[DB-SIG] Oracle no longer wants positional arguments!

[Paul Boddie]

Jim Fulton <jim.fulton@Digicool.com> wrote:

> I happen to be working on a new Oracle module that needs to
> work with Oracle 8 and I noticed something interesting.

Right! I thought someone was working on a new module. Now I know I didn't just 
make it up!

> The Oracle OCI call, obindrn, that lets you use positional
> placeholders, as in:
> 
>   select * from spam
>   where foo=:1
> 
> is now considered "obsolete"!

I noticed that named placeholders were supported in OCI, and wondered why they 
weren't utilised by oracledb...

> Oracle wants you to use named variables, like:
> 
>   select * from spam
>   where foo=:foo
> 
> Aparently, you were already (at least in Oracle 7)
> not allowed to use positional placeholders in PL/SQL
> blocks.
> 
> Oops. ;-)

In the PL/SQL probably not, but it is possible to call PL/SQL procedures using 
OCI with numbered placeholders.

> Maybe we should think about a less position-oriented interface, 
> perhaps using keyword arguments or a dictionary 
> to pass values into execute.
> 
> (Note that I'd still prefer a more function-like
>  interface, as in:
> 
>    f=connection.prepare(some_sql)
>    result=f(arg1=v1, arg2=v2)
> )

Hmmm... I think that (naming and notation issues introduced in the example above 
aside) dictionaries would provide a fairly convenient interface to the 
parameters of stored procedures, which I was working on for oracledb-0.1.3.

I posted a bit of a concern about the disconnection/commit relationship in 
oracledb. Are you in a position to comment about that? (Given that the oracledb 
module is unsupported, of course.)

Paul Boddie			Paul.Boddie@cern.ch
| http://assuwww.cern.ch/~pboddie
| Any views expressed above are personal and not necessarily
| shared by my employer or my associates.