PostgreSQL Introduction

Introduction to PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a flexible open-source object relational database management system. PostgreSQL can handle a huge variety of use cases, from single machines to data warehouses to web services with many concurrent users. PostgreSQL is strongly supported by its global development group of companies and individual contributors.

History of PostgreSQL

The PostgreSQL project started in 1986 at Berkeley Computer Science Department, University of California. The project was originally named POSTGRES, in reference to the older Ingres database which also developed at Berkeley. The goal of the POSTGRES project was to add the minimal features needed to support multiple data types. In 1996, the POSTGRES project was renamed to PostgreSQL to clearly illustrate its support for SQL. Today, PostgreSQL is commonly abbreviated as Postgres.

Usage of PostgreSQL

• Financial industry
• Government GIS data
• Manufacturing
• Web technology and NoSQL workloads
• Scientific data
• Web Hosting Sites

PostgreSQL Features

• User-defined types
• Table inheritance
• Sophisticated locking mechanism
• Foreign key referential integrity
• Nested transactions 
• Multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)
• Asynchronous replication
• Tablespaces
• Point-in-time recovery
• Very Near to Oracle