One of the most frequent questions I get is: How do I get started with PostgreSQL? How steep is the learning curve for an Oracle DBA? When I first learned about PostgreSQL 10+ years ago, one could hardly find any PostgreSQL books in the leading bookstores, whereas there were dozens of books about Oracle, MySQL, or SQL Server. Today, there are many good PostgreSQL books available. Diving into PostgreSQL has become easier than ever. In this webinar, I will review four books that I recommend for general interest, developers, DBAs focused on performance tuning, and system administrators working on PostgreSQL database infrastructures.

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My Favorite
Postgres Books
Bruce Momjian; VP, Postgres Evangelist
Marc Linster; SVP, Product Development
1

2. Welcome – Housekeeping
Items
• Slides and recording will be available in next 48 hours
• Submit questions via GotoWebinar – will be answering at end
• We will be sharing info about EDB and Postgres later
2

3. Webinar Series
3
March 18 2020 How to use postgresql.conf
April 1 2020
Optimizing Performance and
Security with Platform Native
Packaging
April 15 2020 Window Functions in Postgres
April 29 2020 My favorite Postgres books
May 13 2020 Database Administration for
Postgres
Every Monday at
8:00 AM PDT/ 11:00 AM EDT
16:00 BST/ 17:00 CET
https://www.enterprisedb.com/postgres-pulse

4. Agenda
● Preamble
● <TL;DR> … </TL;DR>
● A in-depth introduction
● A cookbook for the DBA
● A deeper dive for the expert
● A focus on the developer
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5. Goals
● Based on working with customers, partners and employees
● Not “Google and Go” - focus on understanding what we are doing
● Focus moved from “Infrastructure DBA” only to the whole breadth
● Postgres everywhere
○ https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/future-postgres-multi-cloud-
world-developer-perspective
○ Developers can dive into Postgres features without lock in
○ Developers rule - Steve Ballmer was right!
5

6. Dealing with
growing
adoption
● Fast growing Postgres interest
● Fastest way to get to Postgres for
Oracle DBAs, SQL DBAs,
Architects and Developers
● Building blocks - not one book for all purposes
● My recommended books
○ Didn’t read all available Postgres books
○ Many other ones available
○ I learn from books - but that’s just me
● Screen shots and extracts with permission from the authors
6

7. Lots of things
have changed
in 20 years!
Bookshelves
are filled with
Postgres books!
7

8. <TL;DR>
8
Getting started with Postgres PostgreSQL Up and Running (3rd Edition); Regina
Obe and Leo Hsu
Want to understand more of how it works
and what happens under the hood
Mastering PostgreSQL 12 (3rd Edition): Hans-
Jürgen Schöning
DBA in need of a good “How To”
cookbook
PostgreSQL 11 Administration Cookbook;
Simon Riggs, Gianni Ciolli, Sudheer Kumar
Meesala
Developer/Architect who wants to write
less code, take advantage of Postgres
and get to release faster
The Art of PostgreSQL;
Dimitri Fontaine

9. ● Great introduction to PostgreSQL
● Authors well known and respected in
the PostgreSQL and PostGIS world
● Very approachable book
● Focus on the essential
● Not an exhaustive list of everything
● Everything you need to get started
● Many references to outside sources,
such as depesz.com
● 275 very well written pages
9

10. 10

11. 11

12. Sample HTML
created report
with psql
12

13. Quote (Chapter 2: Database
Administration)
Teaching you all there is to know about privileges could take a few
chapters. What we’ll aim for in this section instead is to give you enough
information to get up and running and to guide you around some of the
more non intuitive land mines that could either lock you out completely or
expose your server inappropriately.
13

14. ● Not for the Postgres novice
● Built on experience solving real world
problems of tuning, debugging and making
things work
● Steep learning curve - Page 33: detailed
analysis of Transaction Isolation levels
(the ‘I’ in ACID)
● Good explanation of key concepts
● Also dives into advanced concepts like
Operator Classes
● Sometimes academic/encyclopedic
● 427 pages loaded with good information
14

15. 15

16. Dives into advanced concepts
quickly (Page 33): Transaction
Isolation Levels
● Read Committed
● Repeatable Read
● Serializable
16

17. Specific
instructions
on how to
set up key
parameters
17

18. Dives into index types with good
explanation, for example
Generalized Search Tree (GiST):
● Range types
● Geometric indexes (for
example, ones that are used
by the highly popular
● PostGIS extension)
● Fuzzy searching
18

19. ● Cookbook for the Postgres DBA
● 175+ recipes
● All follow uniform format:
○ What is it
○ Getting ready
○ How to do it
○ There is more
● Focused on hands-on guidance to
address specific tasks and problems
● Less emphasis on what happens
under the hood
● 600 pages
19

20. 20

21. 1. Systematic ‘How to’
instruction for DBAs
2. Step by step instructions
3. With tie-in to background
information
21

22. Drill-down recipe:
● How many rows are in a
table?
● Select count(*) isn’t the only
way!
● Fast and scalable way to
estimate for tables of any
size
22

23. ● For the developer!
● Lots of downloadable code
samples and exercises
● Basic Postgres should be known
(or done by somebody else in the
team)
● The subtitle gives it away:
○ Turn thousands of lines of
code into simple queries
● 448 pages of really useful info for
the developer
23

24. 24

25. Recurring Theme (My Words)
● Balance the business logic between the database and the application
layer
● Take advantage of stored procedures, database snapshots,
advanced data types and extensions
● Get it done faster, write more performant code, and write less of it
25

26. ● Detailed code samples (Python and SQL)
● Describes correctness and efficiency
differences
○ Create business logic at the database
level; use stored procedures and
leverage database transactional
consistency
○ Use database for persistence only;
write your own code for everything
26

27. Interviews
● Yohann Gabory, Python Django expert
● Markus Winand, author of “SQL Performance explained”
● Grégoire Hubert, web and PHP developer
● Álvaro Hernández Tortosa, PostgreSQL JSON expert
● Kris Jenkins, author of the YeSQL library,
● Craig Kerstiens, Cloud Team at CitusData
27

28. Summary
28
Getting started with Postgres PostgreSQL Up and Running (3rd Edition); Regina
Obe and Leo Hsu
Want to understand more of how it works
and what happens under the hood
Mastering PostgreSQL 12 (3rd Edition): Hans-
Jürgen Schöning
DBA in need of a good “How To”
cookbook
PostgreSQL 11 Administration Cookbook;
Simon Riggs, Gianni Ciolli, Sudheer Kumar
Meesala
Developer/Architect who wants to write
less code, take advantage of Postgres
and get to release faster
The Art of PostgreSQL:
Dimitri Fontaine

29. 29
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33. Tuning concerns or
operational worries?
Optimize your in-house
resources for other projects
● DBA services in the cloud or your data centre
● Advice and consulting for Postgres deployments
● Technical account management
Email info@enterprisedb.com to request a
Remote DBA readiness review

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