Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Overview of this book

Learn how to work with PostgreSQL as if you spent the last decade working on it. PostgreSQL is capable of providing you with all of the options that you have in your favourite development language and then extending that right on to the database server. With this knowledge in hand, you will be able to respond to the current demand for advanced PostgreSQL skills in a lucrative and booming market."PostgreSQL Server Programming" will show you that PostgreSQL is so much more than a database server. In fact, it could even be seen as an application development framework, with the added bonuses of transaction support, massive data storage, journaling, recovery and a host of other features that the PostgreSQL engine provides. This book will take you from learning the basic parts of a PostgreSQL function, then writing them in languages other than the built-in PL/PgSQL. You will see how to create libraries of useful code, group them into even more useful components, and distribute them to the community. You will see how to extract data from a multitude of foreign data sources, and then extend PostgreSQL to do it natively. And you can do all of this in a nifty debugging interface that will allow you to do it efficiently and with reliability.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
PostgreSQL Server Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Dealing with success – splitting tables over multiple databases


Now, let's roll forward in time a little and assume you have been successful enough to attract tens of thousands of users and your single database starts creaking under the load.

My general rule of thumb is to start planning for a bigger machine or splitting the database when you are over 80 percent utilization at least for a few hours a day. It's good to have a plan earlier, but now you have to start doing something about really carrying out the plan.

What expansion plans work and when

There are a couple of popular ways to grow database-backed systems. Depending on your use case, not all ways will work.

Moving to a bigger server

If you suspect that you are near your top load for the service or product, you can simply move to a more powerful server. This may not be the best long-time scaling solution if you are still in the middle, or even in the beginning of your growth. You will run out of "bigger" machines to buy long before you...