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PostgreSQL Server Programming

You're reading from   PostgreSQL Server Programming Take your skills with PostgreSQL to a whole new level with this fascinating guide to server programming. A step by step approach with illuminating examples will educate you in the full range of possibilities.

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jun 2013
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781849516983
Length 264 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Toc

Table of Contents (17) Chapters Close

PostgreSQL Server Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
1. What Is a PostgreSQL Server? 2. Server Programming Environment FREE CHAPTER 3. Your First PL/pgSQL Function 4. Returning Structured Data 5. PL/pgSQL Trigger Functions 6. Debugging PL/pgSQL 7. Using Unrestricted Languages 8. Writing Advanced Functions in C 9. Scaling Your Database with PL/Proxy 10. Publishing Your Code as PostgreSQL Extensions Index

Adding functionality to add(int, int)


While our function works, it adds nothing in the preceding code just using SELECT A + B, but functions written in C are capable of so much more. Let's start adding some more functionality to our function.

Smart handling of NULL arguments

Notice the use of STRICT keyword in the CREATE FUNCTION add(int a, int b) in the previously mentioned code. This means that the function will not be called if any of the arguments are NULL, but instead NULL is returned straight away. This is similar to how most PostgreSQL operators works, including the + sign when adding two integers—if any of the arguments are NULL the complete result is NULL as well.

Next, we will extend our function to be smarter about NULL inputs and act like PostgreSQL's sum() aggregate function, which ignores NULL values in inputs and still produces sum of all non-null values.

For this, we need to do two things:

  1. Make sure that the function is called when either of the arguments are NULL.

  2. Handle NULL...

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