PostgreSQL: How to execute an insert trigger without delaying insert response?

Question

Does anyone knows how can I set up an insert trigger so when a perform an insert from my application, the data gets inserted and postgres returns, even before the trigger finishes executing?

Answer 1

There is no built-in support for this; you will have to hack something up. Options include:

• Write the trigger in C, Perl, or Python and have it launch a separate process to do the things you want. This can get tricky and possibly slightly dangerous to your database system, and it only works if the things you want to do are outside of the database.

• Write a lightweight trigger function that only records an entry into a log or task table, and have a separate job or daemon that looks into that table on its own schedule and executes things from there. That's more or less how Slony works.

Answer 2

The question is : why do you need it? Triggers should be fast. If you need to do something complicated, write trigger that send notification to some daemon that does the complex part - for example using LISTEN/NOTIFY feature of PostgreSQL.