Re: PL/pgSQL 2

On 01/09/14 21:52, Joel Jacobson wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 8:34 PM, Álvaro Hernández Tortosa <aht@nosys.es> wrote:
>>      What I can add is that, if Postgres is to devote resources to a new
>> language, I would plan it with a broader scope. What would attract most
>> users? Would it bring non postgres users to Postgres? What could be one of
>> the killer features of any next version? My trivial answer to most of these
>> questions is: PL/SQL. I don't know with detail how complex this is to get in
>> Postgres (well, EDB probably knows), but if I had to chose a new language,
>> this is it. So my questions would rather be:
> Interesting visionary ideas.
>
> For me personally, I have no Oracle functions to port to Postgres, so
> all differences
> between PL/SQL and PL/pgSQL would just be unnecessary extra amount of work
> in the process of porting existing code into a new language, be it
> PL/SQL or PL/pgSQL 2.
>
> That said, if PL/SQL wouldn't suffer from the problems I have with
> PL/pgSQL today,
> I wouldn't see a problem writing new code in the language, but then I
> would probably
> never manage to port all existing code to PL/SQL and I would be stuck
> with a mix of code
> in two languages instead of one. With PL/pgSQL 2 on the other hand, it
> would be feasible
> to eventually port all my existing code, as most of it would be
> compatible without changes
> and the rest would easy to make compatible.
>
> I guess it's a question of if it's more important to recruit Oracle users,
> or if it's more important to improve the life of existing PL/pgSQL
> Postgres users.
    I agree that for you, unfortunately, plpgsql2 would be better than 
PL/SQL. However, I believe as a whole a bigger majority of users would 
be benefited from this.
    If anyone is willing to look at the market numbers, the number of 
PL/SQL users compared to those of plpgsql is really huge. That would 
surely attract many more users to postgres, which would ultimately 
greatly help us all (in detriment of you and a few others, sure, but on 
a way that I'm sure it's manageable).
    Of course, I'd +1 any attempt to build a super-set of PL/SQL that 
would try to implement, also, the request that you and others may have 
about this PL, should they make sense.
    Regards,
    Álvaro