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Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 11:30:37 +0100
From: Andreas Pflug <Andreas.Pflug@web.de>
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To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: How to notice column changes in trigger
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How can I detect whether a column was changed by an update command 
inside a trigger?

create table test(a int, b int, c int, primary key(a))

b and c should be updated inside an update trigger if not modified by 
the statement itself

1) update test set a=0 -> trigger does its work
2) update test set a=0, b=1, c=2 -> trigger does nothing
3) update test set a=0, b=b, c=c -> trigger does nothing, but content of 
a and b dont change either although touched

What I'm looking for is something like
IF NOT COLUMN_TOUCHED(b) THEN ...
For MSSQL, this would be coded as  IF NOT UPDATE(b) ..

IF OLD.b=NEW.b will not work, case 3) will falsely execute the trigger code.


Any hints?

Andreas