Re: Usability, MySQL, Postgresql.org, gborg, contrib,

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

>> I know both. :-).
>>
>> Seriously - I'd like to raise my voice in favor of installing plpgsql
>> in template1 by default. I haven't heard any good reason not to (nor
>> even a bad reason).
>>
>
> If we install plPGSQL by default, we should install any other pl
> language that was configured at runtime by default as well. This
> includes plPerl, plTCL, and plPython.
>
> Of course only if they were compiled in, but sense they are a part of
> the core distribution we shouldn't favor one over the other.
>
> Personally, plpgSQL is only useful to those who are coming from Oracle.
> People are more likely to be comfortable with plPython or plPerl than
> plpgSQL.

I disagree. I know python and perl and I have never touched Oracle, but
I find plpgsql to be more useful than the others. Mainly because
(1) It is strongly typed, has all the same types as postgresql itself,
consistent support for NULLS, etc.

(2) Upon a casual read of the docs I couldn't figure out how to read any
values from the database other than what was passed into the
pl{perl|python|php} function. I.e., how do you run a select? What client
libraries do you use? Maybe the others just need better docs.

Paul Tillotson