[SQL] Help in stored procedure

[Igor Maciel Macaubas]

Hi Guys,   I need some help on building the following stored procedure, in PL/PgSQL. If this is not the right place to ask for help in this language, please let me know. Here is what I want to do, my comments in red:   CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION discover_nsu(integer) RETURNS integer as ' DECLARE     nsureturn integer;     nsumax integer;     caixaunitid alias for $1;     branchid integer; BEGIN     branchid := select t1.branch as result from caixa.caixaunit as t1, caixa.caixa as t2 where t2.caixaunit = (select caixaunit from caixa.caixaunit where t2.id = caixaunitid); -- the select above will return to me a result of one row and one column, with a integer variable inside, and will assign its result to branchid.     nsumax := select max(nsu) from caixa.view_transacao_agencia_nsu where branch = branchid; -- here i'll use the var I discovered in the last select (branchid) and will do another select in a view (this view was previously created and works fine), and store the result of the query inside nsumax var.     IF (nsumax <= 0) OR (nsumax ISNULL) THEN           nsureturn:=0;     ELSE           nsureturn:=nsumax + 1;     END IF;     RETURN nsureturn; -- in the if-then-else above, i was just doing a simple test. If nsumax is equal or lower than 0, or nsumax is NULL, it'll assign 0 to the return var. Else, it'll get the max, add one, and assign the value to the return var, and finally, return it =)   END ' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';   Okey, the function gets created fine b/c there are no sintax erros, the problem is when i try to execute:   database=> select discover_nsu(1); ERROR:  syntax error at or near "select" at character 9 QUERY:  SELECT  select t1.branch as result from caixa.caixaunit as t1, caixa.caixa as t2 where t2.caixaunit = (select caixaunit from caixa.cai xaunit where t2.id =  $1 ) CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function "descobrir_nsu" line 7 at assignment LINE 1: SELECT  select t1.branch as result from caixa.caixaunit as t...                 ^ Well, the thing is: when I execute all the selects inside the stored procedure manually, they'll work, proving that there are no errors on the selects statements itself. I believe that the database cannot understand the type of the result, assuming that it's a row instead of a single record(??). I was looking at the PL/PgSQL reference manual and wasn't able to figure out a solution, so here I am .. can aonyone help me? Which type should I use to receive the return from the query? Are cast operations (for type conversions) supported in PL/PgSQL?   Thanks for all, please help!   Regards, Igor -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]