Managing & Using MySQL, 2nd Edition

Calling a UDF

Now that we have successfully created the routines necessary for a UDF, the next step is to call those functions from an SQL query. This is accomplished in three steps:

1. Compiling the function routines

2. Loading the UDF

3. Running the UDF

As discussed earlier, the routines that make up a UDF can be implemented in any programming language that can be compiled into an operating system-level shared library. On most Unix-based systems, a shared library is indicated by a .so extension. In Microsoft Windows, shared libraries have .dll extensions.

Once the routines are written, use whatever procedure is generally followed for compiling source code into a shared library. For example, compiling a shared library from a C or C++ file using the GNU C Compiler on a Unix-based system can be accomplished with the following command:

gcc -shared -o myfunc.so myfunc.c

The -shared flag indicates that a shared library should be created from the functions within the source file. Different compilers, operating systems, and programming languages will have different methods for creating a shared library.

As mentioned earlier, multiple UDFs can be defined and implemented within a single shared library file. However, all the routines necessary for each function must be present within that file. That is, you can place multiple functions within a single shared library, but you cannot split the routines necessary for a single function between multiple libraries.

Once a shared library has been created, ...