I'm so totally new to postgresql that I'm not sure how to word this.

I want to create a query, that does two things

1) take input in the form of a string of numbers, and test if
a) is ssn
b) or internal id

if the string is an ssn, make a second query to another data base,
asking it to convert the ssn to our internal id

otherwise,

2) use the id given to query an existing table

I'm not sure what feature/function postgresql has to help me do this.
I'd like to stick with using python as my language, and I'm guessing
this would be stored procedure, but I'm too new to know.

Please point me to some good reading.

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David Bear
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David Bear wrote:

>I'm so totally new to postgresql that I'm not sure how to word this.
>
>
>
What you want to do is create a function (store procedure)...
You can use plpythonu to do what you want. So you could create
something like this:

create or replace function check_id(text) returns integer as ...

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake



>I want to create a query, that does two things
>
>1) take input in the form of a string of numbers, and test if
> a) is ssn
> b) or internal id
>
>if the string is an ssn, make a second query to another data base,
>asking it to convert the ssn to our internal id
>
>otherwise,
>
>2) use the id given to query an existing table
>
>I'm not sure what feature/function postgresql has to help me do this.
>I'd like to stick with using python as my language, and I'm guessing
>this would be stored procedure, but I'm too new to know.
>
>Please point me to some good reading.
>
>
>


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