Bill Studenmund writes: > So what are packages? In Oracle, they are a feature which helps developers > make stored procedures and functions.
I think you have restricted yourself too much to functions and procedures. A package could/should also be able to contain views, tables, and such. > They provide a name space for functions local to the package, Namespacing is the task of schemas. I think of packages as a bunch of objects that can be addressed under a common name (think RPMs). But it seems like some of this work could be used to implement schema support. > session-specific package variables, I think this is assuming a little too much about how a PL might operate. Some PLs already support this in their own language-specific way, with or without packages. Thus, I don't think packages should touch this. Actually, I think you could easily set up session variables in the package initializer function. > The last component of a package are the functions usable for type > declarations. They are declared as: > BEFORE TYPE FUNCTION <standard package function declaration> > > They are useful as the normal functions in a package are declared after > the types are declared, so that they can use a type newly-defined in a > package. I think it would make much more sense to allow the creation of objects in the CREATE PACKAGE command in any order. PostgreSQL has not so far had a concept of "functions suitable for type declarations" and we shouldn't add one. -- Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
