Hello Ian,

IMO, makes perfect sense.


With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com

Download Database Workbench for Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase SQL
Anywhere, MySQL, InterBase, NexusDB and Firebird!

There was a suggestion on the docs mailing list that we rename Virtual
Columns to Computed Columns. I think it makes sense, but before we
implement I want to make sure everyone is happy with the change, so am
repeating it here as not everyone follows docs.

Currently, we use the term Virtual Columns (see
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/documentation/sql-structure-and-commands/sql-commands/data-definition/create/virtual-columns/).

Oracle uses this term, while MS SQL and Firebird use the term Computed
Columns to describe similar functionality.

MariaDB's virtual column implementation has both persistent and virtual
attributes. Talking of "virtual virtual" and "persistent virtual" can be
confusing. Oracle's implementation, to my knowledge, only has virtual
virtual, while MS SQL's Computed Columns offers both persistent
("persisted" in their case) and virtual.

I think "Computed" is a slightly more descriptive term, and avoids the
ambiguity of "persistent virtual" and "virtual virtual". The MariaDB
error messages already use the term computed, for example "Constant
expression in computed column function is not allowed".

Unless anyone has a good reason to prefer the term virtual, we're going
to rather use the term "computed column" in the docs. The article will
still mention virtual column as an alternative etc, but computed will be
the preferred term.

ian


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