Is a better PL/pgSQL editor / debugger than pgAdmin III or phpPgAdmin available anywhere?
I ask because I was stuck for two days on the following error message:
ERROR: syntax error at or near "LOOP"
CONTEXT: compile of PL/pgSQL function "gen_history" near line 126
…and neither of those tools offered any more help than that. It turned out the error was a missing “;” way back in line 53, and it took two days of trial and error and staring at the code to find it. (On the positive side, pgAdmin III’s use of different colors to distinguish different program elements [variables, keywords, string constants, comments] made the staring part easier to do.)
I’ve learned that pgAdmin “syntax error” can mean anything from a missing “;” to a faulty block structure to an undeclared variable to… I don’t know what else, and as witness the example that error may be nowhere near the line that is flagged. So I’m looking for a PL/pgSQL tool that would at least provide more diagnostic error messages. Preferably, it would also offer some sort of “breakpoint” function to let the developer see the values of variables at specified points in the code.
I looked on the pgAdmin web site. The only place a PL/pgSQL debugger was mentioned was on the “to do” page, under “major projects” (http://www.pgadmin.org/development/todo.php), which I guess means don’t hold your breath.
As editors, the two pgAdmin tools apparently don’t offer elementary functions such as find and replace, which means I have to slurp my code out into a text editor when I really need these things.
So I guess my questions are:
- Is it the case that the pgAdmin tools actually do offer these features, but I just haven’t found them yet? If so, can you show me where they are?
- Are these functions available through add-ons to either pgAdmin tool? If so, where can I get these add-ons?
- Are there other PL/pgSQL editors that provide these functions? If so, what? Obviously, I’d prefer a free one, but would pay for one if necessary.
~ TIA
~ Ken
