Re: Can't use WITH in a PERFORM query in PL/pgSQL?

On 10/20/2011 05:23 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> I wrote:
>> Merlin Moncure<mmoncure(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>> The point being, how do I convert any query to a non WITH variant so
>>> it can be PERFORM'd? Anyways, I always thought having to do perform
>>> at all was pretty weak sauce -- not sure why it's required.
>
>> Possibly it was an Oracle compatibility thing ... anyone know PL/SQL
>> well enough to say how this works there?
>
> After writing that, I remembered I had an old PL/SQL manual sitting
> about, so I took a look. So far as I can see, there is no PERFORM
> statement in PL/SQL, and no SELECT-without-INTO either; that is, the
> functionality of executing a SELECT and discarding the result simply
> isn't there.
>
> So at this point it looks like we made up PERFORM out of whole cloth,
> and we could just as easily choose to do it another way.

How does PL/SQL handle multiple result set returns?

PL/PgSQL doesn't currently support that, but if true stored procedures
land up in someone's sights down the track it'll be important to be able
to support multiple result sets. If compatibility is of interest, then
it'd be good to know whether PL/SQL uses "RETURN SELECT" or just
"SELECT" to produce a result set.

If it just uses "SELECT" (and it sounds like it does from the above)
then perhaps retaining that meaning, and thus disallowing it from
functions that cannot return multiple result sets, would be better. When
true stored procs are implemented they can then permit bare SELECTs,
emitting their output as a resultset.

--
Craig Ringer