Summary

This chapter has introduced you to the extension ecosystem, a very rich and powerful system to package-related objects and manage them as a single unit. Extensions provide a way to add new features to your cluster and your databases and most notably provide a clear and concise way of building updates and repeatable installations, therefore easing the distribution of the features to other clusters and databases.

PostgreSQL ships with useful extensions provided within the contrib package; these extensions are developed directly by the PostgreSQL developers and therefore are very well integrated with the current PostgreSQL version. On the other hand, the PGXN network provides third-party extensions that can improve your cluster with new functionalities.

Thanks to the PGXS building infrastructure, creating an extension from scratch is comprehensive and quite easy, while thanks to tools such as pgxnclient, managing a lot of extensions can be automated.

In the next chapter...