Gathering runtime statistics

The first thing you have to understand is what features PostgreSQL’s onboard statistics have to offer and how to use them. In my opinion, there’s no way to improve performance and reliability without collecting the necessary data to make prudent decisions.

This section will guide you through PostgreSQL’s runtime statistics and explain how you can extract more runtime information from your database setups.

PostgreSQL offers a large set of system views that allow administrators and developers alike to take a deep look into what’s going on in their system. The trouble is that many people collect all this data but can’t make real sense of it. The general rule is that there’s no point in drawing a graph for something you don’t understand anyway. Therefore, the goal of this section is to shed some light on what PostgreSQL has to offer to hopefully make it easier for users to take advantage of what there is...