Book Image

Learning PostgreSQL 10 - Second Edition

Book Image

Learning PostgreSQL 10 - Second Edition

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is one of the most popular open source databases in the world, supporting the most advanced features included in SQL standards. This book will familiarize you with the latest features released in PostgreSQL 10. We’ll start with a thorough introduction to PostgreSQL and the new features introduced in PostgreSQL 10. We’ll cover the Data Definition Language (DDL) with an emphasis on PostgreSQL, and the common DDL commands supported by ANSI SQL. You’ll learn to create tables, define integrity constraints, build indexes, and set up views and other schema objects. Moving on, we’ll cover the concepts of Data Manipulation Language (DML) and PostgreSQL server-side programming capabilities using PL/pgSQL. We’ll also explore the NoSQL capabilities of PostgreSQL and connect to your PostgreSQL database to manipulate data objects. By the end of this book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of the basics of PostgreSQL 10 and will have the necessary skills to build efficient database solutions.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Summary


In this chapter, indexes, views, functions, user-defined data types, and rule and trigger systems have been discussed. A view is a named query or a wrapper around a SELECT statement. They can be used as a data access layer, provide an abstraction level, and control data privileges and permissions.

A view in PostgreSQL can be categorized as temporary, materialized, updatable, and recursive. Simple views in PostgreSQL are automatically updatable. To make complex views updatable, one can use the rule and trigger systems. Indexes are physical database objects defined on a table column, a set of columns, and expressions. Indexes are often used to optimize performance or to validate data. There are several techniques for building indexes, including B-tree, hash, GIN, GIST, and BRIN. B-tree is the default indexing method. GIN and GIST are useful for indexing complex data types and for full-text searches. There are several types of indexes; each type can be used for a different use case....