Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (21 chapters)
PostgreSQL Server Programming Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


In this chapter, we have gone over the process of database sharding for databases that are too big to take the write load on a single host, or where you just want to have the added resilience of having a system where one host being down does not bring the whole system down.

In short, the process is:

  • Decide which tables you want to split over multiple hosts

  • Define a partitioning key

  • Add the partition databases and move the data

  • Set up the proxy functions for all the functions accessing those tables

  • Watch for a little while that everything is working

  • Relax

We also took a brief look at using PL/Proxy for simple remote queries to other PostgreSQL databases, which may be handy for some tasks, even after the new Foreign Data Wrapper (FDW) functionality in PostgreSQL replaced it for many uses.

While PL/Proxy is not for everyone, it may well save the day if you are suddenly faced with rapid database growth and have the need for an easy and clean way to spread the database over many hosts.

In the next...