[GENERAL] Need some advice on appropriate PL strategy...

[Eric D. Nielsen]

I'm in the process of implementing a "monitor this" type feature on a 
web-application.  When something changes on the monitored item an email 
to the subscriber is generated.  I'd like to do this via triggers 
instead of application logic.  As far as I can tell pl/pgsql does not 
include any method for e-mailing as a function side-effect.  So I need 
to choose a different PL.  The function is basically a series of 
queries, coupled with a mailing  ( look up details of new event; lookup 
subscribers and exclude poster of new event from subscriber list, if 
present; email subscribers) -- so, aside from the emailing bit, its 
trivial in pl/pgsql.

The web application is in PHP, so using pl/PHP could be nice, but I 
haven't found a lot of information on pl/PHP to know its relative 
maturity/stableness.  I'm also familiar with Java, Python, C, much less 
familiar with Perl.  In order to e-mail will I need a trusted or 
untrusted version of the procedural language?

I guess I could alternatively just code up a simple mail function in 
another PL and then call that function from pl/pgsql.  Is there any 
merit to this approach over the "whole-trigger" in another PL method?

Thank you,
Eric Nielsen

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