Book Image

Learn PostgreSQL - Second Edition

By : Luca Ferrari, Enrico Pirozzi
1 (2)
Book Image

Learn PostgreSQL - Second Edition

1 (2)
By: Luca Ferrari, Enrico Pirozzi

Overview of this book

The latest edition of this PostgreSQL book will help you to start using PostgreSQL from absolute scratch, helping you to quickly understand the internal workings of the database. With a structured approach and practical examples, go on a journey that covers the basics, from SQL statements and how to run server-side programs, to configuring, managing, securing, and optimizing database performance. This new edition will not only help you get to grips with all the recent changes within the PostgreSQL ecosystem but will also dig deeper into concepts like partitioning and replication with a fresh set of examples. The book is also equipped with Docker images for each chapter which makes the learning experience faster and easier. Starting with the absolute basics of databases, the book sails through to advanced concepts like window functions, logging, auditing, extending the database, configuration, partitioning, and replication. It will also help you seamlessly migrate your existing database system to PostgreSQL and contains a dedicated chapter on disaster recovery. Each chapter ends with practice questions to test your learning at regular intervals. By the end of this book, you will be able to install, configure, manage, and develop applications against a PostgreSQL database.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
20
Other Books You May Enjoy
21
Index

Summary

In this chapter, we learned that PostgreSQL provides advanced tools so that we can perform backups and restorations. Backups are important because, even in a battle-tested and high-quality product such as PostgreSQL, things can go wrong: often, users may accidentally damage their data, but other times, the hardware or the software could fail miserably. Being able to restore data, partially or fully, is, therefore, very important, and every database administrator should carefully plan backup strategies.

We also learned that PostgreSQL ships with tools for both logical and physical backups. Logical backups are taken by means of reading the data from the database itself, using ordinary SQL interactions; physical backups are taken by means of cloning the PGDATA directory, either by using operating system tools or PostgreSQL ad hoc solutions. Restoration is performed by specific tools in the case of logical backups, and by the database self-healing mechanism in the case of...