Re: plpgsql: help with RECORD type

There is no set variables in plpgsql. If you want to retrieve set of rows for futher manipulation either use a CURSOR or ARRAY:

declare
  cur refcursor;
begin
  open cur for
    select * from table where ...;

  loop
    fetch cur into var1,var2...;
    exit when not found;
  end loop;



declare
  arr offsite_batch[];
  i int;
begin
   select array(
    select * from offsite_batch where ...
   ) into arr;

  for i in 1..array_upper(arr,1)
  loop
    var1 := arr[i].id;
    ...
  end loop;

Note that ARRAYs of composite type only appeared in 8.3.

I believe what you want to achieve can be done with simple query result looping:

for batch in (
  select *  from offsite_batch
   where closed is NULL
   order by age(opened) ASC
) loop
  batch_found := true;
  IF NOT unique THEN
end loop;

if not batch_found then
  RAISE NOTICE 'creating new offsite batch';
  ...
end if;