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

An overview of PostgreSQL


PostgreSQL (http://www.PostgreSQL.org/) has many rich features. It provides enterprise-level services including performance, unique features, and scalability. It has a very supportive community and very good documentation.

PostgreSQL history

PostgreSQL has started as a research project in the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), then it has been developed by the community in 1996, up till now PostgreSQL is actively developed by the PostgreSQL community as well as universities. The following time frames shows the history of PostgreSQL development:

  • 1977-1985, the Ingres project: Michael Stonebraker created an RDBMS based on the formal relational model
  • 1986-1994, postgres: Michael Stonebraker created postgres in order to support complex data types and the object relational model
  • 1995, Postgres95: Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen changed the postgres PostQUEL query language with an extended subset of SQL
  • 1996, PostgreSQL: Several developers dedicated a lot of labor and time...