Hello,

when defining functions, why can't they take table-valued arguments? I
do not see the sense of this restriction. When a function takes a table
as an argument, whole tables could be transformed in an obvious way.
Currently functions must operate row-wise (at least I haven't found
another way). This also limits the capabilities of joining the
row-arguments, obviously this must be done before passing the arguments
to the functions, instead of having one or more table-arguments and
simply doing the joins within the function. Further, table valued
arguments could lower the developer's work to prepare the arguments
before the function call and enabling each functions to care for them
itself by transforming them for the implementation instead of
introducing several more or less anonymous record types just for passing
values from one function to another which often also carry
implementation specific constraints. The structure of the code as a set
of functions would also greatly improve.

What does the optimizer do with this per-row-semantic, even if it is
invoked on each row? Does it transform the queries within the function
to directly work on the table and realize possible advantages from
indexes and other techniques?

--

Kind Regards,

Robert