On 28 December 2010 01:09, Kevin Grittner <kevin.gritt...@wicourts.gov> wrote: > Personally, I think it's worth fixing. This sort of disjunction > between code and documentation can cause confusing for someone > trying to get started on hacking. It is an exception to the > otherwise excellent documentation of both the product and the code.
Hmm. Having looked at the relevant sgml file, queries.sgml, common table expressions appear at one point: <indexterm> <primary>common table expression</primary> <see>WITH</see> </indexterm> This indicates that the term common table expression should be indexed (the dead tree way), which isn't much use for the majority of users that access the docs on the web. This term doesn't appear in the html source. Perhaps whatever infrastructure we use to render the sgml files as html for dot org should produce keyword meta tags for indexed terms, in case anyone searches the docs using Altavista. More seriously, if we did this I imagine we'd see WITH Queries (for example) in the first page of results if we search for "common table expression" from dot org directly. The fact that whatever docbook tool we use doesn't already do this does suggests that it might not be such a good idea. It may not be worth the effort. I've cc'd Thom Brown to see what he thinks. Attached documentation patch should make things clearer. I haven't changed the "queries-with" section to "queries-common-table-expression" per David's suggestion for the sake of stability. I hesitate to change it without reaching a consensus - will this break a lot of links? The main change I've made is: "WITH queries, also referred to as Common table expressions or CTEs, provide a way to write subqueries for use as part of a larger query". I'm concerned that this might not be strictly correct, because the term "WITH query" may not be exactly equivalent to the term "CTE" - WITH queries are comprised of one or more CTEs, plus a main query. Or are they? Comments? -- Regards, Peter Geoghegan
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml index f6e081e..45df052 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml @@ -1525,7 +1525,7 @@ SELECT <replaceable>select_list</replaceable> FROM <replaceable>table_expression <sect1 id="queries-with"> - <title><literal>WITH</literal> Queries</title> + <title><literal>WITH</literal> Queries (Common Table Expressions)</title> <indexterm zone="queries-with"> <primary>WITH</primary> @@ -1538,10 +1538,10 @@ SELECT <replaceable>select_list</replaceable> FROM <replaceable>table_expression </indexterm> <para> - <literal>WITH</> provides a way to write subqueries for use in a larger - query. The subqueries can be thought of as defining - temporary tables that exist just for this query. One use of this feature - is to break down complicated queries into simpler parts. An example is: + <literal>WITH</> queries, also referred to as Common table expressions or + <acronym>CTE</acronym>s, provide a way to write subqueries for use as part of a larger query. + The subqueries can be thought of as defining temporary tables that exist just for this query. + One use of this feature is to break down complicated queries into simpler parts. An example is: <programlisting> WITH regional_sales AS (
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