Book Image

PostgreSQL Development Essentials

By : Baji Shaik
Book Image

PostgreSQL Development Essentials

By: Baji Shaik

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is the most advanced open source database in the world. It is easy to install, configure, and maintain by following the documentation; however, it’s difficult to develop applications using programming languages and design databases accordingly. This book is what you need to get the most out of PostgreSQL You will begin with advanced SQL topics such as views, materialized views, and cursors, and learn about performing data type conversions. You will then perform trigger operations and use trigger functions in PostgreSQL. Next we walk through data modeling, normalization concepts, and the effect of transactions and locking on the database. The next half of the book covers the types of indexes, constrains, and the concepts of table partitioning, as well as the different mechanisms and approaches available to write efficient queries or code. Later, we explore PostgreSQL Extensions and Large Object Support in PostgreSQL. Finally, you will perform database operations in PostgreSQL using PHP and Java. By the end of this book, you will have mastered all the aspects of PostgreSQL development. You will be able to build efficient enterprise-grade applications with PostgreSQL by making use of these concepts
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Introduction to indexes and constraints


An index is a pointer to the actual rows in its corresponding table. It is used to find and retrieve particular rows much faster than using the standard method. Indexes help you improve the performance of queries. However, indexes get updated on every Data Manipulation Language (DML)—that is, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE—query on the table, which is an overhead, so they should be used carefully. Constraints are basically rules restricting the values allowed in the columns and they define certain properties that data in a database must comply with. The purpose of constraints is to maintain the integrity of data in the database. The different ways of maintaining data integrity through constraints will be covered in this chapter.

Primary key indexes

As the name indicates, primary key indexes are the primary way to identify a record (tuple) in a table. Obviously, it cannot be null because a null (unknown) value cannot be used to identify a record. So, all...