PostgreSQL 14 Internals

This book is for those who will not settle for a black-box approach when working with a database. If you are eager to learn, prefer not to take expert advice for granted, and would like to figure out everything yourself, follow along. I expect the readers to be familiar with PostgreSQL and have at least some general understanding of what it is all about. I hope that this book will also be useful for those who are familiar with another database system, but switch over to PostgreSQL and would like to understand how they differ. You will not find any quick-fix solutions here. It is impossible to provide one for every occasion, but if you understand inner mechanics of a system, you will be able to critically evaluate other people’s experience and come to your own conclusions. This is exactly why I explain some technicalities in great detail, which may at first seem to be of no practical use. Most of the information in this book is likely to remain up-to-date for quite a long time, but some details will inevitably change very fast—hence the version number on the cover page. Contemplate, experiment, verify the facts: PostgreSQL provides all the tools you might need for it, and I tried to show how to use them.