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You're reading from  Mastering PostgreSQL 15 - Fifth Edition

Product typeBook
Published inJan 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803248349
Edition5th Edition
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Author (1)
Hans-Jürgen Schönig
Hans-Jürgen Schönig
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Hans-Jürgen Schönig

Hans-Jürgen Schönig has 20 years' experience with PostgreSQL. He is the CEO of a PostgreSQL consulting and support company called CYBERTEC PostgreSQL International GmbH. It has successfully served countless customers around the globe. Before founding CYBERTEC PostgreSQL International GmbH in 2000, he worked as a database developer at a private research company that focused on the Austrian labor market, where he primarily worked on data mining and forecast models. He has also written several books about PostgreSQL.
Read more about Hans-Jürgen Schönig

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Exploring various stored procedure languages

As we’ve already stated in this chapter, PostgreSQL gives you the power to write functions and store procedures in various languages. The following options are available and are shipped along with the PostgreSQL core:

  • SQL
  • PL/pgSQL
  • PL/Perl and PL/PerlU
  • PL/Python
  • PL/Tcl and PL/TclU

SQL is the obvious choice for writing functions, and it should be used whenever possible, as it gives the most freedom to the optimizer. However, if you want to write slightly more complex code, PL/pgSQL might be the language of your choice.

PL/pgSQL offers flow control and much more. In this chapter, some of the more advanced and lesser-known features of PL/pgSQL will be shown, but do keep in mind that this chapter is not meant to be a complete tutorial on PL/pgSQL.

The core contains code to run server-side functions in Perl. Basically, the logic is the same here. Code will be passed as a string and executed by Perl....

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Mastering PostgreSQL 15 - Fifth Edition
Published in: Jan 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803248349

Author (1)

author image
Hans-Jürgen Schönig

Hans-Jürgen Schönig has 20 years' experience with PostgreSQL. He is the CEO of a PostgreSQL consulting and support company called CYBERTEC PostgreSQL International GmbH. It has successfully served countless customers around the globe. Before founding CYBERTEC PostgreSQL International GmbH in 2000, he worked as a database developer at a private research company that focused on the Austrian labor market, where he primarily worked on data mining and forecast models. He has also written several books about PostgreSQL.
Read more about Hans-Jürgen Schönig