New SQL functions

From Dmitry Yemanov – Implementation of a new aggregate function LIST has been committed into the HEAD branch. It’s one of the remaining changes that weren’t ported from the Yaffil codebase yet. There are other built-in functions to port, they will be discussed in firebird-devel later this week.

Syntax: LIST ( [DISTINCT] value [ , delimiter ] )

Semantics is similar to the LIST function in Sybase SQL Anywhere and GROUP_CONCAT function in MySQL, with the exception of the ORDER BY clause which is not supported yet.

Also, Adriano dos Santos Fernandes has implemented the new REPLACE function (also about to be committed into HEAD). It can be considered a simplified version of the standard MERGE statement, which allows conditional INSERT or UPDATE operation based on a primary key match.

Syntax: REPLACE INTO table [ ( column_list ) ] VALUES ( value_list )
[ RETURNING column_list [ INTO variable_list ] ]

The SQL99-compliant MERGE statement is also planned for implementation in the future.