On mån, 2011-01-17 at 07:37 +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote: > >> which, as Magnus points out, includes non-procedural languages (SQL). > >> > >> I think that "list languages" could be confusing to newcomers -- the > >> very people who might be reading through the help output of psql for > >> the first time -- who might suppose that "languages" has something to > >> do with the character sets supported by PostgreSQL, and might not even > >> be aware that a variety of procedural languages can be used inside the > >> database. > > > > Fair point. > > Yeah. Procedural langauges may strictly be wrong, but people aren't > likely to misunderstand it.
The term "procedural" in this context originated with Oracle's PL/SQL, which is a procedural language extension to the non-procedural SQL language. From this came PostgreSQL's PL/pgSQL, and that naming was then continued with PL/Tcl, at which point "PL/$X" lost its original meaning of "procedural extension to the non-procedural language $X" and meant more or less "handler for writing PostgreSQL functions in language $X". Otherwise PL/Scheme will blow your mind. :) Think of "procedural language" as "language for writing [PostgreSQL] procedures". As was pointed out, it's also a useful convention for distinguishing this from other "languages", such as message translations. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
