Scott Schulthess wrote:
Hey Ya'll,

I'm a little puzzled by the speed of the stored procedures I am writing.

Here is the query alone in pgAdmin

select distinct featuretype from gnis_placenames where state='CT'
TIME: 312+16ms

Here is a stored procedure

create or replace function getfeaturetypes(text) returns setof text as
$$
select distinct featuretype from gnis_placenames where state=$1;
$$ language sql;

TIME: 2391+15ms

Basically, the planner has more information with the hard-coded example. It should know enough to come up with different plans for 'CT' and XX'. Functions (and this varies per-language, but plpgsql is the usual culprit) cache their query-plans, so you end up with "one size fits all".

You can see what plan it comes up with by using PREPARE ... <query> followed by EXPLAIN EXECUTE ...

I must say I thought recent versions of PG delayed planning the query until first call though.

--
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd

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