PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance

by Gregory Smith

Accelerate your PostgreSQL system
In Detail
PostgreSQL database servers have a common set of problems they encounter as their usage gets heavier and requirements more demanding. You could spend years discovering solutions to them all, step by step as you encounter them. Or you can just look in here.

All successful database applications are destined to eventually run into issues scaling up their performance. Peek into the future of your PostgreSQL database's problems today. Know the warning signs to look for, and how to avoid the most common issues before they even happen.

Surprisingly, most PostgreSQL database applications evolve in the same Choose the right hardware. Tune the operating system and server memory use. Optimize queries against the database, with the right indexes. Monitor every layer, from hardware to queries, using some tools that are inside PostgreSQL and others that are external. Using monitoring insight, continuously rework the design and configuration. On reaching the limits of a single server, break things up; connection pooling, caching, partitioning, and replication can all help handle increasing database workloads.

The path to a high performance database system isn't always easy. But it doesn't have to be mysterious with the right guide.

Approach
A clear, step-by-step guide to optimizing and scaling up PostgreSQL database servers. Improving database performance requires an equal mix of understanding theoretical concepts and working through hands-on examples. You'll find both here. Many of the examples given will be immediately useful for monitoring and improving your PostgreSQL deployments, providing insight into hard-to-obtain information about your database.

Genres: Programming, Reference, Computer Science, Software, Technology

442 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Stefan Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome. It may take quite a while to internalize all the useful stuff that it says about PostgreSQL. Just the chapter about Query Optimization is worth buying it for.

The author is an experienced PostgreSQL administrator and he shares quite a lot of experience. If you're a programmer, it will help you understand a lot of things about PostgreSQL performance that you have never considered before – hard disk configuration and performance, the importance of the Write-Ahead Log and checkpoints, how MVCC is implemented and why some things are slower than expected (for example, `SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tablename` usually needs to do a full-table scan instead of just returning a number immediately).

I won't go into everything I've learned from the book, since it will take quite a while to read it. I'll just mention that you should definitely read it if you're serious about your work with PostgreSQL.

[Ingmar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely full of useful advice, often with detailed background information. Like many tech books, it suffers a bit from the fact that the author is more engineer than author, and apparently also was under the impression (or contract) of having to deliver a certain amount of words, making the book unnecessarily verbose in places.

[Maciek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent info. The only complaint is that the prose is a little awkward in a number of places--the book could've used a more thorough editing pass.

[Mark McGranaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful survey of performance-related Postgres issues. Obviously based on extensive experience with Postgres in production environments. My only problem with the book is that it feels slightly out of date, e.g. describing SSDs as "an unknown risk for database use [that] should be approached with caution.". Still worth reading for sure if you're running Postgres in production though.

[Bernie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this text in a previous role in order to complete certain tasks that had me working with a PG database.

Speaking as a newcomer wih no DBA experience, from simple SQL to more advanced DBA concepts, this certainly gave me the background I needed to get going; it would seem, a lot of material left over to master.

[Dariusz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Świetna książka, obejmująca szeroki zakres tematów związanych z optymalizacją baz danych, począwszy od wyboru sprzętu do optymalizacji zapytań (choć ten ostatni temat mógł być szerzej i dokładniej omówiony). Bardzo przydatne rozdziały o konfiguracji systemu pod serwer i monitorowania jego wydajności.

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

All about making Postgres go fast, everything from low-level disk I/O to query optimization and more. The chapter on using EXPLAIN was worth the price of the book.

[Amrullah Zunzunia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has wealth of information, but is written for database administrators. but even as a developer, I found some useful information (especially about indexes). I wish this book covered topic of materialized views in depth ( which it doesn't)

[Ivaylo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Една от най-добрите "down-to-business" книги изобщо. Общите теми са безкрайно полезни, а конкретно "query optimization" е ЗАДЪЛЖИТЕЛНА за всеки сериозен разработчик. За "съжаление" PG се развива бясно и книжката поостарява - бързайте :)

[Evgeniy Vasilev · Rating 5 out of 5]

It may take years to fully comprehend all of the details mentioned in this book.

[Paweł Sobiegraj · Rating 3 out of 5]

Przeczytałem z niej to co było mi potrzebne. Dużo ciekawych przykładów, a co ważniej dokładnie omówione mechanizmy i sztuczki w PostgeSQL.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read, very much in depth look into what it takes to run PostgreSQL at full capacity, fully utilizing all of the available hardware.

[Bartek · Rating 4 out of 5]

nigdy

[Alexey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Великолепная книга по оптимизации БД PostgreSQL.

[Bharat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing information throughout that is not covered in the Postgres documentation. Chapter on Query Optimization is an example to illustrate this.

[Kai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding book about Postgresql internals, tuning and performance.