Re: S.O.D.A. database Query API - call for comments

In comp.databases Paul G. Brown <paul.brown_at_informix.com> wrote:

: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558606424/qid%3D988998486/002-1526694-9052009

Goodbye, weekend.

: BTW: Terminology thing: functions and stored procedures aren't quite the
: same thing. Stored procedures embed declarative SQL within procedural code
: (looping, branching, etc). The kinds of SQL functions we're talking about can
: be thought of as more like 'methods' in an OO language or sub-routines if you
: prefer functional decomposition. They perform discrete operations on their
: arguments, and return a data result without affecting the underlying database
: in any way. (Do these polygons overlap? What is the moving average of this
: time-series? How many characters do these fingerprints share?)

I am aware of the distinctions, but was being pedantic in the face of percieved ignorance. That, and I'm not sure of the terminology on other RDBMSes - I'm only *really* fluent in Oracle & Postgres.

I see a question raised in your definitions, tho- 'stored procs do DML, functions don't.' Is that how the standard is defined? I've done DML as side effects in Oracle functions before, so.....(yes, I know this is bad.)

I've always distinguised btw them as one returns values as the member of a query set, and the other does not. Overly simplistic? Received on Fri May 04 2001 - 21:34:48 CEST