in postgres there are also alternatives you can use with json fields, which will allow you to return an arbitrary and variable number of columns - the only tric

in postgres there are also alternatives you can use with json fields, which will allow you to return an arbitrary and variable number of columns - the only trick is that the "columns" are in a json object. Here is an example if anyone is interested: http://dbfiddle.uk/?rdbms=postgres_9.6&fiddle=5dbbf7eadf0ed92f8d6a49fc5be8f3f2 http://dbfiddle.uk/?rdbms=postgres_9.6&fiddle=5dbbf7eadf0ed9... - jsonb_object_agg is the secret sauce.