Re: PL/pgSQL 2

On 9/2/14 11:40 AM, Álvaro Hernández Tortosa wrote:
> If we are to have another plpgsql-like language (like plpgsql2) and
> we could design it so it would attract many many users (let's not forget
> that Oracle may have around two orders of magnitude more users than pg),
> that would benefit us all greatly. Even if not perfect. Even if it is a
> longer project which spans more than one release. But just having the
> syntax (or most of it, maybe avoiding some complex unimplemented
> postgres features, if that required a huge effort) is a big win.

Have you looked at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/plpgsql-porting.html already?
As far as I can tell, that already *is* the case as far as the
language goes. It seems to me that most of the stuff that's different
between the two are things that are out of the control of the language
(no autonomous transactions, function source code in a literal etc.)

> For 9.4, we have the media already saying "Postgres has NoSQL
> capabilities" (which is only partially true). For x.y we could have the
> media saying "Postgres adds Oracle compatibility" (which would be only
> partially true). But that brings a lot of users to postgres, and that
> helps us all.

This would be a horrible, horrible lie.

> If on the other hand we resign from attracting Oracle users, in a
> moment where non-Oracle databases are fighting for them..... and we lose
> here.... well, let's at least have a very compelling, attractive,
> in-core, blessed, language. Even disliking it myself, PL/JavaScript
> would be my #1 candidate there.

The best part about PL/PgSQL is the seamless integration with SQL. You
can put an SQL expression pretty much anywhere. How well would that
work if the "framework" was Javascript instead of the ADA-like body that
both PL/SQL and PL/PgSQL implement?

.marko