Commit 2453ea142 redefined pg_proc.proargtypes to include the types of
OUT parameters, for procedures only. While that had some advantages
for implementing the SQL-spec behavior of DROP PROCEDURE, it was pretty
disastrous from a number of other perspectives. Notably, since the
primary key of pg_proc is name + proargtypes, this made it possible to
have multiple procedures with identical names + input arguments and
differing output argument types. That would make it impossible to call
any one of the procedures by writing just NULL (or "?", or any other
data-type-free notation) for the output argument(s). The change also
seems likely to cause grave confusion for client applications that
examine pg_proc and expect the traditional definition of proargtypes.
Hence, revert the definition of proargtypes to what it was, and
undo a number of complications that had been added to support that.
To support the SQL-spec behavior of DROP PROCEDURE, when there are
no argmode markers in the command's parameter list, we perform the
lookup both ways (that is, matching against both proargtypes and
proallargtypes), succeeding if we get just one unique match.
In principle this could result in ambiguous-function failures
that would not happen when using only one of the two rules.
However, overloading of procedure names is thought to be a pretty
rare usage, so this shouldn't cause many problems in practice.
Postgres-specific code such as pg_dump can defend against any
possibility of such failures by being careful to specify argmodes
for all procedure arguments.
This also fixes a few other bugs in the area of CALL statements
with named parameters, and improves the documentation a little.
catversion bump forced because the representation of procedures
with OUT arguments changes.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/3742981.1621533210@sss.pgh.pa.us
In a top-level CALL, the values of INOUT arguments will be returned as a
result row. In PL/pgSQL, the values are assigned back to the input
arguments. In other languages, the same convention as for return a
record from a function is used. That does not require any code changes
in the PL implementations.
Reviewed-by: Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>
This adds a new object type "procedure" that is similar to a function
but does not have a return type and is invoked by the new CALL statement
instead of SELECT or similar. This implementation is aligned with the
SQL standard and compatible with or similar to other SQL implementations.
This commit adds new commands CALL, CREATE/ALTER/DROP PROCEDURE, as well
as ALTER/DROP ROUTINE that can refer to either a function or a
procedure (or an aggregate function, as an extension to SQL). There is
also support for procedures in various utility commands such as COMMENT
and GRANT, as well as support in pg_dump and psql. Support for defining
procedures is available in all the languages supplied by the core
distribution.
While this commit is mainly syntax sugar around existing functionality,
future features will rely on having procedures as a separate object
type.
Reviewed-by: Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>
Andres Freund