On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Daniel L. Miller <dmiller@...> wrote:

Is it possible to refer to internal structures by reference in PSQL?

Err, reference, usually yes.  Change?  Probably not.  Basically, PSQL is

limited to DML - not DDL.

Ok - can you please clarify what I CAN do?  In particular:

1.  From within an insert/update trigger, is there a variable that provides the table name?  Or, if I'm trying to use a common stored procedure, would I call it from the trigger using the table name as a literal string parameter?

2.  Even if the DDL statement I used was wrong (and I admit that - I pasted it without going through it first) can you show me a valid DML?  Something like "SELECT * FROM :tablename"?

3.  My overly paranoid belt-and-suspenders isn't going to remain in production code (I hope).  I had that both as a safeguard and as an example to another programmer I'm working with.  The production code would just have the "standard" check to see if an id was passed, and otherwise perform the assignment of "new.id = NEXT VALUE FOR sequence".  But I'd like to have that code structure in a stored procedure so my triggers are basically just one line.  Is that wrong?

-- 
Daniel