Re: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION

> Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au> writes:
> > Here's a patch I put together. I thought the Oracle-style 'CREATE OR
> > REPLACE FUNCTION' syntax might be useful to those doing lots of function
> > creation/development. It is against the 7.1.3 source.
>
> Hmm.  There are a couple of things that are a tad ugly about this patch
> --- you should be heap_update'ing the pg_proc entry, not doing a delete
> and insert --- but the main thing I don't like is that there's no
> checking to ensure that the function return type doesn't change.  We
> can't allow that; it'd break stored views etc that use the function.
>
> It'd probably also be a good idea to insist that the replacer be the
> same as the original owner.  (Possibly RemoveFunction does that for you
> in the patch as it stands, but it'll need an explicit test if you go
> the update route.)
>
> BTW, I've been assuming that when we got around to providing a
> capability like this, it'd be via an "ALTER FUNCTION" kind of
> statement.  Does anyone have a strong feeling pro or con on whether
> "CREATE OR REPLACE" is a preferable approach?  It doesn't seem to
> fit with the spirit of our other maintenance commands, but maybe
> we should just bow down before the Oracle and do it their way...

I assume it preserves the function's OID?  That is something we have
needed for a while because it would keep oid references to the function
the same, or at least we should give people the option of keeping the
oid.

On the REPLACE/ALTER discussion, we have CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE.
Seems ALTER FUNCTION is the way to go.  Adding a REPLACE toplevel
keyword for this feature just seems too harsh.

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