Table functions and AS clauses ...

Currently I am able to do ...

SELECT dblink_oraconnect('scott/tiger(at)dbname');
SELECT * FROM dblink_ora('SELECT ename, sal FROM emp')
AS (ename text, sal text);

The problem is: If I wanted to do a

SELECT * FROM dblink_ora('SELECT * FROM emp');

It won't work because dblink_ora returns SETOF RECORD. If could define a
type representing the remote data structure.
However, my question is: Is there a way to implement it in a way that
does not depend on the remote data structure?
Is there a way to get rid of the AS without having to define a type?

Maybe somebody can provide me some information about that or point to me
to some material about this topic.

If we had a solution for that, we could go ahead and do some basic OLAP
operations. Imagine we had a cube generated by the means of SQL.

We could do

SELECT * FROM some_olap_operation(cube, ...);

without worrying about the elements in a certain dimension which should
be displayed in the x-axis (as columns).
If there was a nice workaround or a solution I'd be really happy :).

Regards,

Hans

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