Joe, have you heard of a standard called SQL/MED? I came across a description of it the other day. You might think it's got some medical connotation, but actually the acronym is Management of External Data, and what it is is a standard spec for shipping chunks of SQL queries to remote servers. For instance, given
SELECT * FROM a.foo, b.bar WHERE ... where a.foo is on a remote machine, the spec lays down how the local and remote servers can cooperate to execute this query intelligently --- including deciding where to execute various WHERE clauses to minimize the amount of data shipped. (The article I found was actually about how the new draft version of SQL/MED improves the protocol to let this sort of thing be done better; it seems the original spec only allowed retrieval of a whole table's contents.) This looks like it might be a great long-term replacement for dblink, and if it is standard, so much the better. I imagine the draft version of the new SQL/MED spec may be available on the web, but haven't gone looking. Just a heads-up in case you are interested... regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster