About This Book Learn about the PostgreSQL development life cycle including its testing and refactoring Build productive database solutions and use them in Java applications A comprehensive guide to learn about SQL, PostgreSQL procedural language and PL/pgSQL Who This Book Is For If you are a student, database developer or an administrator, interested in developing and maintaining a PostgreSQL database, then this book is for you. No knowledge of database programming or administration is necessary. Readers should, however, know SQL. What You Will Learn Learn concepts of data modelling and relation algebra Install and set up PostgreSQL database server and client software Implement data structures in PostgreSQL Manipulate data in the database using SQL Implement data processing logic in the database with stored functions, triggers and views Test database solutions and assess the performance Integrate database with Java applications Detailed knowledge of the main PostgreSQL building objects, most used extensions Practice database development life cycle including analysis, modelling, (documentation), testing, bug fixes and refactoring In Detail PostgreSQL is one of the most powerful and easy to use database management systems. It has strong support from the community and is being actively developed with a new release every year. PostgreSQL supports the most advanced features included in SQL standards. Also it provides NoSQL capabilities, and very rich data types and extensions. All that makes PostgreSQL a very attractive solution in various kinds of software systems. The book starts with the introduction of relational databases with PostegreSQL. It then moves on to covering data definition language (DDL) with emphasis on PostgreSQL and common DDL commands supported by ANSI SQL. You will then learn the data manipulation language (DML), and advanced topics like locking and multi version concurrency control (MVCC). This will give you a very robust background to tune and troubleshoot your application. The book then covers the implementation of data models in the database such as creating tables, setting up integrity constraints, building indexes, defining views and other schema objects. Next, it will give you an overview about the NoSQL capabilities of PostgreSQL along with Hstore, XML, Json and arrays. Finally by the end of the book, you'll learn to use the JDBC driver and manipulate data objects in the Hibernate framework. Authors Salahaldin Juba Salahaldin Juba has over 10 years of experience in industry and academia, with a focus on database development for large-scale and enterprise applications. He holds a master's degree of science in environmental management and a bachelor's degree of engineering in computer systems. Achim Vannahme Achim Vannahme works as a senior software developer at a mobile messaging operator, where he focuses on software quality and test automation. He holds a degree in computer science and has over 10 years of experience in using Java and PostgreSQL in distributed and high-performance applications. Continue reading Andrey Volkov Andrey Volkov pursued his education in information systems in the banking sector. He started his career as a financial analyst in a commercial bank. Here, Andrey worked with a database as a data source for his analysis and soon realized that querying the database directly is much more efficient for ad hoc analyses than using any visual report-generating software. He joined the data warehouse team, and after a while, he led the team by taking up the position of a data warehouse architect. Andrey worked mainly with Oracle databases to develop logical and physical models of finance and accounting data, created them in a database, implemented procedures to load and process data, and performed analytical tasks. He was also responsible for teaching users how to use data warehouse and BI tools, and SQL training was a part of his job as well. After many years of being greatly interested in the aspects of his job that were related to IT rather than accounting or banking, Andrey changed fields. Currently, he works as a database developer in a telecommunication company. Here, Andrey works mainly with PostgreSQL databases and is responsible for data modeling, implementing data structures in databases, developing stored procedures, integrating databases with other software components, and developing a data warehouse. Having worked with both Oracle and PostgreSQL—the former is a leading commercial and the latter is one of the most advanced open source RDBMSes—he is able to compare them and recognize and evaluate the key advantages of both. Andrey's extensive experience, therefore, made him able and willing to work on this book. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Relational Databases Chapter 2: PostgreSQL in Action Chapter 3: PostgreSQL Basic Building Blocks Chapter 4: PostgreSQL Advanced Building Blocks Chapter 5: SQL Language Chapter 6: Advanced Query Writing Chapter 7: Server-Side Programming with PL/pgSQL Chapter 8: PostgreSQL Security Chapter 9: The PostgreSQL System Catalog and System Administration Functions Chapter 10: Optimizing Database Performance Chapter 11: Beyond Conventional Data types Chapter 12: Testing Chapter 13: PostgreSQL JDBC Chapter 14: PostgreSQL and Hibernate