Re: Creating Functions & Triggers

Thanks for the help Tom & Markus I've got it now.

Kevin Lohka

On Sunday, March 21, 2004, at 09:18 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> Markus Bertheau <twanger(at)bluetwanger(dot)de> writes:
>> The trigger is probably recursively being called.
>
> Well, of course. Every UPDATE causes another UPDATE, which queues
> another trigger firing. What else would you expect but an infinite
> loop?
>
> The correct way to do this is illustrated in the plpgsql trigger
> example at the bottom of this page:
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/static/plpgsql-trigger.html
> You use a BEFORE trigger and alter the NEW record before it gets
> written.
>
> AFTER triggers are not intended for modifying data in the record they
> are fired for --- it's too late for that. (Even if you avoid the
> infinite loop by testing whether you really need to do another UPDATE
> or not, it's still ridiculously inefficient to force another cycle of
> UPDATE when you could just as easily have gotten it right beforehand.)
> Usually people use AFTER triggers for end-of-command consistency
> checking or for propagating information to other tables.
>
> regards, tom lane