> Neil Conway writes:

> > This patch improves the documentation of the UPDATE and ALTER TABLE
> > commands to elaborate on the effect of specifying an "ONLY" clause.
>
> Unfortunately this is still only half the truth ... see the
> SQL_INHERITANCE configuration variable.

Okay, I've attached an updated patch with more information on
SQL_INHERITANCE and inheritance behavior in prior releases.

Neil Conway

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
index 0bfe88cf54d4d84d587b7ce9bf6c72e7f23d6cc4..61409861cf63b72be1cbb183bf085ac6e1bc264a 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 
 
@@ -60,7 +60,15 @@ ALTER TABLE table
        table 
       
        
-   The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing table to alter.
+   The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing table to
+   alter. If ONLY is specified, only that table is
+   altered. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all
+   its descendant tables (if any) are updated. * can be
+   appended to the table name to indicate that descendant tables are
+   to be scanned, but in the current version, this is the default
+   behavior.  (In releases before 7.1, ONLY was the
+   default behavior.)  The default can be altered by changing the
+   SQL_INHERITANCE configuration option.
        
       
      

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
index a1970c3e88747f359d5cef188990653cd6357374..7a696491a68f7aebd09ec09fcc1c69871152df24 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 
 
@@ -131,7 +131,9 @@ where from_item can be:
    tables (if any) are scanned.  * can be appended to the
    table name to indicate that descendant tables are to be scanned, but
    in the current version, this is the default behavior.  (In releases
-   before 7.1, ONLY was the default behavior.)
+   before 7.1, ONLY was the default behavior.)  The
+   default behavior can be modified by changing the
+   SQL_INHERITANCE configuration option.
        
       
      

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml
index 439e11be4bbd7eacbb502fb47948a3a21b53d2a7..3825be5bc1cbed4ff49a0fcc2accf0fd67c529fc 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 
 
@@ -40,7 +40,15 @@ UPDATE [ ONLY ] table SET 
       table
       
        
-   The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table.
+   The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table. If
+   ONLY is specified, only that table is updated.  If
+   ONLY is not specified, the table and all its
+   descendant tables (if any) are updated. * can be
+   appended to the table name to indicate that descendant tables are
+   to be scanned, but in the current version, this is the default
+   behavior.  (In releases before 7.1, ONLY was the
+   default behavior.)  The default can be altered by changing the
+   SQL_INHERITANCE configuration option.