Book Image

PostgreSQL 14 Administration Cookbook

By : Simon Riggs, Gianni Ciolli
5 (1)
Book Image

PostgreSQL 14 Administration Cookbook

5 (1)
By: Simon Riggs, Gianni Ciolli

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 14 allows you to scale up your PostgreSQL infrastructure. With this book, you'll take a step-by-step, recipe-based approach to effective PostgreSQL administration. This book will get you up and running with all the latest features of PostgreSQL 14 while helping you explore the entire database ecosystem. You’ll learn how to tackle a variety of problems and pain points you may face as a database administrator such as creating tables, managing views, improving performance, and securing your database. As you make progress, the book will draw attention to important topics such as monitoring roles, validating backups, regular maintenance, and recovery of your PostgreSQL 14 database. This will help you understand roles, ensuring high availability, concurrency, and replication. Along with updated recipes, this book touches upon important areas like using generated columns, TOAST compression, PostgreSQL on the cloud, and much more. By the end of this PostgreSQL book, you’ll have gained the knowledge you need to manage your PostgreSQL 14 database efficiently, both in the cloud and on-premise.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Chapter 2: Exploring the Database

To understand PostgreSQL, you need to see it in use. An empty database is like a ghost town without houses.

For now, we will assume that you already have a database. There are over a thousand books on how to design your own database from nothing. So, here, we aim to help people who are still learning to use the PostgreSQL database management system with handy routines to explore the database. 

The best way to start is by asking some simple questions to orient yourself and begin the process of understanding. Incidentally, these are also questions that you'll need to answer if you ask someone else for help.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following recipes:

  • What type of server is this?
  • 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 the 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