Postgres 11 Stored Procedure not returning results

Question

In Postgres 11, are stored procedures not intended to return result sets? Because when we run the following, it says it ran successfully but no results are returned.

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE test()
LANGUAGE sql
AS $$
  SELECT * from aTable;
$$;

call test();

Answer 1

Postgresql procedures can return at most a single value:

CREATE PROCEDURE test (INOUT x int)
LANGUAGE sql
AS $$
    SELECT x;
$$;

# call test (1);
 x
---
 1
(1 row)

Postgresql functions are much more flexible:

create or replace function test()
RETURNS setof atable
language sql
as $$
select * from atable;
$$;

The advantage of procedures is that they can control transactions. If you don't need that, you are likely better off with a function.