Time index column alias for SQL

[sunng87]

What type of enhancement is this?

User experience

What does the enhancement do?

Since we only one time index column in each table, it is possible to use an alias for this column without requiring its actual name in sql. For example in a table of:

CREATE TABLE monitor (
  host STRING,
  ts TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() TIME INDEX,
  cpu FLOAT64 DEFAULT 0,
  memory FLOAT64,
  PRIMARY KEY(host));

Instead of using ts, we can use an alias, say __ts__, in sql query:

SELECT * FROM monitor ORDER BY __ts__ DESC LIMIT 100;

Alias naming candidates

• $timestamp
• __timestamp
• __timestamp__
• @timestamp

Implementation challenges

No response

[killme2008]

I personally prefer $time_index as it represents the time index.

[waynexia]

This seems not viable in JOIN cases like

SELECT * FROM metrics JOIN logs on metrics.host = logs.host ORDER BY ??? DESC LIMIT 100;

where the TIME INDEX attribute lost after calculation (not only JOIN)

[sunng87]

@waynexia Can we use metrics.$time_index here?

[waynexia]

What if metrics is from a subquery

[sunng87]

It has to be an error for this case