Book Image

PostgreSQL 10 High Performance - Third Edition

By : Enrico Pirozzi
Book Image

PostgreSQL 10 High Performance - Third Edition

By: Enrico Pirozzi

Overview of this book

PostgreSQL database servers have a common set of problems that they encounter as their usage gets heavier and requirements get more demanding. Peek into the future of your PostgreSQL 10 database's problems today. Know the warning signs to look for and how to avoid the most common issues before they even happen. Surprisingly, most PostgreSQL database applications evolve in the same way—choose the right hardware, tune the operating system and server memory use, optimize queries against the database and CPUs with the right indexes, and monitor every layer, from hardware to queries, using tools from inside and outside PostgreSQL. Also, using monitoring insight, PostgreSQL database applications continuously rework the design and configuration. On reaching the limits of a single server, they break things up; connection pooling, caching, partitioning, replication, and parallel queries can all help handle increasing database workloads. By the end of this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to design, run, and manage your PostgreSQL solution while ensuring high performance and high availability
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

Index types

Indexing in PostgreSQL is completely programmable. It's straightforward (albeit not quite easy) to create a totally custom index type, even with customized operators for how to compare values. A few unusual index types are included with the core database.

B-tree

The standard index type is the B-tree, where the B stands for balanced. A balanced tree is one where the amount of data on the left and right side of each split is kept even, so that the amount of levels you have to descend to reach any individual row is approximately equal.

The B-tree can be used to find a single value or to scan a range, searching for key values that are greater than, less than, and/or equal to some value. They also work fine on...