What is PostgreSQL?

What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL is an open-source, advanced object-relational database management system, both relational (SQL) and non-relational (JSON) queries are supported by PostgreSQL. It comes under the most stable, compliant database. It is used as a main data store for multiple analytics, geospatial, mobile, and web applications.

A Brief History of PostgreSQL

Under Professor Michael Stonebreaker's direction, in 1986 project of PostgreSQL was started at the University of California, Berkeley. And the name of this project is POTSGRES. This name was decided by considering other developed ingres databases of Berkeley. And the main aim of POSTGRES at that time is to have little features to make it support different data types. And to illustrate the SQL support, the project was renamed in 1996 to the name POSTGRESQL. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is a diverse and dedicated contributors community continuously making efforts to release major and minor versions of open source and free databases regularly.

Benefits of using PostgreSQL

The benefits of PostgreSQL are listed below:

• Rich features and extensions: Multiple features are supported by PostgreSQL which involves write-ahead logging, a refined optimizer/planner for queries, nested transactions, asynchronous replications, tablespaces, granular access controls, point-in-time recovery, and Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC). Unicode, multi-byte character encodings, and international character sets are also supported by it. And PostgreSQL is also famous for its features in formatting, case sensitivity, and sorting. PostgreSQL supports high scalability in both cases, in accommodating a large number of users concurrently and the amount of data it can manage.
• Reliability and standards compliance: PostgreSQL comes under the database with high fault tolerance because of the write-ahead logging feature. Built-in community network support is added to it due to the large base provided by its open-source contributors. ACID features are also supported by PostgreSQL and it also provides full support for the stored procedures, triggers, views, joins, and foreign keys. Many data types of SQL:2008 are included in it such as TIMESTAMP, INTERVAL, DATE, VARCHAR, and CHAR. BOOLEAN, NUMERIC AND INTEGER. It also allows large binary object storage which involves video, sounds, or pictures.
• Open source license: Open source license is provided for the source code of PostgreSQL, which you are free to use, change and implement according to your needs free of cost. No licensing costs are charged by PostgreSQL by which the over-deployment risk is also eliminated. Enthusiasts and dedicated contributors community checks for the Postgresql bus regularly and fix those bugs which further ensure the security of the overall database system.

Common Use Cases of PostgreSQL

Some of the common use cases of PostgreSQL are given below:

• General purpose OLTP database: Both large enterprises and startups are using PostgreSQL for their primary data store so that internet-scale `products, solutions, and applications can be supported.
• Geospatial database: Geographic objects are also supported by PostgreSQL when it is used with the extension PostGIS. And for geographic information systems (GIS) and location-based services, it can also be used as a geospatial data store.
• Federated hub database: JSON support and foreign data wrappers features of PostgreSQL allow the PostgreSQL to be linked with the external data stores which can also involve NoSQL type. And for polyglot database systems, work like a federated hub
• LAPP open-source stack: Here LAPP stands for Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP, Python, and Perl. And PostgreSQL can also allow to run the dynamic mobile-based and web-based applications.

PostgreSQL Features

Multiple operating system supports PostgreSQL including Linus, Windows, UNIX, etc. Text, videos, audio, and images are supported by it. And multiple programming languages are also supported by it including Ruby, Tcl, Python, Perl, Java, and C/C++. Many advanced features are provided by the PostgreSQL that also be provided by the many other enterprise-class database management systems offer, some of them are given below:

• Asynchronous replication
• Multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)
• Nested transactions (savepoints)
• Transactions
• Views
• Triggers
• Complex SQL queries
• SQL Sub-selects
• Foreign keys
• Table inheritance

The following features are supported by the recent PostgreSQL versions:

• Point-in-time recovery
• Tablespaces
• Native Microsoft Windows Server version

And every release of PostgreSQL adds some new features. PostgreSQL is an extensible database management system. So, you can define your index types, data types, functional languages, etc. in PostgreSQL.

And you can also make your custom plugin to make it according to your needs if you don't like any system part.

Language support

Many leading programming languages and protocols are supported by PostgreSQL, Some of them are given below:

• ODBC
• Tcl
• C/C++
• Ruby
• Go
• .Net
• Perl
• Java
• Python