I am trying to cast unnamed row types to a known type using SQL. There seems to be some syntactic sugar that is missing or I haven't found it. A stored procedure can be cast to an unnamed row type with select * from proc() as (A text, B text, C text). What I have is a text represenation of a ROW stored in a column. I want to extract it and store it in a table or select out the individual columns. Tables. f (fid integer, fname text) qs (qid integer, q text, dom text) Insert text description of qs into f.fname works with these variations: insert into f (fname) select textin(record_out(ROW(1,'q1',NULL),0::oid)); insert into f (fname) select textin(record_out(ROW(qs)),0::oid)) from qs; insert into f (fname) select textin(record_out(ROW(qs)),4638118::oid)) from qs; Now I want to go the other way and take f.fname and expand it into a qs typed row. I want to be able to select out the columns and I want to be able to insert it back into the qs table. Below are several variations I've tried. The last one is most curious. =# select (fname).* from found; ERROR: type text is not composite =# select (ROW(fname)).* from found; ERROR: record type has not been registered =# select (record_in(fname)).* from found; ERROR: function record_in(text) does not exist HINT: No function matches the given name and argument types. You may need to add explicit type casts. =# select (record_in(fname),4638118::oid).* from found; ERROR: syntax error at or near "." at character 39 LINE 1: select (record_in(fname),4638118::oid).* from found; =# select record_in(textout(fname),4638118::oid) from found; ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "(1,q1,)" Any help would be appreciated. The underlying problem is the need for a semi-sane, preferably SQL version of jagged rows. I would certainly use the original jagged rows if I could. Elein elein@xxxxxxxxxxx ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)