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Use the following code within a trigger function, then watch the ‘messages’ tab in pgAdmin3 or the output in psql:
RAISE NOTICE 'myplpgsqlval is currently %', myplpgsqlval; -- either this RAISE EXCEPTION 'failed'; -- or that
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To see which triggers actually get called, how many times etc, the following statement is the life-saver of choice:
EXPLAIN ANALYZE UPDATE table SET foo='bar'; -- shows the called triggers
Note that if your trigger is not getting called and you use inheritance, it may be that you’ve only defined a trigger on the parent table, whereas triggers are not inherited by child tables automatically.
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To step through the function, you can use the debugger built into pgAdmin3, which on Windows is enabled by default; all you have to do is execute the code found in …\8.3\share\contrib\pldbgapi.sql against the database you’re debugging, restart pgAdmin3, right-click your trigger function, hit ‘Set Breakpoint’, and then execute a statement that would cause the trigger to fire, such as the UPDATE statement above.