Last week marked a rather big step in the PostgreSQL world that went largely unnoticed. Thanks to the work done by 2ndQuadrant contributors, we now have the ability to write Stored Procedures in PostgreSQL!
(Ok, well not exactly now but we will have the ability once PostgreSQL 11 comes out)
A procedure is essentially a set of commands to be executed in a particular order. As opposed to functions, procedures are not required to return a value. With this addition, you can now invoke a procedure by simply using the new CALL statement rather than using SELECT. The implementation is fully compliant with the SQL standard and will allow users to write procedures that are somewhat compatible with DB2, MySQL, and to a lesser extent, Oracle.
The commit from last week adds new commands CALL, CREATE/ALTER/DROP PROCEDURE, as well as ALTER/DROP ROUTINE that can refer to either a function or a procedure (or an aggregate function, as an extension to SQL). It also includes support for procedures in various utility commands such as COMMENT and GRANT, as well as support in pg_dump and psql. Support for defining procedures is available in all the languages supplied by the core distribution.
While this commit simply adds structure that is built upon existing functionality, it lays down the foundation on which we will be building the real meat to be made available in PostgreSQL 11. Next steps include the implementation of:
- Transaction control – allowing us to COMMIT and ROLLBACK inside procedures
- Returning multiple result sets
Part 2 here: https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/postgresql-11-server-side-procedures-part-2/