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<TITLE>The POSTGRES95 User Manual - EXTENDING SQL: TYPES</TITLE>
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<H1>8. EXTENDING SQL: TYPES</H1>
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<HR>
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As previously mentioned, there are two kinds of types
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in POSTGRES: base types (defined in a programming language)
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and composite types (instances).
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Examples in this section up to interfacing indices can
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be found in <CODE>complex.sql</CODE> and <CODE>complex.c</CODE>. Composite examples
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are in <CODE>funcs.sql</CODE>.
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<p>
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<H2><A NAME="user-defined-types">8.1. User-Defined Types</A></H2>
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<p>
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<H3><A NAME="functions-needed-for-a-user-defined-type">8.1.1. Functions Needed for a User-Defined Type</A></H3>
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A user-defined type must always have input and output
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functions. These functions determine how the type
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appears in strings (for input by the user and output to
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the user) and how the type is organized in memory. The
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input function takes a null-delimited character string
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as its input and returns the internal (in memory)
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representation of the type. The output function takes the
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internal representation of the type and returns a null
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delimited character string.
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Suppose we want to define a complex type which represents
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complex numbers. Naturally, we choose to represent a
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complex in memory as the following <B>C</B> structure:
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<pre> typedef struct Complex {
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double x;
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double y;
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} Complex;
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</pre>
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and a string of the form (x,y) as the external string
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representation.
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These functions are usually not hard to write, especially
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the output function. However, there are a number of points
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to remember.
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<OL>
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<LI> When defining your external (string) representation,
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remember that you must eventually write a
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complete and robust parser for that representation
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as your input function!
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<pre> Complex *
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complex_in(char *str)
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{
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double x, y;
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Complex *result;
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if (sscanf(str, " ( %lf , %lf )", &x, &y) != 2) {
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elog(WARN, "complex_in: error in parsing
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return NULL;
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}
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result = (Complex *)palloc(sizeof(Complex));
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result->x = x;
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result->y = y;
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return (result);
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}
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</pre>
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The output function can simply be:
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<pre> char *
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complex_out(Complex *complex)
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{
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char *result;
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<p>
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if (complex == NULL)
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return(NULL);
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<p>
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result = (char *) palloc(60);
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sprintf(result, "(%g,%g)", complex->x, complex->y);
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return(result);
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}
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</pre>
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<LI> You should try to make the input and output
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functions inverses of each other. If you do
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not, you will have severe problems when you need
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to dump your data into a file and then read it
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back in (say, into someone else's database on
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another computer). This is a particularly common
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problem when floating-point numbers are
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involved.
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</OL>
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To define the <B>complex</B> type, we need to create the two
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user-defined functions complex_in and complex_out
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before creating the type:
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<pre> CREATE FUNCTION complex_in(opaque)
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RETURNS complex
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AS '/usr/local/postgres95/tutorial/obj/complex.so'
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LANGUAGE 'c';
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CREATE FUNCTION complex_out(opaque)
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RETURNS opaque
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AS '/usr/local/postgres95/tutorial/obj/complex.so'
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LANGUAGE 'c';
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CREATE TYPE complex (
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internallength = 16,
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input = complex_in,
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output = complex_out
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);
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</pre>
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As discussed earlier, POSTGRES fully supports arrays of
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base types. Additionally, POSTGRES supports arrays of
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user-defined types as well. When you define a type,
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POSTGRES automatically provides support for arrays of
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that type. For historical reasons, the array type has
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the same name as the user-defined type with the
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underscore character _ prepended.
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Composite types do not need any function defined on
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them, since the system already understands what they
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look like inside.
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<p>
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<H3><A NAME="large-objects">8.1.2. Large Objects</A></H3>
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The types discussed to this point are all "small"
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objects -- that is, they are smaller than 8KB<A HREF="#7"><font size=-1>[7]</font></A> in size.
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If you require a larger type for something like a document
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retrieval system or for storing bitmaps, you will
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need to use the POSTGRES large object interface.
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<p>
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<HR>
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<A NAME="8"><B>[7]</B></A> 8 * 1024 == 8192 bytes. In fact, the type must be considerably smaller than 8192 bytes, since the POSTGRES tuple
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and page overhead must also fit into this 8KB limitation.
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The actual value that fits depends on the machine architecture.
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