In Chapter 10, Making Sense of Backups and Replication, our focus was on replication, transaction log shipping, and logical decoding. After looking at mostly administration-related topics, the goal now is to aim at a broader topic. In the PostgreSQL world, many things are done through extensions. The advantage of extensions is that functionality can be added without bloating the PostgreSQL core. Users can choose from competing extensions and find what is best for them. The philosophy is to keep the core slim, relatively easy to maintain, and ready for the future.

In this chapter, some of the most commonly used extensions for PostgreSQL will be discussed. However, before digging deeper into this issue, I want to state that this chapter only features a list of extensions that I personally find useful. There are so many modules out there these days that...