PostgreSQL &version; Programmer's Guide
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group
&legal;
Preface
What's In This Book
This book is for PostgreSQL application programmers. It is divided into three parts.
The first part of this book describes the client programming
interfaces distributed with PostgreSQL. Each of these chapters
can be read independently. Note that there are many other
programming interfaces for client programs that are distributed
separately and contain their own documentation. Readers of the
first part should be familiar with using SQL commands to
manipulate and query the database (see the &cite-user;) and of
course with the programming language that the interface uses.
The second part of this book is about extending the server
functionality with user-defined functions, data types, triggers,
etc. These are advanced topics which should probably be
approached only after all the other user documentation about
PostgreSQL has been understood.
The third part of this book described the available server-side
programming languages. This information is related to the second
part and is only useful to readers that have read at least the
first few chapters thereof.
This book covers PostgreSQL &version;
only. For information on other versions, please read the
documentation that accompanies that release.
Client Interfaces
This part of the manual is the description of the client-side
programming interfaces and support libraries for various
languages.
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Server Programming
This second part of the manual explains the
PostgreSQL approach to extensibility
and describe how users can extend
PostgreSQL by adding user-defined
types, operators, aggregates, and both query language and
programming language functions. After a discussion of the
PostgreSQL rule system, we discuss the
trigger and SPI interfaces.
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&extend;
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&rules;
&xindex;
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&trigger;
&spi;
Procedural Languages
This part documents the procedural languages available in the
PostgreSQL distribution as well as
general issues concerning procedural languages.
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