Reply-To: cstotesbery@acm.org
From: "Clint Stotesbery" <cstotes@hotmail.com>
To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: trigger conversion advice needed
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:51:42 +0000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Message-ID: <BAY9-F11pKkVavr8nCy0001de1f@hotmail.com>

I'm working on converting a simple trigger from Oracle to Postgres and I 
have a couple ofl questions that I need some help on please. First here's 
the Oracle trigger:

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER t_ship_date
AFTER UPDATE OR INSERT OF order_date ON orders
BEGIN
   UPDATE orders
   SET ship_date = working_5days(order_date);
END;
/

When I was working on converting the trigger I noticed that Postgres doesn't 
have the OF table_attribute ON syntax support. I just want the trigger to 
fire when the order_date field in the order table is updated or inserted 
like it is specified in the Oracle trigger specification above. So I did 
this in Postgres:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION t_ship_date()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS '
   BEGIN
      UPDATE orders
      SET ship_date = working_5days(new.order_date);

      RETURN NEW;
   END;
   ' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

I justed used new.order_date in the Postgres one version. I'm pretty sure 
that this isn't going to work, it will probably update every ship_date which 
is not what I want. I just want to update the ship_date when the record's 
order_date is updated. Is there some way in Postgres to specify a trigger to 
fire only when a certain field in a table is changed or inserted (like I had 
in the Oracle version)? I couldn't find anything for triggers to do that in 
the docs so I hope someone can shed some light on this for me. I thought 
maybe something like this could work too (probably closer to being correct):

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION t_ship_date()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS '
   BEGIN
      IF TG_OP = ''INSERT'' THEN
         UPDATE orders
         SET ship_date = working_5days(new.order_date)
         where order_no = new.order_no;
      ELSIF TG_OP =''UPDATE'' THEN
         UPDATE orders
         SET ship_date = working_5days(new.order_date)
         where order_no = old.order_no;
      END IF;

      RETURN NEW;
   END;
   ' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

The working_5days function just adds 5 business days to a date fyi. Now the 
second question I have is due to an error I keep getting when I try and make 
the trigger definition below:

CREATE TRIGGER t_ship_date AFTER UPDATE OR INSERT ON orders
EXECUTE PROCEDURE t_ship_date();

I always get a parse error at or near execute. What am I doing wrong? If I 
could get the trigger to compile then I could test it to see if it works the 
same as the Oracle version. I wouldn't even have to ask the first question 
if I could get it to compile but I thought I might as well ask anyway so I 
don't have to post another message. Thanks for the help.
-Clint

P.S. 7.3.4 is the postgres version on the server.

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