Deciding on Useful Extensions

In Chapter 10, Making Sense of Backups and Replication, our focus was on replication, transaction log shipping, and logical decoding. After looking at mostly administration-related topics, the goal now is to aim at a broader topic. In the PostgreSQL world, many things are done using extensions. The advantage of extensions is that functionality can be added without bloating the PostgreSQL core. Users can choose from competing extensions and find what is best for them. The philosophy is to keep the core slim, relatively easy to maintain, and ready for the future. The PostgreSQL development community puts heavy emphasis on extensibility to make sure that the core is not bloated because of features that only a handful of people will need in the long run.

In this chapter, we will discuss some of the most commonly used extensions for PostgreSQL. However, before digging deeper into this issue, I want to state that it is totally impossible to explain all the...