Enhancements to Aggregate Functions: Merging and Scaling States

Why it matters

This feature allows users to combine the intermediate states of aggregate functions more flexibly by enabling addition and scaling of these states. It improves the capability to perform complex aggregate state manipulations, facilitating custom aggregation logic and optimization of distributed query processing.

How to use it

Users can merge aggregate function states by applying the + operator between them, and multiply an aggregate function state by a nonnegative constant using the multiplication operator. This enables expressions like agg_state_1 + agg_state_2 and agg_state * constant within SQL queries or aggregate function manipulations.