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PostgreSQL Server Programming

PostgreSQL Server Programming - Second Edition

By : Usama Dar, Hannu Krosing, Jim Mlodgenski, Kirk Roybal
4.5 (8)
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PostgreSQL Server Programming

PostgreSQL Server Programming

4.5 (8)
By: Usama Dar, Hannu Krosing, Jim Mlodgenski, Kirk Roybal

Overview of this book

This book is for moderate to advanced PostgreSQL database professionals who wish to extend PostgreSQL, utilizing the most updated features of PostgreSQL 9.4. For a better understanding of this book, familiarity with writing SQL, a basic idea of query tuning, and some coding experience in your preferred language is expected.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
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15
Index

Data cleaning

In the preceding code, we notice that employee names don't have consistent cases. It will be easy to enforce consistency by adding a constraint, as shown here:

CHECK (emp_name = upper(emp_name))

However, it is even better to just make sure that the name is stored as uppercase, and the simplest way to do this is by using trigger:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION uppercase_name () 
  RETURNS trigger AS $$
    BEGIN
        NEW.emp_name = upper(NEW.emp_name);
        RETURN NEW;
    END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER uppercase_emp_name
BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON salaries
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE uppercase_name ();

The next set_salary() call for a new employee will now insert emp_name in uppercase:

postgres=# SELECT set_salary('arnold',80);
-[ RECORD 1 ]-------------------
set_salary | INSERTED USER arnold

As the uppercasing happens inside a trigger, the function's response still shows a lowercase name, but in the database, it is uppercased:

postgres=# SELECT * FROM salaries;
-[ RECORD 1 ]---
emp_name | Bob
salary   | 1300
-[ RECORD 2 ]---
emp_name | Fred
salary   | 750
-[ RECORD 3 ]---
emp_name | Frank
salary   | 100
-[ RECORD 4 ]---
emp_name |  ARNOLD
salary   | 80

After fixing the existing mixed-case employee names, we can make sure that all employee names will be uppercased in the future by adding a constraint:

postgres=# update salaries set emp_name = upper(emp_name) where not emp_name = upper(emp_name);
UPDATE 3                                                        
postgres=# alter table salaries add constraint emp_name_must_be_uppercasepostgres CHECK (emp_name = upper(emp_name));
ALTER TABLE

If this behavior is needed in more places, it will make sense to define a new type – say u_text, which is always stored as uppercase. You will learn more about this approach in Chapter 14, PostgreSQL as Extensible RDBMS.

CONTINUE READING
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PostgreSQL Server Programming
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