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PostgreSQL Administration Cookbook, 9.5/9.6 Edition

You're reading from PostgreSQL Administration Cookbook, 9.5/9.6 Edition Effective database management for administrators

Product type Paperback

Published in Apr 2017

Publisher

ISBN-13 9781785883187

Length 556 pages

Edition 3rd Edition

Languages

SQL

Tools

PostgreSQL

Concepts

Database Administration

Authors (3):

Simon Riggs

GIANNI CIOLLI

Bartolini

View More author details

Table of Contents (19) Chapters

Title Page

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Customer Feedback

Preface

1. First Steps FREE CHAPTER

2. Exploring the Database

3. Configuration

4. Server Control

5. Tables and Data

6. Security

7. Database Administration

8. Monitoring and Diagnosis

9. Regular Maintenance

10. Performance and Concurrency

11. Backup and Recovery

12. Replication and Upgrades

Controlling automatic database maintenance

Autovacuum is enabled by default in PostgreSQL, and mostly does a great job of maintaining your PostgreSQL database. We say mostly because it doesn't know everything you do about the database, such as the best time to perform maintenance actions.

Getting ready

Exercising control requires some thinking about what you actually want:

Which are the best times of day to do things? When are system resources more available?
Which days are quiet, and which are not?
Which tables are critical to the application, and which are not?

How to do it...

The first thing to do is to make sure that autovacuum is switched on, which is the default. Check that you have the following parameters enabled in your postgresql.conf file:

autovacuum = on 
track_counts = on

PostgreSQL controls autovacuum with more than 40 individually tunable parameters. That provides a wide range of options, though it can be a little daunting.

The following are the relevant parameters that can be set...

The rest of the chapter is locked

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Authors (3)

Simon Riggs

Simon Riggs

Simon Riggs is a Major Developer of PostgreSQL since 2004. Formerly, Simon was the Founder and CEO of 2ndQuadrant, acquired by EDB in 2020. Simon has contributed widely to PostgreSQL, initiating new projects, contributing ideas, committing many important features as well and working directly with database architects and users on advanced solutions

See other products by Simon Riggs

GIANNI CIOLLI

GIANNI CIOLLI

Gianni Ciolli is the head of professional services at 2ndQuadrant and has been a PostgreSQL consultant, trainer, and speaker at many PostgreSQL conferences in Europe and abroad over the last 10 years. He has a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Florence. He has worked with free and open source software since the 1990s and is active in the community (the Prato Linux User Group and the Italian PostgreSQL Users Group). He lives in London with his son. His other interests include music, drama, poetry, and athletics.

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Bartolini

Bartolini

Gabriele Bartolini is a long-time open source programmer, now head of support at 2ndQuadrant, and an active member of the international PostgreSQL community. Gabriele has a degree in statistics from the University of Florence. His areas of expertise are data mining and data warehousing, and he has worked on web traffic analysis in Australia and Italy. He currently lives in Prato, a small but vibrant city located in the northern part of Tuscany, Italy. His second home is Melbourne, Australia, where he studied at Monash University and worked in the ICT sector. Gabriele's hobbies include playing his Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and "calcio" (football or soccer, depending on which part of the world you come from).

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