Hi: I notice when I save a view, I lose all the formatting and comments. As I was writing a complicated view, wanting to retain the format and comments, I thought I could just save it as a function that returns a table value. A function would evaluate to the same value as a view, but changing it later might be less confusing.
However, I'm guessing (since I don't know anything about the internals) that the loss of formatting and comments is a result of the view being processed and stored in a more computer-friendly format, while functions are simply stored as the text that I type. That gives me reason to suspect there may be performance or other differences between the same SQL statement stored either as a view or a user-defined function. So that's my question: as someone who doesn't have a problem with putting a pair of empty parentheses at the end of a table variable name, what factors should I be thinking of while deciding whether to store my self-composed, multi-hundred-line long SQL statement as a view or a function? -- Adam Mackler -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
