PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system emphasizing extensibility and technical standards compliance. It is designed to handle a range of workloads, from single machines to data warehouses or Web services with many concurrent users. It is the default database for macOS Server, and is also available for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows. PostgreSQL features transactions with Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (ACID) properties, automatically updatable views, materialized views, triggers, foreign keys, and stored procedures. PostgreSQL is developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, a diverse group of many companies and individual contributors.
What Can We Do With PostgreSQL ?
- Create Your Own Data Types
With many database systems, you’re more or less stuck with the data types that the creators of the database envisioned when the database system was created. Not so with PostgreSQL, which features Generalized Search Tree (GiST) indexing. One of the features of GiST is that PostgreSQL users can create custom data types that allow them to decide what to store and how to store it.This has enabled some substantial projects based on PostgreSQL, such as the OpenFTS full-text search engine and PostGIS. PostGIS provides data types that are used by geographic information systems (GIS). If your organization needs support for data types that aren’t offered “out of the box,” then PostgreSQL may provide the solution.
- All DDL Is Transactional
Mistakes happen, hardware fails, and Murphy’s Law sometimes prevails. You want to be able to recover from transactions that were made by mistake or for any other reason. PostgreSQL has the ability to do this through what’s called “transactional DDL” (Data Definition Language). DDL is the language that defines, essentially, how you can define and work with your database such as creating and dropping tables, altering objects, and so on. With one exception (adding and dropping databases), all operations are transactional. Using the logs, you can easily recover from even very large changes. You might think that this is true for all databases, but it really isn’t.
- You Can Query XML Data
Many organizations are working with a lot of XML data these days. If you are in this position, you should take a look at PostgreSQL’s XML features, which allow users to query XML data. Using PostgreSQL, you can directly query XML data stored in the database and extract elements from the data stored in your database. For example, it’s possible to store an XML file created in another application in PostgreSQL, and query just one element from the file rather than pulling the entire file and having to query it outside the database.
- Streaming Replication Is Baked In
Another compelling feature in PostgreSQL is streaming replication. You might not know this, but PostgreSQL 9.0 and later can continually update standby servers so that they’re ready at a moment’s notice.
- Supports 12 Authentication Systems
One of the challenges that teams face when deploying any service is making sure that the service supports the type of authentication that’s in use. While PostgreSQL may not support every type of authentication imaginable, it certainly comes close. Current PostgreSQL releases support 12 authentication systems. Whether you’re using an all-UNIX environment and LDAP, or putting PostgreSQL in an environment that’s primarily Windows with Active Directory, PostgreSQL comes prepared. In addition to LDAP and Kerberos, PostgreSQL also supports GSSAPI, password-based authentication, RADIUS, or even “trust-based” authentication for situations when anyone that can connect to the server is assumed to be allowed to connect.
Use Cases for PostgreSQL
- Financial industry
PostgreSQL is highly suitable for the financial industry. PostgreSQL is fully ACID compliant and therefore ideal for OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) workloads. However, PostgreSQL is not only a good choice for its superior OLTP capabilities – it is also a highly capable analytical database and can be integrated nicely with mathematical software such as Matlab and R. PostgreSQL can be used for a variety of tasks and operations.
- Government GIS data
PostgreSQL is not only a tool for the financial industry – there is also a really powerful GIS extension called “PostGIS” which provides hundreds of functions to process geometric data in various formats. PostGIS is highly standard compliant and is one of the de-facto standards in the Open Source GIS world. In combination with QGIS or GeoServer the Open Source community provides powerful means to handle geodata. Check out website on PostGIS to find out more about our geodata services.
- Manufacturing
Many world class industrial manufacturers use PostgreSQL to speed up innovation and to drive growth boost through customer-centric processes, and optimize supply chain performance using PostgreSQL as a storage backend. PostgreSQL is a reliable, long term data stores and offers you reliable storage at low costs.
- Web technology and NoSQL workloads
PostgreSQL works fine with all modern web frameworks including but not limited to: Django (Python), node.js (JavaScript), Hibernate (Java), Ruby on rails, PHP, and a lot more. Due to PostgreSQL’s replication capabilities, websites can easily be scaled out to as many database servers as you need.
- Scientific data
Research and scientific projects can generate terabytes of data, which have to be handled in the most beneficial and most efficient way possible. PostgreSQL has wonderful analytical capabilities and offers a powerful SQL engine, which makes processing large amounts of data a real joy.