Using PostgreSQL Arrays The Right Way

While this is really cool, can anyone tell me if it has become any easier to write stored procedures&#x2F;functions?<p>Last time I tried writing stored procedures I went into a deep depression from the lack of a proper IDE&#x2F;editor&#x2F;debugger&#x2F;tester&#x2F;anything.<p>Is there any process out there besides time consuming trial and error? Or does everyone who writes these knows them by heart and I should just stick to programming languages?

we heavily rely on postgres as well, in the past we have tried to do the entire backend on postgres as we believe it could be the best solution, but we have had a terrifically hard time of maintaining stored procs, etc. We still use them, but a lot less than we probably would and wound up building an ORM and moving most logic to PHP.<p>I would be really interested in how you maintain your database code if you are up for another write up or have some time to chat.

Why use an array instead of a separate table? Are you trying to avoid a JOIN?

Does anyone know offhand whether fixed length values, e.g., bigint, have this problem?