Re: retrieving varchar size

The historical reason why the POSTGRES backend is required to send multiple
result sets is to support cursors on queries involving type inheritance and
anonymous target lists.

    begin
    declare c cursor for
        select e.oid, e.* from EMP* e
    fetch 10 in c
    ...

To handle the command sequence above, frontend applications would need to
be provided with a new result descriptor when the "fetch 10 in c" crosses a
result set boundary.