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)

Which parameters are at non-default settings?

Often, we need to check which parameters have been changed or whether our changes have correctly taken effect.

In the previous two recipes, we have seen that parameters can be changed in several ways, and with different scope. You learned how to inspect the value of one parameter or get the full list of parameters.

In this recipe, we will show you how to use SQL capabilities to list only those parameters whose value in the current session differs from the system-wide default value.

This list is valuable for several reasons. First, it includes only a few of the 200-plus available parameters, so it is more immediate. Also, it is difficult to remember all our past actions, especially in the middle of a long or complicated session.

Version 9.4 introduces the ALTER SYSTEM syntax, which we will describe in the next recipe, Updating the parameter...