except that it returns the string 'NULL', rather than a SQL null, when called
with a null argument. This is often a much more useful behavior for
constructing dynamic queries. Add more discussion to the documentation
about how to use these functions.
Brendan Jurd
sugar for PL/PgSQL set-returning functions that want to return the result
of evaluating a query; it should also be more efficient than repeated
RETURN NEXT statements. Based on an earlier patch from Pavel Stehule.
name. With this patch, it is always possible for the user to qualify a
plpgsql variable name if needed to avoid ambiguity. While there is much more
work to be done in this area, this simple change removes one unnecessary
incompatibility with Oracle. Per discussion.
of variable substitution and plan caching behavior in dedicated sections.
(A lot of this material existed already, but was scattered in various places
in the chapter.) Reorganize material a little bit, mostly to try to avoid
diving into deep details in the first introductory sections. Document some
fine points that had escaped treatment before, notably the ability to qualify
plpgsql variable names with block labels. Some minor wordsmithing here and
there.
with a plpgsql-defined cursor. The underlying mechanism for this is that the
main SQL engine will now take "WHERE CURRENT OF $n" where $n is a refcursor
parameter. Not sure if we should document that fact or consider it an
implementation detail. Per discussion with Pavel Stehule.
were accepted by prior Postgres releases. This takes care of the loose end
left by the preceding patch to downgrade implicit casts-to-text. To avoid
breaking desirable behavior for array concatenation, introduce a new
polymorphic pseudo-type "anynonarray" --- the added concatenation operators
are actually text || anynonarray and anynonarray || text.
Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:
may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."
can - ability, "I can lift that log."
might - possibility, "It might rain today."
Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice. Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".
Also update two error messages mentioned in the documenation to match.
more, and standard_conforming_strings less, because in the future non-E
strings will not treat backslashes specially.
Also use E'' strings where backslashes are used in examples. (The
existing examples would have drawn warnings.)
Backpatch to 8.2.X.
merely a matter of fixing the error check, since the underlying Portal
infrastructure already handles it. This in turn allows these statements
to be used in some existing plpgsql and plperl contexts, such as a
plpgsql FOR loop. Also, do some marginal code cleanup in places that
were being sloppy about distinguishing SELECT from SELECT INTO.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add dynamic record inspection to PL/PgSQL, useful for generic triggers:
tval2 := r.(cname);
or
columns := r.(*);
Titus von Boxberg
An article at WebProNews quoted from the PG docs as to the merits of
stored procedures. I have added a bit more material on their merits,
as well as making a few changes to improve the introductions to
PL/Perl and PL/Tcl.
Chris Browne
the builtin functions (although some more entries are still needed),
and remove the duplicate index entries that have been causing
collateindex.pl warnings. Consistently use "int" and "bigint", rather
than a mix of "int", "integer", "int4", "bigint", and "int8". Make
parenthesis style in syntax examples more consistent. Various
copy-editing for newly-added documentation and SGML markup fixes.
end of the block:
<<label>>
begin
...
end label;
Similarly for loops. This is per PL/SQL. Update the documentation and
add regression tests. Patch from Pavel Stehule, code review by Neil
Conway.
instead of just scalar variables. Add regression tests and update the
documentation. Along the way, remove some redundant error checking
code from exec_stmt_perform().
Original patch from Pavel Stehule, reworked by Neil Conway.
These contain the SQLSTATE and error message of the current exception,
respectively. They are scope-local variables that are only defined
in exception handlers (so attempting to reference them outside an
exception handler is an error). Update the regression tests and the
documentation.
Also, do some minor related cleanup: export an unpack_sql_state()
function from the backend and use it to unpack a SQLSTATE into a
string, and add a free_var() function to pl_exec.c
Original patch from Pavel Stehule, review by Neil Conway.
This allows the result of executing a SELECT to be assigned to a row
variable, record variable, or list of scalars. Docs and regression tests
updated. Per Pavel Stehule, improvements and cleanup by Neil Conway.
>>>
>>>No, and I think it should be in the manual as an example.
>>>
>>>You will need to enter a loop that uses exception handling to detect
>>>unique_violation.
>>
>>Pursuant to an IRC discussion to which Dennis Bjorklund and
>>Christopher Kings-Lynne made most of the contributions, please find
>>enclosed an example patch demonstrating an UPSERT-like capability.
>>
David Fetter
>
> No, and I think it should be in the manual as an example.
>
> You will need to enter a loop that uses exception handling to detect
> unique_violation.
Pursuant to an IRC discussion to which Dennis Bjorklund and
Christopher Kings-Lynne made most of the contributions, please find
enclosed an example patch demonstrating an UPSERT-like capability.
David Fetter
output parameters or VOID or a set. There seems no particular reason to
insist on a RETURN in these cases, since the function return value is
determined by other elements anyway. Per recent discussion.
OPENed on non-SELECT commands such as EXPLAIN or SHOW (anything that
returns tuples is allowed). This flexibility already existed for
bound cursors, but OPEN was artificially restricting what it would
take. Per a gripe some months back.
several reports of users being confused when they attempt to use ELSEIF
and run into trouble due to PL/PgSQL's lax parser. The parser will be
improved for 8.1, but we can fix most of the problem by allowing ELSEIF
for now.
function parameters and dollar quoting in examples; do some polishing
of the existing dollar-quoting docs). The 'how to port from Oracle'
section is looking pretty respectable these days ...
more nearly Oracle-equivalent. Allow matching by category as well as
specific error code. Document the set of available condition names
(or more accurately, synchronize it with the existing documentation). In
passing, update errcodes.sgml to include codes added during 7.5 development.
There are still some things that need refinement; in particular I fear
that the recognized set of error condition names probably has little in
common with what Oracle recognizes. But it's a start.
FOR loops are giving weird syntax errors. Restructure parsing of FOR
loops so that the integer-loop-vs-query-loop decision is driven off
the presence of '..' between IN and LOOP, rather than the presence
of a matching record/row variable name. Hopefully this will make the
behavior a bit more transparent.
comments, make some unrelated improvements to the functions
documentation, and perform some minor consistency cleanup
elsewhere. Original initcap() change from Dennis B., additional
changes by Neil C.
Make btree index creation and initial validation of foreign-key constraints
use maintenance_work_mem rather than work_mem as their memory limit.
Add some code to guc.c to allow these variables to be referenced by their
old names in SHOW and SET commands, for backwards compatibility.
of an index can now be a computed expression instead of a simple variable.
Restrictions on expressions are the same as for predicates (only immutable
functions, no sub-selects). This fixes problems recently introduced with
inlining SQL functions, because the inlining transformation is applied to
both expression trees so the planner can still match them up. Along the
way, improve efficiency of handling index predicates (both predicates and
index expressions are now cached by the relcache) and fix 7.3 oversight
that didn't record dependencies of predicate expressions.
- more work from the SGML police
- some grammar improvements: rewriting a paragraph or two, replacing
contractions where (IMHO) appropriate
- fix missing utility commands in lock mode docs
- improve CLUSTER, REINDEX, SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION ref pages
Neil Conway
including:
- replacing all the appropriate usages of <citetitle>PostgreSQL
...</citetitle> with &cite-user;, &cite-admin;, and so on
- fix an omission in the EXECUTE documentation
- add some more text to the EXPLAIN documentation
- improve the PL/PgSQL RETURN NEXT documentation (more work to do here)
- minor markup fixes
Neil Conway
-hackers a couple days ago.
Notes/caveats:
- added regression tests for the new functionality, all
regression tests pass on my machine
- added pg_dump support
- updated PL/PgSQL to support per-statement triggers; didn't
look at the other procedural languages.
- there's (even) more code duplication in trigger.c than there
was previously. Any suggestions on how to refactor the
ExecXXXTriggers() functions to reuse more code would be
welcome -- I took a brief look at it, but couldn't see an
easy way to do it (there are several subtly-different
versions of the code in question)
- updated the documentation. I also took the liberty of
removing a big chunk of duplicated syntax documentation in
the Programmer's Guide on triggers, and moving that
information to the CREATE TRIGGER reference page.
- I also included some spelling fixes and similar small
cleanups I noticed while making the changes. If you'd like
me to split those into a separate patch, let me know.
Neil Conway
PL/PgSQL. Previously, it had been bundled together with the assign
statement implementation, for some reason that wasn't clear to me
(they certainly don't share any code with one another). So I separated
them and made PERFORM a statement like any other. No changes in
functionality.
Along the way, I added some regression tests for PERFORM, added a
bunch more SGML tags to the PL/PgSQL docs, and removed an obsolete
comment relating to the implementation of RETURN NEXT.
Neil Conway
with OPAQUE, as per recent pghackers discussion. I still want to do some
more work on the 'cstring' pseudo-type, but I'm going to commit the bulk
of the changes now before the tree starts shifting under me ...
FOUND is set whenever a SELECT INTO returns > 0 rows, *or* when an
INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE affects > 0 rows. We implemented the first
part of this behavior, but not the second.
I also improved the documentation on the various situations in which
FOUND can be set (excluding inside FOR loops, which I still need to
think about), and added some regression tests for this behavior.
Neil Conway
All of the internal tags are of the latter.
The other thing I noticed is that most of the quick examples in the file
use a para and synopsis. Is there a reason we're not using <example/> ?
Rod Taylor