Accessing other databases (Was Re: MySQL vs PostgreSQL)

On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Stan van de Mortel wrote:

> Hi Joel,
>
> In MySQL, when I was using a database, it was possible to get information of
> an other database.
> For example: SELECT * FROM otherdb.table.
> When I tried this in PostgreSQL, it came with an error: parse error at or
> near ".".
>
> Is it possible to do the same thing in PostgreSQL as I did in MySQL, is
> there an other way of doing this or isn't this possible at all.

I didn't think so: this is non-standard syntax (and given the way
security and server stuff works in PG, it appears to be quite tricky), and
PostgreSQL hasn't yet included support for SQL schemas, which are the
standard way of handling this.

However, this week, Jan Wieck made a comment about trusted pltcl
(regular pltcl, or untrusted pltcl is a one of the procedural languages
that pg supports). it sounded like perhaps one could this sort of thing
there, though his email message didn't explain it at all. Check the list
from the last week or so, and if you find the  message, see if you can get
him to explain it. (It's possible that I misunderstood what he was saying
as well, Jan is a serious hacker in PG, and I'm just a muddler.)

Please be sure to post any findings you have to the list, and please cc
any follow-ups to pgsql-general@postgresql.org.

Good luck!

--
Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington