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PostGreSQL Backend Reference

Prerequisites

Supported Versions

The SOCI PostgreSQL backend is supported for use with PostgreSQL >= 7.3, although versions older than 8.0 will suffer from limited feature support. See below for details.

Tested Platforms

PostgreSQL version	Operating System	Compiler
8.3	Mac OS X 10.5.3	g++ 4.0.1
8.3	Mac OS X 10.5.3	g++ 4.4.0
8.3	FreeBSD 7.0	g++ 4.2.1
8.3	Linux i686 2.6.9 (RedHat family)	g++ 3.4.6
8.2.7	Linux i686 2.6.23 (Fedora release 7)	g++ 4.1.2

Required Client Libraries

The SOCI PostgreSQL backend requires PostgreSQL's libpq client library.

Note that the SOCI library itself depends also on libdl, so the minimum set of libraries needed to compile a basic client program is:

-lsoci_core -lsoci_postgresql -ldl -lpq

Connecting to the Database

To establish a connection to the PostgreSQL database, create a session object using the postgresql backend factory together with a connection string:

session sql(postgresql, "dbname=mydatabase");

// or:
session sql("postgresql", "dbname=mydatabase");

// or:
session sql("postgresql://dbname=mydatabase");

The set of parameters used in the connection string for PostgreSQL is the same as accepted by the PQconnectdb function from the libpq library.

Once you have created a session object as shown above, you can use it to access the database, for example:

int count;
sql << "select count(*) from invoices", into(count);

(See the SOCI basics and exchanging data documentation for general information on using the session class.)

SOCI Feature Support

Dynamic Binding

The PostgreSQL backend supports the use of the SOCI row class, which facilitates retrieval of data whose type is not known at compile time.

When calling row::get<T>(), the type you should pass as T depends upon the underlying database type.
For the PostgreSQL backend, this type mapping is:

PostgreSQL Data Type	SOCI Data Type	`row::get<T>` specializations
numeric, real, double	`dt_double`	`double`
boolean, smallint, integer	`dt_integer`	`int`
int8	`dt_long_long`	`long long`
oid	`dt_unsigned_long`	`unsigned long`
char, varchar, text, cstring, bpchar	`dt_string`	`std::string`
abstime, reltime, date, time, timestamp, timestamptz, timetz	`dt_date`	`std::tm`

(See the dynamic resultset binding documentation for general information on using the row class.)

Binding by Name

In addition to binding by position, the PostgreSQL backend supports binding by name, via an overload of the use() function:

int id = 7;
sql << "select name from person where id = :id", use(id, "id")

Apart from the portable "colon-name" syntax above, which is achieved by rewriting the query string, the backend also supports the PostgreSQL native numbered syntax:

int i = 7;
int j = 8;
sql << "insert into t(x, y) values($1, $2)", use(i), use(j);

The use of native syntax is not recommended, but can be nevertheless imposed by switching off the query rewriting. This can be achieved by defining the macro SOCI_PGSQL_NOBINDBYNAME and it is actually necessary for PostgreSQL 7.3, in which case binding of use elements is not supported at all. See the Configuration options section for details.

Bulk Operations

The PostgreSQL backend has full support for SOCI's bulk operations interface.

Transactions

Transactions are also fully supported by the PostgreSQL backend.

blob Data Type

The PostgreSQL backend supports working with data stored in columns of type Blob, via SOCI's blob class with the exception that trimming is not supported.

rowid Data Type

The concept of row identifier (OID in PostgreSQL) is supported via SOCI's rowid class.

Nested Statements

Nested statements are not supported by PostgreSQL backend.

Stored Procedures

PostgreSQL stored procedures can be executed by using SOCI's procedure class.

Acessing the native database API

SOCI provides access to underlying datbabase APIs via several get_backend() functions, as described in the beyond SOCI documentation.

The PostgreSQL backend provides the following concrete classes for navite API access:

Accessor Function	Concrete Class
`session_backend * session::get_backend()`	`postgresql_session_backend`
`statement_backend * statement::get_backend()`	`postgresql_statement_backend`
`blob_backend * blob::get_backend()`	`postgresql_blob_backend`
`rowid_backend * rowid::get_backend()`	`postgresql_rowid_backend`

Backend-specific extensions

None.

Configuration options

To support older PostgreSQL versions, the following configuration macros are recognized:

SOCI_PGSQL_NOBINDBYNAME - switches off the query rewriting.
SOCI_PGSQL_NOPARAMS - disables support for parameterized queries (binding of use elements), automatically imposes also the SOCI_PGSQL_NOBINDBYNAME macro. It is necessary for PostgreSQL 7.3.
SOCI_PGSQL_NOPREPARE - disables support for separate query preparation, which in this backend is significant only in terms of optimization. It is necessary for PostgreSQL 7.3 and 7.4.