Request for Patch Feedback: Lag & Lead Window Functions Can Ignore Nulls

From: Nicholas White <n(dot)j(dot)white(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Request for Patch Feedback: Lag & Lead Window Functions Can Ignore Nulls
Date: 2013-03-23 17:00:25
Message-ID: CA+=vxNa5_N1q5q5OkxC0aQnNdbo2Ru6GVw+86wk+oNsUNJDLig@mail.gmail.com
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> The SQL standard defines a RESPECT NULLS or IGNORE NULLS option for lead,
lag, [...]. This is not implemented in PostgreSQL
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/functions-window.html)
I've had a go at implementing this, and I've attached the resulting patch.
It's not finished yet, but I was hoping to find out if my solution is along
the right lines.

In particular, I'm storing the ignore-nulls flag in the frameOptions of a
window function definition, and am adding a function to the windowapi.h to
get at these options. I'm keeping the last non-null value in
WinGetPartitionLocalMemory (which I hope is the right place), but I'm not
using any of the *GetDatum macros to access it.

An example of my change's behaviour:

nwhite=# select *, lag(num,0) ignore nulls over (order by generate_series)
from
nwhite-# (select generate_series from generate_series(0,10)) s
nwhite-# left outer join
nwhite-# numbers n
nwhite-# on (s.generate_series = n.num);
generate_series | num | lag
-----------------+-----+-----
0 | |
1 | 1 | 1
2 | | 1
3 | | 1
4 | 4 | 4
5 | 5 | 5
6 | | 5
7 | | 5
8 | | 5
9 | 9 | 9
10 | | 9
(11 rows)

I'd find this feature really useful, so I hope you can help me get my patch
to a contributable state.

Thanks -

Nick

Attachment Content-Type Size
lead-lag-ignore-nulls.patch application/octet-stream 14.1 KB

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