To get the most out of this book

This book has been written for a broad audience. In order to follow the examples presented in this book, it makes sense to have at least some experience with SQL and, perhaps, even PostgreSQL in general (although this is not mandatory). In general, it is a good idea to have some familiarity with the Unix command-line interface as well.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code via the GitHub repository (link available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

At the end of each chapter, you will find questions for self-assessment. The answers to those questions can be found in the GitHub repository (link in the following section).

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-PostgreSQL-13-Fourth-Edition. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "You can just use COMMIT, COMMIT WORK, or COMMIT TRANSACTION."

A block of code is set as follows:

test=# \h COMMIT
Command: COMMIT
Description: commit the current transaction
Syntax:
COMMIT [ WORK | TRANSACTION ] [ AND [ NO ] CHAIN ]

URL: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/sql-commit.html

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "For normal Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), read committed has various advantages, because changes can be seen much earlier and the odds of unexpected errors are usually lower."