Creating Your Own Data Types

PostgreSQL allows you to create your own data types. This is not unique among relational database systems, but PostgreSQL's depth of support is unique. In other RDBMSs, you can define one data type in terms of another (predefined) data type. For example, you might create a new numeric data type to hold an employee's age, with valid values between 18 and 100. This is still a numeric data type ”you must define the new type as a subset of an existing type.

With PostgreSQL, you can create entirely new types that have no relationship to existing types. When you define a custom data type (in PostgreSQL), you determine the syntax required for literal values, the format for internal data storage, the set of operators supported for the new type, and the set of (predefined) functions that can operate on values of that type.

There are a number of contributed packages that add new data types to the standard PostgreSQL distribution. For example, the PostGIS project (http://postgis.refractions.net) adds geographic data types based on specifications produced by the Open GIS Consortium. The / contrib directory of a standard PostgreSQL distribution contains a cube data type as well as an implementation of ISBN/ISSN (International Standard Book Number/International Standard Serial Number) data types.

Creating a new data type is too advanced for this chapter. If you are interested in defining a new data type, see Chapter 6, "Extending PostgreSQL."