Chapter 1. What Is a PostgreSQL Server?
If you think that a PostgreSQL Server is just a storage system and the only way to communicate with it is by executing SQL statements, you are limiting yourself tremendously. That is, you are using just a tiny part of the database's features.
A PostgreSQL Server is a powerful framework that can be used for all kinds of data processing, and even some non-data server tasks. It is a server platform that allows you to easily mix and match functions and libraries from several popular languages.
Consider this complicated, multilanguage sequence of work:
- Call a string parsing function in Perl
- Convert the string to XSLT and process the result using JavaScript
- Ask for a secure stamp from an external timestamping service, ...
Get PostgreSQL Server Programming - Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
