This chapter is one of the most relevant chapters for admins in terms of their day-to-day lives. Here we will learn what extensions are and examine some of the most commonly used extensions for routine maintenance activities. We will also learn about the concept of using EXPLAIN in PostgreSQL for performance tuning and how to read an execution plan to identify a problematic area in a tree. We will then proceed to learn how to build caches using pg_prewarm. By the end of this chapter, you will be familiar with many great extensions in PostgreSQL and will be confident in managing maintenance activities and the performance tuning of a PostgreSQL cluster.
We will discuss some of the extensions that are helpful in many of the more important activities performed by an administrator or developer.
The following are the recipes that are covered in this...
