Book Image

Mastering PostgreSQL 12 - Third Edition

By : Hans-Jürgen Schönig
Book Image

Mastering PostgreSQL 12 - Third Edition

By: Hans-Jürgen Schönig

Overview of this book

Thanks to its reliability, robustness, and high performance, PostgreSQL has become the most advanced open source database on the market. This third edition of Mastering PostgreSQL helps you build dynamic database solutions for enterprise applications using the latest release of PostgreSQL, which enables database analysts to design both physical and technical aspects of system architecture with ease. Starting with an introduction to the newly released features in PostgreSQL 12, this book will help you build efficient and fault-tolerant PostgreSQL applications. You’ll thoroughly examine the advanced features of PostgreSQL, including logical replication, database clusters, performance tuning, monitoring, and user management. You’ll also work with the PostgreSQL optimizer, configure PostgreSQL for high speed, and understand how to move from Oracle to PostgreSQL. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll cover transactions, locking, indexes, and how to optimize queries for improved performance. Additionally, you’ll learn how to manage network security and explore backups and replications while understanding useful PostgreSQL extensions to help you in optimizing the performance of large databases. By the end of this PostgreSQL book, you’ll be able to get the most out of your database by implementing advanced administrative tasks effortlessly.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Basic Overview
4
Section 2: Advanced Concepts

Performing simple dumps

If you are running a PostgreSQL setup, there are basically two major methods to perform backups:

  • Logical dumps (extract a SQL script representing your data)
  • Transaction log shipping

The idea behind transaction log shipping is to archive binary changes made to the database. Most people claim that transaction log shipping is the only real way to create backups. However, in my opinion, this is not necessarily true.

Many people rely on pg_dump to simply extract a textual representation of the data. Interestingly, pg_dump is also the oldest method of creating a backup and has been around since the very early days of the PostgreSQL project (transaction log shipping was added much later). Every PostgreSQL administrator will become familiar with pg_dump sooner or later, so it is important to know how it really works and what it does.

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