You could write a pl/pgsql function that does that mapping for you. For example, insert into some_table values (intern(str), …) where intern can insert and retu

You could write a pl/pgsql function that does that mapping for you. For example, insert into some_table values (intern(str), …) where intern can insert and return the intern_id from your intern_table. For select statements and joins you could use interned(str) that only does select without insert.