[GENERAL] Stored Procedure / function and their result

[Alain Roger]

Hi,

I would like to know if there is a better way how to retrieve result from a
stored procedure (function) than to use 'AS res(col1 varchar, col2
timestamp,..)'

for example, here is a stored procedure :
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION SP_A_003(username VARCHAR)
 RETURNS SETOF RECORD AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
   myrec RECORD;
BEGIN
   FOR myrec IN
       select
           users.user_name,
           users.user_firstname,
           accounts.account_login,
           statususer.statususer_type
       from accounts, users, statususer
       where
           accounts.account_login = $1
       AND
           accounts.account_id = users.user_account_id
       AND
           users.user_status_id = statususer.statususer_id
   LOOP
       RETURN NEXT myrec;
   END LOOP;
RETURN;
END;
$BODY$
 LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE;
...

here is how i call it :


select * from sp_a_003('my_user_name')
as result
(
   name varchar,
   firstname varchar,
   userlogin varchar,
   statustype varchar
);

to understand well, in my stored procedure i only select a part of each
table (so i build a "composite" record) therefore i understood that SETOF
RECORD AS was the best solution for that.

however the result call is catastrophic when stored procedure returns
several fields. when it is more than 2 fields i'm already "angry" to write :
as result
(
   name varchar,
   firstname varchar,
   userlogin varchar,
   statustype varchar,
   ....
);

I would like to avoid this "as result (...)", so is there a better solution
?

thanks a lot,




--
Alain
------------------------------------
Windows XP SP2
PostgreSQL 8.1.4
Apache 2.0.58
PHP 5