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Support PLAN and ORDER BY on MERGE

The MERGE statement now supports the PLAN and ORDER BY clauses.

Syntax
MERGE INTO target [[AS] target_alias]
  USING <source> [[AS] source_alias]
  ON <join_condition>
  <merge_when> [<merge_when> ...]
  [PLAN <plan-expr>]
  [ORDER BY <ordering-list>]
  [RETURNING <returning_list> [INTO <variables>]]

Support PLAN, ORDER BY and ROWS on UPDATE OR INSERT

The UPDATE OR INSERT statement now supports the PLAN, ORDER BY and ROWS clauses.

Syntax
UPDATE OR INSERT INTO
  target [(<column_list>)]
  [<override_opt>]
  VALUES (<value_list>)
  [MATCHING (<column_list>)]
  [PLAN <plan-expr>]
  [ORDER BY <ordering-list>]
  [ROWS <m> [TO <n>]]
  [RETURNING <returning_list> [INTO <variables>]]

OPTIMIZE FOR Clause

Dmitry Yemanov

SELECT statements now support the OPTIMIZE FOR clause.

Syntax
SELECT
  ...
  [WITH LOCK [SKIP LOCKED]]
  [OPTIMIZE FOR {FIRST | LAST} ROWS]

The OPTIMIZE FOR clause can only occur on a top-level SELECT.

This feature allows the optimizer to consider another (hopefully better) plan if only a subset or rows is fetched initially by the user application (with the remaining rows being fetched on demand), thus improving the response time.

It can also be specified at the session level using the SET OPTIMIZE management statement.

The default behaviour can be specified globally using the OptimizeForFirstRows setting in firebird.conf or databases.conf.