Every table has several system columns that are implicitly defined by the system. Therefore, these names cannot be used as names of user-defined columns. (Note that these restrictions are separate from whether the name is a key word or not; quoting a name will not allow you to escape these restrictions.) You do not really need to be concerned about these columns; just know they exist. oid The object identifier (object ID) of a row. This column is only present if the table was created using WI

NameCREATE RULE -- define a new rewrite rule Synopsis CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] RULE name AS ON event TO table_name [ WHERE condition ] DO [ ALSO | INSTEAD ] { NOTHING | command | ( command ; command ... ) } where event can be one of: SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE Description CREATE RULE defines a new rule applying to a specified table or view. CREATE OR REPLACE RULE will either create a new rule, or replace an existing rule of the same name for the same table. The Postg

Transactions are a fundamental concept of all database systems. The essential point of a transaction is that it bundles multiple steps into a single, all-or-nothing operation. The intermediate states between the steps are not visible to other concurrent transactions, and if some failure occurs that prevents the transaction from completing, then none of the steps affect the database at all. For example, consider a bank database that contains balances for various customer accounts, as well as tot

NameALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- change the definition of a text search configuration Synopsis ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name ADD MAPPING FOR token_type [, ... ] WITH dictionary_name [, ... ] ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name ALTER MAPPING FOR token_type [, ... ] WITH dictionary_name [, ... ] ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name ALTER MAPPING REPLACE old_dictionary WITH new_dictionary ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name ALTER MAPPING FOR token_type [, ... ]

An alternative to the built-in standby mode described in the previous sections is to use a restore_command that polls the archive location. This was the only option available in versions 8.4 and below. In this setup, set standby_mode off, because you are implementing the polling required for standby operation yourself. See the pg_standby module for a reference implementation of this. Note that in this mode, the server will apply WAL one file at a time, so if you use the standby server for queri

The executor takes the plan created by the planner/optimizer and recursively processes it to extract the required set of rows. This is essentially a demand-pull pipeline mechanism. Each time a plan node is called, it must deliver one more row, or report that it is done delivering rows. To provide a concrete example, assume that the top node is a MergeJoin node. Before any merge can be done two rows have to be fetched (one from each subplan). So the executor recursively calls itself to process t

An alternative backup strategy is to directly copy the files that PostgreSQL uses to store the data in the database; Section 18.2 explains where these files are located. You can use whatever method you prefer for doing file system backups; for example: tar -cf backup.tar /usr/local/pgsql/data There are two restrictions, however, which make this method impractical, or at least inferior to the pg_dump method: The database server must be shut down in order to get a usable backup. Half-way measu

PostgreSQL implements table inheritance, which can be a useful tool for database designers. (SQL:1999 and later define a type inheritance feature, which differs in many respects from the features described here.) Let's start with an example: suppose we are trying to build a data model for cities. Each state has many cities, but only one capital. We want to be able to quickly retrieve the capital city for any particular state. This can be done by creating two tables, one for state capitals and o

NameCREATE TYPE -- define a new data type Synopsis CREATE TYPE name AS ( [ attribute_name data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [, ... ] ] ) CREATE TYPE name AS ENUM ( [ 'label' [, ... ] ] ) CREATE TYPE name AS RANGE ( SUBTYPE = subtype [ , SUBTYPE_OPCLASS = subtype_operator_class ] [ , COLLATION = collation ] [ , CANONICAL = canonical_function ] [ , SUBTYPE_DIFF = subtype_diff_function ] ) CREATE TYPE name ( INPUT = input_function, OUTPUT = output_functio

The pgstattuple module provides various functions to obtain tuple-level statistics. F.30.1. Functions pgstattuple(regclass) returns record pgstattuple returns a relation's physical length, percentage of "dead" tuples, and other info. This may help users to determine whether vacuum is necessary or not. The argument is the target relation's name (optionally schema-qualified) or OID. For example: test=> SELECT * FROM pgstattuple('pg_catalog.pg_proc'); -[ RECORD 1 ]------+------- tab