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

Checking for memory and I/O

Once we are done finding missing indexes, we can inspect the memory and I/O. To figure out what is going on, it makes sense to activate track_io_timing. If it is on, PostgreSQL will collect information about disk wait time and present it to you.

Often, the main question asked by a customer is: if we add more disks, is it going to be faster? It is possible to guess what will happen, but in general, measuring is the better and more useful strategy. Enabling track_io_timing will help you gather the data to really figure this out.

PostgreSQL exposes disk wait time in various ways. One way to inspect things is to take a look at pg_stat_database:

test=# \d pg_stat_database
View "pg_catalog.pg_stat_database"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------------+--------------------------+-----------
datid | oid ...