Making use of contrib modules

Now that we have had a look at a theoretical introduction to extensions, it is time to take a look at some of the most important extensions. In this section, you will learn about modules that are provided to you as part of the PostgreSQL contrib module. When you install PostgreSQL, I recommend that you always install these contrib modules, as they contain vital extensions that can really make your life easier.

In the upcoming section, you will be guided through some extensions that I find the most interesting and the most useful for a variety of reasons (for debugging, performance tuning, and so on).

Using the adminpack module

The idea behind the adminpack module is to give administrators a way to access the filesystem without SSH access. The package contains a couple of functions to make this possible.

To load the module into the database, run the following command:

test=# CREATE EXTENSION adminpack;
 CREATE EXTENSION

One of the most...