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

Basic Statements

In this chapter, we will discuss basic SQL commands for PostgreSQL; these are Data Definition Language (DDL) commands and Data Manipulation Language (DML) commands. In basic terms, DDL commands are used to manage databases and tables, and DML commands are used to insert, delete, update, and select data inside databases. In this chapter, we will also dive into the psql environment. As you learned in Chapter 2, Getting to know your cluster, psql can be described as PostgreSQL’s shell environment; it is the gate we have to go through in order to start writing commands natively in PostgreSQL. We have to remember that psql is always present in any PostgreSQL installation we work with, and it is worth learning since it is such a powerful environment in which to manage our data and our databases.

Basic statements and psql are therefore the foundations on which we will build our knowledge of PostgreSQL. Therefore, reading and understanding this chapter is essential...