aggregate returning anyarray and 'cannot determine result data type'

From: Tomas Vondra <tv(at)fuzzy(dot)cz>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: aggregate returning anyarray and 'cannot determine result data type'
Date: 2014-04-22 22:24:46
Message-ID: 5356EC2E.3090900@fuzzy.cz
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Hi all,

I needed to implement an aggregate producing a random sample, with an
upper bound on the number of items. I.e. not the usual "5% of values"
but "up to 1000 values".

So my plan was to do something like this:

sample_append(internal, anyelement, int) -> internal
sample_final(internal) -> anyarray

CREATE AGGREGATE sample_agg(anyelement, int) (
SFUNC = sample_append,
STYPE = internal,
FINALFUNC = sample_final
);

where 'internal' represents a pointer to a structure with all the info
(limit, currently accumulated sample, ...).

However this leads to

ERROR: cannot determine result data type
DETAIL: A function returning a polymorphic type must have at least
one polymorphic argument

because 'sample_final' produces anyarray but has no polymorphic
argument. Sadly, the 'natural' solution of using anyarray instead of the
internal structure does not work because I have no way to pass the other
parameters to the final function (the last int in sfunc).

Any ideas how to solve this?

regards
Tomas

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