Adding PL/pgSQL to Your Database
Programming languages are made available to databases by being created as a database object. You will therefore need to add the PL/pgSQL language to your database before you can use it (it is installed with PostgreSQL by default). The following steps demonstrate how to add PL/pgSQL to an existing database.
Adding PL/pgSQL to Your Database
To add PL/pgSQL to your
PostgreSQL database, you can either use the createlang application from
the command line, or the CREATE LANGUAGE SQL command from within a database
client such as psql. The use of the CREATE LANGUAGE
command first requires the creation of the PL/pgSQL call handler, which
is the function that actually processes and interprets the PL/pgSQL code.
Though the createlang utility is simpler to use, as it abstracts the creation of the call handler and the language away from the user, the following sections document both methods.
Note
Installing PL/pgSQL in the template1 database causes all subsequent
databases that are created with template1 as their template (which is the
default) to also have PL/pgSQL installed.
Using psql to add PL/pgSQL
CREATE LANGUAGE is the SQL command which adds procedural languages to
the currently connected database. Before it can be used, however, the CREATE
FUNCTION command must first be used to create the procedural call handler.
Here is the syntax to create a PL/pgSQL call handler ...