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thardinthardin 

SOQL: Static columns supported?

Anyone know if I can have static columns in my SOQL.

select Name, ID, 'FOO' as Bar from Account


Thanks -
Todd Hardin,
Customer Systems Inc.
DevAngelDevAngel
Nope, sorry. Static columns are not supported either. SOQL has a limited mapping to SQL. The objects are defined by the wsdl contract and creating arbitrary fields via a static column or a function would cause a dataset to be returned that could not be mapped to the wsdl defined shape.
thardinthardin
Good point, I can appreciate that the standard WSDL would not support arbitrary columns - however the Partner WSDL would accomodate this if I understand the issue correctly?

Do you think this would be a future consideration for SOQL with the requisite that only apps using the Partner WSDL could correctly handle the result set?

Thanks -
Todd Hardin,
Customer Systems Inc.
DevAngelDevAngel
First, yes, the partner wsdl implementation could handle something this like this, with caveats. But, for static fields, it feels like a frivilous (sp?) use of bandwidth. Suppose my static column is 50 chars. wide and I return 1000 records. I've just increased the size of my soap response by what could be a fair percentage. I'm not sure we want to populate an arbitrary number of static columns across n records. Seems just as easy to augment the return with the static fields.

I am fairly confident that we will try to avoid having SOQL that is appropo for one wsdl versus the other. Support and testing gets a bit overwhelming.
thardinthardin
Your logic and arguments certainly seem sound to me - I definitely appreciate your time in responding with detailed explaination.

This was just a left over convenience feature I've grown used to in traditional 2-tier RDBMS solutions where bandwidth was not as large of a concern. I'll work on adjusting my assumptions and perspective.

Thanks again.
Todd Hardin,
Customer Systems Inc.