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)

Usage of disk space by temporary data

In addition to ordinary stable tables, you can also create temporary tables.

Also, PostgreSQL may use temporary files for query processing if it can't fit all the necessary data into the memory.

So, how do you find out how much data is used by temporary tables and files? You can do this using any untrusted embedded language, or directly on the database host.

Getting ready

You have to use an untrusted language, because trusted languages run in a sandbox, which prohibits them from directly accessing the host filesystem.

How to do it...

...