Book Image

Learn PostgreSQL

By : Luca Ferrari, Enrico Pirozzi
Book Image

Learn PostgreSQL

By: Luca Ferrari, Enrico Pirozzi

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL is one of the fastest-growing open source object-relational database management systems (DBMS) in the world. As well as being easy to use, it’s scalable and highly efficient. In this book, you’ll explore PostgreSQL 12 and 13 and learn how to build database solutions using it. Complete with hands-on tutorials, this guide will teach you how to achieve the right database design required for a reliable environment. You'll learn how to install and configure a PostgreSQL server and even manage users and connections. The book then progresses to key concepts of relational databases, before taking you through the Data Definition Language (DDL) and commonly used DDL commands. To build on your skills, you’ll understand how to interact with the live cluster, create database objects, and use tools to connect to the live cluster. You’ll then get to grips with creating tables, building indexes, and designing your database schema. Later, you'll explore the Data Manipulation Language (DML) and server-side programming capabilities of PostgreSQL using PL/pgSQL, before learning how to monitor, test, and troubleshoot your database application to ensure high-performance and reliability. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed with the Postgres database and be able to set up your own PostgreSQL instance and use it to build robust solutions.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started
5
Section 2: Interacting with the Database
12
Section 3: Administering the Cluster
20
Section 4: Replication
23
Section 5: The PostegreSQL Ecosystem

Installing extensions

Usually, the workflow for getting an extension up and running involves a few steps. First, you need to find out which extension to use, which version, and the compatibility with your cluster. Once you have found out the extension you need, you have to install it in the cluster.

Installing it in the cluster really means deploying it in the cluster, that is, moving all the extension-related files and libraries into the shared directory of the cluster so that PostgreSQL can seek the code required to run the extension.

Lastly, you need to create the extension in every single database that needs it. Creating an extension is like enabling the usage of the extension within a specific database.

In order to demonstrate the usage of an extension, we will install Orafce, the Oracle compatibility functions extension. Describing the whole extension is not the aim of this section, so let's just say that this extension provides a set of functions, data types, and other stuff...