[lug] Pointers Needed for Building Web Interface for PostgreSQL

[Hugh Brown]

Bill Thoen wrote:
> Thanks, Hugh... What I meant by 'pgsql' was the built-in language that
> comes with Postgres, plpgsql. I'm most familiar with that, but I know
> enough php and perl to be dangerous, so I can try the packages you
> suggested and see if I can make them work.
> 
> 


As I understand it, plpgsql is most often used as a trigger (granted my 
understanding is limited).  So you'd still have a web front-end and then 
you could write plpgsql that would run any time a select or update or 
delete or ... was performed.  Relying on the db's internal programming 
language means more difficulty in porting later (though there are 
multiple languages that are supported as postgres procedural languages 
incl. perl, tcl, c, python).  The other portability problem that I've 
seen is data types.  There's the core set of SQL data types and then 
each db has its own special datatypes.  My memory says that the internal 
date formats are also problematic.

If you are just starting, I'd leave plpgsql alone and pick it up later.

man createlang for more info on adding procedural languages to a 
postgres db.

Disclaimer: I'm not a DBA, I'm a sysadmin that has supported java 
developers working with postgres.  So the above may not be worth much.

FWIW,
Hugh