To: pacquet@newsguy.com
Cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: PQputline in BINARY mode? 
In-reply-to: <200208132215.PAA79633@newsguy.com> 
References: <200208132215.PAA79633@newsguy.com>
Comments: In-reply-to pacquet@newsguy.com
	message dated "Tue, 13 Aug 2002 15:15:11 -0700"
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 18:41:01 -0400
Message-ID: <2008.1029278461@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

pacquet@newsguy.com writes:
> However, this is an embedded system, so some modest amount of
> backend-hacking is quite acceptable if the payoff is large enough. Do
> you have any pointers on implementing a variant of COPY BINARY <> FROM
> file that works out of memory instead of a file?

I think what you want is to hack the fe/be protocol so you can pass
binary data in the COPY from stdin/to stdout datastream.  The problem is
that the message protocol for COPY is ASCII strings (ugh).  Change it to
be counted strings and away you go.  (There are more changes that I want
to see in this area than that, but that should get you the functionality
you want...)  backend/commands/copy.c and PQgetline/PQputline on the
frontend side are the things to look at.  Also read the SGML docs'
chapter about the fe/be protocol.

			regards, tom lane