The debugging methods that we have seen in this chapter are designed to be used in conjunction with one another. They complement each other at different points in the development process. Where debugging using the PL/pgSQL debugger is highly effective while editing an existing (hopefully well-written) function, other forms of debugging may be better suited to the quality assurance or automated data processing applications.

Because the PL/pgSQL debugger is meant to be a visual tool to work within pgAdmin3, it is possible that the developer may want to forego the visual debugger in the interest of some other feature.

In the next chapter, we will take a look at how to write some advanced functions in C.