--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Clay Shannon" wrote:

> Is there some kind of syntax in SQL which allows you to select most
> of the columns from a table without selecting them all.
>
> IOW, if you have a table with 25 columns, and you want 22 of them in
> your result set, can you do something like:
>
> Select (* - SuperfluousVal, SuperfluousVal2, SuperfluousVal3) from .
> .rather than explicitly listing the 22 columns?
>
> Listing the 22 columns explicitly is a pain; grabbing all 25 using
> "SELECT *" is wasteful.

Well, Firebird itself does not support this (or at least I've never
heard of such a statement). What IS possible, is to create your own
component that translates such a statement into Firebird syntax. To do
this, you start by something like GetFieldNamesList method of IBO or
query the system tables yourself, then remove the superfluous columns
and create a statement using the remaining columns. That should be a
quicker solution than to start lobbying at the Firebird conference in
Prague ;o) or changing the SQL standard (well, I do not know the
standard, so your SQL may exist in a newer version for all I know)...

Set