PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Recognize and avoid these common PostgreSQL mistakes!

The best mistakes to learn from are ones made by other people! In PostgreSQL Mistakes and How To Avoid Them you’ll explore dozens of common PostgreSQL errors so you can easily avoid them in your own projects, learning proactively why certain approaches fail and others succeed.

In PostgreSQL Mistakes and How To Avoid Them you’ll learn how to:

• Avoid configuration and operation issues
• Maximize PostgreSQL utility and performance
• Fix bad SQL practices
• Solve common security and administration issues
• Ensure smooth migration and upgrades
• Diagnose and fix a bad database

As PostgreSQL continues its rise as a leading open source database, mastering its intricacies is crucial. PostgreSQL Mistakes and How To Avoid Them is full of tested best practices to ensure top performance, and future-proof your database systems for seamless change and growth. Each of the mistakes is carefully described and accompanied by a demo, along with an explanation that expands your knowledge of PostgreSQL internals and helps you to build a stronger mental model of how the database engine works.

Foreword by Gianni Ciollil.

About the technology

Fixing mistakes in PostgreSQL databases can be time-consuming and risky—especially when you’re making live changes to an in-use system. Fortunately, you can learn from the mistakes other Postgres pros have already made! This incredibly practical book lays out how to find and avoid the most common, dangerous, and sneaky errors you’ll encounter using PostgreSQL.

About the book

PostgreSQL Mistakes and How To Avoid Them identifies Postgres problems in key areas like data types, features, security, and high availability. For each mistake you’ll find a real-world narrative that illustrates the pattern and provides concrete recommendations for improvement. You’ll especially appreciate the illustrative code snippets, schema samples, mind maps, and tables that show the pros and cons of different approaches.

What's inside

• Diagnose configuration and operation issues
• Fix bad SQL code
• Address security and administration issues
• Ensure smooth migration and upgrades

About the reader

For PostgreSQL database administrators and application developers.

About the author

Jimmy Angelakos is a systems and database architect and PostgreSQL Contributor. He works as a Senior Principal Engineer at Deriv.

Table of Contents
1 Why PostgreSQL matters—and why talking about mistakes does too
2 Bad SQL usage
3 Improper data type usage
4 Table and index mistakes
5 Improper feature usage
6 Performance bad practices
7 Administration bad practices
8 Security bad practices
9 High availability bad practices
10 Upgrade/migration bad practices
11 PostgreSQL, best practices, and you: Final insights
A Frogge Emporium database
B Cheat sheet