Re: Trying to learn the PL/pgsql procedural language

On 27/10/14 18:15, John R. Sowden wrote:
> On 10/26/2014 08:53 PM, David G Johnston wrote:
>> John R. Sowden wrote
>>> I have been a foxpro/dos programmer for my small business for about 35
>>> years. I use linux for all but database stuff. For db I use
>>> foxpro/dosemu. It looks like pg is my best bet for linux/sql. After
>>> reading an o'reilly book on pg (_practical postgresql_), not one word
>>> was mentioned in the procedural language chapter about displaying text.
>>> I write complete applications (in foxpro), not just queries and
>>> forms.
>>>
>>> What am I missing here? I am not interested in trying to learn C, C++,
>>> Java, or Perl in order to read sql databases.
>>
>> Unlike FoxPro, PostgreSQL does not have any kind of user interface
>> development layer built in. PL/pgsql is intended to allow you to
>> process
>> data using procedural logic instead of just a sequence of SQL set-based
>> statements. There is no way to write an entire user application
>> purely with
>> PL/pgsql - the functions you write end up performing specific data
>> manipulation tasks that are glued together by the caller using a more
>> full
>> featured programming language.
>>
>> The book you chose to read is 12 YEARS old; you will find much is not
>> covered there (or is outright wrong) simply because things have changed
>> considerably in that time period.
>>
>> You will have to choose a language to develop your application in and
>> then
>> use an appropriate database driver for that language to connect to your
>> PostgreSQL instance. It is quite probable you could even continue using
>> Foxpro and simply connect to PostgreSQL via ODBC.
>>
>> I would suggest you first read large portions of the current
>> documentation -
>> you will find that few introductory books on PostgreSQL exist because
>> the
>> documentation itself is well written. That is not to say that newer
>> books
>> targeting newcomers do not exist...
>>
>> David J.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/Trying-to-learn-the-PL-pgsql-procedural-language-tp5824353p5824361.html
>> Sent from the PostgreSQL - novice mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
> Thank you both for your response. This does not sound good. It looks
> like I am going to have to find a linux language that I can embed sql
> commands to talk to pg.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
I am now mainly a Java developer, but I started with FORTRAN & COBOL
(I'm ancient), with a sideline of teaching C to experienced programmers.

I suggest that Python or Java are probably the best languages for you, I
think.

Java is more cumbersome to learn than Python, but scales well to deal
with complicated systems and enterprise heavy loads. I looked at
Python, and liked what I saw, but it was not a good fit for me.

C++ is quite heavily used, and is likely to keep growing, but is
probably harder to gain competence in than Java.

Cheers,
Gavin

Cheers,
Gavin