Re: [GENERAL] Stored Procedures

On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Jeff MacDonald wrote:

> 1: does postgres support stored procedures

Yes, quite extensively, and far beyond what SQL 7 offers. You may want
to take a look at the programmer's manual for the documentation.

> 2: say a user has a microsoft sql server 7 database
> with ~120 stored procedures, and alot of data, is their
> a script or tool to convert that to a postgres database
> or does it have to be done by hand.
>

You can convert the data over with ODBC, but not the stored procedures.
Under SQL 7, stored procedures are essentially SQL batch files and cannot
be used as a term in an expression, whereas under PostgreSQL, you can
create true functions in PL/PgSQL (a procedural language akin to
Oracle's), or as loadable executable modules written in C, C++, Tcl, etc.,
that returns values and objects, and can be used in an expression.

I was shocked recently when we put in SQL 7 in our office (we've been
using PostgreSQL for a while now, but we needed SQL 7 to use with a
commercial retrieval system) and needed to start writing functions as I
was used to under PostgreSQL, and couldn't. A big win for PostgreSQL!

Brett W. McCoy
http://www.lan2wan.com/~bmccoy
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