Re: Newbie: PG8 and text file parsing

> I need some advice.. I am new to PG8 - I am working on the project
> that needs to load data daily to PostgreSQL from the text file.. the
> text file is 40MB comma delimited file with row consisting of 20-30
> fields and couple thousands of rows..
> 
> so the data needs to be parsed and if the row exists it needs to be
> updated, otherwise new record is going to be created. My problem is
> with parsing:
> 
> 1-what would be a good approach to do it? is plpgSQL suitable for
> this? or should I use PHP or other language to to that and run as a
> cron job/service?

There are some tools which can read a text file and treat it as if
it's a real table. Using them would make your job much easier.

ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/cmd/postgres/exttable/exttable-0.5.tar.gz
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/dbi-link/

> 2-how about committing transactions?  would there be a problem if it
> is done at the end of all the updates?

Not at all, I think.