Currently I am able to do ...

SELECT dblink_oraconnect('scott/tiger@dbname');
SELECT * FROM dblink_ora('SELECT ename, sal FROM emp')
	AS (ename text, sal text);


The problem is: If I wanted to do a

SELECT * FROM dblink_ora('SELECT * FROM emp');

It won't work because dblink_ora returns SETOF RECORD. If could define a 
type representing the remote data structure.
However, my question is: Is there a way to implement it in a way that 
does not depend on the remote data structure?
Is there a way to get rid of the AS without having to define a type?

Maybe somebody can provide me some information about that or point to me 
to some material about this topic.

If we had a solution for that, we could go ahead and do some basic OLAP 
operations. Imagine we had a cube generated by the means of SQL.

We could do

SELECT * FROM some_olap_operation(cube, ...);

without worrying about the elements in a certain dimension which should 
be displayed in the x-axis (as columns).
If there was a nice workaround or a solution I'd be really happy :).

	Regards,

		Hans

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Sat, 14 Jun 2003 11:52:20 +0200
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Hans-J=FCrgen_Sch=F6nig?= <hs@cybertec.at>
Table functions and AS clauses ...
Hans-Jï¿½rgen Schï¿½nig wrote:
> However, my question is: Is there a way to implement it in a way that 
> does not depend on the remote data structure?
> Is there a way to get rid of the AS without having to define a type?

Unfortunately, no. The parse and planning stages need defined types, so 
waiting for the function to execute is too late. We've discussed it a 
time or two before (as recently as within the last week), but the 
conclusion has been that there is no easy answer to the problem.

Joe



Tue, 17 Jun 2003 11:39:21 -0700
Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>
Re: Table functions and AS clauses ...