Re: tuple maximum size; plpgsql to sendmail?

ERIC Lawson - x52010 wrote:
>
> Hi, and TIA,
>
> Can anybody here answer these questions:
>
> 1) I've seen references to the maximum size of a tuple as being
> configurable within the range of 8 to 32K, yet the incorporation of blobs
> seems to contradict any maximum size constraint.  Is there a maximum tuple
> size, and if so, what is it?  (To be sure, the server environment limits
> the size of a tuple, attribute and class, but does postgreSQL imposes
> limits itself?)

A bit less than 8k is the 'default' limit (8k less tuple overhead).  You
can use the 'LZTEXT' type to compress large text fields though, as a
first approach.  You can recompile PostgreSQL with the block size set
larger (up to 32k) so the limit increases to a bit less than 32k.

Coming in version 7.1 is a thing called 'TOAST' (it's in current CVS)
which will let you store larger tuples - have a read about it on the
website.


> 2) I'd like to use a plpgsql procedure to send mail when a trigger event
> or condition pertains (e.g., when the interval between the system date and
> a date stored in an attribute reaches 14 days).  Is this possible with
> plpgsql, and how would it be achieved?

A PL/PGSQL procedure won't run by itself.  You would have to set
something up to do a pass through the database looking for such records
periodically.

    SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE tbl.c_time < (now() - timespan('14 days'));

would be a suitable SQL query.  If the c_time field is indexed it would
use an indexed lookup and so should be efficient.

You could run such a query in a shell script like:

IDLIST=`psql -d database -c "SELECT my_id FROM tbl WHERE tbl.c_time <
(now() - timespan('14 days'));"`
for ID in $IDLIST
do
  echo "$ID expired" | mail -s "$ID expired" user@email.dom
done


If you're doing much more complex stuff than that I'd go for a
higher-level language for the scripting such as Perl, Python or C.

Hope this is some assistance,
                Andrew.
--
_____________________________________________________________________
            Andrew McMillan, e-mail: Andrew@cat-it.co.nz
Catalyst IT Ltd, PO Box 10-225, Level 22, 105 The Terrace, Wellington
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