On 12/16/21 16:48, Pavel Stehule wrote: > I don't think Postgres needs packages - this is a redundant concept in > Postgres, when Postgres has schemas (different from Oracle's schemas) > and extensions. > Yes, ORAFCE uses schemas as the package names. However, one very practical thing is missing: session variables. Yes, you can emulate those with ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS temporary tables, but that's a rather ugly hack.
On the other hand, packages can easily be emulated by using Python. Having packages would make PLPg/SQL programming much prettier. It would be much prettier to group related routines into a package than to have them laying around without anything indicating that the routines are related. On the plus side, packages would make it much easier to migrate from Oracle to Postgres. And you do want that, don't you?
I am very well aware of the animosity toward the Oracle community and the reasons for that animosity. Oracle wiped the floor with the predecessor of Postgres, the database called "Ingres". Sandra Kurtzig, the Ingres CEO at the the time, and Michael Stonebraker were both involved in very public spat with Larry Ellison. Stonebraker is still very much a factor in Postgres community and I doubt that his feelings toward the Larry and his company have got any warmer with years. Postgres was created with the idea of fighting the Dark Lord in the land of Belmont, CA. However, if it is the goal of the community to have users convert from Oracle to Postgres, than making that conversion easy would be conducive to that goal. A long time ago a former pastry baker wrote the following article:
Disclosure: I am the Oracle DBA that Josh Berkus is talking about in that article. Recent events with "advice" to a very well known Oracle personality testify to the fact that the emotions haven't changed much since that article was written. Of course, Oracle is still the most popular database in the world.
