Summary

This chapter discussed the options available to you when you create applications to work with PostgreSQL. With PostgreSQL, you can write client-side applications in a variety of languages and you can also choose between many server-side languages.

When you write an application that uses PostgreSQL, you have to decide whether you want to implement server-side code, client-side code, or a combination of both. I've explained some of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Personally, I prefer to mix server-side and client-side code so that I can realize the advantages offered by each.

The next few chapters describe in greater detail PL/pgSQL (server-side programming) and many of the client APIs.