On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 07:35:57PM -0600, Todd P Marek wrote:
> I am curious if there is a way to select and return multiple columns
> from multiple tables without having to first create a view.
You could use CREATE TYPE to create a composite type with the desired
fields and return SETOF that type. When I do this, I sometimes
create the type to contain only keys; if I want additional columns
then I join the function results (rows of keys) to the appropriate
tables.
Depending on why you object to creating a view to get a composite
type, you might not want to create a custom type either. The
function could return SETOF RECORD, but then queries that use it
will have to supply their own column definitions. I prefer to do
this only when the return rows don't have a fixed format.
--
Michael Fuhr
http://www.fuhr.org/~mfuhr/