[PHOENIX-6384] Allow using colon for specifying column families in sql grammar

• Type: Wish
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: core
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Istvan Toth
• Created: 14/Feb/21 13:22
• Updated: 14/Feb/21 13:22

Description

As I worked on the query compiler code recently, it became apparent that the way we overload the . (dot) character for specifying column families is a very limited and ambigous choice, with ugly and error-prone code hacked into the compiler to support it.

While we cannot remove the currently supported syntax from the code, we should look into adding an alternate unambigious syntax for the same, which could be used with less limitations.

I get the impression that using colon for this should be doable.

select cf:* from table;

select a:cf.*, b:cf:*, a.cf.column from table a, table b; //not possible currenty