Book Image

Learning PostgreSQL

Book Image

Learning PostgreSQL

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is one of the most powerful and easy to use database management systems. It supports the most advanced features included in SQL standards. The book starts with the introduction of relational databases with PostegreSQL. It then moves on to covering data definition language (DDL) with emphasis on PostgreSQL and common DDL commands supported by ANSI SQL. You will then learn the data manipulation language (DML), and advanced topics like locking and multi version concurrency control (MVCC). This will give you a very robust background to tune and troubleshoot your application. The book then covers the implementation of data models in the database such as creating tables, setting up integrity constraints, building indexes, defining views and other schema objects. Next, it will give you an overview about the NoSQL capabilities of PostgreSQL along with Hstore, XML, Json and arrays. Finally by the end of the book, you'll learn to use the JDBC driver and manipulate data objects in the Hibernate framework.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Learning PostgreSQL
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


PostgreSQL is very rich in built-in data types and external extensions. It can be extended easily using the C and C++ languages. In fact, PostgreSQL provides an extension-building infrastructure called PGXS so that extensions can be built against an installed server. Some PostgreSQL extensions, such as PostGIS, require complete chapters to discuss.

PostgreSQL provides a very rich set of data types, such as XML, hstore, JSON, array, and so on. These data types can be used to ease the developer's life by not reinventing the wheel and utilizing the very rich set of functions and operators. Also, several PostgreSQL data types, such as hstore and JSON, can increase the developer's agility because the database's physical design is not amended frequently.

PostgreSQL arrays are very mature; they have a rich set of operators and function. PostgreSQL can handle multidimensional arrays with different base types. Arrays are useful in modeling multivalued attributes as well as in performing several...