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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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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.
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Understanding stored procedure languages

When it comes to stored procedures and functions, PostgreSQL differs quite significantly from other database systems. Most database engines force you to use a certain programming language to write server-side code. Microsoft SQL Server offers Transact-SQL, while Oracle encourages you to use PL/SQL. PostgreSQL doesn’t force you to use a certain language; instead, it allows you to decide on what you know and like the best.

The reason PostgreSQL is so flexible is actually quite interesting in a historical sense, too. Many years ago, one of the most well-known PostgreSQL developers, Jan Wieck, who had written countless patches back in its early days, came up with the idea of using Tool Command Language (Tcl) as the server-side programming language. The trouble was that nobody wanted to use Tcl, and nobody wanted to have this stuff in the database engine. The solution to the problem was to make the language interface so flexible that basically...

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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