COPY, Triggers and visibility into pg_tables

Howdy all,

I've got a COPY statement:

COPY fp_eitem_price_parent (sku, store_number, effective_date, reg_for_qty,
reg_price)
FROM 'C:\Projects\Raleys\postgres\partitions\upload\ec_weekly.113.upl'
(FORMAT text, DELIMITER '|', NULL '')

which causes a CREATE OR REPLACE trigger to fire.

This trigger will create a DB table based on a couple of parameters in the
line being copied into the database. The way it's determining whether to
create the table is to do a query against the pg_tables view looking for
the table name. I had assumed that once the CREATE TABLE had executed that
the next time I queried the pg_tables view that I would find an entry for
the new table. Turns out that's not the case.

I'm assuming (dangerous I know) that the query is not finding the new
pg_tables entry because the COPY command is operating under a transaction
and no database changes will be seen until it completes. In any event the
next row in the file that's being copied into the database also tries to
create the new table which then causes the pgplsql code to abort.

My question is this:
If I can't query the pg_tables view to determine that I've already created
the table how should I determine if the table already exists? The trigger
is being called for each row being copied and I don't see any obvious ways
to maintain state between trigger calls so that the first trigger execution
could inform the inform subsequent executions that the table has already
been created. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.
------------------------------------------------

Ken LaCrosse | Enterprise Architect
500 West Capitol Avenue
West Sacramento, California 95605-2696
P: 916.373.6571 | F: 916.373.6553
E: klacross <klacross(at)raleys(dot)com>@raleys.com <rjacobsen(at)raleys(dot)com>

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