Chapter 11. PL/Tcl - TCL Procedural Language

PL/Tcl is a loadable procedural language for the Postgres database system that enables the Tcl language to be used to create functions and trigger-procedures.

This package was originally written by Jan Wieck.

Overview

PL/Tcl offers most of the capabilities a function writer has in the C language, except for some restrictions.

The good restriction is, that everything is executed in a safe Tcl-interpreter. In addition to the limited command set of safe Tcl, only a few commands are available to access the database over SPI and to raise messages via elog(). There is no way to access internals of the database backend or gaining OS-level access under the permissions of the Postgres user ID like in C. Thus, any unprivileged database user may be permitted to use this language.

The other, internal given, restriction is, that Tcl procedures cannot be used to create input-/output-functions for new data types.

The shared object for the PL/Tcl call handler is automatically built and installed in the Postgres library directory if the Tcl/Tk support is specified in the configuration step of the installation procedure.