Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Overview of this book

Learn how to work with PostgreSQL as if you spent the last decade working on it. PostgreSQL is capable of providing you with all of the options that you have in your favourite development language and then extending that right on to the database server. With this knowledge in hand, you will be able to respond to the current demand for advanced PostgreSQL skills in a lucrative and booming market."PostgreSQL Server Programming" will show you that PostgreSQL is so much more than a database server. In fact, it could even be seen as an application development framework, with the added bonuses of transaction support, massive data storage, journaling, recovery and a host of other features that the PostgreSQL engine provides. This book will take you from learning the basic parts of a PostgreSQL function, then writing them in languages other than the built-in PL/PgSQL. You will see how to create libraries of useful code, group them into even more useful components, and distribute them to the community. You will see how to extract data from a multitude of foreign data sources, and then extend PostgreSQL to do it natively. And you can do all of this in a nifty debugging interface that will allow you to do it efficiently and with reliability.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
PostgreSQL Server Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary of RETURN SETOF variants


We learned that you can return table-like data sets from a function using one of the following:

RETURNS ...

RECORD structure

INSIDE function

SETOF <type>

From type definition

DECLARE row variable of ROW or RECORD type

ASSIGN to row variable

RETURN NEXT var;

SETOF <table/view>

Same as table or view structure

 

SETOF RECORD

Dynamic, using AS (name type, …) at call site

 

SETOF RECORD

Using OUT and INOUT function arguments. Assign to OUT variables.

RETURN NEXT ;

 

TABLE (...)

Declared in-line in parentheses after TABLE keyword, converted to OUT variables for use in function. Assigned to OUT variables from the TABLE(...) part of the declaration.

RETURN NEXT ;