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PostgreSQL 10 Administration Cookbook - Fourth Edition

PostgreSQL 10 Administration Cookbook

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source database management system with an enviable reputation for high performance and stability. With many new features in its arsenal, PostgreSQL 10 allows users to scale up their PostgreSQL infrastructure. This book takes a step-by-step, recipe-based approach to effective PostgreSQL administration. Throughout this book, you will be introduced to these new features such as logical replication, native table partitioning, additional query parallelism, and much more. You will learn how to tackle a variety of problems that are basically the pain points for any database administrator - from creating tables to managing views, from improving performance to securing your database. More importantly, the book pays special attention to topics such as monitoring roles, backup, and recovery of your PostgreSQL 10 database, ensuring high availability, concurrency, and replication. By the end of this book, you will know everything you need to know to be the go-to PostgreSQL expert in your organization.

Preface

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Sections

Get in touch

Free Chapter

First Steps

First Steps

Introduction

Getting PostgreSQL

Connecting to the PostgreSQL server

Enabling access for network/remote users

Using graphical administration tools

OmniDB

Using the psql query and scripting tool

Changing your password securely

Avoiding hardcoding your password

Using a connection service file

Troubleshooting a failed connection

Exploring the Database

Exploring the Database

Introduction

What version is the server?

What is the server uptime?

Locating the database server files

Locating the database server's message log

Locating the database's system identifier

Listing databases on this database server

How many tables are there in a database?

How much disk space does a database use?

How much disk space does a table use?

Which are my biggest tables?

How many rows are there in a table?

Quickly estimating the number of rows in a table

Listing extensions in this database

Understanding object dependencies

Configuration

Configuration

Introduction

Reading the fine manual

Planning a new database

Changing parameters in your programs

Finding the current configuration settings

Which parameters are at non-default settings?

Updating the parameter file

Setting parameters for particular groups of users

The basic server configuration checklist

Adding an external module to PostgreSQL

Using an installed module

Managing installed extensions

Server Control

Server Control

Introduction

Starting the database server manually

Stopping the server safely and quickly

Stopping the server in an emergency

Reloading the server configuration files

Restarting the server quickly

Preventing new connections

Restricting users to only one session each

Pushing users off the system

Deciding on a design for multitenancy

Using multiple schemas

Giving users their own private database

Running multiple servers on one system

Setting up a connection pool

Accessing multiple servers using the same host and port

Tables and Data

Tables and Data

Choosing good names for database objects

Handling objects with quoted names

Enforcing the same name and definition for columns

Identifying and removing duplicates

Preventing duplicate rows

Finding a unique key for a set of data

Generating test data

Randomly sampling data

Loading data from a spreadsheet

Loading data from flat files

Security

Security

Introduction

The PostgreSQL superuser

Revoking user access to a table

Granting user access to a table

Granting user access to specific columns

Granting user access to specific rows

Creating a new user

Temporarily preventing a user from connecting

Removing a user without dropping their data

Checking whether all users have a secure password

Giving limited superuser powers to specific users

Auditing database access

Always knowing which user is logged in

Integrating with LDAP

Connecting using SSL

Using SSL certificates to authenticate

Mapping external usernames to database roles

Encrypting sensitive data

Database Administration

Database Administration

Introduction

Writing a script that either succeeds entirely or fails entirely

Writing a psql script that exits on the first error

Using psql variables

Placing query output into psql variables

Writing a conditional psql script

Investigating a psql error

Performing actions on many tables

Adding/removing columns on a table

Changing the data type of a column

Changing the definition of a data type

Adding/removing schemas

Moving objects between schemas

Adding/removing tablespaces

Moving objects between tablespaces

Accessing objects in other PostgreSQL databases

Accessing objects in other foreign databases

Updatable views

Using materialized views

Monitoring and Diagnosis

Monitoring and Diagnosis

Providing PostgreSQL information to monitoring tools

Real-time viewing using pgAdmin or OmniDB

Checking whether a user is connected

Checking whether a computer is connected

Repeatedly executing a query in psql

Checking which queries are running

Checking which queries are active or blocked

Knowing who is blocking a query

Killing a specific session

Detecting an in-doubt prepared transaction

Knowing whether anybody is using a specific table

Knowing when a table was last used

Usage of disk space by temporary data

Understanding why queries slow down

Investigating and reporting a bug

Producing a daily summary of log file errors

Analyzing the real-time performance of your queries

Regular Maintenance

Regular Maintenance

Controlling automatic database maintenance

Avoiding auto-freezing and page corruptions

Removing issues that cause bloat

Removing old prepared transactions

Actions for heavy users of temporary tables

Identifying and fixing bloated tables and indexes

Monitoring and tuning vacuum

Maintaining indexes

Adding a constraint without checking existing rows

Finding unused indexes

Carefully removing unwanted indexes

Planning maintenance

Performance and Concurrency

Performance and Concurrency

Introduction

Finding slow SQL statements

Collect regular statistics from pg_stat* views

Finding out what makes SQL slow

Reducing the number of rows returned

Simplifying complex SQL queries

Speeding up queries without rewriting them

Discovering why a query is not using an index

Forcing a query to use an index

Using parallel query

Using optimistic locking

Reporting performance problems

Backup and Recovery

Backup and Recovery

Introduction

Understanding and controlling crash recovery

Planning backups

Hot logical backups of one database

Hot logical backups of all databases

Backups of database object definitions

Standalone hot physical database backup

Hot physical backup and continuous archiving

Recovery of all databases

Recovery to a point in time

Recovery of a dropped/damaged table

Recovery of a dropped/damaged database

Improving performance of backup/recovery

Incremental/differential backup and restore

Hot physical backups with Barman

Recovery with Barman

Replication and Upgrades

Replication and Upgrades

Replication concepts

Replication best practices

Setting up file-based replication – deprecated

Setting up streaming replication

Setting up streaming replication security

Hot Standby and read scalability

Managing streaming replication

Using repmgr

Using replication slots

Monitoring replication

Performance and synchronous replication

Delaying, pausing, and synchronizing replication

Logical replication

Bi-directional replication

Archiving transaction log data

Upgrading minor releases

Major upgrades in-place

Major upgrades online

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Reloading the server configuration files

Some PostgreSQL configuration parameters can be changed only by reloading the entire configuration file(s).

How to do it...

There are two variants of this recipe, depending on whether you are using systemd. This is similar to the previous recipes in this chapter, and especially the Starting the database server manually recipe. More details are explained there, such as the exact names of systemd service units depending on which database server you want to reload, and which GNU/Linux distribution you are working on.

With systemd, configuration files can be reloaded with the following syntax:

sudo systemctl reload SERVICEUNIT

Here, SERVICEUNIT must be replaced with the exact name of the...

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