I've been working on adding the functionality into the jdbc driver and
I'm having some issues.

Currently the bind message does not know anything about directionality
of the parameter. This means that considerable gyrations need to be done
by the driver to transform

create function foo( out p1 int, in p2 int, out p3 int) ....
then a subsequent

"{call = select foo(?,?,?)}

This would need to be currently transformed into select foo(?), with the
other two being discarded.

It seems to me that the bind message needs to support the notion of
direction in order for this to work cleanly.

Alternatively we could punt and use SQL Server's mechanism where they
only support IN, and INOUT, which would require all parameters to be
sent to the procedure.

On a related note, drop function needs to support the in/out direction.

Dave

--
Dave Cramer
http://www.postgresintl.com
519 939 0336
ICQ#14675561


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Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> writes:
> On a related note, drop function needs to support the in/out direction.

It does ... do you see a problem?

regards, tom lane

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Hmmmm ....

> It seems to me that the bind message needs to support the notion of
> direction in order for this to work cleanly.
>
> Alternatively we could punt and use SQL Server's mechanism where they
> only support IN, and INOUT, which would require all parameters to be
> sent to the procedure.

Does SQL2003 cover IN/OUT parameters? I don't see anything in SQL99.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> writes:
> create function foo( out p1 int, in p2 int, out p3 int) ....
> then a subsequent

> "{call = select foo(?,?,?)}

> This would need to be currently transformed into select foo(?), with the
> other two being discarded.

> It seems to me that the bind message needs to support the notion of
> direction in order for this to work cleanly.

How would it help for BIND to incorporate direction? What would it even
*mean* for BIND to incorporate direction --- it's a client-to-server
message, and can hardly be expected to transmit data in the reverse
direction.

regards, tom lane

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Ok, then I guess the documentation needs to indicate that. Or the
version I am reading is not up to date.

Dave

Tom Lane wrote:

>Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> writes:
>
>
>>On a related note, drop function needs to support the in/out direction.
>>
>>
>
>It does ... do you see a problem?
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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>
>
>
>

--
Dave Cramer
http://www.postgresintl.com
519 939 0336
ICQ#14675561

At this point I'd just like the backend to ignore the OUT parameter if
it were set that way, but allow
it to be sent.

If you consider that a function could have for arguments sake 10
parameters, and they
can be ordered in any fashion; clients have to essentially parse out the
OUT parameters and not send them. So you have an incoming client call
with 10 parameters but some number less than or equal to get sent to the
backend.

At this point I'm leaning towards just using IN, or INOUT params, as
jdbc has a register outparam, and this could be bound to null if were
not explicitly set.

Dave



Tom Lane wrote:

>Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> writes:
>
>
>>create function foo( out p1 int, in p2 int, out p3 int) ....
>>then a subsequent
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>"{call = select foo(?,?,?)}
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>This would need to be currently transformed into select foo(?), with the
>>other two being discarded.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>It seems to me that the bind message needs to support the notion of
>>direction in order for this to work cleanly.
>>
>>
>
>How would it help for BIND to incorporate direction? What would it even
>*mean* for BIND to incorporate direction --- it's a client-to-server
>message, and can hardly be expected to transmit data in the reverse
>direction.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
>
>
>

--
Dave Cramer
http://www.postgresintl.com
519 939 0336
ICQ#14675561


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Tom,

> How would it help for BIND to incorporate direction? What would it even
> *mean* for BIND to incorporate direction --- it's a client-to-server
> message, and can hardly be expected to transmit data in the reverse
> direction.

Where directionality comes in is with OUT-only parameters. Which, IMHO,
aren't terribly important unless SQL2003 demands them; MSSQL didn't even
bother to implement them. Anyone know what SQL3 says?

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> writes:
> At this point I'd just like the backend to ignore the OUT parameter if
> it were set that way, but allow it to be sent.

I think you're thinking at the wrong level. AIUI the issue occurs at
the Parse stage, long before any parameter value is sent (or not sent).

What you really want, if I'm understanding correctly, is to be able to
send SQL that looks like this:

SELECT * FROM myfunc($1,$2,$3);

and then have some of the Param symbols be simply ignored while looking
up myfunc().

This is pretty ugly in itself, and I'd not want to add a protocol change
into the mix to make it happen. But possibly we could do it without any
protocol-level change. What would you say to specifying that Params
that are declared as type VOID are ignored in a function lookup? What
this would mean is that you'd need to do the following:

1. The SQL string can look as above.

2. When sending the Parse message, you'd specify the parameter types
as, say, INT4/VOID/VOID (or possibly UNKNOWN/VOID/VOID).

3. When sending Bind, you'd have to specify dummy values (probably
nulls) for the VOID parameter positions.

While I haven't looked at the backend code yet, I think we could drop
VOID-type parameters out of the argument list of a function during
parse analysis without too much trouble. This would affect *all*
function calls, not only those appearing in SELECT * FROM, but
I don't see any legitimate use of VOID-type values that this would
interfere with.

Klugy, isn't it? Anyone have a better idea? Or should we just tell
Dave that the JDBC driver ought to handle it?

regards, tom lane

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Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> writes:
> Ok, then I guess the documentation needs to indicate that. Or the
> version I am reading is not up to date.

Oh, you're right, I overlooked adding that to the documentation of
the other statement types that work with function names.

Come to think of it, the regprocedure type may need some work too.
It'd probably be nice if it understood IN/OUT decorations, at
least for input.

regards, tom lane

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People:

OK, found it in SQL99:

<SQL parameter declaration> ::=
[ <parameter mode> ] [ <SQL parameter name> ] <parameter type> [ RESULT ]
<parameter mode> ::=
IN
| OUT
| INOUT

.... so this is something we need to support, apparently both for Functions and
Procedures (when we get the latter), in the backend, not just JDBC. As you
can imagine, though, SQL03 does nothing to clarify calling rules for IN/OUT
params.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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