Re: Accessing Database Data from C Function

On Aug 8, 2006, at 8:33 PM, Jeffrey Bigham wrote:

>
>> Do you have a reason to use C instead of a higher-level language?
>
> Not really. Basically I know C decently enough and would have to
> learn PL/pgSQL (although it looks pretty easy). Perl sounds quite
> attractive for the added benefit of text-processing as you mention. I
> also have some vague understanding that C might be faster. I hope I'm
> not opening a can-of-worms, but is C actually faster?

It depends on what you're doing. I've found plpgsql to be a better
match for a lot of purposes, as it has a much better "impedance
match" with the database. I'm a happy C hacker, and use C for
PG functions where it seems appropriate, but use plpgsql for
>90% of my in database work. Performance is probably marginally
slower than C, but development time for day-to-day triggers and
functions is a lot faster. Much easier to maintain, too.

Cheers,
Steve