Book Image

PostgreSQL Administration Cookbook, 9.5/9.6 Edition - Third Edition

Book Image

PostgreSQL Administration Cookbook, 9.5/9.6 Edition - Third Edition

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is a powerful opensource database management system; now recognized as the expert's choice for a wide range of applications, it has an enviable reputation for performance and stability. PostgreSQL provides an integrated feature set comprising relational database features, object-relational, text search, Geographical Info Systems, analytical tools for big data and JSON/XML document management. Starting with short and simple recipes, you will soon dive into core features, such as configuration, server control, tables, and data. You will tackle a variety of problems a database administrator usually encounters, from creating tables to managing views, from improving performance to securing your database, and from using monitoring tools to using storage engines. Recipes based on important topics such as high availability, concurrency, replication, backup and recovery, as well as diagnostics and troubleshooting are also given special importance. By the end of this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to run, manage, and maintain PostgreSQL efficiently.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Simplifying complex SQL queries

There are two types of complexity that you can encounter in SQL queries.

First, the complexity can be directly visible in the query, if it has hundreds or even thousands of rows of SQL code in a single query. This can cause both maintenance headaches and slow execution.

The complexity can also be hidden in subviews, so the SQL code of the query may seem simple, but it uses other views and/or functions to do part of the work, which in turn can use others. This is much better for maintenance, but it can still cause performance problems.

Both types of queries can either be written manually by programmers or data analysts, or can emerge as a result of a query generator.

Getting ready

First, verify...