Hi All,
My company (EnterpriseDB) is very interested in helping to make ANSI-ISO SQL Stored Procedures part of standard BSD Postgres. The SQL/PSM standard is currently used in DB2 and is being implemented in MySQL 5.0. Note that I'm NOT a big fan of adding Oracle compatibility to PL/pgSQL, but, I'm biased in this regard because EnterpriseDB's SPL (Superset Procedural Language) supports Redwood (pl/sql) and Redmond (transact-sql) style programming.
For various technical and backward compatibility reasons, I don't think SQL/PSM should be a replacement for PL/pgSQL. Although I do think it should heavily leverage the solid foundation afforded by the PL/pgSQL code base. I think it should start as a separate project on PgFoundry. Once it is working and fully tested and rock solid and proven... I think it should then be considered to become part of the core & installed by default alongside plpgsql.
Please note that this is all appropriate for 8.2, because changes to the server side code are necessary to support ANSI stored proc signatures and flexible out/inout parameter passing. EnterpriseDB will publish those suggested server changes for review so that work can begin on plsqlpsm sooner rather than later.
What do y'all think?? I believe the first step is for us to create "plsqlpsm" as a BSD project in PgFoundry.
--Luss