How to work around the "Recursive CTE member can refer itself only in FROM clause" requirement? - firebird

Question

I'm trying to run a graph search to find all nodes accessible from a starting point, like so:
with recursive
nodes_traversed as (
select START_NODE ID
from START_POSITION
union all
select ed.DST_NODE
from EDGES ed
join nodes_traversed NT
on (NT.ID = ed.START_NODE)
and (ed.DST_NODE not in (select ID from nodes_traversed))
)
select distinct * from nodes_traversed
Unfortunately, when I try to run that, I get an error:
Recursive CTE member (nodes_traversed) can refer itself only in FROM clause.
That "not in select" clause is important to the recursive expression, though, as it provides the ending point. (Without it, you get infinite recursion.) Using generation counting, like in the accepted answer to this question, would not help, since this is a highly cyclic graph.
Is there any way to work around this without having to create a stored proc that does it iteratively?

Answer 1

Here is my solution that use global temporary table, I have limited recursion by level and nodes from temporary table.
I am not sure how it will work on large set of data.
create procedure get_nodes (
START_NODE integer)
returns (
NODE_ID integer)
as
declare variable C1 integer;
declare variable C2 integer;
begin
/**
create global temporary table id_list(
id integer
);
create index id_list_idx1 ON id_list (id);
*/
delete from id_list;
while ( 1 = 1 ) do
begin
select count(distinct id) from id_list into :c1;
insert into id_list
select id from
(
with recursive nodes_traversed as (
select :START_NODE AS ID , 0 as Lv
from RDB$DATABASE
union all
select ed.DST_NODE , Lv+1
from edges ed
join nodes_traversed NT
on
(NT.ID = ed.START_NODE)
and nt.Lv < 5 -- Max recursion level
and nt.id not in (select id from id_list)
)
select distinct id from nodes_traversed);
select count(distinct id) from id_list into :c2;
if (c1 = c2) then break;
end
for select distinct id from id_list into :node_id do
begin
suspend ;
end
end