Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@pobox.com> writes:
> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 09:47:24AM -0800, David E. Wheeler wrote:
>> Definite benefit, there. How does it handle the difference between
>> IMMUTABLE | STABLE | VOLATILE, as well as STRICT functions?
> It doesn't at the moment. I think IMMUTABLE, STABLE and VOLATILE can be
> (documented as being) ignored in this context.
Just for the record, I think that would be a seriously bad idea.
There is a semantic difference there (having to do with snapshot
management), and ignoring it would mean that a function could behave
subtly differently depending on how it was called. It's the kind of
thing that would be a nightmare to debug, too, because you'd never
see a problem except when the right sort of race condition occurred
with another transaction.
I see downthread that you seem to have an approach without this gotcha,
so that's fine, but I wanted to make it clear that you can't just ignore
volatility.
regards, tom lane
