I'm wanting to do some reporting on data which I have an a PostgreSQL table. For lack of anything better, I've decided to see if I can do it in GNU awk. OK, using Perl with DBI might be a better idea, I'll grant you that. Or maybe Python or Ruby (which I don't know). But out of shear cussedness, I'm going to see what I can do in gawk. What I don't see is a way to get the data out of PostgreSQL and into my awk program. Does anybody know of a way to do this, short of "cheating" by using psql? Yes, I know that I could do something like (BASH on Linux/Fedora 22 x86_64):
awk -f some-program.awk <(echo 'SELECT a, b, c, d FROM schema.table ORDER BY a' | psql dbname)
While not an expert on awk I believe this ^ is how the program is designed to function.
What I was hoping for was a "Dynamic Extension" (dll) which would allow "native" use of PostgreSQL, or may ODBC. But I haven't found any. Have I missed anything? If I were to create such a beastie, would it be of any use to others? I guess, in this, I'm wondering what "report writer" most are using when psql just doesn't have sufficient capability.
Birt, Jasper Reports, or Crystal Reports to name a few well-known ones.
Yeah, sometimes I'm just plain stupid & pig headed. But then it will be a "leaning experience" (with associated scars, I'm sure).
If you don't understand the nature of awk or *NIX in general (dll is a Window's thing) you are likely going to end up with much worse than scars. Amputation is likely to be required.
To a large degree one is expected to use BASH (or another shell scripting language) if they want to compose programs from *NIX commands. To choose to use awk but then discard psql makes little sense. If you need something more holistic and/or capable you should just upgrade to a general-purpose language (e.g., Perl) or a custom-built solution (e.g. Birt).