Re: "stored procedures"

Peter,

> I would like to collect some specs on this feature.  So does anyone have
> links to documentation of existing implementations, or their own spec
> writeup?  A lot of people appear to have a very clear idea of this
> concept in their own head, so let's start collecting those.

Delta between SPs and Functions for PostgreSQL:

* SPs are executed using CALL or EXECUTE, and not SELECT.

* SPs do not return a value
** optional: SPs *may* have OUT parameters.

* SPs have internal transactions including begin/commit
** optional: SPs can run non-transaction statements,  like CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY and VACUUM
** corollary: SPs may not be called as part of a larger query
** question: if an SP is called by another SP, what is its  transaction context?

* optional: SPs can return multisets (ala SQL Server).
** question: how would multisets be handled on the client end?

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com