Re: dynamic field names in a function.

Soma Interesting <dfunct@telus.net> writes:
> In the following, is there something I can do so that postgres will
> evaluate NEW.qty to NEW.name, treating qty as a variable and evaluating it
> before evaluating the field reference?

Plain PLSQL will not do this --- it wants to know field names when the
query is first compiled.  (This is a feature, not a bug, since it
implies that the query can be optimized during compilation.)

You could use PLTCL or PLPERL instead.  Both of them treat queries
as plain strings that you assemble out of whatever parts you please
and then pass to the query engine.  Of course you pay the cost of
re-planning the query from scratch every time --- there's no free lunch.

In 7.1, PLSQL can do that trick too, via its new EXECUTE statement.

            regards, tom lane