On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 10:03:33AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:
> > Or are you talking about non-scalar OUT params?
>
> Exactly. I agree that a procedure has no "return value" per se,
> but we need to be able to support OUT params that are rowsets.
FWIW, Sybase, MSSQL, and DB2 return recordsets via an 'open' SELECT or
OPEN CURSOR statement. IE: you execute a SELECT or an OPEN CURSOR, but
don't fetch it into anything. Oracle takes the track of fetching into a
refcursor or cursor variable, which you return as an OUT or INOUT parameter.
The advantage to MSSQL et all is it's less work/code. The advantage to
Oracle is there's no ambiguity.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel@decibel.org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828
Windows: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"
FreeBSD: "Are you guys coming, or what?"