You can get either commas or required `as` and parenthesis around expressions.
IMO, required `as` and parenthesis are better. But it's not a clear thing where everybody will agree.
IMO, required `as` and parenthesis are better. But it's not a clear thing where everybody will agree.
The big problem here is the seemed-good-in-the-70s syntax that died with SQL. In the best of all possible worlds they could have just used Lisp as the foundation then let people macro/transpile their own syntaxes. A subtle flaw in SQL is being just hard enough to correctly emit that most people don't build new languages on top of it.
I have really no idea what's "ideal". Haskell's "white space means application" is way nicer than most function syntaxes, end of line statement separation work very well if you don't need any long statement, the SQL complex syntax is very convenient... and yet if you mix any of those things, you'll get a truckload of disastrous issues.
But one thing that is clear is that allowing for trailing commas in SQL is a gain.