Oracle PL/SQL supports a very convenient feature in which you can say
something like DECLARE CURSUR cur IS SELECT * FROM RECORD; BEGIN OPEN cur; UPDATE record SET field = value WHERE
CURRENTOF cur; CLOSE cur; END
We have cursors in the development version of PL/pgSQL, but they don't
support CURRENT OF. In the patch I wrote a few months back to add
cursor support to PL/pgSQL, which was not adopted, I included support
for CURRENT OF. I did it by using OIDs. Within PL/pgSQL, I modified
the cursor select statement to also select the OID. Then I change
WHERE CURRENT OF cur to oid = oidvalue. Of course this only works in
limited situations, and in particular doesn't work after OID
wraparound.
Anyhow, I see that there is a move afoot to eliminate mandatory OIDs.
My question now is: if there is no OID, is there any comparable way to
implement CURRENT OF cursor? Basically what is needed is some way to
identify a particular row between a SELECT and an UPDATE.
Ian
