Re: TCL updates

Kyle wrote:
> Jan wrote:
> > Beginning with Tcl 8.0, dual ported objects got used to deal
> > with values. These have (amongst performance issues) alot of
> > benefits. Changing all the call interfaces would make it
> > impossible to use PL/Tcl with a pre 8.0 Tcl installation.
> > Since we're now at Tcl 8.3 (the last I've seen), ISTM it's
> > not a bad decision to force the upgrade.
> >
> > Comments?
>
> Jan, I would support this upgrade. I think TCL runs much faster with
> the dual ported calls, right?

After writing the above (and looking at the code again) I
realized that most of the Tcl calls into the PL handler
provided C functions go through strings anyway. Each single
attribute value must do so, because in the worst case someone
might have replaced the output function for int4, and PL/Tcl
has to be consistent with that.

So I left that one as is for now.

> I would also like to see proper support for nulls in TCL functions as
> this has caused us some problems in the past.

In CURRENT sources, there are two new PL/Tcl commands.
"argisnull n" determines if one specific call argument is
NULL. "return_null" will do exactly that.

> BTW, any news on this: Is there a plan for a way to allow a FK
> reference to a table without giving the user select,update privilege on
> the referenced table? This is currently causing us some grief in our
> design.

I'm writing on a proposal to replace the entire permission
system to a more normalized and generalized approach. Stay
tuned.

Jan

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