On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> wrote: > Robert Treat wrote: >> On Wednesday 21 January 2009 20:21:41 Bruce Momjian wrote: >> > Alvaro Herrera wrote: >> > > Robert Treat wrote: >> > > > On Thursday 08 May 2008 00:27:10 Tino Wildenhain wrote: >> > > > > David Fetter wrote: >> > > >> > > Ref: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-05/msg00198.php >> > > >> > > > > > 1. Create a generic (possibly overloaded) trigger function, >> > > > > > bundled with PostgreSQL, which sets a field to some value. For >> > > > > > example, a timestamptz version might set the field to now(). >> > > > > >> > > > > Having the pre defined triggers at hand could be useful, especially >> > > > > for people not writing triggers so often to get used to it but I'm >> > > > > really not happy with the idea of magic preprocessing. >> > > > >> > > > I have a generic version of this in pagila. >> > > >> > > Now that we have a specific file in core for generic triggers (right now >> > > with a single one), how about adding this one to it? >> > >> > Any progress on this? TODO? >> >> I think this is a TODO, but not sure who is working on it or what needs to be >> done. The generic version in pagila is perhaps not generic enough: >> >> CREATE FUNCTION last_updated() RETURNS trigger >> AS $$ >> BEGIN >> NEW.last_update = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP; >> RETURN NEW; >> END $$ >> LANGUAGE plpgsql; >> >> It requires you name your column last_update, which is what the naming >> convention is in pagila, but might not work for everyone. Can someone work >> with that and move forward? Or maybe give a more specific pointer to the >> generic trigger stuff (I've not looked at it before) > > Well, I thought it was a good idea, but no one seems to want to do the > work.
I'd like to see more options than that, which, it seems to me, establishes a need for more design work. Another perspective on temporality is to have a "transaction column" which points (via foreign key) to a transaction table, where you would use currval('transaction_sequence') as the value instead of CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. Thus... create or replace function update_txid () returns trigger as $$ begin if TG_OP = 'UPDATE' then NEW.tx_id := currval('some-schema.tx_sequence'); return NEW; else raise exception 'tx update requested on non-update request - %', TG_OP; end if; return NEW; end $$ language plpgsql; Thus, I'd encourage having the column as well as the kind of value (timestamp vs sequence value) both being parameters for this. -- http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html Calvin Trillin - "Health food makes me sick." -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers