hello performance minded administrators:

We have recently converted a number of routines that walk a bill of
materials (which is a nested structure) from the application side to the
server side via recursive plpgsql functions.  The performance is
absolutely fantastic but I have to maintain a specialized 'walker' for
each specific task that I have to do.  It would be very nice and elegant
if I could pass in the function for the walker to execute while it is
iterating through the bill of materials.  I have been beating my head
against the wall for the best way to do this so here I am shopping for
ideas.

A simplified idealized version of what I would like to do is 
        begin
          select (callback_routine)(record_type)
        end;

from within a plpgsql function.  I am borrowing the C syntax for a
function pointer here.  The problem I am running into is the only way to
do callbacks is via dynamic sql...however you can use higher level types
such as row/record type in dynamic sql (at least not efficiently).  I
could of course make a full dynamic sql call by expanding the record
type into a large parameter list but this is unwieldy and brittle.

Any thoughts?

Merlin

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