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)

Multiple ways to implement a query


As we all know, a query can be implemented in several ways. But only one will be implemented among them:the one that takes the least cost when compared to the rest. For demonstration purposes, let's consider we have a payments table, which makes customer id entry along with the payment date when the customer clears his payment.

Now the general request from the management team is something like, "Get me the customers who've paid so far".

For this requirement, we can write queries like the following:

  • Approach 1: Joining tables

        CREATE TABLE payments (id integer, amount numeric, paydate  date);
        postgres=# EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT c.id FROM customers C, 
        payments P WHERE        
        c.id=p.id AND p.paydate<=now()::date;
                          QUERY PLAN
        ---------------------------------------------------------------                
        Hash Join  (cost=16236.00..36268.00 rows=412000 width=4)  (actual ...