Re: [HACKERS] proposal: schema variables

​I've done a non-compilation documentation review, the diff from the poc
patch and the diff from master are attached.

Comments are inter-twined in the patch in xml comment format; though I
reiterate (some of?) them below.

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 3:06 PM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> Hi
>
> I wrote proof concept of schema variables. The patch is not nice, but the
> functionality is almost complete (for scalars only) and can be good enough
> for playing with this concept.
>
> I recap a goals (the order is random):
>
> 1. feature like PL/SQL package variables (with similar content life cycle)
> 2. available from any PL used by PostgreSQL, data can be shared between
> different PL
> 3. possibility to store short life data in fast secured storage
>

​The generic use of the word secure here bothers me. I'm taking it to be
"protected by grant/revoke"-based privileges; plus session-locality.

4. possibility to pass parameters and results to/from anonymous blocks
> 5. session variables with possibility to process static code check
>

What does "process static code check" means here?​

> 6. multiple API available from different environments - SQL commands, SQL
> functions, internal functions
>

I made the public aspect of this explicit in the CREATE VARIABLE doc
(though as noted below it probably belongs in section II)
​

> 7. data are stored in binary form
>

Thoughts during my review:

There is, for me, a cognitive dissonance between "schema variable" and
"variable value" - I'm partial to the later. Since we use "setting" for
GUCs the term variable here hopefully wouldn't cause ambiguity...

I've noticed that we don't seem to have or enforce any policy on how to
communicate "SQL standards compatibility" to the user...

We are missing the ability to alter ownership (or at least its
undocumented), and if that brings into existing ALTER VARIABLE we should
probably add ALTER TYPE TO new_type USING (cast) for completeness.

Its left for the reader to presume that because these are schema
"relations" that namespace resolution via search_path works the same as any
other relation.

I think I've answered my own question regarding DISCARD in that "variables"
discards values while if TEMP is in effect all temp variables are dropped.

Examples abound though it doesn't feel like too much: but saying "The usage
is very simple:" before giving the example in the function section seems to
be outside of our general style. A better preamble than "An example:"
would be nice but the example is so simple I could not think of anything
worth writing.

Its worth considering how both:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/ddl.html
and
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/queries.html

could be updated to incorporate the broad picture of schema variables, with
examples, and leave the reference (SQL and functions) sections mainly
relegated to syntax and reminders.

A moderate number of lines changed are for typos and minor grammar edits.

David J.