Re: 4.1 (pre 5.0.x) stored procedure options

[Roland Bouman]

Ok, glad that helped. To be sure, what I meant was that you should ALWAYS use these aggregate functions to calculate summaries. Any attempt to calculate summaries using running-value calculations are bound to be slower and more resource consuming then the builtin aggregate.

So this example running-value pseudocode:

declare my_sum int := 0;
foreach record in (
select *
from table_i_want_to_query
) loop
my_sum := my_sum + record.column_i_want_to_summate;
end loop;

return my_sum;

should always be shunned in favour of this:

select sum(column_i_want_to_summate)
from table_i_want_to_query

Even if you wrap that in a stored procedure/function