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@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
 + It's impossible for everything to be true. +