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PostgreSQL certainly has a reputation. It's known for having a rich feature set and very stable software releases. The secure stance that its default configuration takes is simultaneously praised by security fans and criticized for its learning curve. The SQL-specification conformance and data integrity features allow only the strictest ways to interact with the database, which is surprising to those who come from a background working with looser desktop database software. All of these points have an element of truth to them.

Another part of PostgreSQL's reputation is that it's slow. This, too, has some truth to it, even today. There are many database operations where the right thing takes longer to do than the alternative. As the simplest example of this, consider the date February 29, 2009. With no leap year in 2009, that date is only valid as an abstract one. It's not possible for this to be the real date of something that happened. If you ask the database to store this value into a standard date field, it can just do that, the fast approach. Alternatively, it can check whether that date is valid to store into the destination field, note that there is no such date in a regular calendar, and reject your change. That's always going to be slower. PostgreSQL is designed by, and intended for, the sort of people who don't like cutting corners just to make things faster or easier, and in cases where the only way you can properly handle something takes a while, that may be the only option available.

However, once you have a correct implementation of something, you can then go back and optimize it. That's the mode PostgreSQL has been in for the last few years. PostgreSQL usually rises above these smaller issues to give excellent database performance. Parts of it have the sort of great design that outperforms simpler approaches, even after paying the overhead that complexity can introduce. This is a fairly recent phenomenon though, which explains quite a bit about the perception that PostgreSQL is a slower database than its competitors. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Performance of historical PostgreSQL releases
PostgreSQL or another database?
PostgreSQL tools
PostgreSQL application scaling life cycle
Performance tuning as a practice

Key benefits

Obtain optimal PostgreSQL 10 database performance, ranging from initial design to routine maintenance

Fine tune the performance of your queries and avoid the common pitfalls that can slow your system down

Contains tips and tricks on scaling successful database installations, and ensuring a highly available PostgreSQL solution

Description

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

Who is this book for?

This book is designed for database administrators and PostgreSQL architects who already use or plan to exploit the features of PostgreSQL 10 to design and maintain a high-performance PostgreSQL database. A working knowledge of SQL, and some experience with PostgreSQL will be helpful in getting the most out of this book.

What you will learn

Learn best practices for scaling PostgreSQL 10 installations

Discover the best hardware for developing high-performance PostgreSQL applications

Benchmark your whole system – from hardware to application

Learn by real examples how server parameters impact performance

Discover PostgreSQL 10 features for partitioning and parallel query

Monitor your server, both inside and outside the database

Design and implement a good replication system on PostgreSQL 10

What do you get with eBook?

Instant access to your Digital eBook purchase

Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

Access this title in our online reader with advanced features

DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

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Justin Pryzby Sep 26, 2018

The book is okay, and has a bunch of good information consolidated in one place.But it's also full of the same typos as the original book for 9.0, having apparently not been passed through basic nor technical editor, proofreader, nor review.And still has a bunch of outdated information from the postgres8.3 and 9.0 days when the book was first authored. For example, in the span of 5 paragraphs, we read, first: "...we can use multiple cores for every single query...", then, "...PG does not allow splitting a single query across more than one core...".What's the point of an update for v9.6 and then v10 if it's not done well and to completion ?

Amazon Verified review

Dustin J. Mitchell Jan 20, 2020

First, despite the "10" in the title and the 2018 publication date, most of this book is based on Postgres 8.3 (2008) with mentions of 9.4 (2014) and occasional reference to 10 (2017) in a future-y wild-west kind of way. It also spends a good bit of time talking about hardware selection, including details of some now-rather-outdated processor architectures (Nehalem, 2008), good old 7200RPM spinning-rusty disks, and fancy "new" (2007) DDR3 RAM -- yet if you're deploying a DB today, it's probably hosted in a cloud, making all of those considerations are moot. So if you're looking to catch up on the latest developments in Postgres, keep looking.Second, this book is un-edited. Not poorly edited, no: from the authors keyboards to your eyes, with all of the omitted words, stray newlines, weird formatting, and nonsenical statements that an author trying to make a deadline will write. Sadly, I think this is the state of this genre of books these days: editors are expensive! So if you're planning to study the content carefully in hopes of understanding the nuances of MVCC or VACUUM FULL, you'll be scratching your head over nothing. I suggest you skip the book and go straight to the web.Having said all that, if you'd like an overview of the things that experienced Postgres DBAs think about, along with some high-level advice ("tweak this setting when..", "this sounds great but has the following downsides..") then this might be worth picking up.

PostgreSQL 10 High Performance: Expert techniques for query optimization, high availability, and efficient database maintenance , Third Edition

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