SET SQL - Language Statements SET Set run-time parameters SET variable { TO | = } { value | 'value' | DEFAULT } SET TIME ZONE { 'timezone' | LOCAL | DEFAULT } variable A settable run-time parameter. value New value of parameter. DEFAULT can be used to specify resetting the parameter to its default value. Lists of strings are allowed, but more complex constructs may need to be single or double quoted. The SET command changes run-time configuration parameters. The following parameters can be altered: CLIENT_ENCODING NAMES Sets the multi-byte client encoding. The specified encoding must be supported by the backend. This option is only available if Postgres is build with multibyte support. DATESTYLE Choose the date/time representation style. Two separate settings are made: the default date/time output and the interpretation of ambiguous input. The following are date/time output styles: ISO Use ISO 8601-style dates and times (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS). This is the default. SQL Use Oracle/Ingres-style dates and times. Note that this style has nothing to do with SQL (which mandates ISO 8601 style), the naming of this option is a historical accident. Postgres Use traditional Postgres format. German Use dd.mm.yyyy for numeric date representations. The following two options determine both a substyle of the SQL and Postgres output formats and the preferred interpretation of ambiguous date input. European Use dd/mm/yyyy for numeric date representations. NonEuropean US Use mm/dd/yyyy for numeric date representations. A value for SET DATESTYLE can be one from the first list (output styles), or one from the second list (substyles), or one from each separated by a comma. Date format initialization may be done by: Setting the PGDATESTYLE environment variable. If PGDATESTYLE is set in the frontend environment of a client based on libpq, libpq will automatically set DATESTYLE to the value of PGDATESTYLE during connection startup. Running postmaster using the option -o -e to set dates to the European convention. The DateStyle option is really only intended for porting applications. To format your date/time values to choice, use the to_char family of functions. SEED Sets the internal seed for the random number generator. value The value for the seed to be used by the random function. Allowed values are floating point numbers between 0 and 1, which are then multiplied by 2^31-1. This product will silently overflow if a number outside the range is used. The seed can also be set by invoking the setseed SQL function: SELECT setseed(value); SERVER_ENCODING Sets the multi-byte server encoding. This option is only available if Postgres was built with multibyte support. TIME ZONE TIMEZONE The possible values for timezone depends on your operating system. For example, on Linux /usr/share/zoneinfo contains the database of time zones. Here are some valid values for timezone: PST8PDT Set the time zone for California. Portugal Set time zone for Portugal. 'Europe/Rome' Set time zone for Italy. LOCAL DEFAULT Set the time zone to your local time zone (the one that your operating system defaults to). If an invalid time zone is specified, the time zone becomes GMT (on most systems anyway). If the PGTZ environment variable is set in the frontend environment of a client based on libpq, libpq will automatically set TIMEZONE to the value of PGTZ during connection startup. An extended list of other run-time parameters can be found in the Administrator's Guide. Use to show the current setting of a parameters. SET VARIABLE Message returned if successful. ERROR: not a valid option name: name The parameter you tried to set does not exist. ERROR: permission denied You must be a superuser to have access to certain settings. ERROR: name can only be set at startup Some parameters are fixed once the server is started. Set the style of date to traditional Postgres with European conventions: SET DATESTYLE TO Postgres,European; Set the timezone for Berkeley, California, using double quotes to preserve the uppercase attributes of the time zone specifier (note that the date/time format is ISO here): SET TIME ZONE "PST8PDT"; SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AS today; today ------------------------ 1998-03-31 07:41:21-08 Set the timezone for Italy (note the required single or double quotes to handle the special characters): SET TIME ZONE 'Europe/Rome'; SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AS today; today ------------------------ 1998-03-31 17:41:31+02 The second syntax shown above (SET TIME ZONE) attempts to mimic SQL92. However, SQL allows only numeric time zone offsets. All other parameter settings as well as the first syntax shown above are a Postgres extension.