What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL is an enterprise-class open source database management system. It supports both SQL for relational and JSON for non-relational queries. PostgreSQL supports advanced data types and advance performance optimization.

Key features

• Compatible with various platforms using all major languages and middleware
• It offers a most sophisticated locking mechanism
• Support for multi-version concurrency control
• Compliant with the ANSI SQL standard
• Full support for client-server network architecture
• Log-based and trigger-based replication SSL
• Standby server and high availability
• Object-oriented and ANSI-SQL2008 compatible
• Support for JSON allows linking with other data stores like NoSQL which act as a federated hub for polyglot databases

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

Advantages

1. Can run dynamic websites and web apps.
2. Write-ahead logging makes it a highly fault-tolerant database.
3. Source code is freely available under an open source license.
4. Supports geographic objects so you can use it for location-based services and geographic information systems.
5. Supports geographic objects so it can be used as a geospatial data store for location-based services and geographic information systems.
6. Low maintenance administration for both embedded and enterprise use.

Disadvantages

1. Changes made for speed improvement requires more work than MySQL as PostgreSQL focuses on compatibility.
2. Many open source apps support MySQL, but may not support PostgreSQL.
3. On performance metrics, it is slower than MySQL.

Download and install

1. Download and install postgrlSQL
brew doctor
brew update
brew install postgresql
2. Download and install Pgcli, for Postgres with auto-completion and syntax highlighting.
brew install pgcli
3. The path of psql
brew info libpq
4. To include in in zshrc
echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/libpq/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

Postgre.app

Postgre.app is a full-featured PostgreSQL installation packaged as a standard Mac app.

Configure the $PATH for CLI (Optional)

sudo mkdir -p /etc/paths.d && echo /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin | sudo tee /etc/paths.d/postgresapp

Changing the default directory of PostgreSQL (Optional)

kencho=# SHOW data_directory;

/Users/kencho/Library/Application Support/Postgres/var-12

Datatypes

1. Characters

2. Numeric

• Integers
• Floating-pointing numbers

3. Binary

• Binary strings allow storing odds of value zero
• Non- printable octets

4. Network Address Type

• cider: IPv4 and IPv6 networks
• Inet: IPv4 and IPv5 host and networks
• macaaddr: MAC addresses

5. Text Search Type

6. Date/Time PostgreSQL timestamp offers microsecond precision instead of second precision. Date and time input is accepted in various format, including traditional Postgres, ISO 8601. SQL-compatible etc.

7. Boolean

• True, 1
• False, 0
• null

8. Geometric

9. Enumerated
   Enumerated Data types in PostgreSQL is useful for representing rarely changing information such as country code or branch id. The Enumerated data type is represented in a table with foreign keys to ensure data integrity. Here is the example code:

#Hair color is fairly static in a demographic database
CREATE TYPE hair_color AS ENUM
('brown','black','red','grey','blond')

10. Range

11. UUID Universally Unique Identifies (UUID) is a 128-bit quantity, these identifiers are an ideal choice as it offers uniqueness within a single database.
    Example:
    d5f28c97-b962-43be-9cf8-ca1632182e8e

12. XML PostgreSQL allows you to store XML data in a data type, but it is nothing more than an extension to a text data type.
    But the advantage is that it checks that the input XML is well-formed.

13. Json

• Json
• Jsonb

CREATE TABLE employee (
  id integer NOT NULL,
  age  integer NOT NULL,
  data jsonb
);

14. Pseudo-types
    PostgreSQL has many special-purpose entries that are called pseudo-types. You can’t use pseudo-type as a column data type. There are used to declare or function’s argument or return type.
    Each of the available pseudo-types is helpful in situations where a function’s behavior docs do not correspond to simply taking or returning a value of a specific SQL data type.

Best practice using data types

• Use “text” data type unless you want to limit the input
• Never use “char.”
• Integers use “int.” Use bigint only when you have really big numbers
• Use “numeric” almost always
• Use float data type if you have IEEE 754 data source

Export/save table or query

1. Check current position
   \! pwd
2. List folders
   \! ls
3. Export the Full tables with header
   COPY albums TO '/Users/dave/Downloads/albums.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER;
4. Export the query to CSV with header
   \copy [Table/Query] to [Relative Path] csv header

PostgreSQL backup

1. One-time single database backup
   pg_dump to back up a single database. It must be run as a user with read permissions to the database you intend to back up. 1.1 Log in as postgre user
   su - postgres
   1.2 Dump the contents of a database to a file
   pg_dump dbname > dbname.bak
   1.3 Restore the database using psql
psql newdb < dbname.bak

2. Backup single database remotely
   pg_dump -h 198.51.100.0 -p 5432 dbname > dbname.bak

3. Backup all databases
   pg_dumponly creates a backup of one database at a time, it does not store information about database roles or other cluster-wide configuration. pg_dumpall can store information about database roles and other cluster-wide configuration.
   3.1 Create backup file pg_dumpall > pg_backup.bak
   3.2 Restore all databases from the backup
   psql -f pg_backup.bak psotgre

Automate backup with a cron task (say, backed up at midnight every Sunday)

1. Log is as the postgre user
   su - postgre
2. Create a directory to store the automatic backups mkdir -p /postgre/backups
3. Edit the crontab to create a cron task crontab -e
4. The cron task as 0 0 * * 0 pg_dump -U postgres dbname > ~/postgres/backups/dbname.bak > /postgres/log/pg_dump.log

Database backup formats

• *.bak: compressed binary format
• *.sql: plaintext dump
• *.tar: tarball

How to know if the PostgreSQL backup is good?

A. Logical backup: The backup is stored in a human-readable format like SQL.
B. Physical backup: The backup contains binary data.

1. backup the database with logs pg_dumpall > /path/to/dump.sql > postgres/log/pg_dump.log

2. Then to verify the databse.bak is in the backup directory

$ grep '^[\]connect' /path/to/dump.sql |awk '{print $2}'
 
template1
 
postgres
 
world

3. Finally, restore the backup and check manually, it is the most secure way to confirm

# restore the backup
$ psql -f /path/to/dump.sql postgres

# access it and check it
$ psql 
postgres=# \l

Handling large databases

Some operating systems have maximum file size limits that cause problems when creating large pg_dump output files. Fortunately, pg_dump can write to the standard output, so you can use standard Unix tools to work around this potential problem.

1.1 Use compressed dump
pg_dump dbname | gzip > filename.gz
1.2. Reload with
gunzip -c filename.gz | psql dbname or
cat filename.gz | gunzip | psql dbname

2.1 Use splite, split the output into smaller files that are acceptable in size to the underlying file system.
pg_dump dbname | split -b 1m - filename
2.2 Reload with
cat filename* | psql dbname

Connected to gigadb database container

1. Connect to gigadb database container locally
   PGPASSWORD=vagrant psql -h localhost -p 54321 -U gigadb postgres
2. Create database
   postgre=# CREATE DATADASE dbname;
3. Restore dump database
   kencho % pg_restore -h localhost -p 54321 -U gigadb -d production_like --clean --no-owner -v sql/production_like.pgdmp

Reference

1. Introduction to PostgreSQL
2. PostgreSQL download
3. 10 Command-line Utilities in PostgreSQL
4. cheatsheet
5. Postgres Guide
6. How to exort PostgreSQL Data to a CSV or Excel File
7. PostgreSQL backup stratgy
8. Cron task
9. How Do I Know if My PostgreSQL Backup is Good?
10. Chapter 24. Backup and Restore
11. Automated Testing of PostgreSQL Backups
12. SQL Tutorial