Re: RE : How do I compile/test a PL/SQL in Postgresql

> I am a novice to PostgreSQL (although I know ORACLE's PL/SQL very well)
> I have written a Stored Function in PostgreSQL but cannot figure out how
> to compile it or run it in PostgreSQL. In ORACLE, one would have to

I don't know if you've seen this link, but I should be useful.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/plpgsql-porting.html

> do this at SQL*PLUS prompt : @<file-path\file_name to compile the stored
> function into ORACLE DB.
> In PostgreSQL, how do I do that?

http://www.postgresql.org/files/documentation/books/aw_pgsql/node143.html#SECTION002411000000000000000

I would do:

psql-> \i <file-path>\function.sql

> In ORACLE, one would have to write a PL/SQL to test the stored function
> (and use DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE) to get the stored function to write to
> stdout.

I believe that:

psql-> \o filename

or from the command line you can get query results returned to standard out. And then you could
"pipe" the result to whatever you wanted.

$ psql -u <user> -d <mydb> -c "select * from test" | grep -e "hello world" > hello.txt

> In PostgreSQL, how do I test the stored function? I noticed none of the
> documentation or books seemed to mention this simple point.

Well, I would run it to see if it was syntactically correct.
Then I would check to see if the results were as I expected.
Next I would execute the function using "explain analyze" to see if there are any preformance
issues that need to be resolved.