Re: "stored procedures" - use cases?

Christopher Browne wrote:
> > Multiple resultsets in one call would be a good thing, though, no?
> >
> > cheers
>
> I *thought* the purpose of having stored procedures was to allow a
> substrate supporting running multiple transactions, so it could do
> things like:
> - Managing vacuums
> - Managing transactions
> - Replacing some of the need for dblink.
> - Being an in-DB piece that could manage LISTENs
>
> It seems to be getting "bikeshedded" into something with more
> "functional argument functionality" than stored functions.
>
> I think we could have a perfectly successful implementation of "stored
> procedures" that supports ZERO ability to pass arguments in or out.
> That's quite likely to represent a good start.

I am kind of confused too, particularly with the CALL syntax. I thought
our function call usage was superior in every way to CALL, so why
implement CALL? I assume for SQL-standards compliance, right? Does
multiple result sets require CALL? I assume autonomous transactions
don't require CALL.

Are we assuming no one is going to want a function that allows multiple
result sets or autonomous transactions? That seems unlikely. I would
think CALL is independent of those features. Maybe we need those
features to support SQL-standard CALL, and we will just add those
features to functions too.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +