Book Image

Mastering PostgreSQL 9.6

By : Hans-Jürgen Schönig
Book Image

Mastering PostgreSQL 9.6

By: Hans-Jürgen Schönig

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is an open source database used for handling large datasets (Big Data) and as a JSON document database. It also has applications in the software and web domains. This book will enable you to build better PostgreSQL applications and administer databases more efficiently. We begin by explaining the advanced database design concepts in PostgreSQL 9.6, along with indexing and query optimization. You will also see how to work with event triggers and perform concurrent transactions and table partitioning, along with exploring SQL and server tuning. We will walk you through implementing advanced administrative tasks such as server maintenance and monitoring, replication, recovery and high availability, and much more. You will understand the common and not-so-common troubleshooting problems and how you can overcome them. By the end of this book, you will have an expert-level command of the advanced database functionalities and will be able to implement advanced administrative tasks with PostgreSQL.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
PostgreSQL Overview

Utilizing advisory locks

PostgreSQL has a highly efficient and sophisticated transaction machinery that is capable of handling locks in a really fine grained and efficient way. Some years ago, some people came up with the idea of using this code to synchronize applications with each other. Thus, advisory locks were born.

When using advisory locks, it is important to mention that they won't go away on COMMIT as normal locks do. Therefore, it is really important to make sure that unlocking is done properly and in a totally reliable way.

If you decide to use an advisory lock, what you really lock is a number. So this is not about rows or data: it is really just a number. Here is how it works:

Session 1

Session 2

BEGIN;

SELECT pg_advisory_lock(15);

SELECT pg_advisory_lock(15);

It has to wait

COMMIT;

It still has to wait

SELECT pg_advisory_unlock(15);

It still waiting

Lock...