Re: [SQL] Re: [GENERAL] Proposed Changes to PostgreSQL

Mathijs Brands wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Feb 02, 2000 at 09:57:48PM -0500, Bruce Momjian allegedly wrote:
> > > > > 3) The ability to return different types of rows from a SELECT. This
> > > > > is to allow implementation of ODBMS functionality where a query could
> > > > > be required to instantiate objects of differing types with differing
> > > > > attributes.
> > > >
> > > > This bothers me.  We return relational data, showing the same number of
> > > > columns and types for every query.  I don't think we want to change
> > > > that, even for OO.
> > >
> > > What aspects bother you? This is the fundamental important thing about
> > > object databases.
> >
> > I fear it is totally against the way our API works.  How does someone
> > see how many columns in the returned row?
> 
> This would probably break applications written in PHP and Perl (and
> possibly others) that have their queryresults returned to them in a
> numerically indexed array (index by offset). If this behaviour could
> be turned off, than it shouldn't be a problem.

It wouldn't affect them because the current APIs would continue to
return
the same base-level columns. You would only get access to the extra
columns
with a new API.