proposal: lob conversion functionality

Hello

I had to enhance my older project, where XML documents are parsed and
created on server side - in PLpgSQL and PLPerl procedures. We would to
use a LO API for client server communication, but we have to
parse/serialize LO on server side.

I found so there are no simple API for working with LO from PL without
access to file system. I had to use a ugly hacks:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION parser.save_as_lob(bytea)
RETURNS oid AS $$
DECLARE
_loid oid;
_substr bytea;
BEGIN
_loid := lo_creat(-1);
FOR i IN 0..length($1)/2048
LOOP
_substr := substring($1 FROM i * 2048 + 1 FOR 2048);
IF _substr <> '' THEN
INSERT INTO pg_largeobject(loid, pageno, data)
VALUES(_loid, i, _substr);
END IF;
END LOOP;

EXECUTE format('GRANT SELECT ON LARGE OBJECT %s TO ohs', _loid);
RETURN _loid;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql SECURITY DEFINER STRICT SET search_path = 'pg_catalog';

and

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION fbuilder.attachment_to_xml(attachment oid)
RETURNS xml AS $$
DECLARE
b_cum bytea = '';
b bytea;
BEGIN
FOR b IN SELECT l.data
FROM pg_largeobject l
WHERE l.loid = attachment_to_xml.attachment
ORDER BY l.pageno
LOOP
b_cum := b_cum || b;
END LOOP;
IF NOT FOUND THEN
RETURN NULL;
ELSE
RETURN xmlelement(NAME "attachment",
encode(b_cum, 'base64'));
END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT SECURITY DEFINER SET search_path = 'pg_catalog';

These functions can be simplified if we supports some functions like
encode, decode for LO

So my proposal is creating functions:

* lo_encode(loid oid) .. returns bytea
* lo_encode(loid oid, encoding text) .. returns text
* lo_make(loid oid, data bytea)
* lo_make(loid oid, data text, encoding text)

This can simplify all transformation between LO and VARLENA. Known
limit is 1G for varlena, but it is still relative enough high.

Notes. comments?

Regards

Pavel