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)

Forcing a query to use an index

Often, we think we know better than the database optimizer. Most of the time your expectation is wrong and if you look carefully you'll see that. So recheck everything and come back later.

It is a classic error to try to get the database optimizer to use indexes when the database has very little data in it. Put some genuine data in the database first, then worry about it. Better still, load some data on a test server first rather than doing this in production.

Sometimes the optimizer gets it wrong. You feel elated and possibly angry that the database optimizer doesn't see what you see. Please bear in mind that the data distributions within your database change over time and this causes the optimizer to change its plans over time also. If you have found a case where the optimizer is wrong, it might have been correct last week and will be...