I'm trying to write a recordset-returning function that returns a values from a base table, and one column from a joined table, where the joined table varies according to a field of the base table. I'm looking for an efficieint way to do this, and I don't think I know enough about Postgres' capabilities to know how to do this.
I imagine fetching my base table rows in order of the table reference column, looping over my base table, and setting a refcursor to a new joined table when the table reference column changes. I would then fetch from the appropriate joined table cursor to get the joined value for each row.
So my question is a performance one: is this a sensible way to do this, or am I missing something altogether about hierarchies of tables.
Or can I fetch a bunch of rows into memory and loop over them there, thus avoid queries to look up individual rows over and over.
Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Many thanks,
Eric
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