Lester Caine wrote:

> So isn't REPLACE the same but working on the one table?
>
> We do need to decide if Firebird is going to become SQL2003 compliant -
> which I would prefer - or not?
>

Yes, we need to be as standard compliant as possible.

But nothing prevents us from having non-standard extensions, if we find
that they make life better. I suppose that REPLACE via MERGE is such
extension, is not it?

Ideally we should support MERGE in all it's complexity, and as soon as
we are able to compile REPLACE using that same execution tree, it will
become fine extension of SQL language, making life easier in trivial
cases, when full MERGE capabilities are not required. But (returning to
our initial problem) RETURNING clause is not present now in MERGE
specification - at least I don't see it in both Oracle docs or available
to me form of sql2003. But nothing prevents us from having it! In the
future.

If right now any developer wants to implement REPLACE, not MERGE, I see
no problems. But please make it possible to use that same parts of code
- BLR, execution tree node(s), etc. - later in MERGE.