Re: A table of magic constants

On 07/11/2015 01:55 PM, Dane Foster wrote:
> Hello Adrian,
>
> Thank you for the additional reference links but my concern was less
> about how to find out what a function (formerly magic constant) that I
> encountered in the wild did but more about having a list that would
> educate newcomers/me about what is automatically available for use. For
> example, in the RLS example from my original message, had I the same or
> similar need as the poster I would not have been able to formulate the
> policy that I quoted because I had no clue that SESSION_USER even
> existed. Specifically I would not have been able to formulate the
> following clause, "... WITH CHECK (username = SESSION_USER)", w/o first
> knowing that SESSION_USER was a thing.

Well that is a generic problem of how to know what you do not know. 
Similar to starting out looking for a job when the jobs want job 
experience. The documentation, as you have found out, is extensive. 
1000+ pages the last time I heard someone printing it out. So just 
reading through it and learning everything is not feasible. I would say 
learn on a problem by problem basis. Start doing something, go to the 
section of the docs that deal with that and look at the examples, they 
tend to illustrate common problems. Next step would be using your 
favorite search engine and looking up examples, say 'Postgres get 
current user example'. In DuckDuckGo this has one of the links Ray 
posted as the first hit. Ask this list. FYI, convention on the list is 
to bottom post.

>
> ​Regards,​
>
> Dane



-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com