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

Chapter 8. OLAP and Data Warehousing

A database usually performs the role of a storage component of a complex software solution. Depending on the type of the solution and what problem it aims to solve, the configuration of database and the data structure can be different. It is common to set up a database in regard to configuration and data structure in one of the two ways: online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP). 

When a database works as a backend for an application, it implements an OLTP solution. This means that the database is supposed to perform a lot of small transactions on a regular basis. The car portal database we used as an example in previous chapters can be an example of a typical OLTP data structure. The application working with this database executes a transaction each time a user does something: creates an account, modifies the password, enters a car into the system, creates or changes an advertisement, and so on. Every action like that...