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Learning PostgreSQL 11

You're reading from   Learning PostgreSQL 11 A beginner's guide to building high-performance PostgreSQL database solutions

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2019
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781789535464
Length 556 pages
Edition 3rd Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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Andrey Volkov Andrey Volkov
Author Profile Icon Andrey Volkov
Andrey Volkov
Christopher Travers Christopher Travers
Author Profile Icon Christopher Travers
Christopher Travers
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Toc

Table of Contents (18) Chapters Close

1. Relational Databases FREE CHAPTER 2. PostgreSQL in Action 3. PostgreSQL Basic Building Blocks 4. PostgreSQL Advanced Building Blocks 5. SQL Language 6. Advanced Query Writing 7. Server-Side Programming with PL/pgSQL 8. OLAP and Data Warehousing 9. Beyond Conventional Data Types 10. Transactions and Concurrency Control 11. PostgreSQL Security 12. The PostgreSQL Catalog 13. Optimizing Database Performance 14. Testing 15. Using PostgreSQL in Python Applications 16. Scalability 17. What's Next? 18. Other Books You May Enjoy

The system catalog

PostgreSQL describes all database objects using the meta information stored in database relations. These relations hold information about tables, views, functions, indexes, foreign-data wrappers (FDWs), triggers, constraints, rules, users, groups, and so on. This information is stored in the pg_catalog schema, and to make it more readable by humans, PostgreSQL also provides the information_schema schema, in which the meta information is wrapped and organized into views.

In the psql client, users can see exactly what is happening behind the scenes when a certain meta command is executed, such as \z, by enabling ECHO_HIDDEN. The ECHO_HIDDEN or -E switch allows users to study the system catalog tables of PostgreSQL. You need to run the following command:

postgres=# \set ECHO_HIDDEN
postgres=# \d
********* QUERY **********
SELECT n.nspname as "Schema",
c...
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