Oracle's been into the SQL extensions since well before the 92 standard was set in stone, witness DECODE, etc. ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dan Norris Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 9:00 PM To: chet.justice@xxxxxxxxx Cc: oracle-l Subject: Re: Speaking of New Features You may be appealing to the wrong people. The SQL 92 standard specifies the INSERT statement syntax (page 388 of http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~shadow/sql/sql1992.txt). However, I suppose it's always possible to create "extensions" to those standards too. Dan On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:37 PM, chet justice <chet.justice@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: Any thoughts on the "new" syntax for INSERT statements below? INSERT INTO my_table ( id => seq.nexval, create_date => SYSDATE, update_date => SYSDATE, col1 => 'A', col2 => 'SOMETHING', col3 => 'SOMETHING', col4 => 'SOMETHING', col5 => 'SOMETHING', col6 => 'SOMETHING', col7 => 'SOMETHING', col8 => 'SOMETHING', col9 => 'SOMETHING', col10 => 'SOMETHING', col11 => 'SOMETHING', col12 => 'SOMETHING', col13 => 'SOMETHING', col14 => 'SOMETHING' ); Thought of one day while trying to clean up (make human readable) someone else's code. I would either get too many values or not enough. After copying the INSERT columns and subsequent VALUES clause into an Excel spreadsheet to compare them side by side, I thought, hey, what about named notation? Anyway, I created the "Idea" on Oracle Mix here <https://mix.oracle.com/ideas/94278-position-insert-syntax> if you are inclined to, one way or another, to vote. chet -- chet justice www.oraclenerd.com