Postgres Plus 9.0 Advanced Server Database Administration

Recently I got into a tiff over the lack of CHECK CONSTRAINTS in MySql. The MySQL manual^[1] says:

“The CHECK clause is parsed but ignored by all storage engines.”

They say it's best to use a Trigger to work around the problem. Luckily, I have the opportunity for my work to attend a course in Postgres Plus Advanced Server Database Administration.

Included in the course was a certification track. So, since the fourth of March 2013, I can now officially call myself an "EnterpriseDB Certified Postgres Plus 9.0 Associate". Yay!!!

I've made some notes during the course, and this here are some excerpts from them I feel were important enough to share.

Introduction

EnterpriseDB ^[3] provides a version of PostgreSQL, called Postgres Plus Advanced Server^[2], that is very similar to Oracle Database Server in a lot of ways.

The EnterpriseDB version requires a license, but you can download the trialversion to use for free for a couple of months. Downloading it is only possible after registering on their website.

In fact, the PostgreSQL Server will attempt to contact your profile info via the internet upon startup, but if there is no internet connection it starts up regardless.

Support for

Postgres Plus 9.0 has support for the following features:

SQL

PostgreSQL supports most of the major features of de SQL:2011 standard (ISO/IEC 9075:2011 "Database Language SQL").^[5]

schemas

there is a schema search path per database/per user, by default set to ['$user',public], that indicates in what preference schemas are checked when a tablename is not prefixed with the schema

savepoints

make it possible within a transaction to "save" part of the transaction, so the entire transaction need not be rollbacked upon failure, but can be rollbacked to the savepoint.

write ahead logging

log first, *then* the database

vertical table partitioning

divides different columns of one table across tables. Oracle syntax works, but can allow many more partitions

horizontal table partitioning

also called database sharding. Different rows of a table are stored in different tables. It's kind of a view of a couple of tables unioned together.

tablespaces

tables on different devices for concurrent io.

caching

caching of everything in memory

materialized views

a view that is actually stored as a table, which provides the advantage of having indexes and being quicker, and the disadvantage of being possibly out of date

synonyms

created aliases for database objects (tables, procedures, etc)

hierarchical queries

returns a resultset which is a flattened tree, based on a parent-child relationship defined in a CONNECT BY. It is possible to create queries that work on the node-level by using LEVEL (for example for indentation). ORDER SIBLINGS makes it possible to order all siblings under a common parent as you'd like.

database links

database links provide links in the current database to tables in other (remote) databases that otherwise could not be queried.

optimizer hints

hints provided to update/insert/delete/select statements for influencing which query plan the optimizer will choose. The APPEND keyword for this is interesting. It forces an insert to be appended at the end of the table, not at the location of a (couple of) vacuumed record(s). This is handy for efficient bulkloading of data.

MSRs

send multiple requests of the database all at once, instead of each request individually. Minimizes network round trips.

functions

lets you embed functions that perform actions within a regular SELECT query. A common use is with "SELECT pg_reload_conf();" which reloads the configuration.

inheritance

define tables as inherited from other tables

Glossary

DBMS

DataBase Management System

fsm

free space map

hba

Host Based Access

MSR

Multi-Statement Request

MVCC

Multi Version Concurrency Control

OLAP

Online analytical processing

OLTP

Online transaction processing

QUEL ^[4]

old standard query language existing alongside SQL

RDBMS

Relational DBMS

STONITH

"Shoot The Other Node In The Head", just to make sure that the master, which went down, stays down after the slave takes over.

tid

tuple id, identification of a row in the table (a row in a table is called a tuple in Postgres)

vm

visibility map

WAL

Write Ahead Logging

xlog

transaction log

References

[1] MySQL manual 5.6 - CREATE TABLE

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/create-table.html

[2] PostgreSQL

http://www.postgresql.org/

[3] EnterpriseDB/

http://www.enterprisedb.com/

[4] QUEL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages

[5] Appendix D. SQL Conformance

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/features.html