NAME

       PREPARE - prepare a statement for execution

SYNOPSIS

       PREPARE name [ ( data_type [, ...] ) ] AS statement

DESCRIPTION

           Note

           The following description applies both to Postgres-XC and PostgreSQL if not described explicitly.

       PREPARE creates a prepared statement. A prepared statement is a server-side object that can be used to
       optimize performance. When the PREPARE statement is executed, the specified statement is parsed,
       rewritten, and planned. When an EXECUTE command is subsequently issued, the prepared statement need only
       be executed. Thus, the parsing, rewriting, and planning stages are only performed once, instead of every
       time the statement is executed.

       Prepared statements can take parameters: values that are substituted into the statement when it is
       executed. When creating the prepared statement, refer to parameters by position, using $1, $2, etc. A
       corresponding list of parameter data types can optionally be specified. When a parameter's data type is
       not specified or is declared as unknown, the type is inferred from the context in which the parameter is
       used (if possible). When executing the statement, specify the actual values for these parameters in the
       EXECUTE statement. Refer to EXECUTE(7) for more information about that.

       Prepared statements only last for the duration of the current database session. When the session ends,
       the prepared statement is forgotten, so it must be recreated before being used again. This also means
       that a single prepared statement cannot be used by multiple simultaneous database clients; however, each
       client can create their own prepared statement to use. The prepared statement can be manually cleaned up
       using the DEALLOCATE(7) command.

       Prepared statements have the largest performance advantage when a single session is being used to execute
       a large number of similar statements. The performance difference will be particularly significant if the
       statements are complex to plan or rewrite, for example, if the query involves a join of many tables or
       requires the application of several rules. If the statement is relatively simple to plan and rewrite but
       relatively expensive to execute, the performance advantage of prepared statements will be less
       noticeable.

PARAMETERS

       name
           An arbitrary name given to this particular prepared statement. It must be unique within a single
           session and is subsequently used to execute or deallocate a previously prepared statement.

       data_type
           The data type of a parameter to the prepared statement. If the data type of a particular parameter is
           unspecified or is specified as unknown, it will be inferred from the context in which the parameter
           is used. To refer to the parameters in the prepared statement itself, use $1, $2, etc.

       statement
           Any SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or VALUES statement.

NOTES

       In some situations, the query plan produced for a prepared statement will be inferior to the query plan
       that would have been chosen if the statement had been submitted and executed normally. This is because
       when the statement is planned and the planner attempts to determine the optimal query plan, the actual
       values of any parameters specified in the statement are unavailable.  PostgreSQL collects statistics on
       the distribution of data in the table, and can use constant values in a statement to make guesses about
       the likely result of executing the statement. Since this data is unavailable when planning prepared
       statements with parameters, the chosen plan might be suboptimal. To examine the query plan PostgreSQL has
       chosen for a prepared statement, use EXPLAIN(7).

       For more information on query planning and the statistics collected by PostgreSQL for that purpose, see
       the ANALYZE(7) documentation.

       You can see all available prepared statements of a session by querying the pg_prepared_statements system
       view.

EXAMPLES

       Create a prepared statement for an INSERT statement, and then execute it:

           PREPARE fooplan (int, text, bool, numeric) AS
               INSERT INTO foo VALUES($1, $2, $3, $4);
           EXECUTE fooplan(1, 'Hunter Valley', 't', 200.00);

       Create a prepared statement for a SELECT statement, and then execute it:

           PREPARE usrrptplan (int) AS
               SELECT * FROM users u, logs l WHERE u.usrid=$1 AND u.usrid=l.usrid
               AND l.date = $2;
           EXECUTE usrrptplan(1, current_date);

       Note that the data type of the second parameter is not specified, so it is inferred from the context in
       which $2 is used.

COMPATIBILITY

       The SQL standard includes a PREPARE statement, but it is only for use in embedded SQL. This version of
       the PREPARE statement also uses a somewhat different syntax.

SEE ALSO

       DEALLOCATE(7), EXECUTE(7)

Postgres-XC 1.1                                    2014-04-07                                         PREPARE(7)