Stored Procedure / function and their result

Hi,

I would like to know if there is a better way how to retrieve result from a
stored procedure (function) than to use 'AS res(col1 varchar, col2
timestamp,..)'

for example, here is a stored procedure :
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION SP_A_003(username VARCHAR)
RETURNS SETOF RECORD AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
myrec RECORD;
BEGIN
FOR myrec IN
select
users.user_name,
users.user_firstname,
accounts.account_login,
statususer.statususer_type
from accounts, users, statususer
where
accounts.account_login = $1
AND
accounts.account_id = users.user_account_id
AND
users.user_status_id = statususer.statususer_id
LOOP
RETURN NEXT myrec;
END LOOP;
RETURN;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE;
...

here is how i call it :

select * from sp_a_003('my_user_name')
as result
(
name varchar,
firstname varchar,
userlogin varchar,
statustype varchar
);

to understand well, in my stored procedure i only select a part of each
table (so i build a "composite" record) therefore i understood that SETOF
RECORD AS was the best solution for that.

however the result call is catastrophic when stored procedure returns
several fields. when it is more than 2 fields i'm already "angry" to write :
as result
(
name varchar,
firstname varchar,
userlogin varchar,
statustype varchar,
....
);

I would like to avoid this "as result (...)", so is there a better solution
?

thanks a lot,

--
Alain
------------------------------------
Windows XP SP2
PostgreSQL 8.1.4
Apache 2.0.58
PHP 5