plpgsql has always executed the query given in a RETURN QUERY command
by opening it as a cursor and then fetching a few rows at a time,
which it turns around and dumps into the function's result tuplestore.
The point of this was to keep from blowing out memory with an oversized
SPITupleTable result (note that while a tuplestore can spill tuples
to disk, SPITupleTable cannot). However, it's rather inefficient, both
because of extra data copying and because of executor entry/exit
overhead. In recent versions, a new performance problem has emerged:
use of a cursor prevents use of a parallel plan for the executed query.
We can improve matters by skipping use of a cursor and having the
executor push result tuples directly into the function's result
tuplestore. However, a moderate amount of new infrastructure is needed
to make that idea work:
* We can use the existing tstoreReceiver.c DestReceiver code to funnel
executor output to the tuplestore, but it has to be extended to support
plpgsql's requirement for possibly applying a tuple conversion map.
* SPI needs to be extended to allow use of a caller-supplied
DestReceiver instead of its usual receiver that puts tuples into
a SPITupleTable. Two new API calls are needed to handle both the
RETURN QUERY and RETURN QUERY EXECUTE cases.
I also felt that I didn't want these new API calls to use the legacy
method of specifying query parameter values with "char" null flags
(the old ' '/'n' convention); rather they should accept ParamListInfo
objects containing the parameter type and value info. This required
a bit of additional new infrastructure since we didn't yet have any
parse analysis callback that would interpret $N parameter symbols
according to type data supplied in a ParamListInfo. There seems to be
no harm in letting makeParamList install that callback by default,
rather than leaving a new ParamListInfo's parserSetup hook as NULL.
(Indeed, as of HEAD, I couldn't find anyplace that was using the
parserSetup field at all; plpgsql was using parserSetupArg for its
own purposes, but parserSetup seemed to be write-only.)
We can actually get plpgsql out of the business of using legacy null
flags altogether, and using ParamListInfo instead of its ad-hoc
PreparedParamsData structure; but this requires inventing one more
SPI API call that can replace SPI_cursor_open_with_args. That seems
worth doing, though.
SPI_execute_with_args and SPI_cursor_open_with_args are now unused
anywhere in the core PG distribution. Perhaps someday we could
deprecate/remove them. But cleaning up the crufty bits of the SPI
API is a task for a different patch.
Per bug #16040 from Jeremy Smith. This is unfortunately too invasive to
consider back-patching. Patch by me; thanks to Hamid Akhtar for review.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16040-eaacad11fecfb198@postgresql.org
<!-- doc/src/sgml/README.links -->
Linking within DocBook documents can be confusing, so here is a summary:
Intra-document Linking
----------------------
<xref>
use to get chapter/section number from the title of the target
link, or xreflabel if defined at the target, or refentrytitle if target
is a refentry; has no close tag
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/documentation/reference/html/xref.html
linkend=
controls the target of the link/xref, required
endterm=
for <xref>, allows the text of the link/xref to be taken from a
different link target title
<link>
use to supply text for the link, only uses linkend, requires </link>
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/documentation/reference/html/link.html
External Linking
----------------
<ulink>
like <link>, but uses a URL (not a document target); requires
</ulink>; if no text is specified, the URL appears as the link
text
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/documentation/reference/html/ulink.html
url=
used by <ulink> to specify the URL, required
Guidelines
----------
- For an internal link, if you want to supply text, use <link>, else
<xref>.
- Specific nouns like GUC variables, SQL commands, and contrib modules
usually have xreflabels.
- For an external link, use <ulink>, with or without link text.
- xreflabels added to tags prevent the chapter/section for id's from being
referenced; only the xreflabel is accessible. Therefore, use xreflabels
only when linking is common, and chapter/section information is unneeded.