Book Image

PostgreSQL 11 Server Side Programming Quick Start Guide

By : Luca Ferrari
Book Image

PostgreSQL 11 Server Side Programming Quick Start Guide

By: Luca Ferrari

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is a rock-solid, scalable, and safe enterprise-level relational database. With a broad range of features and stability, it is ever increasing in popularity.This book shows you how to take advantage of PostgreSQL 11 features for server-side programming. Server-side programming enables strong data encapsulation and coherence. The book begins with the importance of server-side programming and explains the risks of leaving all the checks outside the database. To build your capabilities further, you will learn how to write stored procedures, both functions and the new PostgreSQL 11 procedures, and create triggers to perform encapsulation and maintain data consistency. You will also learn how to produce extensions, the easiest way to package your programs for easy and solid deployment on different PostgreSQL installations.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Procedures

A procedure is a an executable unit of code that can interact with transaction boundaries. It can commit a piece of work, roll back another piece of work, and so on. Procedures were introduced with PostgreSQL 11, and are first-class entities. A procedure is declared in a way that is similar to functions and can be implemented in any supported language. However, a procedure has fewer properties than a function and has no concept of stability, cost, or estimated return values.

Procedures are created with the CREATE PROCEDURE statement, which also supports the OR REPLACE clause. A procedure has a name, an argument list, and an implementation body. A typical procedure template looks as follows:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE <procedure_name>( <arguments> )
AS <block-of-code>
LANGUAGE <implementation-language>;

A procedure is uniquely identified by the...