PostgreSQL 14.

6 Documentation

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group

PostgreSQL 14.6 Documentation
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Copyright © 1996–2022 The PostgreSQL Global Development Group

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Table of Contents
Preface ................................................................................................................... xxxii
1. What Is PostgreSQL? .................................................................................... xxxii
2. A Brief History of PostgreSQL ....................................................................... xxxii
2.1. The Berkeley POSTGRES Project ........................................................ xxxiii
2.2. Postgres95 ....................................................................................... xxxiii
2.3. PostgreSQL ...................................................................................... xxxiv
3. Conventions ................................................................................................ xxxiv
4. Further Information ...................................................................................... xxxiv
5. Bug Reporting Guidelines .............................................................................. xxxv
5.1. Identifying Bugs ................................................................................ xxxv
5.2. What to Report ................................................................................. xxxvi
5.3. Where to Report Bugs ....................................................................... xxxvii
I. Tutorial .................................................................................................................... 1
1. Getting Started .................................................................................................. 3
1.1. Installation ............................................................................................. 3
1.2. Architectural Fundamentals ....................................................................... 3
1.3. Creating a Database ................................................................................. 3
1.4. Accessing a Database .............................................................................. 5
2. The SQL Language ............................................................................................ 7
2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 7
2.2. Concepts ................................................................................................ 7
2.3. Creating a New Table .............................................................................. 7
2.4. Populating a Table With Rows .................................................................. 8
2.5. Querying a Table .................................................................................... 9
2.6. Joins Between Tables ............................................................................. 11
2.7. Aggregate Functions .............................................................................. 13
2.8. Updates ............................................................................................... 14
2.9. Deletions .............................................................................................. 15
3. Advanced Features ........................................................................................... 16
3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................... 16
3.2. Views .................................................................................................. 16
3.3. Foreign Keys ........................................................................................ 16
3.4. Transactions ......................................................................................... 17
3.5. Window Functions ................................................................................. 19
3.6. Inheritance ........................................................................................... 22
3.7. Conclusion ........................................................................................... 23
II. The SQL Language ................................................................................................. 24
4. SQL Syntax .................................................................................................... 32
4.1. Lexical Structure ................................................................................... 32
4.2. Value Expressions ................................................................................. 41
4.3. Calling Functions .................................................................................. 54
5. Data Definition ................................................................................................ 57
5.1. Table Basics ......................................................................................... 57
5.2. Default Values ...................................................................................... 58
5.3. Generated Columns ................................................................................ 59
5.4. Constraints ........................................................................................... 60
5.5. System Columns ................................................................................... 68
5.6. Modifying Tables .................................................................................. 69
5.7. Privileges ............................................................................................. 72
5.8. Row Security Policies ............................................................................ 76
5.9. Schemas ............................................................................................... 82
5.10. Inheritance .......................................................................................... 87
5.11. Table Partitioning ................................................................................ 90
5.12. Foreign Data ..................................................................................... 104
5.13. Other Database Objects ....................................................................... 104

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5.14. Dependency Tracking ......................................................................... 104

6. Data Manipulation .......................................................................................... 107
6.1. Inserting Data ..................................................................................... 107
6.2. Updating Data ..................................................................................... 108
6.3. Deleting Data ...................................................................................... 109
6.4. Returning Data from Modified Rows ....................................................... 109
7. Queries ......................................................................................................... 111
7.1. Overview ............................................................................................ 111
7.2. Table Expressions ................................................................................ 111
7.3. Select Lists ......................................................................................... 127
7.4. Combining Queries (UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT) ................................ 129
7.5. Sorting Rows (ORDER BY) .................................................................. 130
7.6. LIMIT and OFFSET ............................................................................ 131
7.7. VALUES Lists ..................................................................................... 131
7.8. WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions) ............................................ 132
8. Data Types .................................................................................................... 142
8.1. Numeric Types .................................................................................... 143
8.2. Monetary Types ................................................................................... 148
8.3. Character Types ................................................................................... 149
8.4. Binary Data Types ............................................................................... 151
8.5. Date/Time Types ................................................................................. 153
8.6. Boolean Type ...................................................................................... 163
8.7. Enumerated Types ............................................................................... 164
8.8. Geometric Types ................................................................................. 165
8.9. Network Address Types ........................................................................ 168
8.10. Bit String Types ................................................................................ 170
8.11. Text Search Types .............................................................................. 171
8.12. UUID Type ....................................................................................... 174
8.13. XML Type ........................................................................................ 174
8.14. JSON Types ...................................................................................... 176
8.15. Arrays .............................................................................................. 187
8.16. Composite Types ............................................................................... 196
8.17. Range Types ..................................................................................... 202
8.18. Domain Types ................................................................................... 209
8.19. Object Identifier Types ....................................................................... 209
8.20. pg_lsn Type ................................................................................... 212
8.21. Pseudo-Types .................................................................................... 212
9. Functions and Operators .................................................................................. 214
9.1. Logical Operators ................................................................................ 214
9.2. Comparison Functions and Operators ...................................................... 215
9.3. Mathematical Functions and Operators .................................................... 219
9.4. String Functions and Operators .............................................................. 226
9.5. Binary String Functions and Operators .................................................... 235
9.6. Bit String Functions and Operators ......................................................... 239
9.7. Pattern Matching ................................................................................. 241
9.8. Data Type Formatting Functions ............................................................. 258
9.9. Date/Time Functions and Operators ........................................................ 266
9.10. Enum Support Functions ..................................................................... 282
9.11. Geometric Functions and Operators ....................................................... 283
9.12. Network Address Functions and Operators .............................................. 290
9.13. Text Search Functions and Operators ..................................................... 293
9.14. UUID Functions ................................................................................ 299
9.15. XML Functions ................................................................................. 299
9.16. JSON Functions and Operators ............................................................. 314
9.17. Sequence Manipulation Functions ......................................................... 332
9.18. Conditional Expressions ...................................................................... 333
9.19. Array Functions and Operators ............................................................. 336
9.20. Range/Multirange Functions and Operators ............................................. 340

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9.21. Aggregate Functions ........................................................................... 345

9.22. Window Functions ............................................................................. 352
9.23. Subquery Expressions ......................................................................... 354
9.24. Row and Array Comparisons ............................................................... 356
9.25. Set Returning Functions ...................................................................... 359
9.26. System Information Functions and Operators .......................................... 362
9.27. System Administration Functions .......................................................... 379
9.28. Trigger Functions ............................................................................... 395
9.29. Event Trigger Functions ...................................................................... 396
9.30. Statistics Information Functions ............................................................ 399
10. Type Conversion .......................................................................................... 401
10.1. Overview .......................................................................................... 401
10.2. Operators .......................................................................................... 402
10.3. Functions .......................................................................................... 406
10.4. Value Storage .................................................................................... 410
10.5. UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs .................................................. 411
10.6. SELECT Output Columns .................................................................... 412
11. Indexes ....................................................................................................... 414
11.1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 414
11.2. Index Types ...................................................................................... 415
11.3. Multicolumn Indexes .......................................................................... 417
11.4. Indexes and ORDER BY ..................................................................... 418
11.5. Combining Multiple Indexes ................................................................ 419
11.6. Unique Indexes .................................................................................. 419
11.7. Indexes on Expressions ....................................................................... 420
11.8. Partial Indexes ................................................................................... 420
11.9. Index-Only Scans and Covering Indexes ................................................ 423
11.10. Operator Classes and Operator Families ................................................ 426
11.11. Indexes and Collations ...................................................................... 427
11.12. Examining Index Usage ..................................................................... 428
12. Full Text Search ........................................................................................... 430
12.1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 430
12.2. Tables and Indexes ............................................................................. 434
12.3. Controlling Text Search ...................................................................... 436
12.4. Additional Features ............................................................................ 443
12.5. Parsers ............................................................................................. 449
12.6. Dictionaries ....................................................................................... 450
12.7. Configuration Example ....................................................................... 460
12.8. Testing and Debugging Text Search ...................................................... 461
12.9. Preferred Index Types for Text Search ................................................... 466
12.10. psql Support .................................................................................... 467
12.11. Limitations ...................................................................................... 470
13. Concurrency Control ..................................................................................... 471
13.1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 471
13.2. Transaction Isolation ........................................................................... 471
13.3. Explicit Locking ................................................................................ 477
13.4. Data Consistency Checks at the Application Level ................................... 482
13.5. Caveats ............................................................................................. 484
13.6. Locking and Indexes ........................................................................... 484
14. Performance Tips ......................................................................................... 486
14.1. Using EXPLAIN ................................................................................ 486
14.2. Statistics Used by the Planner .............................................................. 498
14.3. Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses ................................. 503
14.4. Populating a Database ......................................................................... 505
14.5. Non-Durable Settings .......................................................................... 508
15. Parallel Query .............................................................................................. 509
15.1. How Parallel Query Works .................................................................. 509
15.2. When Can Parallel Query Be Used? ...................................................... 510

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15.3. Parallel Plans ..................................................................................... 511

15.4. Parallel Safety ................................................................................... 513
III. Server Administration ............................................................................................ 515
16. Installation from Binaries ............................................................................... 522
17. Installation from Source Code ......................................................................... 523
17.1. Short Version .................................................................................... 523
17.2. Requirements ..................................................................................... 523
17.3. Getting the Source .............................................................................. 525
17.4. Installation Procedure .......................................................................... 525
17.5. Post-Installation Setup ......................................................................... 538
17.6. Supported Platforms ........................................................................... 539
17.7. Platform-Specific Notes ....................................................................... 539
18. Installation from Source Code on Windows ....................................................... 545
18.1. Building with Visual C++ or the Microsoft Windows SDK ........................ 545
19. Server Setup and Operation ............................................................................ 551
19.1. The PostgreSQL User Account ............................................................. 551
19.2. Creating a Database Cluster ................................................................. 551
19.3. Starting the Database Server ................................................................ 553
19.4. Managing Kernel Resources ................................................................. 557
19.5. Shutting Down the Server .................................................................... 565
19.6. Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster .......................................................... 566
19.7. Preventing Server Spoofing .................................................................. 568
19.8. Encryption Options ............................................................................. 569
19.9. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSL .................................................... 570
19.10. Secure TCP/IP Connections with GSSAPI Encryption ............................. 574
19.11. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSH Tunnels ...................................... 574
19.12. Registering Event Log on Windows ..................................................... 575
20. Server Configuration ..................................................................................... 577
20.1. Setting Parameters .............................................................................. 577
20.2. File Locations .................................................................................... 581
20.3. Connections and Authentication ............................................................ 582
20.4. Resource Consumption ........................................................................ 588
20.5. Write Ahead Log ............................................................................... 597
20.6. Replication ........................................................................................ 606
20.7. Query Planning .................................................................................. 613
20.8. Error Reporting and Logging ............................................................... 619
20.9. Run-time Statistics ............................................................................. 632
20.10. Automatic Vacuuming ....................................................................... 633
20.11. Client Connection Defaults ................................................................. 635
20.12. Lock Management ............................................................................ 645
20.13. Version and Platform Compatibility ..................................................... 646
20.14. Error Handling ................................................................................. 648
20.15. Preset Options .................................................................................. 648
20.16. Customized Options .......................................................................... 650
20.17. Developer Options ............................................................................ 650
20.18. Short Options ................................................................................... 655
21. Client Authentication ..................................................................................... 657
21.1. The pg_hba.conf File ..................................................................... 657
21.2. User Name Maps ............................................................................... 665
21.3. Authentication Methods ....................................................................... 667
21.4. Trust Authentication ........................................................................... 667
21.5. Password Authentication ..................................................................... 668
21.6. GSSAPI Authentication ....................................................................... 669
21.7. SSPI Authentication ............................................................................ 670
21.8. Ident Authentication ........................................................................... 671
21.9. Peer Authentication ............................................................................ 672
21.10. LDAP Authentication ........................................................................ 672
21.11. RADIUS Authentication .................................................................... 675

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21.12. Certificate Authentication ................................................................... 676

21.13. PAM Authentication ......................................................................... 676
21.14. BSD Authentication .......................................................................... 677
21.15. Authentication Problems .................................................................... 677
22. Database Roles ............................................................................................. 679
22.1. Database Roles .................................................................................. 679
22.2. Role Attributes .................................................................................. 680
22.3. Role Membership ............................................................................... 681
22.4. Dropping Roles .................................................................................. 683
22.5. Predefined Roles ................................................................................ 683
22.6. Function Security ............................................................................... 685
23. Managing Databases ..................................................................................... 686
23.1. Overview .......................................................................................... 686
23.2. Creating a Database ............................................................................ 686
23.3. Template Databases ............................................................................ 687
23.4. Database Configuration ....................................................................... 688
23.5. Destroying a Database ........................................................................ 689
23.6. Tablespaces ....................................................................................... 689
24. Localization ................................................................................................. 692
24.1. Locale Support .................................................................................. 692
24.2. Collation Support ............................................................................... 694
24.3. Character Set Support ......................................................................... 700
25. Routine Database Maintenance Tasks ............................................................... 711
25.1. Routine Vacuuming ............................................................................ 711
25.2. Routine Reindexing ............................................................................ 719
25.3. Log File Maintenance ......................................................................... 719
26. Backup and Restore ...................................................................................... 722
26.1. SQL Dump ....................................................................................... 722
26.2. File System Level Backup ................................................................... 725
26.3. Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) ........................ 726
27. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication ............................................ 738
27.1. Comparison of Different Solutions ........................................................ 738
27.2. Log-Shipping Standby Servers .............................................................. 741
27.3. Failover ............................................................................................ 750
27.4. Hot Standby ...................................................................................... 751
28. Monitoring Database Activity ......................................................................... 759
28.1. Standard Unix Tools ........................................................................... 759
28.2. The Statistics Collector ....................................................................... 760
28.3. Viewing Locks .................................................................................. 794
28.4. Progress Reporting ............................................................................. 794
28.5. Dynamic Tracing ............................................................................... 802
29. Monitoring Disk Usage .................................................................................. 811
29.1. Determining Disk Usage ..................................................................... 811
29.2. Disk Full Failure ................................................................................ 812
30. Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log ................................................................ 813
30.1. Reliability ......................................................................................... 813
30.2. Data Checksums ................................................................................ 815
30.3. Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) ............................................................... 815
30.4. Asynchronous Commit ........................................................................ 816
30.5. WAL Configuration ............................................................................ 817
30.6. WAL Internals ................................................................................... 820
31. Logical Replication ....................................................................................... 822
31.1. Publication ........................................................................................ 822
31.2. Subscription ...................................................................................... 823
31.3. Conflicts ........................................................................................... 824
31.4. Restrictions ....................................................................................... 824
31.5. Architecture ...................................................................................... 825
31.6. Monitoring ........................................................................................ 826

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31.7. Security ............................................................................................ 826

31.8. Configuration Settings ......................................................................... 826
31.9. Quick Setup ...................................................................................... 827
32. Just-in-Time Compilation (JIT) ....................................................................... 828
32.1. What Is JIT compilation? .................................................................... 828
32.2. When to JIT? .................................................................................... 828
32.3. Configuration .................................................................................... 830
32.4. Extensibility ...................................................................................... 830
33. Regression Tests ........................................................................................... 831
33.1. Running the Tests .............................................................................. 831
33.2. Test Evaluation .................................................................................. 835
33.3. Variant Comparison Files .................................................................... 837
33.4. TAP Tests ......................................................................................... 838
33.5. Test Coverage Examination ................................................................. 839
IV. Client Interfaces ................................................................................................... 840
34. libpq — C Library ........................................................................................ 845
34.1. Database Connection Control Functions ................................................. 845
34.2. Connection Status Functions ................................................................ 861
34.3. Command Execution Functions ............................................................. 867
34.4. Asynchronous Command Processing ...................................................... 883
34.5. Pipeline Mode ................................................................................... 887
34.6. Retrieving Query Results Row-by-Row .................................................. 891
34.7. Canceling Queries in Progress .............................................................. 892
34.8. The Fast-Path Interface ....................................................................... 893
34.9. Asynchronous Notification ................................................................... 894
34.10. Functions Associated with the COPY Command ..................................... 895
34.11. Control Functions ............................................................................. 899
34.12. Miscellaneous Functions .................................................................... 901
34.13. Notice Processing ............................................................................. 905
34.14. Event System ................................................................................... 906
34.15. Environment Variables ...................................................................... 912
34.16. The Password File ............................................................................ 914
34.17. The Connection Service File ............................................................... 914
34.18. LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters .............................................. 915
34.19. SSL Support .................................................................................... 916
34.20. Behavior in Threaded Programs .......................................................... 920
34.21. Building libpq Programs .................................................................... 921
34.22. Example Programs ............................................................................ 922
35. Large Objects .............................................................................................. 933
35.1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 933
35.2. Implementation Features ...................................................................... 933
35.3. Client Interfaces ................................................................................. 933
35.4. Server-Side Functions ......................................................................... 938
35.5. Example Program ............................................................................... 939
36. ECPG — Embedded SQL in C ....................................................................... 945
36.1. The Concept ...................................................................................... 945
36.2. Managing Database Connections ........................................................... 945
36.3. Running SQL Commands .................................................................... 949
36.4. Using Host Variables .......................................................................... 952
36.5. Dynamic SQL ................................................................................... 966
36.6. pgtypes Library .................................................................................. 968
36.7. Using Descriptor Areas ....................................................................... 982
36.8. Error Handling ................................................................................... 995
36.9. Preprocessor Directives ..................................................................... 1002
36.10. Processing Embedded SQL Programs ................................................. 1004
36.11. Library Functions ............................................................................ 1005
36.12. Large Objects ................................................................................. 1006
36.13. C++ Applications ............................................................................ 1007

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36.14. Embedded SQL Commands .............................................................. 1011

36.15. Informix Compatibility Mode ............................................................ 1036
36.16. Oracle Compatibility Mode ............................................................... 1051
36.17. Internals ........................................................................................ 1051
37. The Information Schema .............................................................................. 1054
37.1. The Schema ..................................................................................... 1054
37.2. Data Types ...................................................................................... 1054
37.3. information_schema_catalog_name ........................................ 1055
37.4. administrable_role_authorizations .................................... 1055
37.5. applicable_roles ..................................................................... 1055
37.6. attributes ................................................................................. 1056
37.7. character_sets ......................................................................... 1058
37.8. check_constraint_routine_usage .......................................... 1059
37.9. check_constraints ................................................................... 1059
37.10. collations ................................................................................ 1060
37.11. collation_character_set_applicability .......................... 1060
37.12. column_column_usage .............................................................. 1061
37.13. column_domain_usage .............................................................. 1061
37.14. column_options ........................................................................ 1061
37.15. column_privileges .................................................................. 1062
37.16. column_udt_usage .................................................................... 1063
37.17. columns ...................................................................................... 1063
37.18. constraint_column_usage ...................................................... 1066
37.19. constraint_table_usage ........................................................ 1067
37.20. data_type_privileges ............................................................ 1067
37.21. domain_constraints ................................................................ 1068
37.22. domain_udt_usage .................................................................... 1068
37.23. domains ...................................................................................... 1069
37.24. element_types .......................................................................... 1071
37.25. enabled_roles .......................................................................... 1073
37.26. foreign_data_wrapper_options ............................................ 1073
37.27. foreign_data_wrappers .......................................................... 1074
37.28. foreign_server_options ........................................................ 1074
37.29. foreign_servers ...................................................................... 1074
37.30. foreign_table_options .......................................................... 1075
37.31. foreign_tables ........................................................................ 1075
37.32. key_column_usage .................................................................... 1076
37.33. parameters ................................................................................ 1076
37.34. referential_constraints ...................................................... 1078
37.35. role_column_grants ................................................................ 1079
37.36. role_routine_grants .............................................................. 1079
37.37. role_table_grants .................................................................. 1080
37.38. role_udt_grants ...................................................................... 1081
37.39. role_usage_grants .................................................................. 1081
37.40. routine_column_usage ............................................................ 1082
37.41. routine_privileges ................................................................ 1082
37.42. routine_routine_usage .......................................................... 1083
37.43. routine_sequence_usage ........................................................ 1084
37.44. routine_table_usage .............................................................. 1084
37.45. routines .................................................................................... 1085
37.46. schemata .................................................................................... 1089
37.47. sequences .................................................................................. 1089
37.48. sql_features ............................................................................ 1090
37.49. sql_implementation_info ...................................................... 1091
37.50. sql_parts .................................................................................. 1091
37.51. sql_sizing ................................................................................ 1092
37.52. table_constraints .................................................................. 1092
37.53. table_privileges .................................................................... 1093

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37.54. tables ........................................................................................ 1093

37.55. transforms ................................................................................ 1094
37.56. triggered_update_columns .................................................... 1095
37.57. triggers .................................................................................... 1095
37.58. udt_privileges ........................................................................ 1097
37.59. usage_privileges .................................................................... 1097
37.60. user_defined_types ................................................................ 1098
37.61. user_mapping_options ............................................................ 1100
37.62. user_mappings .......................................................................... 1100
37.63. view_column_usage .................................................................. 1100
37.64. view_routine_usage ................................................................ 1101
37.65. view_table_usage .................................................................... 1101
37.66. views .......................................................................................... 1102
V. Server Programming ............................................................................................. 1104
38. Extending SQL ........................................................................................... 1110
38.1. How Extensibility Works ................................................................... 1110
38.2. The PostgreSQL Type System ............................................................ 1110
38.3. User-Defined Functions ..................................................................... 1113
38.4. User-Defined Procedures ................................................................... 1114
38.5. Query Language (SQL) Functions ....................................................... 1114
38.6. Function Overloading ........................................................................ 1131
38.7. Function Volatility Categories ............................................................. 1132
38.8. Procedural Language Functions ........................................................... 1134
38.9. Internal Functions ............................................................................. 1134
38.10. C-Language Functions ..................................................................... 1134
38.11. Function Optimization Information .................................................... 1155
38.12. User-Defined Aggregates ................................................................. 1156
38.13. User-Defined Types ........................................................................ 1163
38.14. User-Defined Operators ................................................................... 1168
38.15. Operator Optimization Information .................................................... 1168
38.16. Interfacing Extensions to Indexes ....................................................... 1172
38.17. Packaging Related Objects into an Extension ....................................... 1185
38.18. Extension Building Infrastructure ....................................................... 1194
39. Triggers ..................................................................................................... 1198
39.1. Overview of Trigger Behavior ............................................................ 1198
39.2. Visibility of Data Changes ................................................................. 1201
39.3. Writing Trigger Functions in C ........................................................... 1201
39.4. A Complete Trigger Example ............................................................. 1204
40. Event Triggers ............................................................................................ 1208
40.1. Overview of Event Trigger Behavior .................................................... 1208
40.2. Event Trigger Firing Matrix ............................................................... 1209
40.3. Writing Event Trigger Functions in C .................................................. 1212
40.4. A Complete Event Trigger Example .................................................... 1213
40.5. A Table Rewrite Event Trigger Example .............................................. 1214
41. The Rule System ........................................................................................ 1216
41.1. The Query Tree ................................................................................ 1216
41.2. Views and the Rule System ................................................................ 1217
41.3. Materialized Views ........................................................................... 1224
41.4. Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE ........................................... 1227
41.5. Rules and Privileges .......................................................................... 1238
41.6. Rules and Command Status ................................................................ 1240
41.7. Rules Versus Triggers ....................................................................... 1240
42. Procedural Languages .................................................................................. 1243
42.1. Installing Procedural Languages .......................................................... 1243
43. PL/pgSQL — SQL Procedural Language ........................................................ 1246
43.1. Overview ........................................................................................ 1246
43.2. Structure of PL/pgSQL ...................................................................... 1247
43.3. Declarations ..................................................................................... 1249

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43.4. Expressions ..................................................................................... 1255

43.5. Basic Statements .............................................................................. 1256
43.6. Control Structures ............................................................................. 1264
43.7. Cursors ........................................................................................... 1279
43.8. Transaction Management ................................................................... 1285
43.9. Errors and Messages ......................................................................... 1286
43.10. Trigger Functions ............................................................................ 1288
43.11. PL/pgSQL under the Hood ............................................................... 1297
43.12. Tips for Developing in PL/pgSQL ..................................................... 1300
43.13. Porting from Oracle PL/SQL ............................................................ 1304
44. PL/Tcl — Tcl Procedural Language ............................................................... 1314
44.1. Overview ........................................................................................ 1314
44.2. PL/Tcl Functions and Arguments ........................................................ 1314
44.3. Data Values in PL/Tcl ....................................................................... 1316
44.4. Global Data in PL/Tcl ....................................................................... 1316
44.5. Database Access from PL/Tcl ............................................................. 1317
44.6. Trigger Functions in PL/Tcl ............................................................... 1319
44.7. Event Trigger Functions in PL/Tcl ....................................................... 1321
44.8. Error Handling in PL/Tcl ................................................................... 1321
44.9. Explicit Subtransactions in PL/Tcl ....................................................... 1322
44.10. Transaction Management .................................................................. 1323
44.11. PL/Tcl Configuration ....................................................................... 1324
44.12. Tcl Procedure Names ...................................................................... 1324
45. PL/Perl — Perl Procedural Language ............................................................. 1325
45.1. PL/Perl Functions and Arguments ....................................................... 1325
45.2. Data Values in PL/Perl ...................................................................... 1330
45.3. Built-in Functions ............................................................................. 1330
45.4. Global Values in PL/Perl ................................................................... 1335
45.5. Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl ............................................................ 1336
45.6. PL/Perl Triggers ............................................................................... 1337
45.7. PL/Perl Event Triggers ...................................................................... 1338
45.8. PL/Perl Under the Hood .................................................................... 1339
46. PL/Python — Python Procedural Language ..................................................... 1341
46.1. Python 2 vs. Python 3 ....................................................................... 1341
46.2. PL/Python Functions ......................................................................... 1342
46.3. Data Values ..................................................................................... 1343
46.4. Sharing Data .................................................................................... 1349
46.5. Anonymous Code Blocks ................................................................... 1349
46.6. Trigger Functions ............................................................................. 1349
46.7. Database Access ............................................................................... 1350
46.8. Explicit Subtransactions ..................................................................... 1354
46.9. Transaction Management ................................................................... 1355
46.10. Utility Functions ............................................................................. 1356
46.11. Environment Variables ..................................................................... 1357
47. Server Programming Interface ....................................................................... 1358
47.1. Interface Functions ........................................................................... 1358
47.2. Interface Support Functions ................................................................ 1400
47.3. Memory Management ....................................................................... 1409
47.4. Transaction Management ................................................................... 1419
47.5. Visibility of Data Changes ................................................................. 1422
47.6. Examples ........................................................................................ 1422
48. Background Worker Processes ...................................................................... 1426
49. Logical Decoding ........................................................................................ 1429
49.1. Logical Decoding Examples ............................................................... 1429
49.2. Logical Decoding Concepts ................................................................ 1432
49.3. Streaming Replication Protocol Interface .............................................. 1434
49.4. Logical Decoding SQL Interface ......................................................... 1434
49.5. System Catalogs Related to Logical Decoding ....................................... 1434

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49.6. Logical Decoding Output Plugins ........................................................ 1434

49.7. Logical Decoding Output Writers ........................................................ 1442
49.8. Synchronous Replication Support for Logical Decoding ........................... 1442
49.9. Streaming of Large Transactions for Logical Decoding ............................ 1443
49.10. Two-phase Commit Support for Logical Decoding ................................ 1444
50. Replication Progress Tracking ....................................................................... 1446
VI. Reference .......................................................................................................... 1447
I. SQL Commands ............................................................................................ 1452
ABORT .................................................................................................. 1456
ALTER AGGREGATE ............................................................................. 1457
ALTER COLLATION .............................................................................. 1459
ALTER CONVERSION ............................................................................ 1462
ALTER DATABASE ................................................................................ 1464
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES .............................................................. 1467
ALTER DOMAIN .................................................................................... 1470
ALTER EVENT TRIGGER ....................................................................... 1474
ALTER EXTENSION ............................................................................... 1475
ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER ........................................................ 1479
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE ....................................................................... 1481
ALTER FUNCTION ................................................................................. 1486
ALTER GROUP ...................................................................................... 1490
ALTER INDEX ....................................................................................... 1492
ALTER LANGUAGE ............................................................................... 1495
ALTER LARGE OBJECT ......................................................................... 1496
ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW ............................................................... 1497
ALTER OPERATOR ................................................................................ 1499
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS .................................................................... 1501
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY .................................................................. 1502
ALTER POLICY ..................................................................................... 1506
ALTER PROCEDURE .............................................................................. 1508
ALTER PUBLICATION ........................................................................... 1511
ALTER ROLE ......................................................................................... 1513
ALTER ROUTINE ................................................................................... 1517
ALTER RULE ......................................................................................... 1519
ALTER SCHEMA ................................................................................... 1520
ALTER SEQUENCE ................................................................................ 1521
ALTER SERVER ..................................................................................... 1524
ALTER STATISTICS ............................................................................... 1526
ALTER SUBSCRIPTION .......................................................................... 1527
ALTER SYSTEM .................................................................................... 1530
ALTER TABLE ....................................................................................... 1532
ALTER TABLESPACE ............................................................................ 1549
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION .............................................. 1551
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY ..................................................... 1553
ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER ............................................................. 1555
ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE ........................................................ 1556
ALTER TRIGGER ................................................................................... 1557
ALTER TYPE ......................................................................................... 1559
ALTER USER ......................................................................................... 1564
ALTER USER MAPPING ......................................................................... 1565
ALTER VIEW ......................................................................................... 1566
ANALYZE .............................................................................................. 1568
BEGIN ................................................................................................... 1571
CALL ..................................................................................................... 1573
CHECKPOINT ........................................................................................ 1575
CLOSE ................................................................................................... 1576
CLUSTER .............................................................................................. 1577
COMMENT ............................................................................................ 1580

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COMMIT ................................................................................................ 1585

COMMIT PREPARED ............................................................................. 1586
COPY .................................................................................................... 1587
CREATE ACCESS METHOD ................................................................... 1597
CREATE AGGREGATE ........................................................................... 1598
CREATE CAST ....................................................................................... 1606
CREATE COLLATION ............................................................................ 1610
CREATE CONVERSION .......................................................................... 1613
CREATE DATABASE ............................................................................. 1615
CREATE DOMAIN ................................................................................. 1619
CREATE EVENT TRIGGER ..................................................................... 1622
CREATE EXTENSION ............................................................................ 1624
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER ...................................................... 1627
CREATE FOREIGN TABLE ..................................................................... 1629
CREATE FUNCTION .............................................................................. 1634
CREATE GROUP .................................................................................... 1643
CREATE INDEX ..................................................................................... 1644
CREATE LANGUAGE ............................................................................. 1653
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW ............................................................. 1656
CREATE OPERATOR .............................................................................. 1658
CREATE OPERATOR CLASS .................................................................. 1661
CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY ................................................................ 1664
CREATE POLICY ................................................................................... 1665
CREATE PROCEDURE ........................................................................... 1671
CREATE PUBLICATION ......................................................................... 1675
CREATE ROLE ...................................................................................... 1678
CREATE RULE ...................................................................................... 1683
CREATE SCHEMA ................................................................................. 1686
CREATE SEQUENCE .............................................................................. 1689
CREATE SERVER .................................................................................. 1693
CREATE STATISTICS ............................................................................. 1695
CREATE SUBSCRIPTION ....................................................................... 1699
CREATE TABLE .................................................................................... 1702
CREATE TABLE AS ............................................................................... 1724
CREATE TABLESPACE .......................................................................... 1727
CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION ............................................ 1729
CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY ................................................... 1730
CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER ........................................................... 1732
CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE ...................................................... 1734
CREATE TRANSFORM ........................................................................... 1735
CREATE TRIGGER ................................................................................. 1737
CREATE TYPE ....................................................................................... 1744
CREATE USER ....................................................................................... 1753
CREATE USER MAPPING ....................................................................... 1754
CREATE VIEW ...................................................................................... 1756
DEALLOCATE ....................................................................................... 1761
DECLARE .............................................................................................. 1762
DELETE ................................................................................................. 1766
DISCARD ............................................................................................... 1769
DO ........................................................................................................ 1770
DROP ACCESS METHOD ....................................................................... 1772
DROP AGGREGATE ............................................................................... 1773
DROP CAST ........................................................................................... 1775
DROP COLLATION ................................................................................ 1776
DROP CONVERSION .............................................................................. 1777
DROP DATABASE ................................................................................. 1778
DROP DOMAIN ...................................................................................... 1779
DROP EVENT TRIGGER ......................................................................... 1780

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DROP EXTENSION ................................................................................. 1781

DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER .......................................................... 1782
DROP FOREIGN TABLE ......................................................................... 1783
DROP FUNCTION .................................................................................. 1784
DROP GROUP ........................................................................................ 1786
DROP INDEX ......................................................................................... 1787
DROP LANGUAGE ................................................................................. 1789
DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW ................................................................. 1790
DROP OPERATOR .................................................................................. 1791
DROP OPERATOR CLASS ...................................................................... 1793
DROP OPERATOR FAMILY .................................................................... 1795
DROP OWNED ....................................................................................... 1797
DROP POLICY ....................................................................................... 1798
DROP PROCEDURE ............................................................................... 1799
DROP PUBLICATION ............................................................................. 1801
DROP ROLE .......................................................................................... 1802
DROP ROUTINE ..................................................................................... 1803
DROP RULE .......................................................................................... 1805
DROP SCHEMA ..................................................................................... 1806
DROP SEQUENCE .................................................................................. 1807
DROP SERVER ...................................................................................... 1808
DROP STATISTICS ................................................................................. 1809
DROP SUBSCRIPTION ............................................................................ 1810
DROP TABLE ........................................................................................ 1812
DROP TABLESPACE .............................................................................. 1813
DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION ................................................ 1814
DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY ....................................................... 1815
DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER ............................................................... 1816
DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE .......................................................... 1817
DROP TRANSFORM ............................................................................... 1818
DROP TRIGGER ..................................................................................... 1819
DROP TYPE ........................................................................................... 1820
DROP USER ........................................................................................... 1821
DROP USER MAPPING ........................................................................... 1822
DROP VIEW .......................................................................................... 1823
END ...................................................................................................... 1824
EXECUTE .............................................................................................. 1825
EXPLAIN ............................................................................................... 1826
FETCH ................................................................................................... 1831
GRANT .................................................................................................. 1835
IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA .................................................................. 1840
INSERT .................................................................................................. 1842
LISTEN .................................................................................................. 1850
LOAD .................................................................................................... 1852
LOCK .................................................................................................... 1853
MOVE ................................................................................................... 1856
NOTIFY ................................................................................................. 1858
PREPARE ............................................................................................... 1861
PREPARE TRANSACTION ...................................................................... 1864
REASSIGN OWNED ............................................................................... 1866
REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW ........................................................... 1867
REINDEX ............................................................................................... 1869
RELEASE SAVEPOINT ........................................................................... 1874
RESET ................................................................................................... 1876
REVOKE ................................................................................................ 1877
ROLLBACK ........................................................................................... 1881
ROLLBACK PREPARED ......................................................................... 1882
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT .................................................................. 1883

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SAVEPOINT ........................................................................................... 1885

SECURITY LABEL ................................................................................. 1887
SELECT ................................................................................................. 1890
SELECT INTO ........................................................................................ 1912
SET ....................................................................................................... 1914
SET CONSTRAINTS ............................................................................... 1917
SET ROLE ............................................................................................. 1918
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION ............................................................ 1920
SET TRANSACTION ............................................................................... 1922
SHOW ................................................................................................... 1925
START TRANSACTION .......................................................................... 1927
TRUNCATE ........................................................................................... 1928
UNLISTEN ............................................................................................. 1930
UPDATE ................................................................................................ 1932
VACUUM .............................................................................................. 1937
VALUES ................................................................................................ 1941
II. PostgreSQL Client Applications ..................................................................... 1944
clusterdb ................................................................................................. 1945
createdb .................................................................................................. 1948
createuser ................................................................................................ 1951
dropdb .................................................................................................... 1955
dropuser .................................................................................................. 1958
ecpg ....................................................................................................... 1961
pg_amcheck ............................................................................................ 1964
pg_basebackup ......................................................................................... 1970
pgbench .................................................................................................. 1978
pg_config ................................................................................................ 1998
pg_dump ................................................................................................. 2001
pg_dumpall ............................................................................................. 2014
pg_isready ............................................................................................... 2021
pg_receivewal .......................................................................................... 2023
pg_recvlogical ......................................................................................... 2027
pg_restore ............................................................................................... 2031
pg_verifybackup ....................................................................................... 2040
psql ........................................................................................................ 2043
reindexdb ................................................................................................ 2085
vacuumdb ............................................................................................... 2089
III. PostgreSQL Server Applications .................................................................... 2095
initdb ..................................................................................................... 2096
pg_archivecleanup .................................................................................... 2101
pg_checksums .......................................................................................... 2103
pg_controldata ......................................................................................... 2105
pg_ctl ..................................................................................................... 2106
pg_resetwal ............................................................................................. 2112
pg_rewind ............................................................................................... 2116
pg_test_fsync ........................................................................................... 2120
pg_test_timing ......................................................................................... 2121
pg_upgrade .............................................................................................. 2125
pg_waldump ............................................................................................ 2133
postgres .................................................................................................. 2136
postmaster ............................................................................................... 2143
VII. Internals ........................................................................................................... 2144
51. Overview of PostgreSQL Internals ................................................................. 2150
51.1. The Path of a Query ......................................................................... 2150
51.2. How Connections Are Established ....................................................... 2150
51.3. The Parser Stage .............................................................................. 2151
51.4. The PostgreSQL Rule System ............................................................. 2152
51.5. Planner/Optimizer ............................................................................. 2152

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51.6. Executor ......................................................................................... 2153

52. System Catalogs ......................................................................................... 2155
52.1. Overview ........................................................................................ 2155
52.2. pg_aggregate ............................................................................. 2157
52.3. pg_am ........................................................................................... 2158
52.4. pg_amop ....................................................................................... 2159
52.5. pg_amproc ................................................................................... 2160
52.6. pg_attrdef ................................................................................. 2160
52.7. pg_attribute ............................................................................. 2160
52.8. pg_authid ................................................................................... 2162
52.9. pg_auth_members ....................................................................... 2164
52.10. pg_cast ...................................................................................... 2164
52.11. pg_class .................................................................................... 2165
52.12. pg_collation ............................................................................ 2167
52.13. pg_constraint .......................................................................... 2168
52.14. pg_conversion .......................................................................... 2170
52.15. pg_database .............................................................................. 2170
52.16. pg_db_role_setting ................................................................ 2171
52.17. pg_default_acl ........................................................................ 2172
52.18. pg_depend .................................................................................. 2172
52.19. pg_description ........................................................................ 2174
52.20. pg_enum ...................................................................................... 2175
52.21. pg_event_trigger .................................................................... 2175
52.22. pg_extension ............................................................................ 2176
52.23. pg_foreign_data_wrapper ...................................................... 2176
52.24. pg_foreign_server .................................................................. 2177
52.25. pg_foreign_table .................................................................... 2177
52.26. pg_index .................................................................................... 2178
52.27. pg_inherits .............................................................................. 2179
52.28. pg_init_privs .......................................................................... 2180
52.29. pg_language .............................................................................. 2180
52.30. pg_largeobject ........................................................................ 2181
52.31. pg_largeobject_metadata ...................................................... 2181
52.32. pg_namespace ............................................................................ 2182
52.33. pg_opclass ................................................................................ 2182
52.34. pg_operator .............................................................................. 2183
52.35. pg_opfamily .............................................................................. 2184
52.36. pg_partitioned_table ............................................................ 2184
52.37. pg_policy .................................................................................. 2185
52.38. pg_proc ...................................................................................... 2186
52.39. pg_publication ........................................................................ 2188
52.40. pg_publication_rel ................................................................ 2189
52.41. pg_range .................................................................................... 2189
52.42. pg_replication_origin .......................................................... 2189
52.43. pg_rewrite ................................................................................ 2190
52.44. pg_seclabel .............................................................................. 2190
52.45. pg_sequence .............................................................................. 2191
52.46. pg_shdepend .............................................................................. 2191
52.47. pg_shdescription .................................................................... 2193
52.48. pg_shseclabel .......................................................................... 2193
52.49. pg_statistic ............................................................................ 2194
52.50. pg_statistic_ext .................................................................... 2195
52.51. pg_statistic_ext_data .......................................................... 2196
52.52. pg_subscription ...................................................................... 2196
52.53. pg_subscription_rel .............................................................. 2197
52.54. pg_tablespace .......................................................................... 2197
52.55. pg_transform ............................................................................ 2198
52.56. pg_trigger ................................................................................ 2198

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52.57. pg_ts_config ............................................................................ 2200

52.58. pg_ts_config_map .................................................................... 2200
52.59. pg_ts_dict ................................................................................ 2201
52.60. pg_ts_parser ............................................................................ 2201
52.61. pg_ts_template ........................................................................ 2202
52.62. pg_type ...................................................................................... 2202
52.63. pg_user_mapping ...................................................................... 2205
52.64. System Views ................................................................................ 2206
52.65. pg_available_extensions ...................................................... 2207
52.66. pg_available_extension_versions ...................................... 2207
52.67. pg_backend_memory_contexts ................................................ 2208
52.68. pg_config .................................................................................. 2209
52.69. pg_cursors ................................................................................ 2209
52.70. pg_file_settings .................................................................... 2210
52.71. pg_group .................................................................................... 2211
52.72. pg_hba_file_rules .................................................................. 2211
52.73. pg_indexes ................................................................................ 2212
52.74. pg_locks .................................................................................... 2212
52.75. pg_matviews .............................................................................. 2215
52.76. pg_policies .............................................................................. 2215
52.77. pg_prepared_statements ........................................................ 2216
52.78. pg_prepared_xacts .................................................................. 2216
52.79. pg_publication_tables .......................................................... 2217
52.80. pg_replication_origin_status ............................................ 2217
52.81. pg_replication_slots ............................................................ 2218
52.82. pg_roles .................................................................................... 2219
52.83. pg_rules .................................................................................... 2220
52.84. pg_seclabels ............................................................................ 2220
52.85. pg_sequences ............................................................................ 2221
52.86. pg_settings .............................................................................. 2221
52.87. pg_shadow .................................................................................. 2224
52.88. pg_shmem_allocations ............................................................ 2224
52.89. pg_stats .................................................................................... 2225
52.90. pg_stats_ext ............................................................................ 2226
52.91. pg_stats_ext_exprs ................................................................ 2227
52.92. pg_tables .................................................................................. 2229
52.93. pg_timezone_abbrevs .............................................................. 2229
52.94. pg_timezone_names .................................................................. 2230
52.95. pg_user ...................................................................................... 2230
52.96. pg_user_mappings .................................................................... 2231
52.97. pg_views .................................................................................... 2231
53. Frontend/Backend Protocol ........................................................................... 2233
53.1. Overview ........................................................................................ 2233
53.2. Message Flow .................................................................................. 2234
53.3. SASL Authentication ........................................................................ 2248
53.4. Streaming Replication Protocol ........................................................... 2250
53.5. Logical Streaming Replication Protocol ................................................ 2257
53.6. Message Data Types ......................................................................... 2258
53.7. Message Formats .............................................................................. 2258
53.8. Error and Notice Message Fields ......................................................... 2275
53.9. Logical Replication Message Formats .................................................. 2277
53.10. Summary of Changes since Protocol 2.0 ............................................. 2283
54. PostgreSQL Coding Conventions ................................................................... 2285
54.1. Formatting ....................................................................................... 2285
54.2. Reporting Errors Within the Server ...................................................... 2285
54.3. Error Message Style Guide ................................................................. 2289
54.4. Miscellaneous Coding Conventions ...................................................... 2293
55. Native Language Support ............................................................................. 2295

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55.1. For the Translator ............................................................................. 2295

55.2. For the Programmer .......................................................................... 2297
56. Writing a Procedural Language Handler .......................................................... 2301
57. Writing a Foreign Data Wrapper .................................................................... 2303
57.1. Foreign Data Wrapper Functions ......................................................... 2303
57.2. Foreign Data Wrapper Callback Routines .............................................. 2303
57.3. Foreign Data Wrapper Helper Functions ............................................... 2319
57.4. Foreign Data Wrapper Query Planning ................................................. 2320
57.5. Row Locking in Foreign Data Wrappers ............................................... 2322
58. Writing a Table Sampling Method ................................................................. 2324
58.1. Sampling Method Support Functions .................................................... 2324
59. Writing a Custom Scan Provider .................................................................... 2327
59.1. Creating Custom Scan Paths ............................................................... 2327
59.2. Creating Custom Scan Plans ............................................................... 2328
59.3. Executing Custom Scans .................................................................... 2329
60. Genetic Query Optimizer .............................................................................. 2332
60.1. Query Handling as a Complex Optimization Problem .............................. 2332
60.2. Genetic Algorithms ........................................................................... 2332
60.3. Genetic Query Optimization (GEQO) in PostgreSQL .............................. 2333
60.4. Further Reading ............................................................................... 2335
61. Table Access Method Interface Definition ....................................................... 2336
62. Index Access Method Interface Definition ....................................................... 2337
62.1. Basic API Structure for Indexes .......................................................... 2337
62.2. Index Access Method Functions .......................................................... 2340
62.3. Index Scanning ................................................................................ 2345
62.4. Index Locking Considerations ............................................................. 2347
62.5. Index Uniqueness Checks .................................................................. 2348
62.6. Index Cost Estimation Functions ......................................................... 2349
63. Generic WAL Records ................................................................................. 2352
64. B-Tree Indexes ........................................................................................... 2354
64.1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 2354
64.2. Behavior of B-Tree Operator Classes ................................................... 2354
64.3. B-Tree Support Functions .................................................................. 2355
64.4. Implementation ................................................................................ 2358
65. GiST Indexes ............................................................................................. 2361
65.1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 2361
65.2. Built-in Operator Classes ................................................................... 2361
65.3. Extensibility .................................................................................... 2364
65.4. Implementation ................................................................................ 2377
65.5. Examples ........................................................................................ 2377
66. SP-GiST Indexes ........................................................................................ 2379
66.1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 2379
66.2. Built-in Operator Classes ................................................................... 2379
66.3. Extensibility .................................................................................... 2381
66.4. Implementation ................................................................................ 2390
66.5. Examples ........................................................................................ 2391
67. GIN Indexes .............................................................................................. 2392
67.1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 2392
67.2. Built-in Operator Classes ................................................................... 2392
67.3. Extensibility .................................................................................... 2393
67.4. Implementation ................................................................................ 2395
67.5. GIN Tips and Tricks ......................................................................... 2397
67.6. Limitations ...................................................................................... 2397
67.7. Examples ........................................................................................ 2398
68. BRIN Indexes ............................................................................................ 2399
68.1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 2399
68.2. Built-in Operator Classes ................................................................... 2400
68.3. Extensibility .................................................................................... 2407

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69. Hash Indexes .............................................................................................. 2412

69.1. Overview ........................................................................................ 2412
69.2. Implementation ................................................................................ 2413
70. Database Physical Storage ............................................................................ 2414
70.1. Database File Layout ........................................................................ 2414
70.2. TOAST ........................................................................................... 2416
70.3. Free Space Map ............................................................................... 2419
70.4. Visibility Map .................................................................................. 2419
70.5. The Initialization Fork ....................................................................... 2420
70.6. Database Page Layout ....................................................................... 2420
70.7. Heap-Only Tuples (HOT) .................................................................. 2423
71. System Catalog Declarations and Initial Contents ............................................. 2424
71.1. System Catalog Declaration Rules ....................................................... 2424
71.2. System Catalog Initial Data ................................................................ 2425
71.3. BKI File Format ............................................................................... 2430
71.4. BKI Commands ............................................................................... 2430
71.5. Structure of the Bootstrap BKI File ..................................................... 2431
71.6. BKI Example ................................................................................... 2432
72. How the Planner Uses Statistics .................................................................... 2433
72.1. Row Estimation Examples ................................................................. 2433
72.2. Multivariate Statistics Examples .......................................................... 2438
72.3. Planner Statistics and Security ............................................................ 2442
73. Backup Manifest Format .............................................................................. 2444
73.1. Backup Manifest Top-level Object ....................................................... 2444
73.2. Backup Manifest File Object .............................................................. 2444
73.3. Backup Manifest WAL Range Object .................................................. 2445
VIII. Appendixes ...................................................................................................... 2446
A. PostgreSQL Error Codes ............................................................................... 2453
B. Date/Time Support ....................................................................................... 2462
B.1. Date/Time Input Interpretation ............................................................. 2462
B.2. Handling of Invalid or Ambiguous Timestamps ....................................... 2463
B.3. Date/Time Key Words ........................................................................ 2464
B.4. Date/Time Configuration Files ............................................................. 2465
B.5. POSIX Time Zone Specifications ......................................................... 2466
B.6. History of Units ................................................................................ 2468
B.7. Julian Dates ...................................................................................... 2469
C. SQL Key Words .......................................................................................... 2470
D. SQL Conformance ....................................................................................... 2495
D.1. Supported Features ............................................................................ 2496
D.2. Unsupported Features ......................................................................... 2507
D.3. XML Limits and Conformance to SQL/XML ......................................... 2515
E. Release Notes .............................................................................................. 2519
E.1. Release 14.6 ..................................................................................... 2519
E.2. Release 14.5 ..................................................................................... 2523
E.3. Release 14.4 ..................................................................................... 2526
E.4. Release 14.3 ..................................................................................... 2528
E.5. Release 14.2 ..................................................................................... 2533
E.6. Release 14.1 ..................................................................................... 2538
E.7. Release 14 ........................................................................................ 2543
E.8. Prior Releases ................................................................................... 2566
F. Additional Supplied Modules .......................................................................... 2567
F.1. adminpack ........................................................................................ 2568
F.2. amcheck ........................................................................................... 2569
F.3. auth_delay ........................................................................................ 2574
F.4. auto_explain ...................................................................................... 2574
F.5. bloom .............................................................................................. 2577
F.6. btree_gin .......................................................................................... 2580
F.7. btree_gist .......................................................................................... 2581

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F.8. citext ............................................................................................... 2582

F.9. cube ................................................................................................. 2585
F.10. dblink ............................................................................................. 2589
F.11. dict_int ........................................................................................... 2620
F.12. dict_xsyn ........................................................................................ 2621
F.13. earthdistance .................................................................................... 2622
F.14. file_fdw .......................................................................................... 2624
F.15. fuzzystrmatch .................................................................................. 2626
F.16. hstore ............................................................................................. 2629
F.17. intagg ............................................................................................. 2636
F.18. intarray ........................................................................................... 2638
F.19. isn ................................................................................................. 2641
F.20. lo ................................................................................................... 2645
F.21. ltree ............................................................................................... 2646
F.22. old_snapshot .................................................................................... 2653
F.23. pageinspect ...................................................................................... 2653
F.24. passwordcheck ................................................................................. 2663
F.25. pg_buffercache ................................................................................. 2664
F.26. pgcrypto ......................................................................................... 2665
F.27. pg_freespacemap .............................................................................. 2677
F.28. pg_prewarm .................................................................................... 2678
F.29. pgrowlocks ...................................................................................... 2679
F.30. pg_stat_statements ............................................................................ 2680
F.31. pgstattuple ....................................................................................... 2688
F.32. pg_surgery ...................................................................................... 2692
F.33. pg_trgm .......................................................................................... 2693
F.34. pg_visibility .................................................................................... 2699
F.35. postgres_fdw ................................................................................... 2700
F.36. seg ................................................................................................. 2708
F.37. sepgsql ........................................................................................... 2711
F.38. spi ................................................................................................. 2719
F.39. sslinfo ............................................................................................ 2720
F.40. tablefunc ......................................................................................... 2722
F.41. tcn ................................................................................................. 2731
F.42. test_decoding ................................................................................... 2733
F.43. tsm_system_rows ............................................................................. 2733
F.44. tsm_system_time .............................................................................. 2734
F.45. unaccent ......................................................................................... 2735
F.46. uuid-ossp ........................................................................................ 2737
F.47. xml2 .............................................................................................. 2738
G. Additional Supplied Programs ........................................................................ 2743
G.1. Client Applications ............................................................................ 2743
G.2. Server Applications ............................................................................ 2750
H. External Projects .......................................................................................... 2751
H.1. Client Interfaces ................................................................................ 2751
H.2. Administration Tools .......................................................................... 2751
H.3. Procedural Languages ........................................................................ 2751
H.4. Extensions ........................................................................................ 2752
I. The Source Code Repository ........................................................................... 2753
I.1. Getting the Source via Git .................................................................... 2753
J. Documentation ............................................................................................. 2754
J.1. DocBook ........................................................................................... 2754
J.2. Tool Sets .......................................................................................... 2754
J.3. Building the Documentation ................................................................. 2756
J.4. Documentation Authoring .................................................................... 2758
J.5. Style Guide ....................................................................................... 2758
K. PostgreSQL Limits ....................................................................................... 2760
L. Acronyms ................................................................................................... 2761

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M. Glossary .................................................................................................... 2767

N. Color Support .............................................................................................. 2779
N.1. When Color is Used .......................................................................... 2779
N.2. Configuring the Colors ....................................................................... 2779
O. Obsolete or Renamed Features ....................................................................... 2780
O.1. recovery.conf file merged into postgresql.conf ....................... 2780
O.2. Default Roles Renamed to Predefined Roles ........................................... 2780
O.3. pg_xlogdump renamed to pg_waldump ........................................... 2780
O.4. pg_resetxlog renamed to pg_resetwal ........................................ 2780
O.5. pg_receivexlog renamed to pg_receivewal ................................ 2780
Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 2782
Index ...................................................................................................................... 2784

xxi
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60.1. Structure of a Genetic Algorithm ........................................................................ 2333
67.1. GIN Internals ................................................................................................... 2396
70.1. Page Layout .................................................................................................... 2422

xxii
List of Tables
4.1. Backslash Escape Sequences ................................................................................... 35
4.2. Operator Precedence (highest to lowest) .................................................................... 40
5.1. ACL Privilege Abbreviations ................................................................................... 74
5.2. Summary of Access Privileges ................................................................................. 75
8.1. Data Types ......................................................................................................... 142
8.2. Numeric Types .................................................................................................... 143
8.3. Monetary Types .................................................................................................. 148
8.4. Character Types .................................................................................................. 149
8.5. Special Character Types ........................................................................................ 151
8.6. Binary Data Types ............................................................................................... 151
8.7. bytea Literal Escaped Octets ............................................................................... 152
8.8. bytea Output Escaped Octets ............................................................................... 153
8.9. Date/Time Types ................................................................................................. 153
8.10. Date Input ......................................................................................................... 155
8.11. Time Input ........................................................................................................ 155
8.12. Time Zone Input ................................................................................................ 156
8.13. Special Date/Time Inputs ..................................................................................... 157
8.14. Date/Time Output Styles ..................................................................................... 158
8.15. Date Order Conventions ...................................................................................... 158
8.16. ISO 8601 Interval Unit Abbreviations .................................................................... 161
8.17. Interval Input ..................................................................................................... 161
8.18. Interval Output Style Examples ............................................................................ 162
8.19. Boolean Data Type ............................................................................................. 163
8.20. Geometric Types ................................................................................................ 166
8.21. Network Address Types ...................................................................................... 168
8.22. cidr Type Input Examples ................................................................................. 169
8.23. JSON Primitive Types and Corresponding PostgreSQL Types .................................... 178
8.24. jsonpath Variables ......................................................................................... 186
8.25. jsonpath Accessors ........................................................................................ 186
8.26. Object Identifier Types ....................................................................................... 210
8.27. Pseudo-Types .................................................................................................... 212
9.1. Comparison Operators .......................................................................................... 215
9.2. Comparison Predicates .......................................................................................... 215
9.3. Comparison Functions .......................................................................................... 218
9.4. Mathematical Operators ........................................................................................ 219
9.5. Mathematical Functions ........................................................................................ 221
9.6. Random Functions ............................................................................................... 224
9.7. Trigonometric Functions ....................................................................................... 224
9.8. Hyperbolic Functions ........................................................................................... 226
9.9. SQL String Functions and Operators ....................................................................... 226
9.10. Other String Functions ........................................................................................ 228
9.11. SQL Binary String Functions and Operators ........................................................... 236
9.12. Other Binary String Functions .............................................................................. 237
9.13. Text/Binary String Conversion Functions ............................................................... 238
9.14. Bit String Operators ........................................................................................... 240
9.15. Bit String Functions ........................................................................................... 240
9.16. Regular Expression Match Operators ..................................................................... 245
9.17. Regular Expression Atoms ................................................................................... 249
9.18. Regular Expression Quantifiers ............................................................................. 250
9.19. Regular Expression Constraints ............................................................................ 250
9.20. Regular Expression Character-Entry Escapes ........................................................... 252
9.21. Regular Expression Class-Shorthand Escapes .......................................................... 253
9.22. Regular Expression Constraint Escapes .................................................................. 253
9.23. Regular Expression Back References ..................................................................... 254
9.24. ARE Embedded-Option Letters ............................................................................ 254

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9.25. Formatting Functions .......................................................................................... 259

9.26. Template Patterns for Date/Time Formatting ........................................................... 260
9.27. Template Pattern Modifiers for Date/Time Formatting .............................................. 262
9.28. Template Patterns for Numeric Formatting ............................................................. 264
9.29. Template Pattern Modifiers for Numeric Formatting ................................................. 265
9.30. to_char Examples ........................................................................................... 265
9.31. Date/Time Operators ........................................................................................... 267
9.32. Date/Time Functions ........................................................................................... 268
9.33. AT TIME ZONE Variants ................................................................................. 279
9.34. Enum Support Functions ..................................................................................... 282
9.35. Geometric Operators ........................................................................................... 283
9.36. Geometric Functions ........................................................................................... 286
9.37. Geometric Type Conversion Functions ................................................................... 287
9.38. IP Address Operators .......................................................................................... 290
9.39. IP Address Functions .......................................................................................... 291
9.40. MAC Address Functions ..................................................................................... 292
9.41. Text Search Operators ......................................................................................... 293
9.42. Text Search Functions ......................................................................................... 294
9.43. Text Search Debugging Functions ......................................................................... 298
9.44. json and jsonb Operators ................................................................................ 314
9.45. Additional jsonb Operators ................................................................................ 315
9.46. JSON Creation Functions .................................................................................... 317
9.47. JSON Processing Functions ................................................................................. 318
9.48. jsonpath Operators and Methods ...................................................................... 327
9.49. jsonpath Filter Expression Elements .................................................................. 329
9.50. Sequence Functions ............................................................................................ 332
9.51. Array Operators ................................................................................................. 336
9.52. Array Functions ................................................................................................. 337
9.53. Range Operators ................................................................................................ 340
9.54. Multirange Operators .......................................................................................... 341
9.55. Range Functions ................................................................................................ 344
9.56. Multirange Functions .......................................................................................... 344
9.57. General-Purpose Aggregate Functions .................................................................... 346
9.58. Aggregate Functions for Statistics ......................................................................... 348
9.59. Ordered-Set Aggregate Functions .......................................................................... 350
9.60. Hypothetical-Set Aggregate Functions ................................................................... 351
9.61. Grouping Operations ........................................................................................... 351
9.62. General-Purpose Window Functions ...................................................................... 352
9.63. Series Generating Functions ................................................................................. 359
9.64. Subscript Generating Functions ............................................................................ 361
9.65. Session Information Functions .............................................................................. 363
9.66. Access Privilege Inquiry Functions ........................................................................ 366
9.67. aclitem Operators ........................................................................................... 367
9.68. aclitem Functions ........................................................................................... 368
9.69. Schema Visibility Inquiry Functions ...................................................................... 368
9.70. System Catalog Information Functions ................................................................... 369
9.71. Index Column Properties ..................................................................................... 373
9.72. Index Properties ................................................................................................. 374
9.73. Index Access Method Properties ........................................................................... 374
9.74. Object Information and Addressing Functions ......................................................... 374
9.75. Comment Information Functions ........................................................................... 375
9.76. Transaction ID and Snapshot Information Functions ................................................. 376
9.77. Snapshot Components ......................................................................................... 377
9.78. Deprecated Transaction ID and Snapshot Information Functions ................................. 377
9.79. Committed Transaction Information Functions ........................................................ 378
9.80. Control Data Functions ....................................................................................... 378
9.81. pg_control_checkpoint Output Columns ...................................................... 378
9.82. pg_control_system Output Columns .............................................................. 379

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9.83. pg_control_init Output Columns .................................................................. 379

9.84. pg_control_recovery Output Columns .......................................................... 379
9.85. Configuration Settings Functions .......................................................................... 380
9.86. Server Signaling Functions .................................................................................. 380
9.87. Backup Control Functions ................................................................................... 382
9.88. Recovery Information Functions ........................................................................... 384
9.89. Recovery Control Functions ................................................................................. 385
9.90. Snapshot Synchronization Functions ...................................................................... 386
9.91. Replication Management Functions ....................................................................... 386
9.92. Database Object Size Functions ............................................................................ 389
9.93. Database Object Location Functions ...................................................................... 390
9.94. Collation Management Functions .......................................................................... 391
9.95. Partitioning Information Functions ........................................................................ 391
9.96. Index Maintenance Functions ............................................................................... 392
9.97. Generic File Access Functions .............................................................................. 393
9.98. Advisory Lock Functions ..................................................................................... 394
9.99. Built-In Trigger Functions ................................................................................... 396
9.100. Table Rewrite Information Functions ................................................................... 399
12.1. Default Parser's Token Types ............................................................................... 449
13.1. Transaction Isolation Levels ................................................................................. 472
13.2. Conflicting Lock Modes ...................................................................................... 479
13.3. Conflicting Row-Level Locks ............................................................................... 480
19.1. System V IPC Parameters .................................................................................... 557
19.2. SSL Server File Usage ........................................................................................ 572
20.1. synchronous_commit Modes ................................................................................ 599
20.2. Message Severity Levels ..................................................................................... 624
20.3. Short Option Key ............................................................................................... 655
22.1. Predefined Roles ................................................................................................ 684
24.1. PostgreSQL Character Sets .................................................................................. 701
24.2. Built-in Client/Server Character Set Conversions ..................................................... 705
24.3. All Built-in Character Set Conversions .................................................................. 706
27.1. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication Feature Matrix ............................. 740
28.1. Dynamic Statistics Views .................................................................................... 761
28.2. Collected Statistics Views .................................................................................... 762
28.3. pg_stat_activity View ............................................................................... 764
28.4. Wait Event Types .............................................................................................. 766
28.5. Wait Events of Type Activity .......................................................................... 767
28.6. Wait Events of Type BufferPin ........................................................................ 767
28.7. Wait Events of Type Client .............................................................................. 768
28.8. Wait Events of Type Extension ........................................................................ 768
28.9. Wait Events of Type IO ..................................................................................... 768
28.10. Wait Events of Type IPC .................................................................................. 771
28.11. Wait Events of Type Lock ................................................................................ 773
28.12. Wait Events of Type LWLock ............................................................................ 773
28.13. Wait Events of Type Timeout .......................................................................... 776
28.14. pg_stat_replication View ....................................................................... 777
28.15. pg_stat_replication_slots View ........................................................... 779
28.16. pg_stat_wal_receiver View ..................................................................... 780
28.17. pg_stat_subscription View ..................................................................... 781
28.18. pg_stat_ssl View ....................................................................................... 781
28.19. pg_stat_gssapi View ................................................................................. 782
28.20. pg_stat_archiver View ............................................................................. 782
28.21. pg_stat_bgwriter View ............................................................................. 783
28.22. pg_stat_wal View ....................................................................................... 784
28.23. pg_stat_database View ............................................................................. 784
28.24. pg_stat_database_conflicts View ......................................................... 786
28.25. pg_stat_all_tables View ......................................................................... 787
28.26. pg_stat_all_indexes View ....................................................................... 788

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28.27. pg_statio_all_tables View ..................................................................... 789

28.28. pg_statio_all_indexes View ................................................................... 789
28.29. pg_statio_all_sequences View ............................................................... 790
28.30. pg_stat_user_functions View ................................................................. 790
28.31. pg_stat_slru View ..................................................................................... 791
28.32. Additional Statistics Functions ............................................................................ 791
28.33. Per-Backend Statistics Functions ......................................................................... 793
28.34. pg_stat_progress_analyze View ............................................................. 794
28.35. ANALYZE Phases ............................................................................................ 795
28.36. pg_stat_progress_create_index View ................................................... 795
28.37. CREATE INDEX Phases ................................................................................... 796
28.38. pg_stat_progress_vacuum View ............................................................... 797
28.39. VACUUM Phases ............................................................................................ 798
28.40. pg_stat_progress_cluster View ............................................................. 799
28.41. CLUSTER and VACUUM FULL Phases .............................................................. 800
28.42. pg_stat_progress_basebackup View ....................................................... 800
28.43. Base Backup Phases ......................................................................................... 801
28.44. pg_stat_progress_copy View ................................................................... 801
28.45. Built-in DTrace Probes ...................................................................................... 802
28.46. Defined Types Used in Probe Parameters ............................................................. 808
34.1. SSL Mode Descriptions ....................................................................................... 918
34.2. Libpq/Client SSL File Usage ................................................................................ 919
35.1. SQL-Oriented Large Object Functions ................................................................... 938
36.1. Mapping Between PostgreSQL Data Types and C Variable Types ............................... 954
36.2. Valid Input Formats for PGTYPESdate_from_asc .............................................. 972
36.3. Valid Input Formats for PGTYPESdate_fmt_asc ................................................ 974
36.4. Valid Input Formats for rdefmtdate .................................................................. 975
36.5. Valid Input Formats for PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc .................................... 976
37.1. information_schema_catalog_name Columns ........................................... 1055
37.2. administrable_role_authorizations Columns ....................................... 1055
37.3. applicable_roles Columns ........................................................................ 1055
37.4. attributes Columns .................................................................................... 1056
37.5. character_sets Columns ............................................................................ 1058
37.6. check_constraint_routine_usage Columns ............................................. 1059
37.7. check_constraints Columns ...................................................................... 1059
37.8. collations Columns .................................................................................... 1060
37.9. collation_character_set_applicability Columns ............................... 1060
37.10. column_column_usage Columns ................................................................. 1061
37.11. column_domain_usage Columns ................................................................. 1061
37.12. column_options Columns ........................................................................... 1062
37.13. column_privileges Columns ..................................................................... 1062
37.14. column_udt_usage Columns ....................................................................... 1063
37.15. columns Columns ......................................................................................... 1063
37.16. constraint_column_usage Columns ......................................................... 1066
37.17. constraint_table_usage Columns ........................................................... 1067
37.18. data_type_privileges Columns ............................................................... 1068
37.19. domain_constraints Columns ................................................................... 1068
37.20. domain_udt_usage Columns ....................................................................... 1069
37.21. domains Columns ......................................................................................... 1069
37.22. element_types Columns ............................................................................. 1071
37.23. enabled_roles Columns ............................................................................. 1073
37.24. foreign_data_wrapper_options Columns ............................................... 1073
37.25. foreign_data_wrappers Columns ............................................................. 1074
37.26. foreign_server_options Columns ........................................................... 1074
37.27. foreign_servers Columns ......................................................................... 1074
37.28. foreign_table_options Columns ............................................................. 1075
37.29. foreign_tables Columns ........................................................................... 1075
37.30. key_column_usage Columns ....................................................................... 1076

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37.31. parameters Columns ................................................................................... 1076

37.32. referential_constraints Columns ......................................................... 1078
37.33. role_column_grants Columns ................................................................... 1079
37.34. role_routine_grants Columns ................................................................. 1079
37.35. role_table_grants Columns ..................................................................... 1080
37.36. role_udt_grants Columns ......................................................................... 1081
37.37. role_usage_grants Columns ..................................................................... 1081
37.38. routine_column_usage Columns ............................................................... 1082
37.39. routine_privileges Columns ................................................................... 1083
37.40. routine_routine_usage Columns ............................................................. 1083
37.41. routine_sequence_usage Columns ........................................................... 1084
37.42. routine_table_usage Columns ................................................................. 1084
37.43. routines Columns ....................................................................................... 1085
37.44. schemata Columns ....................................................................................... 1089
37.45. sequences Columns ..................................................................................... 1090
37.46. sql_features Columns ............................................................................... 1090
37.47. sql_implementation_info Columns ......................................................... 1091
37.48. sql_parts Columns ..................................................................................... 1091
37.49. sql_sizing Columns ................................................................................... 1092
37.50. table_constraints Columns ..................................................................... 1092
37.51. table_privileges Columns ....................................................................... 1093
37.52. tables Columns ........................................................................................... 1094
37.53. transforms Columns ................................................................................... 1094
37.54. triggered_update_columns Columns ....................................................... 1095
37.55. triggers Columns ....................................................................................... 1095
37.56. udt_privileges Columns ........................................................................... 1097
37.57. usage_privileges Columns ....................................................................... 1098
37.58. user_defined_types Columns ................................................................... 1098
37.59. user_mapping_options Columns ............................................................... 1100
37.60. user_mappings Columns ............................................................................. 1100
37.61. view_column_usage Columns ..................................................................... 1101
37.62. view_routine_usage Columns ................................................................... 1101
37.63. view_table_usage Columns ....................................................................... 1102
37.64. views Columns ............................................................................................. 1102
38.1. Polymorphic Types ........................................................................................... 1111
38.2. Equivalent C Types for Built-in SQL Types .......................................................... 1137
38.3. B-Tree Strategies .............................................................................................. 1173
38.4. Hash Strategies ................................................................................................ 1174
38.5. GiST Two-Dimensional “R-tree” Strategies ........................................................... 1174
38.6. SP-GiST Point Strategies ................................................................................... 1174
38.7. GIN Array Strategies ........................................................................................ 1175
38.8. BRIN Minmax Strategies ................................................................................... 1175
38.9. B-Tree Support Functions .................................................................................. 1175
38.10. Hash Support Functions ................................................................................... 1176
38.11. GiST Support Functions ................................................................................... 1176
38.12. SP-GiST Support Functions .............................................................................. 1177
38.13. GIN Support Functions .................................................................................... 1177
38.14. BRIN Support Functions .................................................................................. 1177
40.1. Event Trigger Support by Command Tag .............................................................. 1209
43.1. Available Diagnostics Items ............................................................................... 1263
43.2. Error Diagnostics Items ..................................................................................... 1277
281. Policies Applied by Command Type ..................................................................... 1668
282. pgbench Automatic Variables .............................................................................. 1986
283. pgbench Operators ............................................................................................. 1989
284. pgbench Functions ............................................................................................. 1991
52.1. System Catalogs ............................................................................................... 2155
52.2. pg_aggregate Columns ................................................................................ 2157
52.3. pg_am Columns .............................................................................................. 2158

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52.4. pg_amop Columns .......................................................................................... 2159

52.5. pg_amproc Columns ...................................................................................... 2160
52.6. pg_attrdef Columns .................................................................................... 2160
52.7. pg_attribute Columns ................................................................................ 2161
52.8. pg_authid Columns ...................................................................................... 2163
52.9. pg_auth_members Columns .......................................................................... 2164
52.10. pg_cast Columns ......................................................................................... 2164
52.11. pg_class Columns ....................................................................................... 2165
52.12. pg_collation Columns ............................................................................... 2167
52.13. pg_constraint Columns ............................................................................. 2168
52.14. pg_conversion Columns ............................................................................. 2170
52.15. pg_database Columns ................................................................................. 2170
52.16. pg_db_role_setting Columns ................................................................... 2171
52.17. pg_default_acl Columns ........................................................................... 2172
52.18. pg_depend Columns ..................................................................................... 2172
52.19. pg_description Columns ........................................................................... 2174
52.20. pg_enum Columns ......................................................................................... 2175
52.21. pg_event_trigger Columns ....................................................................... 2175
52.22. pg_extension Columns ............................................................................... 2176
52.23. pg_foreign_data_wrapper Columns ......................................................... 2176
52.24. pg_foreign_server Columns ..................................................................... 2177
52.25. pg_foreign_table Columns ....................................................................... 2178
52.26. pg_index Columns ....................................................................................... 2178
52.27. pg_inherits Columns ................................................................................. 2179
52.28. pg_init_privs Columns ............................................................................. 2180
52.29. pg_language Columns ................................................................................. 2180
52.30. pg_largeobject Columns ........................................................................... 2181
52.31. pg_largeobject_metadata Columns ......................................................... 2182
52.32. pg_namespace Columns ............................................................................... 2182
52.33. pg_opclass Columns ................................................................................... 2182
52.34. pg_operator Columns ................................................................................. 2183
52.35. pg_opfamily Columns ................................................................................. 2184
52.36. pg_partitioned_table Columns ............................................................... 2184
52.37. pg_policy Columns ..................................................................................... 2185
52.38. pg_proc Columns ......................................................................................... 2186
52.39. pg_publication Columns ........................................................................... 2188
52.40. pg_publication_rel Columns ................................................................... 2189
52.41. pg_range Columns ....................................................................................... 2189
52.42. pg_replication_origin Columns ............................................................. 2190
52.43. pg_rewrite Columns ................................................................................... 2190
52.44. pg_seclabel Columns ................................................................................. 2191
52.45. pg_sequence Columns ................................................................................. 2191
52.46. pg_shdepend Columns ................................................................................. 2192
52.47. pg_shdescription Columns ....................................................................... 2193
52.48. pg_shseclabel Columns ............................................................................. 2193
52.49. pg_statistic Columns ............................................................................... 2194
52.50. pg_statistic_ext Columns ....................................................................... 2195
52.51. pg_statistic_ext_data Columns ............................................................. 2196
52.52. pg_subscription Columns ......................................................................... 2196
52.53. pg_subscription_rel Columns ................................................................. 2197
52.54. pg_tablespace Columns ............................................................................. 2198
52.55. pg_transform Columns ............................................................................... 2198
52.56. pg_trigger Columns ................................................................................... 2198
52.57. pg_ts_config Columns ............................................................................... 2200
52.58. pg_ts_config_map Columns ....................................................................... 2200
52.59. pg_ts_dict Columns ................................................................................... 2201
52.60. pg_ts_parser Columns ............................................................................... 2201
52.61. pg_ts_template Columns ........................................................................... 2202

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52.62. pg_type Columns ......................................................................................... 2202

52.63. typcategory Codes .................................................................................... 2205
52.64. pg_user_mapping Columns ......................................................................... 2206
52.65. System Views ................................................................................................ 2206
52.66. pg_available_extensions Columns ......................................................... 2207
52.67. pg_available_extension_versions Columns ......................................... 2208
52.68. pg_backend_memory_contexts Columns ................................................... 2208
52.69. pg_config Columns ..................................................................................... 2209
52.70. pg_cursors Columns ................................................................................... 2209
52.71. pg_file_settings Columns ....................................................................... 2210
52.72. pg_group Columns ....................................................................................... 2211
52.73. pg_hba_file_rules Columns ..................................................................... 2211
52.74. pg_indexes Columns ................................................................................... 2212
52.75. pg_locks Columns ....................................................................................... 2212
52.76. pg_matviews Columns ................................................................................. 2215
52.77. pg_policies Columns ................................................................................. 2215
52.78. pg_prepared_statements Columns ........................................................... 2216
52.79. pg_prepared_xacts Columns ..................................................................... 2217
52.80. pg_publication_tables Columns ............................................................. 2217
52.81. pg_replication_origin_status Columns ............................................... 2217
52.82. pg_replication_slots Columns ............................................................... 2218
52.83. pg_roles Columns ....................................................................................... 2219
52.84. pg_rules Columns ....................................................................................... 2220
52.85. pg_seclabels Columns ............................................................................... 2220
52.86. pg_sequences Columns ............................................................................... 2221
52.87. pg_settings Columns ................................................................................. 2222
52.88. pg_shadow Columns ..................................................................................... 2224
52.89. pg_shmem_allocations Columns ............................................................... 2224
52.90. pg_stats Columns ....................................................................................... 2225
52.91. pg_stats_ext Columns ............................................................................... 2226
52.92. pg_stats_ext_exprs Columns ................................................................... 2228
52.93. pg_tables Columns ..................................................................................... 2229
52.94. pg_timezone_abbrevs Columns ................................................................. 2229
52.95. pg_timezone_names Columns ..................................................................... 2230
52.96. pg_user Columns ......................................................................................... 2230
52.97. pg_user_mappings Columns ....................................................................... 2231
52.98. pg_views Columns ....................................................................................... 2231
65.1. Built-in GiST Operator Classes ........................................................................... 2361
66.1. Built-in SP-GiST Operator Classes ...................................................................... 2379
67.1. Built-in GIN Operator Classes ............................................................................ 2392
68.1. Built-in BRIN Operator Classes .......................................................................... 2400
68.2. Function and Support Numbers for Minmax Operator Classes ................................... 2409
68.3. Function and Support Numbers for Inclusion Operator Classes ................................. 2409
68.4. Procedure and Support Numbers for Bloom Operator Classes ................................... 2410
68.5. Procedure and Support Numbers for minmax-multi Operator Classes ......................... 2411
70.1. Contents of PGDATA ......................................................................................... 2414
70.2. Page Layout .................................................................................................... 2420
70.3. PageHeaderData Layout ..................................................................................... 2421
70.4. HeapTupleHeaderData Layout ............................................................................ 2422
A.1. PostgreSQL Error Codes ..................................................................................... 2453
B.1. Month Names ................................................................................................... 2464
B.2. Day of the Week Names ..................................................................................... 2464
B.3. Date/Time Field Modifiers .................................................................................. 2464
C.1. SQL Key Words ................................................................................................ 2470
F.1. adminpack Functions ....................................................................................... 2568
F.2. Cube External Representations ............................................................................. 2585
F.3. Cube Operators .................................................................................................. 2586
F.4. Cube Functions .................................................................................................. 2587

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 PostgreSQL 14.6 Documentation

F.5. Cube-Based Earthdistance Functions ..................................................................... 2623

F.6. Point-Based Earthdistance Operators ..................................................................... 2624
F.7. hstore Operators ............................................................................................. 2630
F.8. hstore Functions ............................................................................................. 2631
F.9. intarray Functions ......................................................................................... 2638
F.10. intarray Operators ....................................................................................... 2639
F.11. isn Data Types ............................................................................................... 2641
F.12. isn Functions ................................................................................................. 2643
F.13. ltree Operators ............................................................................................. 2648
F.14. ltree Functions ............................................................................................. 2649
F.15. pg_buffercache Columns ............................................................................ 2664
F.16. Supported Algorithms for crypt() ................................................................... 2666
F.17. Iteration Counts for crypt() ........................................................................... 2667
F.18. Hash Algorithm Speeds ..................................................................................... 2668
F.19. Summary of Functionality with and without OpenSSL ............................................ 2675
F.20. pgrowlocks Output Columns .......................................................................... 2679
F.21. pg_stat_statements Columns .................................................................... 2681
F.22. pg_stat_statements_info Columns .......................................................... 2684
F.23. pgstattuple Output Columns ........................................................................ 2688
F.24. pgstattuple_approx Output Columns .......................................................... 2691
F.25. pg_trgm Functions ......................................................................................... 2694
F.26. pg_trgm Operators ......................................................................................... 2695
F.27. seg External Representations ............................................................................. 2709
F.28. Examples of Valid seg Input ............................................................................. 2709
F.29. Seg GiST Operators .......................................................................................... 2710
F.30. Sepgsql Functions ............................................................................................ 2718
F.31. tablefunc Functions ..................................................................................... 2722
F.32. connectby Parameters ................................................................................... 2729
F.33. Functions for UUID Generation .......................................................................... 2737
F.34. Functions Returning UUID Constants .................................................................. 2738
F.35. xml2 Functions ............................................................................................... 2739
F.36. xpath_table Parameters ............................................................................... 2740
H.1. Externally Maintained Client Interfaces ................................................................. 2751
H.2. Externally Maintained Procedural Languages ......................................................... 2752
K.1. PostgreSQL Limitations ...................................................................................... 2760

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List of Examples
8.1. Using the Character Types .................................................................................... 150
8.2. Using the boolean Type ..................................................................................... 163
8.3. Using the Bit String Types .................................................................................... 171
9.1. XSLT Stylesheet for Converting SQL/XML Output to HTML ..................................... 313
10.1. Square Root Operator Type Resolution .................................................................. 403
10.2. String Concatenation Operator Type Resolution ....................................................... 404
10.3. Absolute-Value and Negation Operator Type Resolution ........................................... 404
10.4. Array Inclusion Operator Type Resolution .............................................................. 405
10.5. Custom Operator on a Domain Type ..................................................................... 405
10.6. Rounding Function Argument Type Resolution ....................................................... 408
10.7. Variadic Function Resolution ............................................................................... 408
10.8. Substring Function Type Resolution ...................................................................... 409
10.9. character Storage Type Conversion .................................................................. 410
10.10. Type Resolution with Underspecified Types in a Union ........................................... 411
10.11. Type Resolution in a Simple Union ..................................................................... 411
10.12. Type Resolution in a Transposed Union ............................................................... 412
10.13. Type Resolution in a Nested Union ..................................................................... 412
11.1. Setting up a Partial Index to Exclude Common Values .............................................. 421
11.2. Setting up a Partial Index to Exclude Uninteresting Values ........................................ 421
11.3. Setting up a Partial Unique Index ......................................................................... 422
11.4. Do Not Use Partial Indexes as a Substitute for Partitioning ........................................ 423
21.1. Example pg_hba.conf Entries .......................................................................... 663
21.2. An Example pg_ident.conf File ..................................................................... 666
34.1. libpq Example Program 1 .................................................................................... 922
34.2. libpq Example Program 2 .................................................................................... 925
34.3. libpq Example Program 3 .................................................................................... 928
35.1. Large Objects with libpq Example Program ............................................................ 939
36.1. Example SQLDA Program .................................................................................. 992
36.2. ECPG Program Accessing Large Objects .............................................................. 1006
42.1. Manual Installation of PL/Perl ............................................................................ 1244
43.1. Quoting Values in Dynamic Queries .................................................................... 1261
43.2. Exceptions with UPDATE/INSERT ...................................................................... 1276
43.3. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Function ............................................................................ 1290
43.4. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Function for Auditing .......................................................... 1291
43.5. A PL/pgSQL View Trigger Function for Auditing .................................................. 1292
43.6. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Function for Maintaining a Summary Table ............................. 1293
43.7. Auditing with Transition Tables .......................................................................... 1295
43.8. A PL/pgSQL Event Trigger Function ................................................................... 1297
43.9. Porting a Simple Function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL ............................................ 1305
43.10. Porting a Function that Creates Another Function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL ............ 1306
43.11. Porting a Procedure With String Manipulation and OUT Parameters from PL/SQL to
PL/pgSQL ............................................................................................................... 1307
43.12. Porting a Procedure from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL .................................................. 1309
F.1. Create a Foreign Table for PostgreSQL CSV Logs ................................................... 2625

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Preface
This book is the official documentation of PostgreSQL. It has been written by the PostgreSQL devel-
opers and other volunteers in parallel to the development of the PostgreSQL software. It describes all
the functionality that the current version of PostgreSQL officially supports.

To make the large amount of information about PostgreSQL manageable, this book has been organized
in several parts. Each part is targeted at a different class of users, or at users in different stages of their
PostgreSQL experience:

• Part I is an informal introduction for new users.

• Part II documents the SQL query language environment, including data types and functions, as well
as user-level performance tuning. Every PostgreSQL user should read this.

• Part III describes the installation and administration of the server. Everyone who runs a PostgreSQL
server, be it for private use or for others, should read this part.

• Part IV describes the programming interfaces for PostgreSQL client programs.

• Part V contains information for advanced users about the extensibility capabilities of the server.
Topics include user-defined data types and functions.

• Part VI contains reference information about SQL commands, client and server programs. This part
supports the other parts with structured information sorted by command or program.

• Part VII contains assorted information that might be of use to PostgreSQL developers.

1. What Is PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) based on POSTGRES,
Version 4.21, developed at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department.
POSTGRES pioneered many concepts that only became available in some commercial database sys-
tems much later.

PostgreSQL is an open-source descendant of this original Berkeley code. It supports a large part of
the SQL standard and offers many modern features:

• complex queries
• foreign keys
• triggers
• updatable views
• transactional integrity
• multiversion concurrency control

Also, PostgreSQL can be extended by the user in many ways, for example by adding new

• data types
• functions
• operators
• aggregate functions
• index methods
• procedural languages

And because of the liberal license, PostgreSQL can be used, modified, and distributed by anyone free
of charge for any purpose, be it private, commercial, or academic.

2. A Brief History of PostgreSQL

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The object-relational database management system now known as PostgreSQL is derived from the
POSTGRES package written at the University of California at Berkeley. With over two decades of de-
velopment behind it, PostgreSQL is now the most advanced open-source database available anywhere.

2.1. The Berkeley POSTGRES Project

The POSTGRES project, led by Professor Michael Stonebraker, was sponsored by the Defense Ad-
vanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Office (ARO), the National Science
Foundation (NSF), and ESL, Inc. The implementation of POSTGRES began in 1986. The initial con-
cepts for the system were presented in [ston86], and the definition of the initial data model appeared
in [rowe87]. The design of the rule system at that time was described in [ston87a]. The rationale and
architecture of the storage manager were detailed in [ston87b].

POSTGRES has undergone several major releases since then. The first “demoware” system became
operational in 1987 and was shown at the 1988 ACM-SIGMOD Conference. Version 1, described in
[ston90a], was released to a few external users in June 1989. In response to a critique of the first rule
system ([ston89]), the rule system was redesigned ([ston90b]), and Version 2 was released in June
1990 with the new rule system. Version 3 appeared in 1991 and added support for multiple storage
managers, an improved query executor, and a rewritten rule system. For the most part, subsequent
releases until Postgres95 (see below) focused on portability and reliability.

POSTGRES has been used to implement many different research and production applications. These
include: a financial data analysis system, a jet engine performance monitoring package, an aster-
oid tracking database, a medical information database, and several geographic information systems.
POSTGRES has also been used as an educational tool at several universities. Finally, Illustra Infor-
mation Technologies (later merged into Informix2, which is now owned by IBM3) picked up the code
and commercialized it. In late 1992, POSTGRES became the primary data manager for the Sequoia
2000 scientific computing project4.

The size of the external user community nearly doubled during 1993. It became increasingly obvious
that maintenance of the prototype code and support was taking up large amounts of time that should
have been devoted to database research. In an effort to reduce this support burden, the Berkeley POST-
GRES project officially ended with Version 4.2.

2.2. Postgres95
In 1994, Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen added an SQL language interpreter to POSTGRES. Under a new
name, Postgres95 was subsequently released to the web to find its own way in the world as an open-
source descendant of the original POSTGRES Berkeley code.

Postgres95 code was completely ANSI C and trimmed in size by 25%. Many internal changes im-
proved performance and maintainability. Postgres95 release 1.0.x ran about 30–50% faster on the
Wisconsin Benchmark compared to POSTGRES, Version 4.2. Apart from bug fixes, the following
were the major enhancements:

• The query language PostQUEL was replaced with SQL (implemented in the server). (Interface li-
brary libpq was named after PostQUEL.) Subqueries were not supported until PostgreSQL (see be-
low), but they could be imitated in Postgres95 with user-defined SQL functions. Aggregate func-
tions were re-implemented. Support for the GROUP BY query clause was also added.

• A new program (psql) was provided for interactive SQL queries, which used GNU Readline. This
largely superseded the old monitor program.

• A new front-end library, libpgtcl, supported Tcl-based clients. A sample shell, pgtclsh, pro-
vided new Tcl commands to interface Tcl programs with the Postgres95 server.
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 Preface

• The large-object interface was overhauled. The inversion large objects were the only mechanism
for storing large objects. (The inversion file system was removed.)

• The instance-level rule system was removed. Rules were still available as rewrite rules.

• A short tutorial introducing regular SQL features as well as those of Postgres95 was distributed
with the source code

• GNU make (instead of BSD make) was used for the build. Also, Postgres95 could be compiled with
an unpatched GCC (data alignment of doubles was fixed).

2.3. PostgreSQL
By 1996, it became clear that the name “Postgres95” would not stand the test of time. We chose a new
name, PostgreSQL, to reflect the relationship between the original POSTGRES and the more recent
versions with SQL capability. At the same time, we set the version numbering to start at 6.0, putting
the numbers back into the sequence originally begun by the Berkeley POSTGRES project.

Many people continue to refer to PostgreSQL as “Postgres” (now rarely in all capital letters) because
of tradition or because it is easier to pronounce. This usage is widely accepted as a nickname or alias.

The emphasis during development of Postgres95 was on identifying and understanding existing prob-
lems in the server code. With PostgreSQL, the emphasis has shifted to augmenting features and capa-
bilities, although work continues in all areas.

Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found in Appendix E.

3. Conventions
The following conventions are used in the synopsis of a command: brackets ([ and ]) indicate optional
parts. Braces ({ and }) and vertical lines (|) indicate that you must choose one alternative. Dots (...)
mean that the preceding element can be repeated. All other symbols, including parentheses, should
be taken literally.

Where it enhances the clarity, SQL commands are preceded by the prompt =>, and shell commands
are preceded by the prompt $. Normally, prompts are not shown, though.

An administrator is generally a person who is in charge of installing and running the server. A user
could be anyone who is using, or wants to use, any part of the PostgreSQL system. These terms
should not be interpreted too narrowly; this book does not have fixed presumptions about system
administration procedures.

4. Further Information
Besides the documentation, that is, this book, there are other resources about PostgreSQL:

Wiki

The PostgreSQL wiki5 contains the project's FAQ6 (Frequently Asked Questions) list, TODO7
list, and detailed information about many more topics.

Web Site

The PostgreSQL web site8 carries details on the latest release and other information to make your
work or play with PostgreSQL more productive.
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Mailing Lists

The mailing lists are a good place to have your questions answered, to share experiences with
other users, and to contact the developers. Consult the PostgreSQL web site for details.

Yourself!

PostgreSQL is an open-source project. As such, it depends on the user community for ongoing
support. As you begin to use PostgreSQL, you will rely on others for help, either through the
documentation or through the mailing lists. Consider contributing your knowledge back. Read
the mailing lists and answer questions. If you learn something which is not in the documentation,
write it up and contribute it. If you add features to the code, contribute them.

5. Bug Reporting Guidelines

When you find a bug in PostgreSQL we want to hear about it. Your bug reports play an important part
in making PostgreSQL more reliable because even the utmost care cannot guarantee that every part
of PostgreSQL will work on every platform under every circumstance.

The following suggestions are intended to assist you in forming bug reports that can be handled in an
effective fashion. No one is required to follow them but doing so tends to be to everyone's advantage.

We cannot promise to fix every bug right away. If the bug is obvious, critical, or affects a lot of users,
chances are good that someone will look into it. It could also happen that we tell you to update to
a newer version to see if the bug happens there. Or we might decide that the bug cannot be fixed
before some major rewrite we might be planning is done. Or perhaps it is simply too hard and there are
more important things on the agenda. If you need help immediately, consider obtaining a commercial
support contract.

5.1. Identifying Bugs

Before you report a bug, please read and re-read the documentation to verify that you can really do
whatever it is you are trying. If it is not clear from the documentation whether you can do something
or not, please report that too; it is a bug in the documentation. If it turns out that a program does
something different from what the documentation says, that is a bug. That might include, but is not
limited to, the following circumstances:

• A program terminates with a fatal signal or an operating system error message that would point to
a problem in the program. (A counterexample might be a “disk full” message, since you have to
fix that yourself.)

• A program produces the wrong output for any given input.

• A program refuses to accept valid input (as defined in the documentation).

• A program accepts invalid input without a notice or error message. But keep in mind that your idea
of invalid input might be our idea of an extension or compatibility with traditional practice.

• PostgreSQL fails to compile, build, or install according to the instructions on supported platforms.

Here “program” refers to any executable, not only the backend process.

Being slow or resource-hogging is not necessarily a bug. Read the documentation or ask on one of
the mailing lists for help in tuning your applications. Failing to comply to the SQL standard is not
necessarily a bug either, unless compliance for the specific feature is explicitly claimed.

Before you continue, check on the TODO list and in the FAQ to see if your bug is already known.
If you cannot decode the information on the TODO list, report your problem. The least we can do is
make the TODO list clearer.

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 Preface

5.2. What to Report

The most important thing to remember about bug reporting is to state all the facts and only facts. Do
not speculate what you think went wrong, what “it seemed to do”, or which part of the program has a
fault. If you are not familiar with the implementation you would probably guess wrong and not help
us a bit. And even if you are, educated explanations are a great supplement to but no substitute for
facts. If we are going to fix the bug we still have to see it happen for ourselves first. Reporting the
bare facts is relatively straightforward (you can probably copy and paste them from the screen) but
all too often important details are left out because someone thought it does not matter or the report
would be understood anyway.

The following items should be contained in every bug report:

• The exact sequence of steps from program start-up necessary to reproduce the problem. This should
be self-contained; it is not enough to send in a bare SELECT statement without the preceding CRE-
ATE TABLE and INSERT statements, if the output should depend on the data in the tables. We
do not have the time to reverse-engineer your database schema, and if we are supposed to make up
our own data we would probably miss the problem.

The best format for a test case for SQL-related problems is a file that can be run through the psql
frontend that shows the problem. (Be sure to not have anything in your ~/.psqlrc start-up file.)
An easy way to create this file is to use pg_dump to dump out the table declarations and data needed
to set the scene, then add the problem query. You are encouraged to minimize the size of your
example, but this is not absolutely necessary. If the bug is reproducible, we will find it either way.

If your application uses some other client interface, such as PHP, then please try to isolate the
offending queries. We will probably not set up a web server to reproduce your problem. In any case
remember to provide the exact input files; do not guess that the problem happens for “large files”
or “midsize databases”, etc. since this information is too inexact to be of use.

• The output you got. Please do not say that it “didn't work” or “crashed”. If there is an error message,
show it, even if you do not understand it. If the program terminates with an operating system error,
say which. If nothing at all happens, say so. Even if the result of your test case is a program crash
or otherwise obvious it might not happen on our platform. The easiest thing is to copy the output
from the terminal, if possible.

Note
If you are reporting an error message, please obtain the most verbose form of the message.
In psql, say \set VERBOSITY verbose beforehand. If you are extracting the message
from the server log, set the run-time parameter log_error_verbosity to verbose so that all
details are logged.

Note
In case of fatal errors, the error message reported by the client might not contain all the
information available. Please also look at the log output of the database server. If you do
not keep your server's log output, this would be a good time to start doing so.

• The output you expected is very important to state. If you just write “This command gives me that
output.” or “This is not what I expected.”, we might run it ourselves, scan the output, and think it
looks OK and is exactly what we expected. We should not have to spend the time to decode the
exact semantics behind your commands. Especially refrain from merely saying that “This is not
what SQL says/Oracle does.” Digging out the correct behavior from SQL is not a fun undertaking,

xxxvi
 Preface

nor do we all know how all the other relational databases out there behave. (If your problem is a
program crash, you can obviously omit this item.)

• Any command line options and other start-up options, including any relevant environment variables
or configuration files that you changed from the default. Again, please provide exact information.
If you are using a prepackaged distribution that starts the database server at boot time, you should
try to find out how that is done.

• Anything you did at all differently from the installation instructions.

• The PostgreSQL version. You can run the command SELECT version(); to find out the version
of the server you are connected to. Most executable programs also support a --version option;
at least postgres --version and psql --version should work. If the function or the
options do not exist then your version is more than old enough to warrant an upgrade. If you run a
prepackaged version, such as RPMs, say so, including any subversion the package might have. If
you are talking about a Git snapshot, mention that, including the commit hash.

If your version is older than 14.6 we will almost certainly tell you to upgrade. There are many bug
fixes and improvements in each new release, so it is quite possible that a bug you have encountered
in an older release of PostgreSQL has already been fixed. We can only provide limited support
for sites using older releases of PostgreSQL; if you require more than we can provide, consider
acquiring a commercial support contract.

• Platform information. This includes the kernel name and version, C library, processor, memory
information, and so on. In most cases it is sufficient to report the vendor and version, but do not
assume everyone knows what exactly “Debian” contains or that everyone runs on x86_64. If you
have installation problems then information about the toolchain on your machine (compiler, make,
and so on) is also necessary.

Do not be afraid if your bug report becomes rather lengthy. That is a fact of life. It is better to report
everything the first time than us having to squeeze the facts out of you. On the other hand, if your
input files are huge, it is fair to ask first whether somebody is interested in looking into it. Here is an
article9 that outlines some more tips on reporting bugs.

Do not spend all your time to figure out which changes in the input make the problem go away. This
will probably not help solving it. If it turns out that the bug cannot be fixed right away, you will still
have time to find and share your work-around. Also, once again, do not waste your time guessing why
the bug exists. We will find that out soon enough.

When writing a bug report, please avoid confusing terminology. The software package in total is
called “PostgreSQL”, sometimes “Postgres” for short. If you are specifically talking about the backend
process, mention that, do not just say “PostgreSQL crashes”. A crash of a single backend process
is quite different from crash of the parent “postgres” process; please don't say “the server crashed”
when you mean a single backend process went down, nor vice versa. Also, client programs such as the
interactive frontend “psql” are completely separate from the backend. Please try to be specific about
whether the problem is on the client or server side.

5.3. Where to Report Bugs

In general, send bug reports to the bug report mailing list at <[email protected]
gresql.org>. You are requested to use a descriptive subject for your email message, perhaps parts
of the error message.

Another method is to fill in the bug report web-form available at the project's web site10. Entering
a bug report this way causes it to be mailed to the <[email protected]>
mailing list.
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If your bug report has security implications and you'd prefer that it not become immediately visible
in public archives, don't send it to pgsql-bugs. Security issues can be reported privately to <se-
[email protected]>.

Do not send bug reports to any of the user mailing lists, such as <[email protected]
gresql.org> or <[email protected]>. These mailing lists are for
answering user questions, and their subscribers normally do not wish to receive bug reports. More
importantly, they are unlikely to fix them.

Also, please do not send reports to the developers' mailing list <[email protected]
gresql.org>. This list is for discussing the development of PostgreSQL, and it would be nice if we
could keep the bug reports separate. We might choose to take up a discussion about your bug report
on pgsql-hackers, if the problem needs more review.

If you have a problem with the documentation, the best place to report it is the documentation mailing
list <[email protected]>. Please be specific about what part of the docu-
mentation you are unhappy with.

If your bug is a portability problem on a non-supported platform, send mail to <pgsql-hacker-

[email protected]>, so we (and you) can work on porting PostgreSQL to your platform.

Note
Due to the unfortunate amount of spam going around, all of the above lists will be moderated
unless you are subscribed. That means there will be some delay before the email is delivered.
If you wish to subscribe to the lists, please visit https://lists.postgresql.org/ for instructions.

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 Part I. Tutorial
Welcome to the PostgreSQL Tutorial. The following few chapters are intended to give a simple introduction to
PostgreSQL, relational database concepts, and the SQL language to those who are new to any one of these aspects.
We only assume some general knowledge about how to use computers. No particular Unix or programming ex-
perience is required. This part is mainly intended to give you some hands-on experience with important aspects
of the PostgreSQL system. It makes no attempt to be a complete or thorough treatment of the topics it covers.

After you have worked through this tutorial you might want to move on to reading Part II to gain a more formal
knowledge of the SQL language, or Part IV for information about developing applications for PostgreSQL. Those
who set up and manage their own server should also read Part III.
Table of Contents
1. Getting Started .......................................................................................................... 3
1.1. Installation ..................................................................................................... 3
1.2. Architectural Fundamentals ............................................................................... 3
1.3. Creating a Database ......................................................................................... 3
1.4. Accessing a Database ...................................................................................... 5
2. The SQL Language .................................................................................................... 7
2.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 7
2.2. Concepts ........................................................................................................ 7
2.3. Creating a New Table ...................................................................................... 7
2.4. Populating a Table With Rows .......................................................................... 8
2.5. Querying a Table ............................................................................................ 9
2.6. Joins Between Tables ..................................................................................... 11
2.7. Aggregate Functions ...................................................................................... 13
2.8. Updates ....................................................................................................... 14
2.9. Deletions ...................................................................................................... 15
3. Advanced Features ................................................................................................... 16
3.1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 16
3.2. Views .......................................................................................................... 16
3.3. Foreign Keys ................................................................................................ 16
3.4. Transactions ................................................................................................. 17
3.5. Window Functions ......................................................................................... 19
3.6. Inheritance ................................................................................................... 22
3.7. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 23

2
Chapter 1. Getting Started
1.1. Installation
Before you can use PostgreSQL you need to install it, of course. It is possible that PostgreSQL is
already installed at your site, either because it was included in your operating system distribution
or because the system administrator already installed it. If that is the case, you should obtain infor-
mation from the operating system documentation or your system administrator about how to access
PostgreSQL.

If you are not sure whether PostgreSQL is already available or whether you can use it for your exper-
imentation then you can install it yourself. Doing so is not hard and it can be a good exercise. Post-
greSQL can be installed by any unprivileged user; no superuser (root) access is required.

If you are installing PostgreSQL yourself, then refer to Chapter 17 for instructions on installation,
and return to this guide when the installation is complete. Be sure to follow closely the section about
setting up the appropriate environment variables.

If your site administrator has not set things up in the default way, you might have some more work to
do. For example, if the database server machine is a remote machine, you will need to set the PGHOST
environment variable to the name of the database server machine. The environment variable PGPORT
might also have to be set. The bottom line is this: if you try to start an application program and it
complains that it cannot connect to the database, you should consult your site administrator or, if
that is you, the documentation to make sure that your environment is properly set up. If you did not
understand the preceding paragraph then read the next section.

1.2. Architectural Fundamentals

Before we proceed, you should understand the basic PostgreSQL system architecture. Understanding
how the parts of PostgreSQL interact will make this chapter somewhat clearer.

In database jargon, PostgreSQL uses a client/server model. A PostgreSQL session consists of the
following cooperating processes (programs):

• A server process, which manages the database files, accepts connections to the database from client
applications, and performs database actions on behalf of the clients. The database server program
is called postgres.

• The user's client (frontend) application that wants to perform database operations. Client applica-
tions can be very diverse in nature: a client could be a text-oriented tool, a graphical application, a
web server that accesses the database to display web pages, or a specialized database maintenance
tool. Some client applications are supplied with the PostgreSQL distribution; most are developed
by users.

As is typical of client/server applications, the client and the server can be on different hosts. In that
case they communicate over a TCP/IP network connection. You should keep this in mind, because
the files that can be accessed on a client machine might not be accessible (or might only be accessible
using a different file name) on the database server machine.

The PostgreSQL server can handle multiple concurrent connections from clients. To achieve this it
starts (“forks”) a new process for each connection. From that point on, the client and the new server
process communicate without intervention by the original postgres process. Thus, the supervisor
server process is always running, waiting for client connections, whereas client and associated server
processes come and go. (All of this is of course invisible to the user. We only mention it here for
completeness.)

1.3. Creating a Database

3
 Getting Started

The first test to see whether you can access the database server is to try to create a database. A running
PostgreSQL server can manage many databases. Typically, a separate database is used for each project
or for each user.

Possibly, your site administrator has already created a database for your use. In that case you can omit
this step and skip ahead to the next section.

To create a new database, in this example named mydb, you use the following command:

$ createdb mydb

If this produces no response then this step was successful and you can skip over the remainder of
this section.

If you see a message similar to:

createdb: command not found

then PostgreSQL was not installed properly. Either it was not installed at all or your shell's search path
was not set to include it. Try calling the command with an absolute path instead:

$ /usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb mydb

The path at your site might be different. Contact your site administrator or check the installation in-
structions to correct the situation.

Another response could be this:

createdb: error: connection to server on socket "/

tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting connections on
that socket?

This means that the server was not started, or it is not listening where createdb expects to contact
it. Again, check the installation instructions or consult the administrator.

Another response could be this:

createdb: error: connection to server on socket "/

tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: FATAL: role "joe" does not exist

where your own login name is mentioned. This will happen if the administrator has not created a
PostgreSQL user account for you. (PostgreSQL user accounts are distinct from operating system user
accounts.) If you are the administrator, see Chapter 22 for help creating accounts. You will need to
become the operating system user under which PostgreSQL was installed (usually postgres) to
create the first user account. It could also be that you were assigned a PostgreSQL user name that is
different from your operating system user name; in that case you need to use the -U switch or set the
PGUSER environment variable to specify your PostgreSQL user name.

If you have a user account but it does not have the privileges required to create a database, you will
see the following:

createdb: error: database creation failed: ERROR: permission

denied to create database

4
 Getting Started

Not every user has authorization to create new databases. If PostgreSQL refuses to create databases
for you then the site administrator needs to grant you permission to create databases. Consult your
site administrator if this occurs. If you installed PostgreSQL yourself then you should log in for the
purposes of this tutorial under the user account that you started the server as. 1

You can also create databases with other names. PostgreSQL allows you to create any number of
databases at a given site. Database names must have an alphabetic first character and are limited to
63 bytes in length. A convenient choice is to create a database with the same name as your current
user name. Many tools assume that database name as the default, so it can save you some typing. To
create that database, simply type:

$ createdb

If you do not want to use your database anymore you can remove it. For example, if you are the owner
(creator) of the database mydb, you can destroy it using the following command:

$ dropdb mydb

(For this command, the database name does not default to the user account name. You always need to
specify it.) This action physically removes all files associated with the database and cannot be undone,
so this should only be done with a great deal of forethought.

More about createdb and dropdb can be found in createdb and dropdb respectively.

1.4. Accessing a Database

Once you have created a database, you can access it by:

• Running the PostgreSQL interactive terminal program, called psql, which allows you to interac-
tively enter, edit, and execute SQL commands.
• Using an existing graphical frontend tool like pgAdmin or an office suite with ODBC or JDBC
support to create and manipulate a database. These possibilities are not covered in this tutorial.
• Writing a custom application, using one of the several available language bindings. These possibil-
ities are discussed further in Part IV.

You probably want to start up psql to try the examples in this tutorial. It can be activated for the
mydb database by typing the command:

$ psql mydb

If you do not supply the database name then it will default to your user account name. You already
discovered this scheme in the previous section using createdb.

In psql, you will be greeted with the following message:

psql (14.6)
Type "help" for help.

mydb=>

The last line could also be:

1
As an explanation for why this works: PostgreSQL user names are separate from operating system user accounts. When you connect to a
database, you can choose what PostgreSQL user name to connect as; if you don't, it will default to the same name as your current operating
system account. As it happens, there will always be a PostgreSQL user account that has the same name as the operating system user that started
the server, and it also happens that that user always has permission to create databases. Instead of logging in as that user you can also specify
the -U option everywhere to select a PostgreSQL user name to connect as.

5
 Getting Started

mydb=#

That would mean you are a database superuser, which is most likely the case if you installed the
PostgreSQL instance yourself. Being a superuser means that you are not subject to access controls.
For the purposes of this tutorial that is not important.

If you encounter problems starting psql then go back to the previous section. The diagnostics of
createdb and psql are similar, and if the former worked the latter should work as well.

The last line printed out by psql is the prompt, and it indicates that psql is listening to you and that
you can type SQL queries into a work space maintained by psql. Try out these commands:

mydb=> SELECT version();

version
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
PostgreSQL 14.6 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian
4.9.2-10) 4.9.2, 64-bit
(1 row)

mydb=> SELECT current_date;

date
------------
2016-01-07
(1 row)

mydb=> SELECT 2 + 2;
?column?
----------
4
(1 row)

The psql program has a number of internal commands that are not SQL commands. They begin with
the backslash character, “\”. For example, you can get help on the syntax of various PostgreSQL SQL
commands by typing:

mydb=> \h

To get out of psql, type:

mydb=> \q

and psql will quit and return you to your command shell. (For more internal commands, type \? at
the psql prompt.) The full capabilities of psql are documented in psql. In this tutorial we will not
use these features explicitly, but you can use them yourself when it is helpful.

6
Chapter 2. The SQL Language
2.1. Introduction
This chapter provides an overview of how to use SQL to perform simple operations. This tutorial is
only intended to give you an introduction and is in no way a complete tutorial on SQL. Numerous
books have been written on SQL, including [melt93] and [date97]. You should be aware that some
PostgreSQL language features are extensions to the standard.

In the examples that follow, we assume that you have created a database named mydb, as described
in the previous chapter, and have been able to start psql.

Examples in this manual can also be found in the PostgreSQL source distribution in the directory
src/tutorial/. (Binary distributions of PostgreSQL might not provide those files.) To use those
files, first change to that directory and run make:

$ cd .../src/tutorial
$ make

This creates the scripts and compiles the C files containing user-defined functions and types. Then,
to start the tutorial, do the following:

$ psql -s mydb

...

mydb=> \i basics.sql

The \i command reads in commands from the specified file. psql's -s option puts you in single step
mode which pauses before sending each statement to the server. The commands used in this section
are in the file basics.sql.

2.2. Concepts
PostgreSQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS). That means it is a system for
managing data stored in relations. Relation is essentially a mathematical term for table. The notion
of storing data in tables is so commonplace today that it might seem inherently obvious, but there
are a number of other ways of organizing databases. Files and directories on Unix-like operating sys-
tems form an example of a hierarchical database. A more modern development is the object-oriented
database.

Each table is a named collection of rows. Each row of a given table has the same set of named
columns, and each column is of a specific data type. Whereas columns have a fixed order in each row,
it is important to remember that SQL does not guarantee the order of the rows within the table in any
way (although they can be explicitly sorted for display).

Tables are grouped into databases, and a collection of databases managed by a single PostgreSQL
server instance constitutes a database cluster.

2.3. Creating a New Table

You can create a new table by specifying the table name, along with all column names and their types:

7
 The SQL Language

CREATE TABLE weather (

city varchar(80),
temp_lo int, -- low temperature
temp_hi int, -- high temperature
prcp real, -- precipitation
date date
);

You can enter this into psql with the line breaks. psql will recognize that the command is not
terminated until the semicolon.

White space (i.e., spaces, tabs, and newlines) can be used freely in SQL commands. That means you
can type the command aligned differently than above, or even all on one line. Two dashes (“--”)
introduce comments. Whatever follows them is ignored up to the end of the line. SQL is case insen-
sitive about key words and identifiers, except when identifiers are double-quoted to preserve the case
(not done above).

varchar(80) specifies a data type that can store arbitrary character strings up to 80 characters
in length. int is the normal integer type. real is a type for storing single precision floating-point
numbers. date should be self-explanatory. (Yes, the column of type date is also named date. This
might be convenient or confusing — you choose.)

PostgreSQL supports the standard SQL types int, smallint, real, double precision,
char(N), varchar(N), date, time, timestamp, and interval, as well as other types of
general utility and a rich set of geometric types. PostgreSQL can be customized with an arbitrary
number of user-defined data types. Consequently, type names are not key words in the syntax, except
where required to support special cases in the SQL standard.

The second example will store cities and their associated geographical location:

CREATE TABLE cities (

name varchar(80),
location point
);

The point type is an example of a PostgreSQL-specific data type.

Finally, it should be mentioned that if you don't need a table any longer or want to recreate it differently
you can remove it using the following command:

DROP TABLE tablename;

2.4. Populating a Table With Rows

The INSERT statement is used to populate a table with rows:

INSERT INTO weather VALUES ('San Francisco', 46, 50, 0.25,

'1994-11-27');

Note that all data types use rather obvious input formats. Constants that are not simple numeric values
usually must be surrounded by single quotes ('), as in the example. The date type is actually quite
flexible in what it accepts, but for this tutorial we will stick to the unambiguous format shown here.

The point type requires a coordinate pair as input, as shown here:

INSERT INTO cities VALUES ('San Francisco', '(-194.0, 53.0)');

8
 The SQL Language

The syntax used so far requires you to remember the order of the columns. An alternative syntax allows
you to list the columns explicitly:

INSERT INTO weather (city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date)

VALUES ('San Francisco', 43, 57, 0.0, '1994-11-29');

You can list the columns in a different order if you wish or even omit some columns, e.g., if the
precipitation is unknown:

INSERT INTO weather (date, city, temp_hi, temp_lo)

VALUES ('1994-11-29', 'Hayward', 54, 37);

Many developers consider explicitly listing the columns better style than relying on the order implic-
itly.

Please enter all the commands shown above so you have some data to work with in the following
sections.

You could also have used COPY to load large amounts of data from flat-text files. This is usually
faster because the COPY command is optimized for this application while allowing less flexibility than
INSERT. An example would be:

COPY weather FROM '/home/user/weather.txt';

where the file name for the source file must be available on the machine running the backend process,
not the client, since the backend process reads the file directly. You can read more about the COPY
command in COPY.

2.5. Querying a Table

To retrieve data from a table, the table is queried. An SQL SELECT statement is used to do this. The
statement is divided into a select list (the part that lists the columns to be returned), a table list (the
part that lists the tables from which to retrieve the data), and an optional qualification (the part that
specifies any restrictions). For example, to retrieve all the rows of table weather, type:

SELECT * FROM weather;

Here * is a shorthand for “all columns”. 1 So the same result would be had with:

SELECT city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date FROM weather;

The output should be:

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date

---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
San Francisco | 43 | 57 | 0 | 1994-11-29
Hayward | 37 | 54 | | 1994-11-29
(3 rows)

You can write expressions, not just simple column references, in the select list. For example, you can
do:
1
While SELECT * is useful for off-the-cuff queries, it is widely considered bad style in production code, since adding a column to the table
would change the results.

9
 The SQL Language

SELECT city, (temp_hi+temp_lo)/2 AS temp_avg, date FROM weather;

This should give:

city | temp_avg | date

---------------+----------+------------
San Francisco | 48 | 1994-11-27
San Francisco | 50 | 1994-11-29
Hayward | 45 | 1994-11-29
(3 rows)

Notice how the AS clause is used to relabel the output column. (The AS clause is optional.)

A query can be “qualified” by adding a WHERE clause that specifies which rows are wanted. The
WHERE clause contains a Boolean (truth value) expression, and only rows for which the Boolean
expression is true are returned. The usual Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) are allowed in the
qualification. For example, the following retrieves the weather of San Francisco on rainy days:

SELECT * FROM weather

WHERE city = 'San Francisco' AND prcp > 0.0;

Result:

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date

---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
(1 row)

You can request that the results of a query be returned in sorted order:

SELECT * FROM weather

ORDER BY city;

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date

---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
Hayward | 37 | 54 | | 1994-11-29
San Francisco | 43 | 57 | 0 | 1994-11-29
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27

In this example, the sort order isn't fully specified, and so you might get the San Francisco rows in
either order. But you'd always get the results shown above if you do:

SELECT * FROM weather

ORDER BY city, temp_lo;

You can request that duplicate rows be removed from the result of a query:

SELECT DISTINCT city

FROM weather;

city
---------------

10
 The SQL Language

Hayward
San Francisco
(2 rows)

Here again, the result row ordering might vary. You can ensure consistent results by using DISTINCT
and ORDER BY together: 2

SELECT DISTINCT city

FROM weather
ORDER BY city;

2.6. Joins Between Tables

Thus far, our queries have only accessed one table at a time. Queries can access multiple tables at once,
or access the same table in such a way that multiple rows of the table are being processed at the same
time. Queries that access multiple tables (or multiple instances of the same table) at one time are called
join queries. They combine rows from one table with rows from a second table, with an expression
specifying which rows are to be paired. For example, to return all the weather records together with
the location of the associated city, the database needs to compare the city column of each row of the
weather table with the name column of all rows in the cities table, and select the pairs of rows
where these values match.3 This would be accomplished by the following query:

SELECT * FROM weather JOIN cities ON city = name;

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date | name

| location
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
+---------------+-----------
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27 | San
Francisco | (-194,53)
San Francisco | 43 | 57 | 0 | 1994-11-29 | San
Francisco | (-194,53)
(2 rows)

Observe two things about the result set:

• There is no result row for the city of Hayward. This is because there is no matching entry in the
cities table for Hayward, so the join ignores the unmatched rows in the weather table. We
will see shortly how this can be fixed.

• There are two columns containing the city name. This is correct because the lists of columns from
the weather and cities tables are concatenated. In practice this is undesirable, though, so you
will probably want to list the output columns explicitly rather than using *:

SELECT city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date, location

FROM weather JOIN cities ON city = name;

Since the columns all had different names, the parser automatically found which table they belong
to. If there were duplicate column names in the two tables you'd need to qualify the column names
to show which one you meant, as in:
2
In some database systems, including older versions of PostgreSQL, the implementation of DISTINCT automatically orders the rows and
so ORDER BY is unnecessary. But this is not required by the SQL standard, and current PostgreSQL does not guarantee that DISTINCT
causes the rows to be ordered.
3
This is only a conceptual model. The join is usually performed in a more efficient manner than actually comparing each possible pair of
rows, but this is invisible to the user.

11
 The SQL Language

SELECT weather.city, weather.temp_lo, weather.temp_hi,

weather.prcp, weather.date, cities.location
FROM weather JOIN cities ON weather.city = cities.name;

It is widely considered good style to qualify all column names in a join query, so that the query won't
fail if a duplicate column name is later added to one of the tables.

Join queries of the kind seen thus far can also be written in this form:

SELECT *
FROM weather, cities
WHERE city = name;

This syntax pre-dates the JOIN/ON syntax, which was introduced in SQL-92. The tables are simply
listed in the FROM clause, and the comparison expression is added to the WHERE clause. The results
from this older implicit syntax and the newer explicit JOIN/ON syntax are identical. But for a reader of
the query, the explicit syntax makes its meaning easier to understand: The join condition is introduced
by its own key word whereas previously the condition was mixed into the WHERE clause together
with other conditions.

Now we will figure out how we can get the Hayward records back in. What we want the query to do
is to scan the weather table and for each row to find the matching cities row(s). If no matching
row is found we want some “empty values” to be substituted for the cities table's columns. This
kind of query is called an outer join. (The joins we have seen so far are inner joins.) The command
looks like this:

SELECT *
FROM weather LEFT OUTER JOIN cities ON weather.city =
cities.name;

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date | name

| location
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
+---------------+-----------
Hayward | 37 | 54 | | 1994-11-29 |
|
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27 | San
Francisco | (-194,53)
San Francisco | 43 | 57 | 0 | 1994-11-29 | San
Francisco | (-194,53)
(3 rows)

This query is called a left outer join because the table mentioned on the left of the join operator will
have each of its rows in the output at least once, whereas the table on the right will only have those
rows output that match some row of the left table. When outputting a left-table row for which there is
no right-table match, empty (null) values are substituted for the right-table columns.

Exercise: There are also right outer joins and full outer joins. Try to find out what those do.

We can also join a table against itself. This is called a self join. As an example, suppose we wish to
find all the weather records that are in the temperature range of other weather records. So we need to
compare the temp_lo and temp_hi columns of each weather row to the temp_lo and tem-
p_hi columns of all other weather rows. We can do this with the following query:

12
 The SQL Language

SELECT w1.city, w1.temp_lo AS low, w1.temp_hi AS high,

w2.city, w2.temp_lo AS low, w2.temp_hi AS high
FROM weather w1 JOIN weather w2
ON w1.temp_lo < w2.temp_lo AND w1.temp_hi > w2.temp_hi;

city | low | high | city | low | high

---------------+-----+------+---------------+-----+------
San Francisco | 43 | 57 | San Francisco | 46 | 50
Hayward | 37 | 54 | San Francisco | 46 | 50
(2 rows)

Here we have relabeled the weather table as w1 and w2 to be able to distinguish the left and right side
of the join. You can also use these kinds of aliases in other queries to save some typing, e.g.:

SELECT *
FROM weather w JOIN cities c ON w.city = c.name;

You will encounter this style of abbreviating quite frequently.

2.7. Aggregate Functions

Like most other relational database products, PostgreSQL supports aggregate functions. An aggregate
function computes a single result from multiple input rows. For example, there are aggregates to com-
pute the count, sum, avg (average), max (maximum) and min (minimum) over a set of rows.

As an example, we can find the highest low-temperature reading anywhere with:

SELECT max(temp_lo) FROM weather;

max
-----
46
(1 row)

If we wanted to know what city (or cities) that reading occurred in, we might try:

SELECT city FROM weather WHERE temp_lo = max(temp_lo); WRONG

but this will not work since the aggregate max cannot be used in the WHERE clause. (This restriction
exists because the WHERE clause determines which rows will be included in the aggregate calculation;
so obviously it has to be evaluated before aggregate functions are computed.) However, as is often the
case the query can be restated to accomplish the desired result, here by using a subquery:

SELECT city FROM weather

WHERE temp_lo = (SELECT max(temp_lo) FROM weather);

city
---------------
San Francisco
(1 row)

This is OK because the subquery is an independent computation that computes its own aggregate
separately from what is happening in the outer query.

13
 The SQL Language

Aggregates are also very useful in combination with GROUP BY clauses. For example, we can get
the maximum low temperature observed in each city with:

SELECT city, max(temp_lo)

FROM weather
GROUP BY city;

city | max
---------------+-----
Hayward | 37
San Francisco | 46
(2 rows)

which gives us one output row per city. Each aggregate result is computed over the table rows matching
that city. We can filter these grouped rows using HAVING and the output count using FILTER:

SELECT city, max(temp_lo), count(*) FILTER (WHERE temp_lo < 30)

FROM weather
GROUP BY city
HAVING max(temp_lo) < 40;

city | max | count

---------+-----+-------
Hayward | 37 | 5
(1 row)

which gives us the same results for only the cities that have all temp_lo values below 40. Finally,
if we only care about cities whose names begin with “S”, we might do:

SELECT city, max(temp_lo), count(*) FILTER (WHERE temp_lo < 30)

FROM weather
WHERE city LIKE 'S%' -- 1
GROUP BY city
HAVING max(temp_lo) < 40;

1 The LIKE operator does pattern matching and is explained in Section 9.7.

It is important to understand the interaction between aggregates and SQL's WHERE and HAVING claus-
es. The fundamental difference between WHERE and HAVING is this: WHERE selects input rows before
groups and aggregates are computed (thus, it controls which rows go into the aggregate computation),
whereas HAVING selects group rows after groups and aggregates are computed. Thus, the WHERE
clause must not contain aggregate functions; it makes no sense to try to use an aggregate to determine
which rows will be inputs to the aggregates. On the other hand, the HAVING clause always contains
aggregate functions. (Strictly speaking, you are allowed to write a HAVING clause that doesn't use
aggregates, but it's seldom useful. The same condition could be used more efficiently at the WHERE
stage.)

In the previous example, we can apply the city name restriction in WHERE, since it needs no aggregate.
This is more efficient than adding the restriction to HAVING, because we avoid doing the grouping
and aggregate calculations for all rows that fail the WHERE check.

2.8. Updates
You can update existing rows using the UPDATE command. Suppose you discover the temperature
readings are all off by 2 degrees after November 28. You can correct the data as follows:

14
 The SQL Language

UPDATE weather
SET temp_hi = temp_hi - 2, temp_lo = temp_lo - 2
WHERE date > '1994-11-28';

Look at the new state of the data:

SELECT * FROM weather;

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date

---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
San Francisco | 41 | 55 | 0 | 1994-11-29
Hayward | 35 | 52 | | 1994-11-29
(3 rows)

2.9. Deletions
Rows can be removed from a table using the DELETE command. Suppose you are no longer interested
in the weather of Hayward. Then you can do the following to delete those rows from the table:

DELETE FROM weather WHERE city = 'Hayward';

All weather records belonging to Hayward are removed.

SELECT * FROM weather;

city | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp | date

---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
San Francisco | 46 | 50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
San Francisco | 41 | 55 | 0 | 1994-11-29
(2 rows)

One should be wary of statements of the form

DELETE FROM tablename;

Without a qualification, DELETE will remove all rows from the given table, leaving it empty. The
system will not request confirmation before doing this!

15
Chapter 3. Advanced Features
3.1. Introduction
In the previous chapter we have covered the basics of using SQL to store and access your data in
PostgreSQL. We will now discuss some more advanced features of SQL that simplify management
and prevent loss or corruption of your data. Finally, we will look at some PostgreSQL extensions.

This chapter will on occasion refer to examples found in Chapter 2 to change or improve them, so
it will be useful to have read that chapter. Some examples from this chapter can also be found in
advanced.sql in the tutorial directory. This file also contains some sample data to load, which is
not repeated here. (Refer to Section 2.1 for how to use the file.)

3.2. Views
Refer back to the queries in Section 2.6. Suppose the combined listing of weather records and city
location is of particular interest to your application, but you do not want to type the query each time
you need it. You can create a view over the query, which gives a name to the query that you can refer
to like an ordinary table:

CREATE VIEW myview AS

SELECT name, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date, location
FROM weather, cities
WHERE city = name;

SELECT * FROM myview;

Making liberal use of views is a key aspect of good SQL database design. Views allow you to en-
capsulate the details of the structure of your tables, which might change as your application evolves,
behind consistent interfaces.

Views can be used in almost any place a real table can be used. Building views upon other views is
not uncommon.

3.3. Foreign Keys

Recall the weather and cities tables from Chapter 2. Consider the following problem: You want
to make sure that no one can insert rows in the weather table that do not have a matching entry
in the cities table. This is called maintaining the referential integrity of your data. In simplistic
database systems this would be implemented (if at all) by first looking at the cities table to check
if a matching record exists, and then inserting or rejecting the new weather records. This approach
has a number of problems and is very inconvenient, so PostgreSQL can do this for you.

The new declaration of the tables would look like this:

CREATE TABLE cities (

name varchar(80) primary key,
location point
);

CREATE TABLE weather (

city varchar(80) references cities(name),
temp_lo int,

16
 Advanced Features

temp_hi int,
prcp real,
date date
);

Now try inserting an invalid record:

INSERT INTO weather VALUES ('Berkeley', 45, 53, 0.0, '1994-11-28');

ERROR: insert or update on table "weather" violates foreign key

constraint "weather_city_fkey"
DETAIL: Key (city)=(Berkeley) is not present in table "cities".

The behavior of foreign keys can be finely tuned to your application. We will not go beyond this simple
example in this tutorial, but just refer you to Chapter 5 for more information. Making correct use of
foreign keys will definitely improve the quality of your database applications, so you are strongly
encouraged to learn about them.

3.4. Transactions
Transactions are a fundamental concept of all database systems. The essential point of a transaction is
that it bundles multiple steps into a single, all-or-nothing operation. The intermediate states between
the steps are not visible to other concurrent transactions, and if some failure occurs that prevents the
transaction from completing, then none of the steps affect the database at all.

For example, consider a bank database that contains balances for various customer accounts, as well as
total deposit balances for branches. Suppose that we want to record a payment of $100.00 from Alice's
account to Bob's account. Simplifying outrageously, the SQL commands for this might look like:

UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00

WHERE name = 'Alice';
UPDATE branches SET balance = balance - 100.00
WHERE name = (SELECT branch_name FROM accounts WHERE name =
'Alice');
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00
WHERE name = 'Bob';
UPDATE branches SET balance = balance + 100.00
WHERE name = (SELECT branch_name FROM accounts WHERE name =
'Bob');

The details of these commands are not important here; the important point is that there are several
separate updates involved to accomplish this rather simple operation. Our bank's officers will want to
be assured that either all these updates happen, or none of them happen. It would certainly not do for
a system failure to result in Bob receiving $100.00 that was not debited from Alice. Nor would Alice
long remain a happy customer if she was debited without Bob being credited. We need a guarantee
that if something goes wrong partway through the operation, none of the steps executed so far will
take effect. Grouping the updates into a transaction gives us this guarantee. A transaction is said to be
atomic: from the point of view of other transactions, it either happens completely or not at all.

We also want a guarantee that once a transaction is completed and acknowledged by the database
system, it has indeed been permanently recorded and won't be lost even if a crash ensues shortly
thereafter. For example, if we are recording a cash withdrawal by Bob, we do not want any chance that
the debit to his account will disappear in a crash just after he walks out the bank door. A transactional
database guarantees that all the updates made by a transaction are logged in permanent storage (i.e.,
on disk) before the transaction is reported complete.

17
 Advanced Features

Another important property of transactional databases is closely related to the notion of atomic up-
dates: when multiple transactions are running concurrently, each one should not be able to see the
incomplete changes made by others. For example, if one transaction is busy totalling all the branch
balances, it would not do for it to include the debit from Alice's branch but not the credit to Bob's
branch, nor vice versa. So transactions must be all-or-nothing not only in terms of their permanent
effect on the database, but also in terms of their visibility as they happen. The updates made so far by
an open transaction are invisible to other transactions until the transaction completes, whereupon all
the updates become visible simultaneously.

In PostgreSQL, a transaction is set up by surrounding the SQL commands of the transaction with
BEGIN and COMMIT commands. So our banking transaction would actually look like:

BEGIN;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00
WHERE name = 'Alice';
-- etc etc
COMMIT;

If, partway through the transaction, we decide we do not want to commit (perhaps we just noticed that
Alice's balance went negative), we can issue the command ROLLBACK instead of COMMIT, and all
our updates so far will be canceled.

PostgreSQL actually treats every SQL statement as being executed within a transaction. If you do not
issue a BEGIN command, then each individual statement has an implicit BEGIN and (if successful)
COMMIT wrapped around it. A group of statements surrounded by BEGIN and COMMIT is sometimes
called a transaction block.

Note
Some client libraries issue BEGIN and COMMIT commands automatically, so that you might
get the effect of transaction blocks without asking. Check the documentation for the interface
you are using.

It's possible to control the statements in a transaction in a more granular fashion through the use of
savepoints. Savepoints allow you to selectively discard parts of the transaction, while committing the
rest. After defining a savepoint with SAVEPOINT, you can if needed roll back to the savepoint with
ROLLBACK TO. All the transaction's database changes between defining the savepoint and rolling
back to it are discarded, but changes earlier than the savepoint are kept.

After rolling back to a savepoint, it continues to be defined, so you can roll back to it several times.
Conversely, if you are sure you won't need to roll back to a particular savepoint again, it can be
released, so the system can free some resources. Keep in mind that either releasing or rolling back to
a savepoint will automatically release all savepoints that were defined after it.

All this is happening within the transaction block, so none of it is visible to other database sessions.
When and if you commit the transaction block, the committed actions become visible as a unit to other
sessions, while the rolled-back actions never become visible at all.

Remembering the bank database, suppose we debit $100.00 from Alice's account, and credit Bob's
account, only to find later that we should have credited Wally's account. We could do it using save-
points like this:

BEGIN;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00
WHERE name = 'Alice';
SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;

18
 Advanced Features

UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00

WHERE name = 'Bob';
-- oops ... forget that and use Wally's account
ROLLBACK TO my_savepoint;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00
WHERE name = 'Wally';
COMMIT;

This example is, of course, oversimplified, but there's a lot of control possible in a transaction block
through the use of savepoints. Moreover, ROLLBACK TO is the only way to regain control of a
transaction block that was put in aborted state by the system due to an error, short of rolling it back
completely and starting again.

3.5. Window Functions

A window function performs a calculation across a set of table rows that are somehow related to the
current row. This is comparable to the type of calculation that can be done with an aggregate function.
However, window functions do not cause rows to become grouped into a single output row like non-
window aggregate calls would. Instead, the rows retain their separate identities. Behind the scenes,
the window function is able to access more than just the current row of the query result.

Here is an example that shows how to compare each employee's salary with the average salary in his
or her department:

SELECT depname, empno, salary, avg(salary) OVER (PARTITION BY

depname) FROM empsalary;

depname | empno | salary | avg

-----------+-------+--------+-----------------------
develop | 11 | 5200 | 5020.0000000000000000
develop | 7 | 4200 | 5020.0000000000000000
develop | 9 | 4500 | 5020.0000000000000000
develop | 8 | 6000 | 5020.0000000000000000
develop | 10 | 5200 | 5020.0000000000000000
personnel | 5 | 3500 | 3700.0000000000000000
personnel | 2 | 3900 | 3700.0000000000000000
sales | 3 | 4800 | 4866.6666666666666667
sales | 1 | 5000 | 4866.6666666666666667
sales | 4 | 4800 | 4866.6666666666666667
(10 rows)

The first three output columns come directly from the table empsalary, and there is one output row
for each row in the table. The fourth column represents an average taken across all the table rows
that have the same depname value as the current row. (This actually is the same function as the
non-window avg aggregate, but the OVER clause causes it to be treated as a window function and
computed across the window frame.)

A window function call always contains an OVER clause directly following the window function's
name and argument(s). This is what syntactically distinguishes it from a normal function or non-
window aggregate. The OVER clause determines exactly how the rows of the query are split up for
processing by the window function. The PARTITION BY clause within OVER divides the rows into
groups, or partitions, that share the same values of the PARTITION BY expression(s). For each row,
the window function is computed across the rows that fall into the same partition as the current row.

You can also control the order in which rows are processed by window functions using ORDER BY
within OVER. (The window ORDER BY does not even have to match the order in which the rows are
output.) Here is an example:

19
 Advanced Features

SELECT depname, empno, salary,

rank() OVER (PARTITION BY depname ORDER BY salary DESC)
FROM empsalary;

depname | empno | salary | rank

-----------+-------+--------+------
develop | 8 | 6000 | 1
develop | 10 | 5200 | 2
develop | 11 | 5200 | 2
develop | 9 | 4500 | 4
develop | 7 | 4200 | 5
personnel | 2 | 3900 | 1
personnel | 5 | 3500 | 2
sales | 1 | 5000 | 1
sales | 4 | 4800 | 2
sales | 3 | 4800 | 2
(10 rows)

As shown here, the rank function produces a numerical rank for each distinct ORDER BY value in
the current row's partition, using the order defined by the ORDER BY clause. rank needs no explicit
parameter, because its behavior is entirely determined by the OVER clause.

The rows considered by a window function are those of the “virtual table” produced by the query's
FROM clause as filtered by its WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses if any. For example, a row
removed because it does not meet the WHERE condition is not seen by any window function. A query
can contain multiple window functions that slice up the data in different ways using different OVER
clauses, but they all act on the same collection of rows defined by this virtual table.

We already saw that ORDER BY can be omitted if the ordering of rows is not important. It is also
possible to omit PARTITION BY, in which case there is a single partition containing all rows.

There is another important concept associated with window functions: for each row, there is a set of
rows within its partition called its window frame. Some window functions act only on the rows of the
window frame, rather than of the whole partition. By default, if ORDER BY is supplied then the frame
consists of all rows from the start of the partition up through the current row, plus any following rows
that are equal to the current row according to the ORDER BY clause. When ORDER BY is omitted the
default frame consists of all rows in the partition. 1 Here is an example using sum:

SELECT salary, sum(salary) OVER () FROM empsalary;

salary | sum
--------+-------
5200 | 47100
5000 | 47100
3500 | 47100
4800 | 47100
3900 | 47100
4200 | 47100
4500 | 47100
4800 | 47100
6000 | 47100
5200 | 47100
(10 rows)
1
There are options to define the window frame in other ways, but this tutorial does not cover them. See Section 4.2.8 for details.

20
 Advanced Features

Above, since there is no ORDER BY in the OVER clause, the window frame is the same as the partition,
which for lack of PARTITION BY is the whole table; in other words each sum is taken over the
whole table and so we get the same result for each output row. But if we add an ORDER BY clause,
we get very different results:

SELECT salary, sum(salary) OVER (ORDER BY salary) FROM empsalary;

salary | sum
--------+-------
3500 | 3500
3900 | 7400
4200 | 11600
4500 | 16100
4800 | 25700
4800 | 25700
5000 | 30700
5200 | 41100
5200 | 41100
6000 | 47100
(10 rows)

Here the sum is taken from the first (lowest) salary up through the current one, including any duplicates
of the current one (notice the results for the duplicated salaries).

Window functions are permitted only in the SELECT list and the ORDER BY clause of the query.
They are forbidden elsewhere, such as in GROUP BY, HAVING and WHERE clauses. This is because
they logically execute after the processing of those clauses. Also, window functions execute after
non-window aggregate functions. This means it is valid to include an aggregate function call in the
arguments of a window function, but not vice versa.

If there is a need to filter or group rows after the window calculations are performed, you can use a
sub-select. For example:

SELECT depname, empno, salary, enroll_date

FROM
(SELECT depname, empno, salary, enroll_date,
rank() OVER (PARTITION BY depname ORDER BY salary DESC,
empno) AS pos
FROM empsalary
) AS ss
WHERE pos < 3;

The above query only shows the rows from the inner query having rank less than 3.

When a query involves multiple window functions, it is possible to write out each one with a separate
OVER clause, but this is duplicative and error-prone if the same windowing behavior is wanted for
several functions. Instead, each windowing behavior can be named in a WINDOW clause and then
referenced in OVER. For example:

SELECT sum(salary) OVER w, avg(salary) OVER w

FROM empsalary
WINDOW w AS (PARTITION BY depname ORDER BY salary DESC);

More details about window functions can be found in Section 4.2.8, Section 9.22, Section 7.2.5, and
the SELECT reference page.

21
 Advanced Features

3.6. Inheritance
Inheritance is a concept from object-oriented databases. It opens up interesting new possibilities of
database design.

Let's create two tables: A table cities and a table capitals. Naturally, capitals are also cities,
so you want some way to show the capitals implicitly when you list all cities. If you're really clever
you might invent some scheme like this:

CREATE TABLE capitals (

name text,
population real,
elevation int, -- (in ft)
state char(2)
);

CREATE TABLE non_capitals (

name text,
population real,
elevation int -- (in ft)
);

CREATE VIEW cities AS

SELECT name, population, elevation FROM capitals
UNION
SELECT name, population, elevation FROM non_capitals;

This works OK as far as querying goes, but it gets ugly when you need to update several rows, for
one thing.

A better solution is this:

CREATE TABLE cities (

name text,
population real,
elevation int -- (in ft)
);

CREATE TABLE capitals (

state char(2) UNIQUE NOT NULL
) INHERITS (cities);

In this case, a row of capitals inherits all columns (name, population, and elevation) from
its parent, cities. The type of the column name is text, a native PostgreSQL type for variable
length character strings. The capitals table has an additional column, state, which shows its
state abbreviation. In PostgreSQL, a table can inherit from zero or more other tables.

For example, the following query finds the names of all cities, including state capitals, that are located
at an elevation over 500 feet:

SELECT name, elevation

FROM cities
WHERE elevation > 500;

which returns:

22
 Advanced Features

name | elevation
-----------+-----------
Las Vegas | 2174
Mariposa | 1953
Madison | 845
(3 rows)

On the other hand, the following query finds all the cities that are not state capitals and are situated
at an elevation over 500 feet:

SELECT name, elevation

FROM ONLY cities
WHERE elevation > 500;

name | elevation
-----------+-----------
Las Vegas | 2174
Mariposa | 1953
(2 rows)

Here the ONLY before cities indicates that the query should be run over only the cities table, and
not tables below cities in the inheritance hierarchy. Many of the commands that we have already
discussed — SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE — support this ONLY notation.

Note
Although inheritance is frequently useful, it has not been integrated with unique constraints or
foreign keys, which limits its usefulness. See Section 5.10 for more detail.

3.7. Conclusion
PostgreSQL has many features not touched upon in this tutorial introduction, which has been oriented
toward newer users of SQL. These features are discussed in more detail in the remainder of this book.

If you feel you need more introductory material, please visit the PostgreSQL web site2 for links to
more resources.

2
https://www.postgresql.org

23
 Part II. The SQL Language
This part describes the use of the SQL language in PostgreSQL. We start with describing the general syntax of
SQL, then explain how to create the structures to hold data, how to populate the database, and how to query it. The
middle part lists the available data types and functions for use in SQL commands. The rest treats several aspects
that are important for tuning a database for optimal performance.

The information in this part is arranged so that a novice user can follow it start to end to gain a full understanding
of the topics without having to refer forward too many times. The chapters are intended to be self-contained, so
that advanced users can read the chapters individually as they choose. The information in this part is presented in
a narrative fashion in topical units. Readers looking for a complete description of a particular command should
see Part VI.

Readers of this part should know how to connect to a PostgreSQL database and issue SQL commands. Readers
that are unfamiliar with these issues are encouraged to read Part I first. SQL commands are typically entered using
the PostgreSQL interactive terminal psql, but other programs that have similar functionality can be used as well.
Table of Contents
4. SQL Syntax ............................................................................................................ 32
4.1. Lexical Structure ........................................................................................... 32
4.1.1. Identifiers and Key Words .................................................................... 32
4.1.2. Constants ........................................................................................... 34
4.1.3. Operators ........................................................................................... 38
4.1.4. Special Characters ............................................................................... 39
4.1.5. Comments ......................................................................................... 39
4.1.6. Operator Precedence ............................................................................ 40
4.2. Value Expressions ......................................................................................... 41
4.2.1. Column References ............................................................................. 41
4.2.2. Positional Parameters ........................................................................... 41
4.2.3. Subscripts .......................................................................................... 42
4.2.4. Field Selection .................................................................................... 42
4.2.5. Operator Invocations ........................................................................... 43
4.2.6. Function Calls .................................................................................... 43
4.2.7. Aggregate Expressions ......................................................................... 44
4.2.8. Window Function Calls ........................................................................ 46
4.2.9. Type Casts ......................................................................................... 48
4.2.10. Collation Expressions ......................................................................... 49
4.2.11. Scalar Subqueries .............................................................................. 50
4.2.12. Array Constructors ............................................................................ 50
4.2.13. Row Constructors .............................................................................. 52
4.2.14. Expression Evaluation Rules ............................................................... 53
4.3. Calling Functions .......................................................................................... 54
4.3.1. Using Positional Notation ..................................................................... 55
4.3.2. Using Named Notation ......................................................................... 55
4.3.3. Using Mixed Notation ......................................................................... 56
5. Data Definition ........................................................................................................ 57
5.1. Table Basics ................................................................................................. 57
5.2. Default Values .............................................................................................. 58
5.3. Generated Columns ........................................................................................ 59
5.4. Constraints ................................................................................................... 60
5.4.1. Check Constraints ............................................................................... 60
5.4.2. Not-Null Constraints ............................................................................ 62
5.4.3. Unique Constraints .............................................................................. 63
5.4.4. Primary Keys ..................................................................................... 64
5.4.5. Foreign Keys ...................................................................................... 65
5.4.6. Exclusion Constraints .......................................................................... 68
5.5. System Columns ........................................................................................... 68
5.6. Modifying Tables .......................................................................................... 69
5.6.1. Adding a Column ............................................................................... 69
5.6.2. Removing a Column ............................................................................ 70
5.6.3. Adding a Constraint ............................................................................ 70
5.6.4. Removing a Constraint ........................................................................ 71
5.6.5. Changing a Column's Default Value ....................................................... 71
5.6.6. Changing a Column's Data Type ............................................................ 71
5.6.7. Renaming a Column ............................................................................ 72
5.6.8. Renaming a Table ............................................................................... 72
5.7. Privileges ..................................................................................................... 72
5.8. Row Security Policies .................................................................................... 76
5.9. Schemas ....................................................................................................... 82
5.9.1. Creating a Schema .............................................................................. 83
5.9.2. The Public Schema ............................................................................. 84
5.9.3. The Schema Search Path ...................................................................... 84
5.9.4. Schemas and Privileges ........................................................................ 85

25
 The SQL Language

5.9.5. The System Catalog Schema ................................................................. 86

5.9.6. Usage Patterns .................................................................................... 86
5.9.7. Portability .......................................................................................... 87
5.10. Inheritance .................................................................................................. 87
5.10.1. Caveats ............................................................................................ 90
5.11. Table Partitioning ........................................................................................ 90
5.11.1. Overview ......................................................................................... 90
5.11.2. Declarative Partitioning ...................................................................... 91
5.11.3. Partitioning Using Inheritance .............................................................. 96
5.11.4. Partition Pruning ............................................................................. 101
5.11.5. Partitioning and Constraint Exclusion .................................................. 102
5.11.6. Best Practices for Declarative Partitioning ............................................ 103
5.12. Foreign Data ............................................................................................. 104
5.13. Other Database Objects ............................................................................... 104
5.14. Dependency Tracking ................................................................................. 104
6. Data Manipulation .................................................................................................. 107
6.1. Inserting Data ............................................................................................. 107
6.2. Updating Data ............................................................................................. 108
6.3. Deleting Data .............................................................................................. 109
6.4. Returning Data from Modified Rows ............................................................... 109
7. Queries ................................................................................................................. 111
7.1. Overview .................................................................................................... 111
7.2. Table Expressions ........................................................................................ 111
7.2.1. The FROM Clause .............................................................................. 112
7.2.2. The WHERE Clause ............................................................................ 120
7.2.3. The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses .................................................. 121
7.2.4. GROUPING SETS, CUBE, and ROLLUP .............................................. 124
7.2.5. Window Function Processing .............................................................. 127
7.3. Select Lists ................................................................................................. 127
7.3.1. Select-List Items ............................................................................... 127
7.3.2. Column Labels .................................................................................. 128
7.3.3. DISTINCT ...................................................................................... 128
7.4. Combining Queries (UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT) ........................................ 129
7.5. Sorting Rows (ORDER BY) .......................................................................... 130
7.6. LIMIT and OFFSET .................................................................................... 131
7.7. VALUES Lists ............................................................................................. 131
7.8. WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions) .................................................... 132
7.8.1. SELECT in WITH ............................................................................. 133
7.8.2. Recursive Queries ............................................................................. 133
7.8.3. Common Table Expression Materialization ............................................ 138
7.8.4. Data-Modifying Statements in WITH .................................................... 139
8. Data Types ............................................................................................................ 142
8.1. Numeric Types ............................................................................................ 143
8.1.1. Integer Types .................................................................................... 144
8.1.2. Arbitrary Precision Numbers ............................................................... 144
8.1.3. Floating-Point Types .......................................................................... 146
8.1.4. Serial Types ..................................................................................... 147
8.2. Monetary Types ........................................................................................... 148
8.3. Character Types ........................................................................................... 149
8.4. Binary Data Types ....................................................................................... 151
8.4.1. bytea Hex Format ........................................................................... 151
8.4.2. bytea Escape Format ....................................................................... 152
8.5. Date/Time Types ......................................................................................... 153
8.5.1. Date/Time Input ................................................................................ 154
8.5.2. Date/Time Output .............................................................................. 158
8.5.3. Time Zones ...................................................................................... 159
8.5.4. Interval Input .................................................................................... 160
8.5.5. Interval Output .................................................................................. 162

26
 The SQL Language

8.6. Boolean Type .............................................................................................. 163

8.7. Enumerated Types ....................................................................................... 164
8.7.1. Declaration of Enumerated Types ......................................................... 164
8.7.2. Ordering .......................................................................................... 164
8.7.3. Type Safety ...................................................................................... 165
8.7.4. Implementation Details ....................................................................... 165
8.8. Geometric Types ......................................................................................... 165
8.8.1. Points .............................................................................................. 166
8.8.2. Lines ............................................................................................... 166
8.8.3. Line Segments .................................................................................. 166
8.8.4. Boxes .............................................................................................. 167
8.8.5. Paths ............................................................................................... 167
8.8.6. Polygons .......................................................................................... 167
8.8.7. Circles ............................................................................................. 168
8.9. Network Address Types ................................................................................ 168
8.9.1. inet .............................................................................................. 168
8.9.2. cidr .............................................................................................. 168
8.9.3. inet vs. cidr ................................................................................ 169
8.9.4. macaddr ........................................................................................ 169
8.9.5. macaddr8 ...................................................................................... 170
8.10. Bit String Types ........................................................................................ 170
8.11. Text Search Types ...................................................................................... 171
8.11.1. tsvector ..................................................................................... 171
8.11.2. tsquery ....................................................................................... 173
8.12. UUID Type ............................................................................................... 174
8.13. XML Type ................................................................................................ 174
8.13.1. Creating XML Values ...................................................................... 175
8.13.2. Encoding Handling .......................................................................... 176
8.13.3. Accessing XML Values .................................................................... 176
8.14. JSON Types .............................................................................................. 176
8.14.1. JSON Input and Output Syntax .......................................................... 178
8.14.2. Designing JSON Documents .............................................................. 179
8.14.3. jsonb Containment and Existence ..................................................... 179
8.14.4. jsonb Indexing .............................................................................. 181
8.14.5. jsonb Subscripting ......................................................................... 184
8.14.6. Transforms ..................................................................................... 185
8.14.7. jsonpath Type ................................................................................. 185
8.15. Arrays ...................................................................................................... 187
8.15.1. Declaration of Array Types ............................................................... 187
8.15.2. Array Value Input ............................................................................ 188
8.15.3. Accessing Arrays ............................................................................. 189
8.15.4. Modifying Arrays ............................................................................ 191
8.15.5. Searching in Arrays ......................................................................... 194
8.15.6. Array Input and Output Syntax .......................................................... 195
8.16. Composite Types ....................................................................................... 196
8.16.1. Declaration of Composite Types ......................................................... 196
8.16.2. Constructing Composite Values .......................................................... 197
8.16.3. Accessing Composite Types .............................................................. 198
8.16.4. Modifying Composite Types .............................................................. 199
8.16.5. Using Composite Types in Queries ..................................................... 199
8.16.6. Composite Type Input and Output Syntax ............................................ 202
8.17. Range Types ............................................................................................. 202
8.17.1. Built-in Range and Multirange Types .................................................. 203
8.17.2. Examples ....................................................................................... 203
8.17.3. Inclusive and Exclusive Bounds ......................................................... 204
8.17.4. Infinite (Unbounded) Ranges ............................................................. 204
8.17.5. Range Input/Output .......................................................................... 204
8.17.6. Constructing Ranges and Multiranges .................................................. 205

27
 The SQL Language

8.17.7. Discrete Range Types ....................................................................... 206

8.17.8. Defining New Range Types ............................................................... 206
8.17.9. Indexing ......................................................................................... 207
8.17.10. Constraints on Ranges .................................................................... 208
8.18. Domain Types ........................................................................................... 209
8.19. Object Identifier Types ............................................................................... 209
8.20. pg_lsn Type ........................................................................................... 212
8.21. Pseudo-Types ............................................................................................ 212
9. Functions and Operators .......................................................................................... 214
9.1. Logical Operators ........................................................................................ 214
9.2. Comparison Functions and Operators .............................................................. 215
9.3. Mathematical Functions and Operators ............................................................ 219
9.4. String Functions and Operators ...................................................................... 226
9.4.1. format .......................................................................................... 233
9.5. Binary String Functions and Operators ............................................................ 235
9.6. Bit String Functions and Operators ................................................................. 239
9.7. Pattern Matching ......................................................................................... 241
9.7.1. LIKE .............................................................................................. 242
9.7.2. SIMILAR TO Regular Expressions ..................................................... 243
9.7.3. POSIX Regular Expressions ................................................................ 244
9.8. Data Type Formatting Functions ..................................................................... 258
9.9. Date/Time Functions and Operators ................................................................ 266
9.9.1. EXTRACT, date_part .................................................................... 273
9.9.2. date_trunc .................................................................................. 277
9.9.3. date_bin ...................................................................................... 278
9.9.4. AT TIME ZONE ............................................................................. 279
9.9.5. Current Date/Time ............................................................................. 280
9.9.6. Delaying Execution ........................................................................... 281
9.10. Enum Support Functions ............................................................................. 282
9.11. Geometric Functions and Operators ............................................................... 283
9.12. Network Address Functions and Operators ..................................................... 290
9.13. Text Search Functions and Operators ............................................................. 293
9.14. UUID Functions ........................................................................................ 299
9.15. XML Functions ......................................................................................... 299
9.15.1. Producing XML Content ................................................................... 300
9.15.2. XML Predicates .............................................................................. 304
9.15.3. Processing XML .............................................................................. 306
9.15.4. Mapping Tables to XML .................................................................. 310
9.16. JSON Functions and Operators ..................................................................... 314
9.16.1. Processing and Creating JSON Data .................................................... 314
9.16.2. The SQL/JSON Path Language .......................................................... 324
9.17. Sequence Manipulation Functions ................................................................. 332
9.18. Conditional Expressions .............................................................................. 333
9.18.1. CASE ............................................................................................. 334
9.18.2. COALESCE ..................................................................................... 335
9.18.3. NULLIF ......................................................................................... 335
9.18.4. GREATEST and LEAST .................................................................... 336
9.19. Array Functions and Operators ..................................................................... 336
9.20. Range/Multirange Functions and Operators ..................................................... 340
9.21. Aggregate Functions ................................................................................... 345
9.22. Window Functions ..................................................................................... 352
9.23. Subquery Expressions ................................................................................. 354
9.23.1. EXISTS ......................................................................................... 354
9.23.2. IN ................................................................................................. 354
9.23.3. NOT IN ........................................................................................ 355
9.23.4. ANY/SOME ...................................................................................... 355
9.23.5. ALL ............................................................................................... 356
9.23.6. Single-Row Comparison ................................................................... 356

28
 The SQL Language

9.24. Row and Array Comparisons ....................................................................... 356

9.24.1. IN ................................................................................................. 357
9.24.2. NOT IN ........................................................................................ 357
9.24.3. ANY/SOME (array) ............................................................................ 357
9.24.4. ALL (array) .................................................................................... 358
9.24.5. Row Constructor Comparison ............................................................ 358
9.24.6. Composite Type Comparison ............................................................. 359
9.25. Set Returning Functions .............................................................................. 359
9.26. System Information Functions and Operators .................................................. 362
9.27. System Administration Functions .................................................................. 379
9.27.1. Configuration Settings Functions ........................................................ 379
9.27.2. Server Signaling Functions ................................................................ 380
9.27.3. Backup Control Functions ................................................................. 382
9.27.4. Recovery Control Functions .............................................................. 384
9.27.5. Snapshot Synchronization Functions ................................................... 386
9.27.6. Replication Management Functions ..................................................... 386
9.27.7. Database Object Management Functions .............................................. 389
9.27.8. Index Maintenance Functions ............................................................. 392
9.27.9. Generic File Access Functions ........................................................... 392
9.27.10. Advisory Lock Functions ................................................................ 394
9.28. Trigger Functions ....................................................................................... 395
9.29. Event Trigger Functions .............................................................................. 396
9.29.1. Capturing Changes at Command End .................................................. 396
9.29.2. Processing Objects Dropped by a DDL Command ................................. 397
9.29.3. Handling a Table Rewrite Event ......................................................... 399
9.30. Statistics Information Functions .................................................................... 399
9.30.1. Inspecting MCV Lists ...................................................................... 399
10. Type Conversion .................................................................................................. 401
10.1. Overview .................................................................................................. 401
10.2. Operators .................................................................................................. 402
10.3. Functions .................................................................................................. 406
10.4. Value Storage ............................................................................................ 410
10.5. UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs .......................................................... 411
10.6. SELECT Output Columns ............................................................................ 412
11. Indexes ............................................................................................................... 414
11.1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 414
11.2. Index Types .............................................................................................. 415
11.2.1. B-Tree ........................................................................................... 415
11.2.2. Hash .............................................................................................. 415
11.2.3. GiST ............................................................................................. 415
11.2.4. SP-GiST ......................................................................................... 416
11.2.5. GIN ............................................................................................... 416
11.2.6. BRIN ............................................................................................. 416
11.3. Multicolumn Indexes .................................................................................. 417
11.4. Indexes and ORDER BY ............................................................................. 418
11.5. Combining Multiple Indexes ........................................................................ 419
11.6. Unique Indexes .......................................................................................... 419
11.7. Indexes on Expressions ............................................................................... 420
11.8. Partial Indexes ........................................................................................... 420
11.9. Index-Only Scans and Covering Indexes ........................................................ 423
11.10. Operator Classes and Operator Families ....................................................... 426
11.11. Indexes and Collations .............................................................................. 427
11.12. Examining Index Usage ............................................................................. 428
12. Full Text Search ................................................................................................... 430
12.1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 430
12.1.1. What Is a Document? ....................................................................... 431
12.1.2. Basic Text Matching ........................................................................ 431
12.1.3. Configurations ................................................................................. 433

29
 The SQL Language

12.2. Tables and Indexes ..................................................................................... 434

12.2.1. Searching a Table ............................................................................ 434
12.2.2. Creating Indexes .............................................................................. 435
12.3. Controlling Text Search .............................................................................. 436
12.3.1. Parsing Documents .......................................................................... 436
12.3.2. Parsing Queries ............................................................................... 437
12.3.3. Ranking Search Results .................................................................... 440
12.3.4. Highlighting Results ......................................................................... 442
12.4. Additional Features .................................................................................... 443
12.4.1. Manipulating Documents .................................................................. 443
12.4.2. Manipulating Queries ....................................................................... 444
12.4.3. Triggers for Automatic Updates ......................................................... 447
12.4.4. Gathering Document Statistics ........................................................... 448
12.5. Parsers ..................................................................................................... 449
12.6. Dictionaries ............................................................................................... 450
12.6.1. Stop Words .................................................................................... 451
12.6.2. Simple Dictionary ............................................................................ 452
12.6.3. Synonym Dictionary ........................................................................ 453
12.6.4. Thesaurus Dictionary ........................................................................ 455
12.6.5. Ispell Dictionary .............................................................................. 457
12.6.6. Snowball Dictionary ......................................................................... 459
12.7. Configuration Example ............................................................................... 460
12.8. Testing and Debugging Text Search .............................................................. 461
12.8.1. Configuration Testing ....................................................................... 461
12.8.2. Parser Testing ................................................................................. 464
12.8.3. Dictionary Testing ........................................................................... 465
12.9. Preferred Index Types for Text Search ........................................................... 466
12.10. psql Support ............................................................................................ 467
12.11. Limitations .............................................................................................. 470
13. Concurrency Control ............................................................................................. 471
13.1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 471
13.2. Transaction Isolation ................................................................................... 471
13.2.1. Read Committed Isolation Level ........................................................ 472
13.2.2. Repeatable Read Isolation Level ......................................................... 474
13.2.3. Serializable Isolation Level ................................................................ 475
13.3. Explicit Locking ........................................................................................ 477
13.3.1. Table-Level Locks ........................................................................... 477
13.3.2. Row-Level Locks ............................................................................ 479
13.3.3. Page-Level Locks ............................................................................ 480
13.3.4. Deadlocks ....................................................................................... 480
13.3.5. Advisory Locks ............................................................................... 481
13.4. Data Consistency Checks at the Application Level ........................................... 482
13.4.1. Enforcing Consistency with Serializable Transactions ............................. 483
13.4.2. Enforcing Consistency with Explicit Blocking Locks .............................. 483
13.5. Caveats ..................................................................................................... 484
13.6. Locking and Indexes ................................................................................... 484
14. Performance Tips ................................................................................................. 486
14.1. Using EXPLAIN ........................................................................................ 486
14.1.1. EXPLAIN Basics ............................................................................. 486
14.1.2. EXPLAIN ANALYZE ...................................................................... 492
14.1.3. Caveats .......................................................................................... 497
14.2. Statistics Used by the Planner ...................................................................... 498
14.2.1. Single-Column Statistics ................................................................... 498
14.2.2. Extended Statistics ........................................................................... 500
14.3. Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses ......................................... 503
14.4. Populating a Database ................................................................................. 505
14.4.1. Disable Autocommit ........................................................................ 505
14.4.2. Use COPY ...................................................................................... 505

30
 The SQL Language

14.4.3. Remove Indexes .............................................................................. 506

14.4.4. Remove Foreign Key Constraints ....................................................... 506
14.4.5. Increase maintenance_work_mem ................................................. 506
14.4.6. Increase max_wal_size ................................................................ 506
14.4.7. Disable WAL Archival and Streaming Replication ................................. 506
14.4.8. Run ANALYZE Afterwards ................................................................ 507
14.4.9. Some Notes about pg_dump .............................................................. 507
14.5. Non-Durable Settings .................................................................................. 508
15. Parallel Query ...................................................................................................... 509
15.1. How Parallel Query Works .......................................................................... 509
15.2. When Can Parallel Query Be Used? .............................................................. 510
15.3. Parallel Plans ............................................................................................. 511
15.3.1. Parallel Scans .................................................................................. 511
15.3.2. Parallel Joins .................................................................................. 511
15.3.3. Parallel Aggregation ......................................................................... 512
15.3.4. Parallel Append ............................................................................... 512
15.3.5. Parallel Plan Tips ............................................................................ 512
15.4. Parallel Safety ........................................................................................... 513
15.4.1. Parallel Labeling for Functions and Aggregates ..................................... 513

31
Chapter 4. SQL Syntax
This chapter describes the syntax of SQL. It forms the foundation for understanding the following
chapters which will go into detail about how SQL commands are applied to define and modify data.

We also advise users who are already familiar with SQL to read this chapter carefully because it
contains several rules and concepts that are implemented inconsistently among SQL databases or that
are specific to PostgreSQL.

4.1. Lexical Structure

SQL input consists of a sequence of commands. A command is composed of a sequence of tokens,
terminated by a semicolon (“;”). The end of the input stream also terminates a command. Which tokens
are valid depends on the syntax of the particular command.

A token can be a key word, an identifier, a quoted identifier, a literal (or constant), or a special character
symbol. Tokens are normally separated by whitespace (space, tab, newline), but need not be if there
is no ambiguity (which is generally only the case if a special character is adjacent to some other token
type).

For example, the following is (syntactically) valid SQL input:

SELECT * FROM MY_TABLE;

UPDATE MY_TABLE SET A = 5;
INSERT INTO MY_TABLE VALUES (3, 'hi there');

This is a sequence of three commands, one per line (although this is not required; more than one
command can be on a line, and commands can usefully be split across lines).

Additionally, comments can occur in SQL input. They are not tokens, they are effectively equivalent
to whitespace.

The SQL syntax is not very consistent regarding what tokens identify commands and which are
operands or parameters. The first few tokens are generally the command name, so in the above exam-
ple we would usually speak of a “SELECT”, an “UPDATE”, and an “INSERT” command. But for
instance the UPDATE command always requires a SET token to appear in a certain position, and this
particular variation of INSERT also requires a VALUES in order to be complete. The precise syntax
rules for each command are described in Part VI.

4.1.1. Identifiers and Key Words

Tokens such as SELECT, UPDATE, or VALUES in the example above are examples of key words,
that is, words that have a fixed meaning in the SQL language. The tokens MY_TABLE and A are
examples of identifiers. They identify names of tables, columns, or other database objects, depending
on the command they are used in. Therefore they are sometimes simply called “names”. Key words
and identifiers have the same lexical structure, meaning that one cannot know whether a token is an
identifier or a key word without knowing the language. A complete list of key words can be found
in Appendix C.

SQL identifiers and key words must begin with a letter (a-z, but also letters with diacritical marks
and non-Latin letters) or an underscore (_). Subsequent characters in an identifier or key word can be
letters, underscores, digits (0-9), or dollar signs ($). Note that dollar signs are not allowed in identifiers
according to the letter of the SQL standard, so their use might render applications less portable. The
SQL standard will not define a key word that contains digits or starts or ends with an underscore, so
identifiers of this form are safe against possible conflict with future extensions of the standard.

32
 SQL Syntax

The system uses no more than NAMEDATALEN-1 bytes of an identifier; longer names can be written
in commands, but they will be truncated. By default, NAMEDATALEN is 64 so the maximum identifier
length is 63 bytes. If this limit is problematic, it can be raised by changing the NAMEDATALEN constant
in src/include/pg_config_manual.h.

Key words and unquoted identifiers are case insensitive. Therefore:

UPDATE MY_TABLE SET A = 5;

can equivalently be written as:

uPDaTE my_TabLE SeT a = 5;

A convention often used is to write key words in upper case and names in lower case, e.g.:

UPDATE my_table SET a = 5;

There is a second kind of identifier: the delimited identifier or quoted identifier. It is formed by
enclosing an arbitrary sequence of characters in double-quotes ("). A delimited identifier is always
an identifier, never a key word. So "select" could be used to refer to a column or table named
“select”, whereas an unquoted select would be taken as a key word and would therefore provoke
a parse error when used where a table or column name is expected. The example can be written with
quoted identifiers like this:

UPDATE "my_table" SET "a" = 5;

Quoted identifiers can contain any character, except the character with code zero. (To include a double
quote, write two double quotes.) This allows constructing table or column names that would otherwise
not be possible, such as ones containing spaces or ampersands. The length limitation still applies.

Quoting an identifier also makes it case-sensitive, whereas unquoted names are always folded to lower
case. For example, the identifiers FOO, foo, and "foo" are considered the same by PostgreSQL, but
"Foo" and "FOO" are different from these three and each other. (The folding of unquoted names to
lower case in PostgreSQL is incompatible with the SQL standard, which says that unquoted names
should be folded to upper case. Thus, foo should be equivalent to "FOO" not "foo" according to
the standard. If you want to write portable applications you are advised to always quote a particular
name or never quote it.)

A variant of quoted identifiers allows including escaped Unicode characters identified by their code
points. This variant starts with U& (upper or lower case U followed by ampersand) immediately before
the opening double quote, without any spaces in between, for example U&"foo". (Note that this
creates an ambiguity with the operator &. Use spaces around the operator to avoid this problem.) Inside
the quotes, Unicode characters can be specified in escaped form by writing a backslash followed by
the four-digit hexadecimal code point number or alternatively a backslash followed by a plus sign
followed by a six-digit hexadecimal code point number. For example, the identifier "data" could
be written as

U&"d\0061t\+000061"

The following less trivial example writes the Russian word “slon” (elephant) in Cyrillic letters:

U&"\0441\043B\043E\043D"

If a different escape character than backslash is desired, it can be specified using the UESCAPE clause
after the string, for example:

33
 SQL Syntax

U&"d!0061t!+000061" UESCAPE '!'

The escape character can be any single character other than a hexadecimal digit, the plus sign, a single
quote, a double quote, or a whitespace character. Note that the escape character is written in single
quotes, not double quotes, after UESCAPE.

To include the escape character in the identifier literally, write it twice.

Either the 4-digit or the 6-digit escape form can be used to specify UTF-16 surrogate pairs to com-
pose characters with code points larger than U+FFFF, although the availability of the 6-digit form
technically makes this unnecessary. (Surrogate pairs are not stored directly, but are combined into a
single code point.)

If the server encoding is not UTF-8, the Unicode code point identified by one of these escape sequences
is converted to the actual server encoding; an error is reported if that's not possible.

4.1.2. Constants
There are three kinds of implicitly-typed constants in PostgreSQL: strings, bit strings, and numbers.
Constants can also be specified with explicit types, which can enable more accurate representation and
more efficient handling by the system. These alternatives are discussed in the following subsections.

4.1.2.1. String Constants

A string constant in SQL is an arbitrary sequence of characters bounded by single quotes ('), for
example 'This is a string'. To include a single-quote character within a string constant,
write two adjacent single quotes, e.g., 'Dianne''s horse'. Note that this is not the same as a
double-quote character (").

Two string constants that are only separated by whitespace with at least one newline are concatenated
and effectively treated as if the string had been written as one constant. For example:

SELECT 'foo'
'bar';

is equivalent to:

SELECT 'foobar';

but:

SELECT 'foo' 'bar';

is not valid syntax. (This slightly bizarre behavior is specified by SQL; PostgreSQL is following the
standard.)

4.1.2.2. String Constants with C-Style Escapes

PostgreSQL also accepts “escape” string constants, which are an extension to the SQL standard. An
escape string constant is specified by writing the letter E (upper or lower case) just before the opening
single quote, e.g., E'foo'. (When continuing an escape string constant across lines, write E only
before the first opening quote.) Within an escape string, a backslash character (\) begins a C-like
backslash escape sequence, in which the combination of backslash and following character(s) repre-
sent a special byte value, as shown in Table 4.1.

34
 SQL Syntax

Table 4.1. Backslash Escape Sequences

Backslash Escape Sequence Interpretation
\b backspace
\f form feed
\n newline
\r carriage return
\t tab
\o, \oo, \ooo (o = 0–7) octal byte value
\xh, \xhh (h = 0–9, A–F) hexadecimal byte value
\uxxxx, \Uxxxxxxxx (x = 0–9, A–F) 16 or 32-bit hexadecimal Unicode character val-
ue

Any other character following a backslash is taken literally. Thus, to include a backslash character,
write two backslashes (\\). Also, a single quote can be included in an escape string by writing \',
in addition to the normal way of ''.

It is your responsibility that the byte sequences you create, especially when using the octal or hexa-
decimal escapes, compose valid characters in the server character set encoding. A useful alternative
is to use Unicode escapes or the alternative Unicode escape syntax, explained in Section 4.1.2.3; then
the server will check that the character conversion is possible.

Caution
If the configuration parameter standard_conforming_strings is off, then PostgreSQL recog-
nizes backslash escapes in both regular and escape string constants. However, as of Post-
greSQL 9.1, the default is on, meaning that backslash escapes are recognized only in es-
cape string constants. This behavior is more standards-compliant, but might break applications
which rely on the historical behavior, where backslash escapes were always recognized. As
a workaround, you can set this parameter to off, but it is better to migrate away from using
backslash escapes. If you need to use a backslash escape to represent a special character, write
the string constant with an E.

In addition to standard_conforming_strings, the configuration parameters es-

cape_string_warning and backslash_quote govern treatment of backslashes in string constants.

The character with the code zero cannot be in a string constant.

4.1.2.3. String Constants with Unicode Escapes

PostgreSQL also supports another type of escape syntax for strings that allows specifying arbitrary
Unicode characters by code point. A Unicode escape string constant starts with U& (upper or lower
case letter U followed by ampersand) immediately before the opening quote, without any spaces in
between, for example U&'foo'. (Note that this creates an ambiguity with the operator &. Use spaces
around the operator to avoid this problem.) Inside the quotes, Unicode characters can be specified
in escaped form by writing a backslash followed by the four-digit hexadecimal code point number
or alternatively a backslash followed by a plus sign followed by a six-digit hexadecimal code point
number. For example, the string 'data' could be written as

U&'d\0061t\+000061'

The following less trivial example writes the Russian word “slon” (elephant) in Cyrillic letters:

35
 SQL Syntax

U&'\0441\043B\043E\043D'

If a different escape character than backslash is desired, it can be specified using the UESCAPE clause
after the string, for example:

U&'d!0061t!+000061' UESCAPE '!'

The escape character can be any single character other than a hexadecimal digit, the plus sign, a single
quote, a double quote, or a whitespace character.

To include the escape character in the string literally, write it twice.

Either the 4-digit or the 6-digit escape form can be used to specify UTF-16 surrogate pairs to com-
pose characters with code points larger than U+FFFF, although the availability of the 6-digit form
technically makes this unnecessary. (Surrogate pairs are not stored directly, but are combined into a
single code point.)

If the server encoding is not UTF-8, the Unicode code point identified by one of these escape sequences
is converted to the actual server encoding; an error is reported if that's not possible.

Also, the Unicode escape syntax for string constants only works when the configuration parameter
standard_conforming_strings is turned on. This is because otherwise this syntax could confuse clients
that parse the SQL statements to the point that it could lead to SQL injections and similar security
issues. If the parameter is set to off, this syntax will be rejected with an error message.

4.1.2.4. Dollar-Quoted String Constants

While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually convenient, it can be difficult to
understand when the desired string contains many single quotes or backslashes, since each of those
must be doubled. To allow more readable queries in such situations, PostgreSQL provides another
way, called “dollar quoting”, to write string constants. A dollar-quoted string constant consists of a
dollar sign ($), an optional “tag” of zero or more characters, another dollar sign, an arbitrary sequence
of characters that makes up the string content, a dollar sign, the same tag that began this dollar quote,
and a dollar sign. For example, here are two different ways to specify the string “Dianne's horse” using
dollar quoting:

$$Dianne's horse$$
$SomeTag$Dianne's horse$SomeTag$

Notice that inside the dollar-quoted string, single quotes can be used without needing to be escaped.
Indeed, no characters inside a dollar-quoted string are ever escaped: the string content is always written
literally. Backslashes are not special, and neither are dollar signs, unless they are part of a sequence
matching the opening tag.

It is possible to nest dollar-quoted string constants by choosing different tags at each nesting level.
This is most commonly used in writing function definitions. For example:

$function$
BEGIN
RETURN ($1 ~ $q$[\t\r\n\v\\]$q$);
END;
$function$

Here, the sequence $q$[\t\r\n\v\\]$q$ represents a dollar-quoted literal string [\t\r\n\v

\\], which will be recognized when the function body is executed by PostgreSQL. But since the
sequence does not match the outer dollar quoting delimiter $function$, it is just some more char-
acters within the constant so far as the outer string is concerned.

36
 SQL Syntax

The tag, if any, of a dollar-quoted string follows the same rules as an unquoted identifier, except that it
cannot contain a dollar sign. Tags are case sensitive, so $tag$String content$tag$ is correct,
but $TAG$String content$tag$ is not.

A dollar-quoted string that follows a keyword or identifier must be separated from it by whitespace;
otherwise the dollar quoting delimiter would be taken as part of the preceding identifier.

Dollar quoting is not part of the SQL standard, but it is often a more convenient way to write com-
plicated string literals than the standard-compliant single quote syntax. It is particularly useful when
representing string constants inside other constants, as is often needed in procedural function defini-
tions. With single-quote syntax, each backslash in the above example would have to be written as four
backslashes, which would be reduced to two backslashes in parsing the original string constant, and
then to one when the inner string constant is re-parsed during function execution.

4.1.2.5. Bit-String Constants

Bit-string constants look like regular string constants with a B (upper or lower case) immediately
before the opening quote (no intervening whitespace), e.g., B'1001'. The only characters allowed
within bit-string constants are 0 and 1.

Alternatively, bit-string constants can be specified in hexadecimal notation, using a leading X (upper
or lower case), e.g., X'1FF'. This notation is equivalent to a bit-string constant with four binary digits
for each hexadecimal digit.

Both forms of bit-string constant can be continued across lines in the same way as regular string
constants. Dollar quoting cannot be used in a bit-string constant.

4.1.2.6. Numeric Constants

Numeric constants are accepted in these general forms:

digits
digits.[digits][e[+-]digits]
[digits].digits[e[+-]digits]
digitse[+-]digits

where digits is one or more decimal digits (0 through 9). At least one digit must be before or after the
decimal point, if one is used. At least one digit must follow the exponent marker (e), if one is present.
There cannot be any spaces or other characters embedded in the constant. Note that any leading plus
or minus sign is not actually considered part of the constant; it is an operator applied to the constant.

These are some examples of valid numeric constants:

42
3.5
4.
.001
5e2
1.925e-3

A numeric constant that contains neither a decimal point nor an exponent is initially presumed to be
type integer if its value fits in type integer (32 bits); otherwise it is presumed to be type bigint
if its value fits in type bigint (64 bits); otherwise it is taken to be type numeric. Constants that
contain decimal points and/or exponents are always initially presumed to be type numeric.

The initially assigned data type of a numeric constant is just a starting point for the type resolution
algorithms. In most cases the constant will be automatically coerced to the most appropriate type de-
pending on context. When necessary, you can force a numeric value to be interpreted as a specific data

37
 SQL Syntax

type by casting it. For example, you can force a numeric value to be treated as type real (float4)
by writing:

REAL '1.23' -- string style

1.23::REAL -- PostgreSQL (historical) style

These are actually just special cases of the general casting notations discussed next.

4.1.2.7. Constants of Other Types

A constant of an arbitrary type can be entered using any one of the following notations:

type 'string'
'string'::type
CAST ( 'string' AS type )

The string constant's text is passed to the input conversion routine for the type called type. The result
is a constant of the indicated type. The explicit type cast can be omitted if there is no ambiguity as to
the type the constant must be (for example, when it is assigned directly to a table column), in which
case it is automatically coerced.

The string constant can be written using either regular SQL notation or dollar-quoting.

It is also possible to specify a type coercion using a function-like syntax:

typename ( 'string' )

but not all type names can be used in this way; see Section 4.2.9 for details.

The ::, CAST(), and function-call syntaxes can also be used to specify run-time type conver-
sions of arbitrary expressions, as discussed in Section 4.2.9. To avoid syntactic ambiguity, the type
'string' syntax can only be used to specify the type of a simple literal constant. Another restriction
on the type 'string' syntax is that it does not work for array types; use :: or CAST() to specify
the type of an array constant.

The CAST() syntax conforms to SQL. The type 'string' syntax is a generalization of the
standard: SQL specifies this syntax only for a few data types, but PostgreSQL allows it for all types.
The syntax with :: is historical PostgreSQL usage, as is the function-call syntax.

4.1.3. Operators
An operator name is a sequence of up to NAMEDATALEN-1 (63 by default) characters from the fol-
lowing list:

+-*/<>=~!@#%^&|`?

There are a few restrictions on operator names, however:

• -- and /* cannot appear anywhere in an operator name, since they will be taken as the start of
a comment.

• A multiple-character operator name cannot end in + or -, unless the name also contains at least
one of these characters:

~!@#%^&|`?

38
 SQL Syntax

For example, @- is an allowed operator name, but *- is not. This restriction allows PostgreSQL to
parse SQL-compliant queries without requiring spaces between tokens.

When working with non-SQL-standard operator names, you will usually need to separate adjacent
operators with spaces to avoid ambiguity. For example, if you have defined a prefix operator named
@, you cannot write X*@Y; you must write X* @Y to ensure that PostgreSQL reads it as two operator
names not one.

4.1.4. Special Characters

Some characters that are not alphanumeric have a special meaning that is different from being an oper-
ator. Details on the usage can be found at the location where the respective syntax element is described.
This section only exists to advise the existence and summarize the purposes of these characters.

• A dollar sign ($) followed by digits is used to represent a positional parameter in the body of a
function definition or a prepared statement. In other contexts the dollar sign can be part of an iden-
tifier or a dollar-quoted string constant.

• Parentheses (()) have their usual meaning to group expressions and enforce precedence. In some
cases parentheses are required as part of the fixed syntax of a particular SQL command.

• Brackets ([]) are used to select the elements of an array. See Section 8.15 for more information
on arrays.

• Commas (,) are used in some syntactical constructs to separate the elements of a list.

• The semicolon (;) terminates an SQL command. It cannot appear anywhere within a command,
except within a string constant or quoted identifier.

• The colon (:) is used to select “slices” from arrays. (See Section 8.15.) In certain SQL dialects
(such as Embedded SQL), the colon is used to prefix variable names.

• The asterisk (*) is used in some contexts to denote all the fields of a table row or composite value.
It also has a special meaning when used as the argument of an aggregate function, namely that the
aggregate does not require any explicit parameter.

• The period (.) is used in numeric constants, and to separate schema, table, and column names.

4.1.5. Comments
A comment is a sequence of characters beginning with double dashes and extending to the end of
the line, e.g.:

-- This is a standard SQL comment

Alternatively, C-style block comments can be used:

/* multiline comment
* with nesting: /* nested block comment */
*/

where the comment begins with /* and extends to the matching occurrence of */. These block com-
ments nest, as specified in the SQL standard but unlike C, so that one can comment out larger blocks
of code that might contain existing block comments.

A comment is removed from the input stream before further syntax analysis and is effectively replaced
by whitespace.

39
 SQL Syntax

4.1.6. Operator Precedence

Table 4.2 shows the precedence and associativity of the operators in PostgreSQL. Most operators have
the same precedence and are left-associative. The precedence and associativity of the operators is hard-
wired into the parser. Add parentheses if you want an expression with multiple operators to be parsed
in some other way than what the precedence rules imply.

Table 4.2. Operator Precedence (highest to lowest)

Operator/Element Associativity Description
. left table/column name separator
:: left PostgreSQL-style typecast
[] left array element selection
+- right unary plus, unary minus
^ left exponentiation
*/% left multiplication, division, modulo
+- left addition, subtraction
(any other operator) left all other native and user-defined oper-
ators
BETWEEN IN LIKE ILIKE range containment, set membership,
SIMILAR string matching
< > = <= >= <> comparison operators
IS ISNULL NOTNULL IS TRUE, IS FALSE, IS NULL,
IS DISTINCT FROM, etc
NOT right logical negation
AND left logical conjunction
OR left logical disjunction

Note that the operator precedence rules also apply to user-defined operators that have the same names
as the built-in operators mentioned above. For example, if you define a “+” operator for some custom
data type it will have the same precedence as the built-in “+” operator, no matter what yours does.

When a schema-qualified operator name is used in the OPERATOR syntax, as for example in:

SELECT 3 OPERATOR(pg_catalog.+) 4;

the OPERATOR construct is taken to have the default precedence shown in Table 4.2 for “any other
operator”. This is true no matter which specific operator appears inside OPERATOR().

Note
PostgreSQL versions before 9.5 used slightly different operator precedence rules. In particu-
lar, <= >= and <> used to be treated as generic operators; IS tests used to have higher pri-
ority; and NOT BETWEEN and related constructs acted inconsistently, being taken in some
cases as having the precedence of NOT rather than BETWEEN. These rules were changed for
better compliance with the SQL standard and to reduce confusion from inconsistent treatment
of logically equivalent constructs. In most cases, these changes will result in no behavioral
change, or perhaps in “no such operator” failures which can be resolved by adding parentheses.
However there are corner cases in which a query might change behavior without any parsing
error being reported.

40
 SQL Syntax

4.2. Value Expressions

Value expressions are used in a variety of contexts, such as in the target list of the SELECT command,
as new column values in INSERT or UPDATE, or in search conditions in a number of commands. The
result of a value expression is sometimes called a scalar, to distinguish it from the result of a table
expression (which is a table). Value expressions are therefore also called scalar expressions (or even
simply expressions). The expression syntax allows the calculation of values from primitive parts using
arithmetic, logical, set, and other operations.

A value expression is one of the following:

• A constant or literal value

• A column reference

• A positional parameter reference, in the body of a function definition or prepared statement

• A subscripted expression

• A field selection expression

• An operator invocation

• A function call

• An aggregate expression

• A window function call

• A type cast

• A collation expression

• A scalar subquery

• An array constructor

• A row constructor

• Another value expression in parentheses (used to group subexpressions and override precedence)

In addition to this list, there are a number of constructs that can be classified as an expression but do
not follow any general syntax rules. These generally have the semantics of a function or operator and
are explained in the appropriate location in Chapter 9. An example is the IS NULL clause.

We have already discussed constants in Section 4.1.2. The following sections discuss the remaining
options.

4.2.1. Column References

A column can be referenced in the form:

correlation.columnname

correlation is the name of a table (possibly qualified with a schema name), or an alias for a table
defined by means of a FROM clause. The correlation name and separating dot can be omitted if the
column name is unique across all the tables being used in the current query. (See also Chapter 7.)

4.2.2. Positional Parameters

41
 SQL Syntax

A positional parameter reference is used to indicate a value that is supplied externally to an SQL state-
ment. Parameters are used in SQL function definitions and in prepared queries. Some client libraries
also support specifying data values separately from the SQL command string, in which case parame-
ters are used to refer to the out-of-line data values. The form of a parameter reference is:

$number

For example, consider the definition of a function, dept, as:

CREATE FUNCTION dept(text) RETURNS dept

AS $$ SELECT * FROM dept WHERE name = $1 $$
LANGUAGE SQL;

Here the $1 references the value of the first function argument whenever the function is invoked.

4.2.3. Subscripts
If an expression yields a value of an array type, then a specific element of the array value can be
extracted by writing

expression[subscript]

or multiple adjacent elements (an “array slice”) can be extracted by writing

expression[lower_subscript:upper_subscript]

(Here, the brackets [ ] are meant to appear literally.) Each subscript is itself an expression, which
will be rounded to the nearest integer value.

In general the array expression must be parenthesized, but the parentheses can be omitted when
the expression to be subscripted is just a column reference or positional parameter. Also, multiple
subscripts can be concatenated when the original array is multidimensional. For example:

mytable.arraycolumn[4]
mytable.two_d_column[17][34]
$1[10:42]
(arrayfunction(a,b))[42]

The parentheses in the last example are required. See Section 8.15 for more about arrays.

4.2.4. Field Selection

If an expression yields a value of a composite type (row type), then a specific field of the row can
be extracted by writing

expression.fieldname

In general the row expression must be parenthesized, but the parentheses can be omitted when the
expression to be selected from is just a table reference or positional parameter. For example:

mytable.mycolumn
$1.somecolumn

42
 SQL Syntax

(rowfunction(a,b)).col3

(Thus, a qualified column reference is actually just a special case of the field selection syntax.) An
important special case is extracting a field from a table column that is of a composite type:

(compositecol).somefield
(mytable.compositecol).somefield

The parentheses are required here to show that compositecol is a column name not a table name,
or that mytable is a table name not a schema name in the second case.

You can ask for all fields of a composite value by writing .*:

(compositecol).*

This notation behaves differently depending on context; see Section 8.16.5 for details.

4.2.5. Operator Invocations

There are two possible syntaxes for an operator invocation:

expression operator expression (binary infix operator)

operator expression (unary prefix operator)

where the operator token follows the syntax rules of Section 4.1.3, or is one of the key words AND,
OR, and NOT, or is a qualified operator name in the form:

OPERATOR(schema.operatorname)

Which particular operators exist and whether they are unary or binary depends on what operators have
been defined by the system or the user. Chapter 9 describes the built-in operators.

4.2.6. Function Calls

The syntax for a function call is the name of a function (possibly qualified with a schema name),
followed by its argument list enclosed in parentheses:

function_name ([expression [, expression ... ]] )

For example, the following computes the square root of 2:

sqrt(2)

The list of built-in functions is in Chapter 9. Other functions can be added by the user.

When issuing queries in a database where some users mistrust other users, observe security precautions
from Section 10.3 when writing function calls.

The arguments can optionally have names attached. See Section 4.3 for details.

Note
A function that takes a single argument of composite type can optionally be called using field-
selection syntax, and conversely field selection can be written in functional style. That is, the
notations col(table) and table.col are interchangeable. This behavior is not SQL-

43
 SQL Syntax

standard but is provided in PostgreSQL because it allows use of functions to emulate “com-
puted fields”. For more information see Section 8.16.5.

4.2.7. Aggregate Expressions

An aggregate expression represents the application of an aggregate function across the rows selected
by a query. An aggregate function reduces multiple inputs to a single output value, such as the sum or
average of the inputs. The syntax of an aggregate expression is one of the following:

aggregate_name (expression [ , ... ] [ order_by_clause ] ) [ FILTER

( WHERE filter_clause ) ]
aggregate_name (ALL expression [ , ... ] [ order_by_clause ] )
[ FILTER ( WHERE filter_clause ) ]
aggregate_name (DISTINCT expression [ , ... ] [ order_by_clause ] )
[ FILTER ( WHERE filter_clause ) ]
aggregate_name ( * ) [ FILTER ( WHERE filter_clause ) ]
aggregate_name ( [ expression [ , ... ] ] ) WITHIN GROUP
( order_by_clause ) [ FILTER ( WHERE filter_clause ) ]

where aggregate_name is a previously defined aggregate (possibly qualified with a schema name)
and expression is any value expression that does not itself contain an aggregate expression or
a window function call. The optional order_by_clause and filter_clause are described
below.

The first form of aggregate expression invokes the aggregate once for each input row. The second
form is the same as the first, since ALL is the default. The third form invokes the aggregate once for
each distinct value of the expression (or distinct set of values, for multiple expressions) found in the
input rows. The fourth form invokes the aggregate once for each input row; since no particular input
value is specified, it is generally only useful for the count(*) aggregate function. The last form is
used with ordered-set aggregate functions, which are described below.

Most aggregate functions ignore null inputs, so that rows in which one or more of the expression(s)
yield null are discarded. This can be assumed to be true, unless otherwise specified, for all built-in
aggregates.

For example, count(*) yields the total number of input rows; count(f1) yields the number of
input rows in which f1 is non-null, since count ignores nulls; and count(distinct f1) yields
the number of distinct non-null values of f1.

Ordinarily, the input rows are fed to the aggregate function in an unspecified order. In many cases
this does not matter; for example, min produces the same result no matter what order it receives the
inputs in. However, some aggregate functions (such as array_agg and string_agg) produce
results that depend on the ordering of the input rows. When using such an aggregate, the optional
order_by_clause can be used to specify the desired ordering. The order_by_clause has
the same syntax as for a query-level ORDER BY clause, as described in Section 7.5, except that its
expressions are always just expressions and cannot be output-column names or numbers. For example:

SELECT array_agg(a ORDER BY b DESC) FROM table;

When dealing with multiple-argument aggregate functions, note that the ORDER BY clause goes after
all the aggregate arguments. For example, write this:

SELECT string_agg(a, ',' ORDER BY a) FROM table;

not this:

44
 SQL Syntax

SELECT string_agg(a ORDER BY a, ',') FROM table; -- incorrect

The latter is syntactically valid, but it represents a call of a single-argument aggregate function with
two ORDER BY keys (the second one being rather useless since it's a constant).

If DISTINCT is specified in addition to an order_by_clause, then all the ORDER BY expressions

must match regular arguments of the aggregate; that is, you cannot sort on an expression that is not
included in the DISTINCT list.

Note
The ability to specify both DISTINCT and ORDER BY in an aggregate function is a Post-
greSQL extension.

Placing ORDER BY within the aggregate's regular argument list, as described so far, is used when
ordering the input rows for general-purpose and statistical aggregates, for which ordering is op-
tional. There is a subclass of aggregate functions called ordered-set aggregates for which an or-
der_by_clause is required, usually because the aggregate's computation is only sensible in terms
of a specific ordering of its input rows. Typical examples of ordered-set aggregates include rank
and percentile calculations. For an ordered-set aggregate, the order_by_clause is written inside
WITHIN GROUP (...), as shown in the final syntax alternative above. The expressions in the
order_by_clause are evaluated once per input row just like regular aggregate arguments, sorted
as per the order_by_clause's requirements, and fed to the aggregate function as input arguments.
(This is unlike the case for a non-WITHIN GROUP order_by_clause, which is not treated as
argument(s) to the aggregate function.) The argument expressions preceding WITHIN GROUP, if
any, are called direct arguments to distinguish them from the aggregated arguments listed in the or-
der_by_clause. Unlike regular aggregate arguments, direct arguments are evaluated only once
per aggregate call, not once per input row. This means that they can contain variables only if those
variables are grouped by GROUP BY; this restriction is the same as if the direct arguments were not
inside an aggregate expression at all. Direct arguments are typically used for things like percentile
fractions, which only make sense as a single value per aggregation calculation. The direct argument
list can be empty; in this case, write just () not (*). (PostgreSQL will actually accept either spelling,
but only the first way conforms to the SQL standard.)

An example of an ordered-set aggregate call is:

SELECT percentile_cont(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY income) FROM

households;
percentile_cont
-----------------
50489

which obtains the 50th percentile, or median, value of the income column from table households.
Here, 0.5 is a direct argument; it would make no sense for the percentile fraction to be a value varying
across rows.

If FILTER is specified, then only the input rows for which the filter_clause evaluates to true
are fed to the aggregate function; other rows are discarded. For example:

SELECT
count(*) AS unfiltered,
count(*) FILTER (WHERE i < 5) AS filtered
FROM generate_series(1,10) AS s(i);
unfiltered | filtered
------------+----------

45
 SQL Syntax

10 | 4
(1 row)

The predefined aggregate functions are described in Section 9.21. Other aggregate functions can be
added by the user.

An aggregate expression can only appear in the result list or HAVING clause of a SELECT command.
It is forbidden in other clauses, such as WHERE, because those clauses are logically evaluated before
the results of aggregates are formed.

When an aggregate expression appears in a subquery (see Section 4.2.11 and Section 9.23), the aggre-
gate is normally evaluated over the rows of the subquery. But an exception occurs if the aggregate's
arguments (and filter_clause if any) contain only outer-level variables: the aggregate then be-
longs to the nearest such outer level, and is evaluated over the rows of that query. The aggregate ex-
pression as a whole is then an outer reference for the subquery it appears in, and acts as a constant over
any one evaluation of that subquery. The restriction about appearing only in the result list or HAVING
clause applies with respect to the query level that the aggregate belongs to.

4.2.8. Window Function Calls

A window function call represents the application of an aggregate-like function over some portion of
the rows selected by a query. Unlike non-window aggregate calls, this is not tied to grouping of the
selected rows into a single output row — each row remains separate in the query output. However the
window function has access to all the rows that would be part of the current row's group according
to the grouping specification (PARTITION BY list) of the window function call. The syntax of a
window function call is one of the following:

function_name ([expression [, expression ... ]]) [ FILTER

( WHERE filter_clause ) ] OVER window_name
function_name ([expression [, expression ... ]]) [ FILTER
( WHERE filter_clause ) ] OVER ( window_definition )
function_name ( * ) [ FILTER ( WHERE filter_clause ) ]
OVER window_name
function_name ( * ) [ FILTER ( WHERE filter_clause ) ] OVER
( window_definition )

where window_definition has the syntax

[ existing_window_name ]
[ PARTITION BY expression [, ...] ]
[ ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [ NULLS
{ FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...] ]
[ frame_clause ]

The optional frame_clause can be one of

{ RANGE | ROWS | GROUPS } frame_start [ frame_exclusion ]

{ RANGE | ROWS | GROUPS } BETWEEN frame_start AND frame_end
[ frame_exclusion ]

where frame_start and frame_end can be one of

UNBOUNDED PRECEDING
offset PRECEDING
CURRENT ROW
offset FOLLOWING

46
 SQL Syntax

UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING

and frame_exclusion can be one of

EXCLUDE CURRENT ROW

EXCLUDE GROUP
EXCLUDE TIES
EXCLUDE NO OTHERS

Here, expression represents any value expression that does not itself contain window function
calls.

window_name is a reference to a named window specification defined in the query's WINDOW clause.
Alternatively, a full window_definition can be given within parentheses, using the same syntax
as for defining a named window in the WINDOW clause; see the SELECT reference page for details. It's
worth pointing out that OVER wname is not exactly equivalent to OVER (wname ...); the latter
implies copying and modifying the window definition, and will be rejected if the referenced window
specification includes a frame clause.

The PARTITION BY clause groups the rows of the query into partitions, which are processed sepa-
rately by the window function. PARTITION BY works similarly to a query-level GROUP BY clause,
except that its expressions are always just expressions and cannot be output-column names or num-
bers. Without PARTITION BY, all rows produced by the query are treated as a single partition. The
ORDER BY clause determines the order in which the rows of a partition are processed by the window
function. It works similarly to a query-level ORDER BY clause, but likewise cannot use output-column
names or numbers. Without ORDER BY, rows are processed in an unspecified order.

The frame_clause specifies the set of rows constituting the window frame, which is a subset of
the current partition, for those window functions that act on the frame instead of the whole partition.
The set of rows in the frame can vary depending on which row is the current row. The frame can be
specified in RANGE, ROWS or GROUPS mode; in each case, it runs from the frame_start to the
frame_end. If frame_end is omitted, the end defaults to CURRENT ROW.

A frame_start of UNBOUNDED PRECEDING means that the frame starts with the first row of
the partition, and similarly a frame_end of UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING means that the frame ends
with the last row of the partition.

In RANGE or GROUPS mode, a frame_start of CURRENT ROW means the frame starts with the
current row's first peer row (a row that the window's ORDER BY clause sorts as equivalent to the
current row), while a frame_end of CURRENT ROW means the frame ends with the current row's
last peer row. In ROWS mode, CURRENT ROW simply means the current row.

In the offset PRECEDING and offset FOLLOWING frame options, the offset must be an
expression not containing any variables, aggregate functions, or window functions. The meaning of
the offset depends on the frame mode:

• In ROWS mode, the offset must yield a non-null, non-negative integer, and the option means that
the frame starts or ends the specified number of rows before or after the current row.

• In GROUPS mode, the offset again must yield a non-null, non-negative integer, and the option
means that the frame starts or ends the specified number of peer groups before or after the current
row's peer group, where a peer group is a set of rows that are equivalent in the ORDER BY ordering.
(There must be an ORDER BY clause in the window definition to use GROUPS mode.)

• In RANGE mode, these options require that the ORDER BY clause specify exactly one column. The
offset specifies the maximum difference between the value of that column in the current row and
its value in preceding or following rows of the frame. The data type of the offset expression varies
depending on the data type of the ordering column. For numeric ordering columns it is typically
of the same type as the ordering column, but for datetime ordering columns it is an interval.

47
 SQL Syntax

For example, if the ordering column is of type date or timestamp, one could write RANGE
BETWEEN '1 day' PRECEDING AND '10 days' FOLLOWING. The offset is still
required to be non-null and non-negative, though the meaning of “non-negative” depends on its
data type.

In any case, the distance to the end of the frame is limited by the distance to the end of the partition,
so that for rows near the partition ends the frame might contain fewer rows than elsewhere.

Notice that in both ROWS and GROUPS mode, 0 PRECEDING and 0 FOLLOWING are equivalent to
CURRENT ROW. This normally holds in RANGE mode as well, for an appropriate data-type-specific
meaning of “zero”.

The frame_exclusion option allows rows around the current row to be excluded from the frame,
even if they would be included according to the frame start and frame end options. EXCLUDE CUR-
RENT ROW excludes the current row from the frame. EXCLUDE GROUP excludes the current row and
its ordering peers from the frame. EXCLUDE TIES excludes any peers of the current row from the
frame, but not the current row itself. EXCLUDE NO OTHERS simply specifies explicitly the default
behavior of not excluding the current row or its peers.

The default framing option is RANGE UNBOUNDED PRECEDING, which is the same as RANGE
BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW. With ORDER BY, this sets the frame
to be all rows from the partition start up through the current row's last ORDER BY peer. Without
ORDER BY, this means all rows of the partition are included in the window frame, since all rows
become peers of the current row.

Restrictions are that frame_start cannot be UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING, frame_end cannot

be UNBOUNDED PRECEDING, and the frame_end choice cannot appear earlier in the above list
of frame_start and frame_end options than the frame_start choice does — for example
RANGE BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND offset PRECEDING is not allowed. But, for example,
ROWS BETWEEN 7 PRECEDING AND 8 PRECEDING is allowed, even though it would never
select any rows.

If FILTER is specified, then only the input rows for which the filter_clause evaluates to true
are fed to the window function; other rows are discarded. Only window functions that are aggregates
accept a FILTER clause.

The built-in window functions are described in Table 9.62. Other window functions can be added by
the user. Also, any built-in or user-defined general-purpose or statistical aggregate can be used as a
window function. (Ordered-set and hypothetical-set aggregates cannot presently be used as window
functions.)

The syntaxes using * are used for calling parameter-less aggregate functions as window functions, for
example count(*) OVER (PARTITION BY x ORDER BY y). The asterisk (*) is customar-
ily not used for window-specific functions. Window-specific functions do not allow DISTINCT or
ORDER BY to be used within the function argument list.

Window function calls are permitted only in the SELECT list and the ORDER BY clause of the query.

More information about window functions can be found in Section 3.5, Section 9.22, and Section 7.2.5.

4.2.9. Type Casts

A type cast specifies a conversion from one data type to another. PostgreSQL accepts two equivalent
syntaxes for type casts:

CAST ( expression AS type )

expression::type

The CAST syntax conforms to SQL; the syntax with :: is historical PostgreSQL usage.

48
 SQL Syntax

When a cast is applied to a value expression of a known type, it represents a run-time type conversion.
The cast will succeed only if a suitable type conversion operation has been defined. Notice that this
is subtly different from the use of casts with constants, as shown in Section 4.1.2.7. A cast applied
to an unadorned string literal represents the initial assignment of a type to a literal constant value,
and so it will succeed for any type (if the contents of the string literal are acceptable input syntax for
the data type).

An explicit type cast can usually be omitted if there is no ambiguity as to the type that a value expres-
sion must produce (for example, when it is assigned to a table column); the system will automatically
apply a type cast in such cases. However, automatic casting is only done for casts that are marked “OK
to apply implicitly” in the system catalogs. Other casts must be invoked with explicit casting syntax.
This restriction is intended to prevent surprising conversions from being applied silently.

It is also possible to specify a type cast using a function-like syntax:

typename ( expression )

However, this only works for types whose names are also valid as function names. For example, dou-
ble precision cannot be used this way, but the equivalent float8 can. Also, the names in-
terval, time, and timestamp can only be used in this fashion if they are double-quoted, because
of syntactic conflicts. Therefore, the use of the function-like cast syntax leads to inconsistencies and
should probably be avoided.

Note
The function-like syntax is in fact just a function call. When one of the two standard cast
syntaxes is used to do a run-time conversion, it will internally invoke a registered function
to perform the conversion. By convention, these conversion functions have the same name as
their output type, and thus the “function-like syntax” is nothing more than a direct invocation of
the underlying conversion function. Obviously, this is not something that a portable application
should rely on. For further details see CREATE CAST.

4.2.10. Collation Expressions

The COLLATE clause overrides the collation of an expression. It is appended to the expression it
applies to:

expr COLLATE collation

where collation is a possibly schema-qualified identifier. The COLLATE clause binds tighter than
operators; parentheses can be used when necessary.

If no collation is explicitly specified, the database system either derives a collation from the columns
involved in the expression, or it defaults to the default collation of the database if no column is involved
in the expression.

The two common uses of the COLLATE clause are overriding the sort order in an ORDER BY clause,
for example:

SELECT a, b, c FROM tbl WHERE ... ORDER BY a COLLATE "C";

and overriding the collation of a function or operator call that has locale-sensitive results, for example:

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE a > 'foo' COLLATE "C";

49
 SQL Syntax

Note that in the latter case the COLLATE clause is attached to an input argument of the operator we
wish to affect. It doesn't matter which argument of the operator or function call the COLLATE clause is
attached to, because the collation that is applied by the operator or function is derived by considering
all arguments, and an explicit COLLATE clause will override the collations of all other arguments.
(Attaching non-matching COLLATE clauses to more than one argument, however, is an error. For
more details see Section 24.2.) Thus, this gives the same result as the previous example:

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE a COLLATE "C" > 'foo';

But this is an error:

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE (a > 'foo') COLLATE "C";

because it attempts to apply a collation to the result of the > operator, which is of the non-collatable
data type boolean.

4.2.11. Scalar Subqueries

A scalar subquery is an ordinary SELECT query in parentheses that returns exactly one row with one
column. (See Chapter 7 for information about writing queries.) The SELECT query is executed and
the single returned value is used in the surrounding value expression. It is an error to use a query that
returns more than one row or more than one column as a scalar subquery. (But if, during a particular
execution, the subquery returns no rows, there is no error; the scalar result is taken to be null.) The
subquery can refer to variables from the surrounding query, which will act as constants during any
one evaluation of the subquery. See also Section 9.23 for other expressions involving subqueries.

For example, the following finds the largest city population in each state:

SELECT name, (SELECT max(pop) FROM cities WHERE cities.state =

states.name)
FROM states;

4.2.12. Array Constructors

An array constructor is an expression that builds an array value using values for its member elements. A
simple array constructor consists of the key word ARRAY, a left square bracket [, a list of expressions
(separated by commas) for the array element values, and finally a right square bracket ]. For example:

SELECT ARRAY[1,2,3+4];
array
---------
{1,2,7}
(1 row)

By default, the array element type is the common type of the member expressions, determined using
the same rules as for UNION or CASE constructs (see Section 10.5). You can override this by explicitly
casting the array constructor to the desired type, for example:

SELECT ARRAY[1,2,22.7]::integer[];
array
----------
{1,2,23}
(1 row)

50
 SQL Syntax

This has the same effect as casting each expression to the array element type individually. For more
on casting, see Section 4.2.9.

Multidimensional array values can be built by nesting array constructors. In the inner constructors, the
key word ARRAY can be omitted. For example, these produce the same result:

SELECT ARRAY[ARRAY[1,2], ARRAY[3,4]];

array
---------------
{{1,2},{3,4}}
(1 row)

SELECT ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]];
array
---------------
{{1,2},{3,4}}
(1 row)

Since multidimensional arrays must be rectangular, inner constructors at the same level must produce
sub-arrays of identical dimensions. Any cast applied to the outer ARRAY constructor propagates au-
tomatically to all the inner constructors.

Multidimensional array constructor elements can be anything yielding an array of the proper kind, not
only a sub-ARRAY construct. For example:

CREATE TABLE arr(f1 int[], f2 int[]);

INSERT INTO arr VALUES (ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]], ARRAY[[5,6],[7,8]]);

SELECT ARRAY[f1, f2, '{{9,10},{11,12}}'::int[]] FROM arr;

array
------------------------------------------------
{{{1,2},{3,4}},{{5,6},{7,8}},{{9,10},{11,12}}}
(1 row)

You can construct an empty array, but since it's impossible to have an array with no type, you must
explicitly cast your empty array to the desired type. For example:

SELECT ARRAY[]::integer[];
array
-------
{}
(1 row)

It is also possible to construct an array from the results of a subquery. In this form, the array construc-
tor is written with the key word ARRAY followed by a parenthesized (not bracketed) subquery. For
example:

SELECT ARRAY(SELECT oid FROM pg_proc WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%');

array
------------------------------------------------------------------
{2011,1954,1948,1952,1951,1244,1950,2005,1949,1953,2006,31,2412}
(1 row)

SELECT ARRAY(SELECT ARRAY[i, i*2] FROM generate_series(1,5) AS

a(i));

51
 SQL Syntax

array
----------------------------------
{{1,2},{2,4},{3,6},{4,8},{5,10}}
(1 row)

The subquery must return a single column. If the subquery's output column is of a non-array type,
the resulting one-dimensional array will have an element for each row in the subquery result, with an
element type matching that of the subquery's output column. If the subquery's output column is of an
array type, the result will be an array of the same type but one higher dimension; in this case all the
subquery rows must yield arrays of identical dimensionality, else the result would not be rectangular.

The subscripts of an array value built with ARRAY always begin with one. For more information about
arrays, see Section 8.15.

4.2.13. Row Constructors

A row constructor is an expression that builds a row value (also called a composite value) using values
for its member fields. A row constructor consists of the key word ROW, a left parenthesis, zero or
more expressions (separated by commas) for the row field values, and finally a right parenthesis. For
example:

SELECT ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test');

The key word ROW is optional when there is more than one expression in the list.

A row constructor can include the syntax rowvalue.*, which will be expanded to a list of the
elements of the row value, just as occurs when the .* syntax is used at the top level of a SELECT list
(see Section 8.16.5). For example, if table t has columns f1 and f2, these are the same:

SELECT ROW(t.*, 42) FROM t;

SELECT ROW(t.f1, t.f2, 42) FROM t;

Note
Before PostgreSQL 8.2, the .* syntax was not expanded in row constructors, so that writing
ROW(t.*, 42) created a two-field row whose first field was another row value. The new
behavior is usually more useful. If you need the old behavior of nested row values, write the
inner row value without .*, for instance ROW(t, 42).

By default, the value created by a ROW expression is of an anonymous record type. If necessary, it can
be cast to a named composite type — either the row type of a table, or a composite type created with
CREATE TYPE AS. An explicit cast might be needed to avoid ambiguity. For example:

CREATE TABLE mytable(f1 int, f2 float, f3 text);

CREATE FUNCTION getf1(mytable) RETURNS int AS 'SELECT $1.f1'

LANGUAGE SQL;

-- No cast needed since only one getf1() exists

SELECT getf1(ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test'));
getf1
-------
1
(1 row)

52
 SQL Syntax

CREATE TYPE myrowtype AS (f1 int, f2 text, f3 numeric);

CREATE FUNCTION getf1(myrowtype) RETURNS int AS 'SELECT $1.f1'

LANGUAGE SQL;

-- Now we need a cast to indicate which function to call:

SELECT getf1(ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test'));
ERROR: function getf1(record) is not unique

SELECT getf1(ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test')::mytable);

getf1
-------
1
(1 row)

SELECT getf1(CAST(ROW(11,'this is a test',2.5) AS myrowtype));

getf1
-------
11
(1 row)

Row constructors can be used to build composite values to be stored in a composite-type table column,
or to be passed to a function that accepts a composite parameter. Also, it is possible to compare two
row values or test a row with IS NULL or IS NOT NULL, for example:

SELECT ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test') = ROW(1, 3, 'not the same');

SELECT ROW(table.*) IS NULL FROM table; -- detect all-null rows

For more detail see Section 9.24. Row constructors can also be used in connection with subqueries,
as discussed in Section 9.23.

4.2.14. Expression Evaluation Rules

The order of evaluation of subexpressions is not defined. In particular, the inputs of an operator or
function are not necessarily evaluated left-to-right or in any other fixed order.

Furthermore, if the result of an expression can be determined by evaluating only some parts of it, then
other subexpressions might not be evaluated at all. For instance, if one wrote:

SELECT true OR somefunc();

then somefunc() would (probably) not be called at all. The same would be the case if one wrote:

SELECT somefunc() OR true;

Note that this is not the same as the left-to-right “short-circuiting” of Boolean operators that is found
in some programming languages.

As a consequence, it is unwise to use functions with side effects as part of complex expressions. It is
particularly dangerous to rely on side effects or evaluation order in WHERE and HAVING clauses, since
those clauses are extensively reprocessed as part of developing an execution plan. Boolean expressions
(AND/OR/NOT combinations) in those clauses can be reorganized in any manner allowed by the laws
of Boolean algebra.

When it is essential to force evaluation order, a CASE construct (see Section 9.18) can be used. For
example, this is an untrustworthy way of trying to avoid division by zero in a WHERE clause:

53
 SQL Syntax

SELECT ... WHERE x > 0 AND y/x > 1.5;

But this is safe:

SELECT ... WHERE CASE WHEN x > 0 THEN y/x > 1.5 ELSE false END;

A CASE construct used in this fashion will defeat optimization attempts, so it should only be done
when necessary. (In this particular example, it would be better to sidestep the problem by writing y
> 1.5*x instead.)

CASE is not a cure-all for such issues, however. One limitation of the technique illustrated above is
that it does not prevent early evaluation of constant subexpressions. As described in Section 38.7,
functions and operators marked IMMUTABLE can be evaluated when the query is planned rather than
when it is executed. Thus for example

SELECT CASE WHEN x > 0 THEN x ELSE 1/0 END FROM tab;

is likely to result in a division-by-zero failure due to the planner trying to simplify the constant subex-
pression, even if every row in the table has x > 0 so that the ELSE arm would never be entered
at run time.

While that particular example might seem silly, related cases that don't obviously involve constants
can occur in queries executed within functions, since the values of function arguments and local vari-
ables can be inserted into queries as constants for planning purposes. Within PL/pgSQL functions, for
example, using an IF-THEN-ELSE statement to protect a risky computation is much safer than just
nesting it in a CASE expression.

Another limitation of the same kind is that a CASE cannot prevent evaluation of an aggregate expres-
sion contained within it, because aggregate expressions are computed before other expressions in a
SELECT list or HAVING clause are considered. For example, the following query can cause a divi-
sion-by-zero error despite seemingly having protected against it:

SELECT CASE WHEN min(employees) > 0

THEN avg(expenses / employees)
END
FROM departments;

The min() and avg() aggregates are computed concurrently over all the input rows, so if any row
has employees equal to zero, the division-by-zero error will occur before there is any opportunity
to test the result of min(). Instead, use a WHERE or FILTER clause to prevent problematic input
rows from reaching an aggregate function in the first place.

4.3. Calling Functions

PostgreSQL allows functions that have named parameters to be called using either positional or named
notation. Named notation is especially useful for functions that have a large number of parameters,
since it makes the associations between parameters and actual arguments more explicit and reliable.
In positional notation, a function call is written with its argument values in the same order as they
are defined in the function declaration. In named notation, the arguments are matched to the function
parameters by name and can be written in any order. For each notation, also consider the effect of
function argument types, documented in Section 10.3.

In either notation, parameters that have default values given in the function declaration need not be
written in the call at all. But this is particularly useful in named notation, since any combination of
parameters can be omitted; while in positional notation parameters can only be omitted from right
to left.

54
 SQL Syntax

PostgreSQL also supports mixed notation, which combines positional and named notation. In this case,
positional parameters are written first and named parameters appear after them.

The following examples will illustrate the usage of all three notations, using the following function
definition:

CREATE FUNCTION concat_lower_or_upper(a text, b text, uppercase

boolean DEFAULT false)
RETURNS text
AS
$$
SELECT CASE
WHEN $3 THEN UPPER($1 || ' ' || $2)
ELSE LOWER($1 || ' ' || $2)
END;
$$
LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE STRICT;

Function concat_lower_or_upper has two mandatory parameters, a and b. Additionally there

is one optional parameter uppercase which defaults to false. The a and b inputs will be concate-
nated, and forced to either upper or lower case depending on the uppercase parameter. The remain-
ing details of this function definition are not important here (see Chapter 38 for more information).

4.3.1. Using Positional Notation

Positional notation is the traditional mechanism for passing arguments to functions in PostgreSQL.
An example is:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper('Hello', 'World', true);

concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

All arguments are specified in order. The result is upper case since uppercase is specified as true.
Another example is:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper('Hello', 'World');

concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
hello world
(1 row)

Here, the uppercase parameter is omitted, so it receives its default value of false, resulting in
lower case output. In positional notation, arguments can be omitted from right to left so long as they
have defaults.

4.3.2. Using Named Notation

In named notation, each argument's name is specified using => to separate it from the argument ex-
pression. For example:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a => 'Hello', b => 'World');

concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------

55
 SQL Syntax

hello world
(1 row)

Again, the argument uppercase was omitted so it is set to false implicitly. One advantage of
using named notation is that the arguments may be specified in any order, for example:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a => 'Hello', b => 'World', uppercase

=> true);
concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a => 'Hello', uppercase => true, b =>

'World');
concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

An older syntax based on ":=" is supported for backward compatibility:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a := 'Hello', uppercase := true, b :=

'World');
concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

4.3.3. Using Mixed Notation

The mixed notation combines positional and named notation. However, as already mentioned, named
arguments cannot precede positional arguments. For example:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper('Hello', 'World', uppercase => true);

concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

In the above query, the arguments a and b are specified positionally, while uppercase is specified
by name. In this example, that adds little except documentation. With a more complex function having
numerous parameters that have default values, named or mixed notation can save a great deal of writing
and reduce chances for error.

Note
Named and mixed call notations currently cannot be used when calling an aggregate function
(but they do work when an aggregate function is used as a window function).

56
Chapter 5. Data Definition
This chapter covers how one creates the database structures that will hold one's data. In a relational
database, the raw data is stored in tables, so the majority of this chapter is devoted to explaining how
tables are created and modified and what features are available to control what data is stored in the
tables. Subsequently, we discuss how tables can be organized into schemas, and how privileges can
be assigned to tables. Finally, we will briefly look at other features that affect the data storage, such
as inheritance, table partitioning, views, functions, and triggers.

5.1. Table Basics

A table in a relational database is much like a table on paper: It consists of rows and columns. The
number and order of the columns is fixed, and each column has a name. The number of rows is variable
— it reflects how much data is stored at a given moment. SQL does not make any guarantees about
the order of the rows in a table. When a table is read, the rows will appear in an unspecified order,
unless sorting is explicitly requested. This is covered in Chapter 7. Furthermore, SQL does not assign
unique identifiers to rows, so it is possible to have several completely identical rows in a table. This
is a consequence of the mathematical model that underlies SQL but is usually not desirable. Later in
this chapter we will see how to deal with this issue.

Each column has a data type. The data type constrains the set of possible values that can be assigned to
a column and assigns semantics to the data stored in the column so that it can be used for computations.
For instance, a column declared to be of a numerical type will not accept arbitrary text strings, and
the data stored in such a column can be used for mathematical computations. By contrast, a column
declared to be of a character string type will accept almost any kind of data but it does not lend itself
to mathematical calculations, although other operations such as string concatenation are available.

PostgreSQL includes a sizable set of built-in data types that fit many applications. Users can also
define their own data types. Most built-in data types have obvious names and semantics, so we defer
a detailed explanation to Chapter 8. Some of the frequently used data types are integer for whole
numbers, numeric for possibly fractional numbers, text for character strings, date for dates,
time for time-of-day values, and timestamp for values containing both date and time.

To create a table, you use the aptly named CREATE TABLE command. In this command you specify
at least a name for the new table, the names of the columns and the data type of each column. For
example:

CREATE TABLE my_first_table (

first_column text,
second_column integer
);

This creates a table named my_first_table with two columns. The first column is named
first_column and has a data type of text; the second column has the name second_column
and the type integer. The table and column names follow the identifier syntax explained in Sec-
tion 4.1.1. The type names are usually also identifiers, but there are some exceptions. Note that the
column list is comma-separated and surrounded by parentheses.

Of course, the previous example was heavily contrived. Normally, you would give names to your
tables and columns that convey what kind of data they store. So let's look at a more realistic example:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,

57
 Data Definition

price numeric
);

(The numeric type can store fractional components, as would be typical of monetary amounts.)

Tip
When you create many interrelated tables it is wise to choose a consistent naming pattern for
the tables and columns. For instance, there is a choice of using singular or plural nouns for
table names, both of which are favored by some theorist or other.

There is a limit on how many columns a table can contain. Depending on the column types, it is
between 250 and 1600. However, defining a table with anywhere near this many columns is highly
unusual and often a questionable design.

If you no longer need a table, you can remove it using the DROP TABLE command. For example:

DROP TABLE my_first_table;

DROP TABLE products;

Attempting to drop a table that does not exist is an error. Nevertheless, it is common in SQL script files
to unconditionally try to drop each table before creating it, ignoring any error messages, so that the
script works whether or not the table exists. (If you like, you can use the DROP TABLE IF EXISTS
variant to avoid the error messages, but this is not standard SQL.)

If you need to modify a table that already exists, see Section 5.6 later in this chapter.

With the tools discussed so far you can create fully functional tables. The remainder of this chapter is
concerned with adding features to the table definition to ensure data integrity, security, or convenience.
If you are eager to fill your tables with data now you can skip ahead to Chapter 6 and read the rest
of this chapter later.

5.2. Default Values

A column can be assigned a default value. When a new row is created and no values are specified
for some of the columns, those columns will be filled with their respective default values. A data
manipulation command can also request explicitly that a column be set to its default value, without
having to know what that value is. (Details about data manipulation commands are in Chapter 6.)

If no default value is declared explicitly, the default value is the null value. This usually makes sense
because a null value can be considered to represent unknown data.

In a table definition, default values are listed after the column data type. For example:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric DEFAULT 9.99
);

The default value can be an expression, which will be evaluated whenever the default value is inserted
(not when the table is created). A common example is for a timestamp column to have a default of
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, so that it gets set to the time of row insertion. Another common example is
generating a “serial number” for each row. In PostgreSQL this is typically done by something like:

58
 Data Definition

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer DEFAULT nextval('products_product_no_seq'),
...
);

where the nextval() function supplies successive values from a sequence object (see Section 9.17).
This arrangement is sufficiently common that there's a special shorthand for it:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no SERIAL,
...
);

The SERIAL shorthand is discussed further in Section 8.1.4.

5.3. Generated Columns

A generated column is a special column that is always computed from other columns. Thus, it is for
columns what a view is for tables. There are two kinds of generated columns: stored and virtual. A
stored generated column is computed when it is written (inserted or updated) and occupies storage as
if it were a normal column. A virtual generated column occupies no storage and is computed when it is
read. Thus, a virtual generated column is similar to a view and a stored generated column is similar to a
materialized view (except that it is always updated automatically). PostgreSQL currently implements
only stored generated columns.

To create a generated column, use the GENERATED ALWAYS AS clause in CREATE TABLE, for
example:

CREATE TABLE people (

...,
height_cm numeric,
height_in numeric GENERATED ALWAYS AS (height_cm / 2.54) STORED
);

The keyword STORED must be specified to choose the stored kind of generated column. See CREATE
TABLE for more details.

A generated column cannot be written to directly. In INSERT or UPDATE commands, a value cannot
be specified for a generated column, but the keyword DEFAULT may be specified.

Consider the differences between a column with a default and a generated column. The column default
is evaluated once when the row is first inserted if no other value was provided; a generated column is
updated whenever the row changes and cannot be overridden. A column default may not refer to other
columns of the table; a generation expression would normally do so. A column default can use volatile
functions, for example random() or functions referring to the current time; this is not allowed for
generated columns.

Several restrictions apply to the definition of generated columns and tables involving generated
columns:

• The generation expression can only use immutable functions and cannot use subqueries or reference
anything other than the current row in any way.

• A generation expression cannot reference another generated column.

• A generation expression cannot reference a system column, except tableoid.

59
 Data Definition

• A generated column cannot have a column default or an identity definition.

• A generated column cannot be part of a partition key.

• Foreign tables can have generated columns. See CREATE FOREIGN TABLE for details.

• For inheritance:

• If a parent column is a generated column, a child column must also be a generated column using
the same expression. In the definition of the child column, leave off the GENERATED clause, as
it will be copied from the parent.

• In case of multiple inheritance, if one parent column is a generated column, then all parent
columns must be generated columns and with the same expression.

• If a parent column is not a generated column, a child column may be defined to be a generated
column or not.

Additional considerations apply to the use of generated columns.

• Generated columns maintain access privileges separately from their underlying base columns. So,
it is possible to arrange it so that a particular role can read from a generated column but not from
the underlying base columns.

• Generated columns are, conceptually, updated after BEFORE triggers have run. Therefore, changes
made to base columns in a BEFORE trigger will be reflected in generated columns. But conversely,
it is not allowed to access generated columns in BEFORE triggers.

5.4. Constraints
Data types are a way to limit the kind of data that can be stored in a table. For many applications,
however, the constraint they provide is too coarse. For example, a column containing a product price
should probably only accept positive values. But there is no standard data type that accepts only pos-
itive numbers. Another issue is that you might want to constrain column data with respect to other
columns or rows. For example, in a table containing product information, there should be only one
row for each product number.

To that end, SQL allows you to define constraints on columns and tables. Constraints give you as
much control over the data in your tables as you wish. If a user attempts to store data in a column
that would violate a constraint, an error is raised. This applies even if the value came from the default
value definition.

5.4.1. Check Constraints

A check constraint is the most generic constraint type. It allows you to specify that the value in a cer-
tain column must satisfy a Boolean (truth-value) expression. For instance, to require positive product
prices, you could use:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric CHECK (price > 0)
);

As you see, the constraint definition comes after the data type, just like default value definitions.
Default values and constraints can be listed in any order. A check constraint consists of the key word
CHECK followed by an expression in parentheses. The check constraint expression should involve the
column thus constrained, otherwise the constraint would not make too much sense.

60
 Data Definition

You can also give the constraint a separate name. This clarifies error messages and allows you to refer
to the constraint when you need to change it. The syntax is:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric CONSTRAINT positive_price CHECK (price > 0)
);

So, to specify a named constraint, use the key word CONSTRAINT followed by an identifier followed
by the constraint definition. (If you don't specify a constraint name in this way, the system chooses
a name for you.)

A check constraint can also refer to several columns. Say you store a regular price and a discounted
price, and you want to ensure that the discounted price is lower than the regular price:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric CHECK (price > 0),
discounted_price numeric CHECK (discounted_price > 0),
CHECK (price > discounted_price)
);

The first two constraints should look familiar. The third one uses a new syntax. It is not attached to a
particular column, instead it appears as a separate item in the comma-separated column list. Column
definitions and these constraint definitions can be listed in mixed order.

We say that the first two constraints are column constraints, whereas the third one is a table constraint
because it is written separately from any one column definition. Column constraints can also be written
as table constraints, while the reverse is not necessarily possible, since a column constraint is supposed
to refer to only the column it is attached to. (PostgreSQL doesn't enforce that rule, but you should
follow it if you want your table definitions to work with other database systems.) The above example
could also be written as:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric,
CHECK (price > 0),
discounted_price numeric,
CHECK (discounted_price > 0),
CHECK (price > discounted_price)
);

or even:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric CHECK (price > 0),
discounted_price numeric,
CHECK (discounted_price > 0 AND price > discounted_price)
);

It's a matter of taste.

61
 Data Definition

Names can be assigned to table constraints in the same way as column constraints:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric,
CHECK (price > 0),
discounted_price numeric,
CHECK (discounted_price > 0),
CONSTRAINT valid_discount CHECK (price > discounted_price)
);

It should be noted that a check constraint is satisfied if the check expression evaluates to true or the
null value. Since most expressions will evaluate to the null value if any operand is null, they will not
prevent null values in the constrained columns. To ensure that a column does not contain null values,
the not-null constraint described in the next section can be used.

Note
PostgreSQL does not support CHECK constraints that reference table data other than the new
or updated row being checked. While a CHECK constraint that violates this rule may appear
to work in simple tests, it cannot guarantee that the database will not reach a state in which
the constraint condition is false (due to subsequent changes of the other row(s) involved). This
would cause a database dump and restore to fail. The restore could fail even when the complete
database state is consistent with the constraint, due to rows not being loaded in an order that
will satisfy the constraint. If possible, use UNIQUE, EXCLUDE, or FOREIGN KEY constraints
to express cross-row and cross-table restrictions.

If what you desire is a one-time check against other rows at row insertion, rather than a con-
tinuously-maintained consistency guarantee, a custom trigger can be used to implement that.
(This approach avoids the dump/restore problem because pg_dump does not reinstall triggers
until after restoring data, so that the check will not be enforced during a dump/restore.)

Note
PostgreSQL assumes that CHECK constraints' conditions are immutable, that is, they will al-
ways give the same result for the same input row. This assumption is what justifies examin-
ing CHECK constraints only when rows are inserted or updated, and not at other times. (The
warning above about not referencing other table data is really a special case of this restriction.)

An example of a common way to break this assumption is to reference a user-defined function

in a CHECK expression, and then change the behavior of that function. PostgreSQL does not
disallow that, but it will not notice if there are rows in the table that now violate the CHECK
constraint. That would cause a subsequent database dump and restore to fail. The recommend-
ed way to handle such a change is to drop the constraint (using ALTER TABLE), adjust the
function definition, and re-add the constraint, thereby rechecking it against all table rows.

5.4.2. Not-Null Constraints

A not-null constraint simply specifies that a column must not assume the null value. A syntax example:

CREATE TABLE products (

62
 Data Definition

product_no integer NOT NULL,

name text NOT NULL,
price numeric
);

A not-null constraint is always written as a column constraint. A not-null constraint is functionally

equivalent to creating a check constraint CHECK (column_name IS NOT NULL), but in Post-
greSQL creating an explicit not-null constraint is more efficient. The drawback is that you cannot give
explicit names to not-null constraints created this way.

Of course, a column can have more than one constraint. Just write the constraints one after another:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer NOT NULL,
name text NOT NULL,
price numeric NOT NULL CHECK (price > 0)
);

The order doesn't matter. It does not necessarily determine in which order the constraints are checked.

The NOT NULL constraint has an inverse: the NULL constraint. This does not mean that the column
must be null, which would surely be useless. Instead, this simply selects the default behavior that the
column might be null. The NULL constraint is not present in the SQL standard and should not be used
in portable applications. (It was only added to PostgreSQL to be compatible with some other database
systems.) Some users, however, like it because it makes it easy to toggle the constraint in a script file.
For example, you could start with:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer NULL,
name text NULL,
price numeric NULL
);

and then insert the NOT key word where desired.

Tip
In most database designs the majority of columns should be marked not null.

5.4.3. Unique Constraints

Unique constraints ensure that the data contained in a column, or a group of columns, is unique among
all the rows in the table. The syntax is:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer UNIQUE,
name text,
price numeric
);

when written as a column constraint, and:

CREATE TABLE products (

63
 Data Definition

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric,
UNIQUE (product_no)
);

when written as a table constraint.

To define a unique constraint for a group of columns, write it as a table constraint with the column
names separated by commas:

CREATE TABLE example (

a integer,
b integer,
c integer,
UNIQUE (a, c)
);

This specifies that the combination of values in the indicated columns is unique across the whole table,
though any one of the columns need not be (and ordinarily isn't) unique.

You can assign your own name for a unique constraint, in the usual way:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer CONSTRAINT must_be_different UNIQUE,
name text,
price numeric
);

Adding a unique constraint will automatically create a unique B-tree index on the column or group of
columns listed in the constraint. A uniqueness restriction covering only some rows cannot be written
as a unique constraint, but it is possible to enforce such a restriction by creating a unique partial index.

In general, a unique constraint is violated if there is more than one row in the table where the values of
all of the columns included in the constraint are equal. However, two null values are never considered
equal in this comparison. That means even in the presence of a unique constraint it is possible to
store duplicate rows that contain a null value in at least one of the constrained columns. This behavior
conforms to the SQL standard, but we have heard that other SQL databases might not follow this rule.
So be careful when developing applications that are intended to be portable.

5.4.4. Primary Keys

A primary key constraint indicates that a column, or group of columns, can be used as a unique iden-
tifier for rows in the table. This requires that the values be both unique and not null. So, the following
two table definitions accept the same data:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer UNIQUE NOT NULL,
name text,
price numeric
);

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,

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 Data Definition

price numeric
);

Primary keys can span more than one column; the syntax is similar to unique constraints:

CREATE TABLE example (

a integer,
b integer,
c integer,
PRIMARY KEY (a, c)
);

Adding a primary key will automatically create a unique B-tree index on the column or group of
columns listed in the primary key, and will force the column(s) to be marked NOT NULL.

A table can have at most one primary key. (There can be any number of unique and not-null constraints,
which are functionally almost the same thing, but only one can be identified as the primary key.)
Relational database theory dictates that every table must have a primary key. This rule is not enforced
by PostgreSQL, but it is usually best to follow it.

Primary keys are useful both for documentation purposes and for client applications. For example, a
GUI application that allows modifying row values probably needs to know the primary key of a table
to be able to identify rows uniquely. There are also various ways in which the database system makes
use of a primary key if one has been declared; for example, the primary key defines the default target
column(s) for foreign keys referencing its table.

5.4.5. Foreign Keys

A foreign key constraint specifies that the values in a column (or a group of columns) must match the
values appearing in some row of another table. We say this maintains the referential integrity between
two related tables.

Say you have the product table that we have used several times already:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
price numeric
);

Let's also assume you have a table storing orders of those products. We want to ensure that the orders
table only contains orders of products that actually exist. So we define a foreign key constraint in the
orders table that references the products table:

CREATE TABLE orders (

order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
product_no integer REFERENCES products (product_no),
quantity integer
);

Now it is impossible to create orders with non-NULL product_no entries that do not appear in
the products table.

We say that in this situation the orders table is the referencing table and the products table is the
referenced table. Similarly, there are referencing and referenced columns.

You can also shorten the above command to:

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 Data Definition

CREATE TABLE orders (

order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
product_no integer REFERENCES products,
quantity integer
);

because in absence of a column list the primary key of the referenced table is used as the referenced
column(s).

You can assign your own name for a foreign key constraint, in the usual way.

A foreign key can also constrain and reference a group of columns. As usual, it then needs to be written
in table constraint form. Here is a contrived syntax example:

CREATE TABLE t1 (
a integer PRIMARY KEY,
b integer,
c integer,
FOREIGN KEY (b, c) REFERENCES other_table (c1, c2)
);

Of course, the number and type of the constrained columns need to match the number and type of
the referenced columns.

Sometimes it is useful for the “other table” of a foreign key constraint to be the same table; this is
called a self-referential foreign key. For example, if you want rows of a table to represent nodes of
a tree structure, you could write

CREATE TABLE tree (

node_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
parent_id integer REFERENCES tree,
name text,
...
);

A top-level node would have NULL parent_id, while non-NULL parent_id entries would be
constrained to reference valid rows of the table.

A table can have more than one foreign key constraint. This is used to implement many-to-many
relationships between tables. Say you have tables about products and orders, but now you want to
allow one order to contain possibly many products (which the structure above did not allow). You
could use this table structure:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
price numeric
);

CREATE TABLE orders (

order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
shipping_address text,
...
);

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 Data Definition

CREATE TABLE order_items (

product_no integer REFERENCES products,
order_id integer REFERENCES orders,
quantity integer,
PRIMARY KEY (product_no, order_id)
);

Notice that the primary key overlaps with the foreign keys in the last table.

We know that the foreign keys disallow creation of orders that do not relate to any products. But what
if a product is removed after an order is created that references it? SQL allows you to handle that as
well. Intuitively, we have a few options:

• Disallow deleting a referenced product

• Delete the orders as well
• Something else?

To illustrate this, let's implement the following policy on the many-to-many relationship exam-
ple above: when someone wants to remove a product that is still referenced by an order (via or-
der_items), we disallow it. If someone removes an order, the order items are removed as well:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
price numeric
);

CREATE TABLE orders (

order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
shipping_address text,
...
);

CREATE TABLE order_items (

product_no integer REFERENCES products ON DELETE RESTRICT,
order_id integer REFERENCES orders ON DELETE CASCADE,
quantity integer,
PRIMARY KEY (product_no, order_id)
);

Restricting and cascading deletes are the two most common options. RESTRICT prevents deletion of
a referenced row. NO ACTION means that if any referencing rows still exist when the constraint is
checked, an error is raised; this is the default behavior if you do not specify anything. (The essential
difference between these two choices is that NO ACTION allows the check to be deferred until later
in the transaction, whereas RESTRICT does not.) CASCADE specifies that when a referenced row is
deleted, row(s) referencing it should be automatically deleted as well. There are two other options:
SET NULL and SET DEFAULT. These cause the referencing column(s) in the referencing row(s) to
be set to nulls or their default values, respectively, when the referenced row is deleted. Note that these
do not excuse you from observing any constraints. For example, if an action specifies SET DEFAULT
but the default value would not satisfy the foreign key constraint, the operation will fail.

Analogous to ON DELETE there is also ON UPDATE which is invoked when a referenced column is
changed (updated). The possible actions are the same. In this case, CASCADE means that the updated
values of the referenced column(s) should be copied into the referencing row(s).

Normally, a referencing row need not satisfy the foreign key constraint if any of its referencing
columns are null. If MATCH FULL is added to the foreign key declaration, a referencing row escapes

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 Data Definition

satisfying the constraint only if all its referencing columns are null (so a mix of null and non-null
values is guaranteed to fail a MATCH FULL constraint). If you don't want referencing rows to be able
to avoid satisfying the foreign key constraint, declare the referencing column(s) as NOT NULL.

A foreign key must reference columns that either are a primary key or form a unique constraint. This
means that the referenced columns always have an index (the one underlying the primary key or unique
constraint); so checks on whether a referencing row has a match will be efficient. Since a DELETE
of a row from the referenced table or an UPDATE of a referenced column will require a scan of the
referencing table for rows matching the old value, it is often a good idea to index the referencing
columns too. Because this is not always needed, and there are many choices available on how to
index, declaration of a foreign key constraint does not automatically create an index on the referencing
columns.

More information about updating and deleting data is in Chapter 6. Also see the description of foreign
key constraint syntax in the reference documentation for CREATE TABLE.

5.4.6. Exclusion Constraints

Exclusion constraints ensure that if any two rows are compared on the specified columns or expressions
using the specified operators, at least one of these operator comparisons will return false or null. The
syntax is:

CREATE TABLE circles (

c circle,
EXCLUDE USING gist (c WITH &&)
);

See also CREATE TABLE ... CONSTRAINT ... EXCLUDE for details.

Adding an exclusion constraint will automatically create an index of the type specified in the constraint
declaration.

5.5. System Columns

Every table has several system columns that are implicitly defined by the system. Therefore, these
names cannot be used as names of user-defined columns. (Note that these restrictions are separate from
whether the name is a key word or not; quoting a name will not allow you to escape these restrictions.)
You do not really need to be concerned about these columns; just know they exist.

tableoid

The OID of the table containing this row. This column is particularly handy for queries that se-
lect from partitioned tables (see Section 5.11) or inheritance hierarchies (see Section 5.10), since
without it, it's difficult to tell which individual table a row came from. The tableoid can be
joined against the oid column of pg_class to obtain the table name.

xmin

The identity (transaction ID) of the inserting transaction for this row version. (A row version is an
individual state of a row; each update of a row creates a new row version for the same logical row.)

cmin

The command identifier (starting at zero) within the inserting transaction.

xmax

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 Data Definition

The identity (transaction ID) of the deleting transaction, or zero for an undeleted row version. It
is possible for this column to be nonzero in a visible row version. That usually indicates that the
deleting transaction hasn't committed yet, or that an attempted deletion was rolled back.

cmax

The command identifier within the deleting transaction, or zero.

ctid

The physical location of the row version within its table. Note that although the ctid can be used
to locate the row version very quickly, a row's ctid will change if it is updated or moved by
VACUUM FULL. Therefore ctid is useless as a long-term row identifier. A primary key should
be used to identify logical rows.

Transaction identifiers are also 32-bit quantities. In a long-lived database it is possible for transaction
IDs to wrap around. This is not a fatal problem given appropriate maintenance procedures; see Chap-
ter 25 for details. It is unwise, however, to depend on the uniqueness of transaction IDs over the long
term (more than one billion transactions).

Command identifiers are also 32-bit quantities. This creates a hard limit of 232 (4 billion) SQL com-
mands within a single transaction. In practice this limit is not a problem — note that the limit is on
the number of SQL commands, not the number of rows processed. Also, only commands that actually
modify the database contents will consume a command identifier.

5.6. Modifying Tables

When you create a table and you realize that you made a mistake, or the requirements of the application
change, you can drop the table and create it again. But this is not a convenient option if the table is
already filled with data, or if the table is referenced by other database objects (for instance a foreign key
constraint). Therefore PostgreSQL provides a family of commands to make modifications to existing
tables. Note that this is conceptually distinct from altering the data contained in the table: here we are
interested in altering the definition, or structure, of the table.

You can:

• Add columns
• Remove columns
• Add constraints
• Remove constraints
• Change default values
• Change column data types
• Rename columns
• Rename tables

All these actions are performed using the ALTER TABLE command, whose reference page contains
details beyond those given here.

5.6.1. Adding a Column

To add a column, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products ADD COLUMN description text;

The new column is initially filled with whatever default value is given (null if you don't specify a
DEFAULT clause).

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 Data Definition

Tip
From PostgreSQL 11, adding a column with a constant default value no longer means that
each row of the table needs to be updated when the ALTER TABLE statement is executed.
Instead, the default value will be returned the next time the row is accessed, and applied when
the table is rewritten, making the ALTER TABLE very fast even on large tables.

However, if the default value is volatile (e.g., clock_timestamp()) each row will need
to be updated with the value calculated at the time ALTER TABLE is executed. To avoid a
potentially lengthy update operation, particularly if you intend to fill the column with mostly
nondefault values anyway, it may be preferable to add the column with no default, insert the
correct values using UPDATE, and then add any desired default as described below.

You can also define constraints on the column at the same time, using the usual syntax:

ALTER TABLE products ADD COLUMN description text CHECK (description

<> '');

In fact all the options that can be applied to a column description in CREATE TABLE can be used here.
Keep in mind however that the default value must satisfy the given constraints, or the ADD will fail.
Alternatively, you can add constraints later (see below) after you've filled in the new column correctly.

5.6.2. Removing a Column

To remove a column, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products DROP COLUMN description;

Whatever data was in the column disappears. Table constraints involving the column are dropped, too.
However, if the column is referenced by a foreign key constraint of another table, PostgreSQL will
not silently drop that constraint. You can authorize dropping everything that depends on the column
by adding CASCADE:

ALTER TABLE products DROP COLUMN description CASCADE;

See Section 5.14 for a description of the general mechanism behind this.

5.6.3. Adding a Constraint

To add a constraint, the table constraint syntax is used. For example:

ALTER TABLE products ADD CHECK (name <> '');

ALTER TABLE products ADD CONSTRAINT some_name UNIQUE (product_no);
ALTER TABLE products ADD FOREIGN KEY (product_group_id) REFERENCES
product_groups;

To add a not-null constraint, which cannot be written as a table constraint, use this syntax:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN product_no SET NOT NULL;

The constraint will be checked immediately, so the table data must satisfy the constraint before it can
be added.

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 Data Definition

5.6.4. Removing a Constraint

To remove a constraint you need to know its name. If you gave it a name then that's easy. Otherwise
the system assigned a generated name, which you need to find out. The psql command \d table-
name can be helpful here; other interfaces might also provide a way to inspect table details. Then
the command is:

ALTER TABLE products DROP CONSTRAINT some_name;

(If you are dealing with a generated constraint name like $2, don't forget that you'll need to dou-
ble-quote it to make it a valid identifier.)

As with dropping a column, you need to add CASCADE if you want to drop a constraint that something
else depends on. An example is that a foreign key constraint depends on a unique or primary key
constraint on the referenced column(s).

This works the same for all constraint types except not-null constraints. To drop a not null constraint
use:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN product_no DROP NOT NULL;

(Recall that not-null constraints do not have names.)

5.6.5. Changing a Column's Default Value

To set a new default for a column, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN price SET DEFAULT 7.77;

Note that this doesn't affect any existing rows in the table, it just changes the default for future INSERT
commands.

To remove any default value, use:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN price DROP DEFAULT;

This is effectively the same as setting the default to null. As a consequence, it is not an error to drop
a default where one hadn't been defined, because the default is implicitly the null value.

5.6.6. Changing a Column's Data Type

To convert a column to a different data type, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN price TYPE numeric(10,2);

This will succeed only if each existing entry in the column can be converted to the new type by an
implicit cast. If a more complex conversion is needed, you can add a USING clause that specifies how
to compute the new values from the old.

PostgreSQL will attempt to convert the column's default value (if any) to the new type, as well as
any constraints that involve the column. But these conversions might fail, or might produce surprising
results. It's often best to drop any constraints on the column before altering its type, and then add back
suitably modified constraints afterwards.

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 Data Definition

5.6.7. Renaming a Column

To rename a column:

ALTER TABLE products RENAME COLUMN product_no TO product_number;

5.6.8. Renaming a Table

To rename a table:

ALTER TABLE products RENAME TO items;

5.7. Privileges
When an object is created, it is assigned an owner. The owner is normally the role that executed the
creation statement. For most kinds of objects, the initial state is that only the owner (or a superuser)
can do anything with the object. To allow other roles to use it, privileges must be granted.

There are different kinds of privileges: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, REF-
ERENCES, TRIGGER, CREATE, CONNECT, TEMPORARY, EXECUTE, and USAGE. The privileges
applicable to a particular object vary depending on the object's type (table, function, etc). More detail
about the meanings of these privileges appears below. The following sections and chapters will also
show you how these privileges are used.

The right to modify or destroy an object is inherent in being the object's owner, and cannot be granted
or revoked in itself. (However, like all privileges, that right can be inherited by members of the owning
role; see Section 22.3.)

An object can be assigned to a new owner with an ALTER command of the appropriate kind for the
object, for example

ALTER TABLE table_name OWNER TO new_owner;

Superusers can always do this; ordinary roles can only do it if they are both the current owner of the
object (or a member of the owning role) and a member of the new owning role.

To assign privileges, the GRANT command is used. For example, if joe is an existing role, and
accounts is an existing table, the privilege to update the table can be granted with:

GRANT UPDATE ON accounts TO joe;

Writing ALL in place of a specific privilege grants all privileges that are relevant for the object type.

The special “role” name PUBLIC can be used to grant a privilege to every role on the system. Also,
“group” roles can be set up to help manage privileges when there are many users of a database —
for details see Chapter 22.

To revoke a previously-granted privilege, use the fittingly named REVOKE command:

REVOKE ALL ON accounts FROM PUBLIC;

Ordinarily, only the object's owner (or a superuser) can grant or revoke privileges on an object. How-
ever, it is possible to grant a privilege “with grant option”, which gives the recipient the right to grant
it in turn to others. If the grant option is subsequently revoked then all who received the privilege from

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 Data Definition

that recipient (directly or through a chain of grants) will lose the privilege. For details see the GRANT
and REVOKE reference pages.

An object's owner can choose to revoke their own ordinary privileges, for example to make a table
read-only for themselves as well as others. But owners are always treated as holding all grant options,
so they can always re-grant their own privileges.

The available privileges are:

SELECT

Allows SELECT from any column, or specific column(s), of a table, view, materialized view, or
other table-like object. Also allows use of COPY TO. This privilege is also needed to reference
existing column values in UPDATE or DELETE. For sequences, this privilege also allows use of
the currval function. For large objects, this privilege allows the object to be read.

INSERT

Allows INSERT of a new row into a table, view, etc. Can be granted on specific column(s), in
which case only those columns may be assigned to in the INSERT command (other columns will
therefore receive default values). Also allows use of COPY FROM.

UPDATE

Allows UPDATE of any column, or specific column(s), of a table, view, etc. (In practice, any
nontrivial UPDATE command will require SELECT privilege as well, since it must reference
table columns to determine which rows to update, and/or to compute new values for columns.)
SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and SELECT ... FOR SHARE also require this privilege on
at least one column, in addition to the SELECT privilege. For sequences, this privilege allows
use of the nextval and setval functions. For large objects, this privilege allows writing or
truncating the object.

DELETE

Allows DELETE of a row from a table, view, etc. (In practice, any nontrivial DELETE command
will require SELECT privilege as well, since it must reference table columns to determine which
rows to delete.)

TRUNCATE

Allows TRUNCATE on a table.

REFERENCES

Allows creation of a foreign key constraint referencing a table, or specific column(s) of a table.

TRIGGER

Allows creation of a trigger on a table, view, etc.

CREATE

For databases, allows new schemas and publications to be created within the database, and allows
trusted extensions to be installed within the database.

For schemas, allows new objects to be created within the schema. To rename an existing object,
you must own the object and have this privilege for the containing schema.

For tablespaces, allows tables, indexes, and temporary files to be created within the tablespace,
and allows databases to be created that have the tablespace as their default tablespace.

Note that revoking this privilege will not alter the existence or location of existing objects.

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 Data Definition

CONNECT

Allows the grantee to connect to the database. This privilege is checked at connection startup (in
addition to checking any restrictions imposed by pg_hba.conf).

TEMPORARY

Allows temporary tables to be created while using the database.

EXECUTE

Allows calling a function or procedure, including use of any operators that are implemented on
top of the function. This is the only type of privilege that is applicable to functions and procedures.

USAGE

For procedural languages, allows use of the language for the creation of functions in that language.
This is the only type of privilege that is applicable to procedural languages.

For schemas, allows access to objects contained in the schema (assuming that the objects' own
privilege requirements are also met). Essentially this allows the grantee to “look up” objects within
the schema. Without this permission, it is still possible to see the object names, e.g., by querying
system catalogs. Also, after revoking this permission, existing sessions might have statements
that have previously performed this lookup, so this is not a completely secure way to prevent
object access.

For sequences, allows use of the currval and nextval functions.

For types and domains, allows use of the type or domain in the creation of tables, functions, and
other schema objects. (Note that this privilege does not control all “usage” of the type, such as
values of the type appearing in queries. It only prevents objects from being created that depend on
the type. The main purpose of this privilege is controlling which users can create dependencies
on a type, which could prevent the owner from changing the type later.)

For foreign-data wrappers, allows creation of new servers using the foreign-data wrapper.

For foreign servers, allows creation of foreign tables using the server. Grantees may also create,
alter, or drop their own user mappings associated with that server.

The privileges required by other commands are listed on the reference page of the respective command.

PostgreSQL grants privileges on some types of objects to PUBLIC by default when the objects are
created. No privileges are granted to PUBLIC by default on tables, table columns, sequences, foreign
data wrappers, foreign servers, large objects, schemas, or tablespaces. For other types of objects, the
default privileges granted to PUBLIC are as follows: CONNECT and TEMPORARY (create temporary
tables) privileges for databases; EXECUTE privilege for functions and procedures; and USAGE priv-
ilege for languages and data types (including domains). The object owner can, of course, REVOKE
both default and expressly granted privileges. (For maximum security, issue the REVOKE in the same
transaction that creates the object; then there is no window in which another user can use the object.)
Also, these default privilege settings can be overridden using the ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES
command.

Table 5.1 shows the one-letter abbreviations that are used for these privilege types in ACL (Access
Control List) values. You will see these letters in the output of the psql commands listed below, or
when looking at ACL columns of system catalogs.

Table 5.1. ACL Privilege Abbreviations

Privilege Abbreviation Applicable Object Types
SELECT r (“read”) LARGE OBJECT, SEQUENCE, TABLE (and ta-
ble-like objects), table column

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 Data Definition

Privilege Abbreviation Applicable Object Types

INSERT a (“append”) TABLE, table column
UPDATE w (“write”) LARGE OBJECT, SEQUENCE, TABLE, table
column
DELETE d TABLE
TRUNCATE D TABLE
REFERENCES x TABLE, table column
TRIGGER t TABLE
CREATE C DATABASE, SCHEMA, TABLESPACE
CONNECT c DATABASE
TEMPORARY T DATABASE
EXECUTE X FUNCTION, PROCEDURE
USAGE U DOMAIN, FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER,
FOREIGN SERVER, LANGUAGE, SCHEMA,
SEQUENCE, TYPE

Table 5.2 summarizes the privileges available for each type of SQL object, using the abbreviations
shown above. It also shows the psql command that can be used to examine privilege settings for each
object type.

Table 5.2. Summary of Access Privileges

Object Type All Privileges Default PUBLIC psql Command
Privileges
DATABASE CTc Tc \l
DOMAIN U U \dD+
FUNCTION or PROCEDURE X X \df+
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER U none \dew+
FOREIGN SERVER U none \des+
LANGUAGE U U \dL+
LARGE OBJECT rw none
SCHEMA UC none \dn+
SEQUENCE rwU none \dp
TABLE (and table-like objects) arwdDxt none \dp
Table column arwx none \dp
TABLESPACE C none \db+
TYPE U U \dT+

The privileges that have been granted for a particular object are displayed as a list of aclitem
entries, where each aclitem describes the permissions of one grantee that have been granted by
a particular grantor. For example, calvin=r*w/hobbes specifies that the role calvin has the
privilege SELECT (r) with grant option (*) as well as the non-grantable privilege UPDATE (w), both
granted by the role hobbes. If calvin also has some privileges on the same object granted by a
different grantor, those would appear as a separate aclitem entry. An empty grantee field in an
aclitem stands for PUBLIC.

As an example, suppose that user miriam creates table mytable and does:

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 Data Definition

GRANT SELECT ON mytable TO PUBLIC;

GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT ON mytable TO admin;
GRANT SELECT (col1), UPDATE (col1) ON mytable TO miriam_rw;

Then psql's \dp command would show:

=> \dp mytable

Access privileges
Schema | Name | Type | Access privileges | Column
privileges | Policies
--------+---------+-------+-----------------------
+-----------------------+----------
public | mytable | table | miriam=arwdDxt/miriam+| col1:
+|
| | | =r/miriam +| miriam_rw=rw/
miriam |
| | | admin=arw/miriam |
|
(1 row)

If the “Access privileges” column is empty for a given object, it means the object has default privileges
(that is, its privileges entry in the relevant system catalog is null). Default privileges always include all
privileges for the owner, and can include some privileges for PUBLIC depending on the object type,
as explained above. The first GRANT or REVOKE on an object will instantiate the default privileges
(producing, for example, miriam=arwdDxt/miriam) and then modify them per the specified re-
quest. Similarly, entries are shown in “Column privileges” only for columns with nondefault privi-
leges. (Note: for this purpose, “default privileges” always means the built-in default privileges for the
object's type. An object whose privileges have been affected by an ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES
command will always be shown with an explicit privilege entry that includes the effects of the ALTER.)

Notice that the owner's implicit grant options are not marked in the access privileges display. A * will
appear only when grant options have been explicitly granted to someone.

5.8. Row Security Policies

In addition to the SQL-standard privilege system available through GRANT, tables can have row
security policies that restrict, on a per-user basis, which rows can be returned by normal queries or
inserted, updated, or deleted by data modification commands. This feature is also known as Row-Level
Security. By default, tables do not have any policies, so that if a user has access privileges to a table
according to the SQL privilege system, all rows within it are equally available for querying or updating.

When row security is enabled on a table (with ALTER TABLE ... ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURI-
TY), all normal access to the table for selecting rows or modifying rows must be allowed by a row
security policy. (However, the table's owner is typically not subject to row security policies.) If no
policy exists for the table, a default-deny policy is used, meaning that no rows are visible or can be
modified. Operations that apply to the whole table, such as TRUNCATE and REFERENCES, are not
subject to row security.

Row security policies can be specific to commands, or to roles, or to both. A policy can be specified
to apply to ALL commands, or to SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE. Multiple roles can be
assigned to a given policy, and normal role membership and inheritance rules apply.

To specify which rows are visible or modifiable according to a policy, an expression is required that
returns a Boolean result. This expression will be evaluated for each row prior to any conditions or
functions coming from the user's query. (The only exceptions to this rule are leakproof functions,
which are guaranteed to not leak information; the optimizer may choose to apply such functions ahead
of the row-security check.) Rows for which the expression does not return true will not be processed.
Separate expressions may be specified to provide independent control over the rows which are visible

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 Data Definition

and the rows which are allowed to be modified. Policy expressions are run as part of the query and
with the privileges of the user running the query, although security-definer functions can be used to
access data not available to the calling user.

Superusers and roles with the BYPASSRLS attribute always bypass the row security system when
accessing a table. Table owners normally bypass row security as well, though a table owner can choose
to be subject to row security with ALTER TABLE ... FORCE ROW LEVEL SECURITY.

Enabling and disabling row security, as well as adding policies to a table, is always the privilege of
the table owner only.

Policies are created using the CREATE POLICY command, altered using the ALTER POLICY com-
mand, and dropped using the DROP POLICY command. To enable and disable row security for a
given table, use the ALTER TABLE command.

Each policy has a name and multiple policies can be defined for a table. As policies are table-specific,
each policy for a table must have a unique name. Different tables may have policies with the same
name.

When multiple policies apply to a given query, they are combined using either OR (for permissive
policies, which are the default) or using AND (for restrictive policies). This is similar to the rule that a
given role has the privileges of all roles that they are a member of. Permissive vs. restrictive policies
are discussed further below.

As a simple example, here is how to create a policy on the account relation to allow only members
of the managers role to access rows, and only rows of their accounts:

CREATE TABLE accounts (manager text, company text, contact_email

text);

ALTER TABLE accounts ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

CREATE POLICY account_managers ON accounts TO managers

USING (manager = current_user);

The policy above implicitly provides a WITH CHECK clause identical to its USING clause, so that
the constraint applies both to rows selected by a command (so a manager cannot SELECT, UPDATE,
or DELETE existing rows belonging to a different manager) and to rows modified by a command (so
rows belonging to a different manager cannot be created via INSERT or UPDATE).

If no role is specified, or the special user name PUBLIC is used, then the policy applies to all users
on the system. To allow all users to access only their own row in a users table, a simple policy
can be used:

CREATE POLICY user_policy ON users

USING (user_name = current_user);

This works similarly to the previous example.

To use a different policy for rows that are being added to the table compared to those rows that are
visible, multiple policies can be combined. This pair of policies would allow all users to view all rows
in the users table, but only modify their own:

CREATE POLICY user_sel_policy ON users

FOR SELECT
USING (true);
CREATE POLICY user_mod_policy ON users

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 Data Definition

USING (user_name = current_user);

In a SELECT command, these two policies are combined using OR, with the net effect being that all
rows can be selected. In other command types, only the second policy applies, so that the effects are
the same as before.

Row security can also be disabled with the ALTER TABLE command. Disabling row security does
not remove any policies that are defined on the table; they are simply ignored. Then all rows in the
table are visible and modifiable, subject to the standard SQL privileges system.

Below is a larger example of how this feature can be used in production environments. The table
passwd emulates a Unix password file:

-- Simple passwd-file based example

CREATE TABLE passwd (
user_name text UNIQUE NOT NULL,
pwhash text,
uid int PRIMARY KEY,
gid int NOT NULL,
real_name text NOT NULL,
home_phone text,
extra_info text,
home_dir text NOT NULL,
shell text NOT NULL
);

CREATE ROLE admin; -- Administrator

CREATE ROLE bob; -- Normal user
CREATE ROLE alice; -- Normal user

-- Populate the table

INSERT INTO passwd VALUES
('admin','xxx',0,0,'Admin','111-222-3333',null,'/root','/bin/
dash');
INSERT INTO passwd VALUES
('bob','xxx',1,1,'Bob','123-456-7890',null,'/home/bob','/bin/
zsh');
INSERT INTO passwd VALUES
('alice','xxx',2,1,'Alice','098-765-4321',null,'/home/alice','/
bin/zsh');

-- Be sure to enable row-level security on the table

ALTER TABLE passwd ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

-- Create policies
-- Administrator can see all rows and add any rows
CREATE POLICY admin_all ON passwd TO admin USING (true) WITH CHECK
(true);
-- Normal users can view all rows
CREATE POLICY all_view ON passwd FOR SELECT USING (true);
-- Normal users can update their own records, but
-- limit which shells a normal user is allowed to set
CREATE POLICY user_mod ON passwd FOR UPDATE
USING (current_user = user_name)
WITH CHECK (
current_user = user_name AND
shell IN ('/bin/bash','/bin/sh','/bin/dash','/bin/zsh','/bin/
tcsh')

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 Data Definition

);

-- Allow admin all normal rights

GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON passwd TO admin;
-- Users only get select access on public columns
GRANT SELECT
(user_name, uid, gid, real_name, home_phone, extra_info,
home_dir, shell)
ON passwd TO public;
-- Allow users to update certain columns
GRANT UPDATE
(pwhash, real_name, home_phone, extra_info, shell)
ON passwd TO public;

As with any security settings, it's important to test and ensure that the system is behaving as expected.
Using the example above, this demonstrates that the permission system is working properly.

-- admin can view all rows and fields

postgres=> set role admin;
SET
postgres=> table passwd;
user_name | pwhash | uid | gid | real_name | home_phone |
extra_info | home_dir | shell
-----------+--------+-----+-----+-----------+--------------
+------------+-------------+-----------
admin | xxx | 0 | 0 | Admin | 111-222-3333 |
| /root | /bin/dash
bob | xxx | 1 | 1 | Bob | 123-456-7890 |
| /home/bob | /bin/zsh
alice | xxx | 2 | 1 | Alice | 098-765-4321 |
| /home/alice | /bin/zsh
(3 rows)

-- Test what Alice is able to do

postgres=> set role alice;
SET
postgres=> table passwd;
ERROR: permission denied for relation passwd
postgres=> select
user_name,real_name,home_phone,extra_info,home_dir,shell from
passwd;
user_name | real_name | home_phone | extra_info | home_dir |
shell
-----------+-----------+--------------+------------+-------------
+-----------
admin | Admin | 111-222-3333 | | /root
| /bin/dash
bob | Bob | 123-456-7890 | | /home/bob
| /bin/zsh
alice | Alice | 098-765-4321 | | /home/alice
| /bin/zsh
(3 rows)

postgres=> update passwd set user_name = 'joe';

ERROR: permission denied for relation passwd
-- Alice is allowed to change her own real_name, but no others
postgres=> update passwd set real_name = 'Alice Doe';

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 Data Definition

UPDATE 1
postgres=> update passwd set real_name = 'John Doe' where user_name
= 'admin';
UPDATE 0
postgres=> update passwd set shell = '/bin/xx';
ERROR: new row violates WITH CHECK OPTION for "passwd"
postgres=> delete from passwd;
ERROR: permission denied for relation passwd
postgres=> insert into passwd (user_name) values ('xxx');
ERROR: permission denied for relation passwd
-- Alice can change her own password; RLS silently prevents
updating other rows
postgres=> update passwd set pwhash = 'abc';
UPDATE 1

All of the policies constructed thus far have been permissive policies, meaning that when multiple
policies are applied they are combined using the “OR” Boolean operator. While permissive policies
can be constructed to only allow access to rows in the intended cases, it can be simpler to combine
permissive policies with restrictive policies (which the records must pass and which are combined
using the “AND” Boolean operator). Building on the example above, we add a restrictive policy to
require the administrator to be connected over a local Unix socket to access the records of the passwd
table:

CREATE POLICY admin_local_only ON passwd AS RESTRICTIVE TO admin

USING (pg_catalog.inet_client_addr() IS NULL);

We can then see that an administrator connecting over a network will not see any records, due to the
restrictive policy:

=> SELECT current_user;

current_user
--------------
admin
(1 row)

=> select inet_client_addr();

inet_client_addr
------------------
127.0.0.1
(1 row)

=> TABLE passwd;

user_name | pwhash | uid | gid | real_name | home_phone |
extra_info | home_dir | shell
-----------+--------+-----+-----+-----------+------------
+------------+----------+-------
(0 rows)

=> UPDATE passwd set pwhash = NULL;

UPDATE 0

Referential integrity checks, such as unique or primary key constraints and foreign key references,
always bypass row security to ensure that data integrity is maintained. Care must be taken when de-
veloping schemas and row level policies to avoid “covert channel” leaks of information through such
referential integrity checks.

In some contexts it is important to be sure that row security is not being applied. For example, when
taking a backup, it could be disastrous if row security silently caused some rows to be omitted from

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 Data Definition

the backup. In such a situation, you can set the row_security configuration parameter to off. This
does not in itself bypass row security; what it does is throw an error if any query's results would get
filtered by a policy. The reason for the error can then be investigated and fixed.

In the examples above, the policy expressions consider only the current values in the row to be ac-
cessed or updated. This is the simplest and best-performing case; when possible, it's best to design row
security applications to work this way. If it is necessary to consult other rows or other tables to make
a policy decision, that can be accomplished using sub-SELECTs, or functions that contain SELECTs,
in the policy expressions. Be aware however that such accesses can create race conditions that could
allow information leakage if care is not taken. As an example, consider the following table design:

-- definition of privilege groups

CREATE TABLE groups (group_id int PRIMARY KEY,
group_name text NOT NULL);

INSERT INTO groups VALUES

(1, 'low'),
(2, 'medium'),
(5, 'high');

GRANT ALL ON groups TO alice; -- alice is the administrator

GRANT SELECT ON groups TO public;

-- definition of users' privilege levels

CREATE TABLE users (user_name text PRIMARY KEY,
group_id int NOT NULL REFERENCES groups);

INSERT INTO users VALUES

('alice', 5),
('bob', 2),
('mallory', 2);

GRANT ALL ON users TO alice;

GRANT SELECT ON users TO public;

-- table holding the information to be protected

CREATE TABLE information (info text,
group_id int NOT NULL REFERENCES groups);

INSERT INTO information VALUES

('barely secret', 1),
('slightly secret', 2),
('very secret', 5);

ALTER TABLE information ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

-- a row should be visible to/updatable by users whose security

group_id is
-- greater than or equal to the row's group_id
CREATE POLICY fp_s ON information FOR SELECT
USING (group_id <= (SELECT group_id FROM users WHERE user_name =
current_user));
CREATE POLICY fp_u ON information FOR UPDATE
USING (group_id <= (SELECT group_id FROM users WHERE user_name =
current_user));

-- we rely only on RLS to protect the information table

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 Data Definition

GRANT ALL ON information TO public;

Now suppose that alice wishes to change the “slightly secret” information, but decides that mal-
lory should not be trusted with the new content of that row, so she does:

BEGIN;
UPDATE users SET group_id = 1 WHERE user_name = 'mallory';
UPDATE information SET info = 'secret from mallory' WHERE group_id
= 2;
COMMIT;

That looks safe; there is no window wherein mallory should be able to see the “secret from mallory”
string. However, there is a race condition here. If mallory is concurrently doing, say,

SELECT * FROM information WHERE group_id = 2 FOR UPDATE;

and her transaction is in READ COMMITTED mode, it is possible for her to see “secret from mallory”.
That happens if her transaction reaches the information row just after alice's does. It blocks
waiting for alice's transaction to commit, then fetches the updated row contents thanks to the FOR
UPDATE clause. However, it does not fetch an updated row for the implicit SELECT from users,
because that sub-SELECT did not have FOR UPDATE; instead the users row is read with the snap-
shot taken at the start of the query. Therefore, the policy expression tests the old value of mallory's
privilege level and allows her to see the updated row.

There are several ways around this problem. One simple answer is to use SELECT ... FOR
SHARE in sub-SELECTs in row security policies. However, that requires granting UPDATE privilege
on the referenced table (here users) to the affected users, which might be undesirable. (But another
row security policy could be applied to prevent them from actually exercising that privilege; or the
sub-SELECT could be embedded into a security definer function.) Also, heavy concurrent use of row
share locks on the referenced table could pose a performance problem, especially if updates of it are
frequent. Another solution, practical if updates of the referenced table are infrequent, is to take an
ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on the referenced table when updating it, so that no concurrent transac-
tions could be examining old row values. Or one could just wait for all concurrent transactions to end
after committing an update of the referenced table and before making changes that rely on the new
security situation.

For additional details see CREATE POLICY and ALTER TABLE.

5.9. Schemas
A PostgreSQL database cluster contains one or more named databases. Roles and a few other object
types are shared across the entire cluster. A client connection to the server can only access data in a
single database, the one specified in the connection request.

Note
Users of a cluster do not necessarily have the privilege to access every database in the cluster.
Sharing of role names means that there cannot be different roles named, say, joe in two
databases in the same cluster; but the system can be configured to allow joe access to only
some of the databases.

A database contains one or more named schemas, which in turn contain tables. Schemas also contain
other kinds of named objects, including data types, functions, and operators. The same object name
can be used in different schemas without conflict; for example, both schema1 and myschema can

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 Data Definition

contain tables named mytable. Unlike databases, schemas are not rigidly separated: a user can access
objects in any of the schemas in the database they are connected to, if they have privileges to do so.

There are several reasons why one might want to use schemas:

• To allow many users to use one database without interfering with each other.

• To organize database objects into logical groups to make them more manageable.

• Third-party applications can be put into separate schemas so they do not collide with the names
of other objects.

Schemas are analogous to directories at the operating system level, except that schemas cannot be
nested.

5.9.1. Creating a Schema

To create a schema, use the CREATE SCHEMA command. Give the schema a name of your choice.
For example:

CREATE SCHEMA myschema;

To create or access objects in a schema, write a qualified name consisting of the schema name and
table name separated by a dot:

schema.table

This works anywhere a table name is expected, including the table modification commands and the
data access commands discussed in the following chapters. (For brevity we will speak of tables only,
but the same ideas apply to other kinds of named objects, such as types and functions.)

Actually, the even more general syntax

database.schema.table

can be used too, but at present this is just for pro forma compliance with the SQL standard. If you
write a database name, it must be the same as the database you are connected to.

So to create a table in the new schema, use:

CREATE TABLE myschema.mytable (

...
);

To drop a schema if it's empty (all objects in it have been dropped), use:

DROP SCHEMA myschema;

To drop a schema including all contained objects, use:

DROP SCHEMA myschema CASCADE;

See Section 5.14 for a description of the general mechanism behind this.

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 Data Definition

Often you will want to create a schema owned by someone else (since this is one of the ways to restrict
the activities of your users to well-defined namespaces). The syntax for that is:

CREATE SCHEMA schema_name AUTHORIZATION user_name;

You can even omit the schema name, in which case the schema name will be the same as the user
name. See Section 5.9.6 for how this can be useful.

Schema names beginning with pg_ are reserved for system purposes and cannot be created by users.

5.9.2. The Public Schema

In the previous sections we created tables without specifying any schema names. By default such
tables (and other objects) are automatically put into a schema named “public”. Every new database
contains such a schema. Thus, the following are equivalent:

CREATE TABLE products ( ... );

and:

CREATE TABLE public.products ( ... );

5.9.3. The Schema Search Path

Qualified names are tedious to write, and it's often best not to wire a particular schema name into
applications anyway. Therefore tables are often referred to by unqualified names, which consist of
just the table name. The system determines which table is meant by following a search path, which is
a list of schemas to look in. The first matching table in the search path is taken to be the one wanted.
If there is no match in the search path, an error is reported, even if matching table names exist in other
schemas in the database.

The ability to create like-named objects in different schemas complicates writing a query that refer-
ences precisely the same objects every time. It also opens up the potential for users to change the be-
havior of other users' queries, maliciously or accidentally. Due to the prevalence of unqualified names
in queries and their use in PostgreSQL internals, adding a schema to search_path effectively trusts
all users having CREATE privilege on that schema. When you run an ordinary query, a malicious user
able to create objects in a schema of your search path can take control and execute arbitrary SQL
functions as though you executed them.

The first schema named in the search path is called the current schema. Aside from being the first
schema searched, it is also the schema in which new tables will be created if the CREATE TABLE
command does not specify a schema name.

To show the current search path, use the following command:

SHOW search_path;

In the default setup this returns:

search_path
--------------
"$user", public

84
 Data Definition

The first element specifies that a schema with the same name as the current user is to be searched.
If no such schema exists, the entry is ignored. The second element refers to the public schema that
we have seen already.

The first schema in the search path that exists is the default location for creating new objects. That
is the reason that by default objects are created in the public schema. When objects are referenced
in any other context without schema qualification (table modification, data modification, or query
commands) the search path is traversed until a matching object is found. Therefore, in the default
configuration, any unqualified access again can only refer to the public schema.

To put our new schema in the path, we use:

SET search_path TO myschema,public;

(We omit the $user here because we have no immediate need for it.) And then we can access the
table without schema qualification:

DROP TABLE mytable;

Also, since myschema is the first element in the path, new objects would by default be created in it.

We could also have written:

SET search_path TO myschema;

Then we no longer have access to the public schema without explicit qualification. There is nothing
special about the public schema except that it exists by default. It can be dropped, too.

See also Section 9.26 for other ways to manipulate the schema search path.

The search path works in the same way for data type names, function names, and operator names as it
does for table names. Data type and function names can be qualified in exactly the same way as table
names. If you need to write a qualified operator name in an expression, there is a special provision:
you must write

OPERATOR(schema.operator)

This is needed to avoid syntactic ambiguity. An example is:

SELECT 3 OPERATOR(pg_catalog.+) 4;

In practice one usually relies on the search path for operators, so as not to have to write anything so
ugly as that.

5.9.4. Schemas and Privileges

By default, users cannot access any objects in schemas they do not own. To allow that, the owner of
the schema must grant the USAGE privilege on the schema. To allow users to make use of the objects
in the schema, additional privileges might need to be granted, as appropriate for the object.

A user can also be allowed to create objects in someone else's schema. To allow that, the CREATE
privilege on the schema needs to be granted. Note that by default, everyone has CREATE and USAGE
privileges on the schema public. This allows all users that are able to connect to a given database
to create objects in its public schema. Some usage patterns call for revoking that privilege:

85
 Data Definition

REVOKE CREATE ON SCHEMA public FROM PUBLIC;

(The first “public” is the schema, the second “public” means “every user”. In the first sense it is an
identifier, in the second sense it is a key word, hence the different capitalization; recall the guidelines
from Section 4.1.1.)

5.9.5. The System Catalog Schema

In addition to public and user-created schemas, each database contains a pg_catalog schema,
which contains the system tables and all the built-in data types, functions, and operators. pg_cat-
alog is always effectively part of the search path. If it is not named explicitly in the path then it is
implicitly searched before searching the path's schemas. This ensures that built-in names will always
be findable. However, you can explicitly place pg_catalog at the end of your search path if you
prefer to have user-defined names override built-in names.

Since system table names begin with pg_, it is best to avoid such names to ensure that you won't suffer
a conflict if some future version defines a system table named the same as your table. (With the default
search path, an unqualified reference to your table name would then be resolved as the system table
instead.) System tables will continue to follow the convention of having names beginning with pg_,
so that they will not conflict with unqualified user-table names so long as users avoid the pg_ prefix.

5.9.6. Usage Patterns

Schemas can be used to organize your data in many ways. A secure schema usage pattern prevents un-
trusted users from changing the behavior of other users' queries. When a database does not use a secure
schema usage pattern, users wishing to securely query that database would take protective action at the
beginning of each session. Specifically, they would begin each session by setting search_path to
the empty string or otherwise removing non-superuser-writable schemas from search_path. There
are a few usage patterns easily supported by the default configuration:

• Constrain ordinary users to user-private schemas. To implement this, issue REVOKE CREATE ON
SCHEMA public FROM PUBLIC, and create a schema for each user with the same name as
that user. Recall that the default search path starts with $user, which resolves to the user name.
Therefore, if each user has a separate schema, they access their own schemas by default. After
adopting this pattern in a database where untrusted users had already logged in, consider auditing
the public schema for objects named like objects in schema pg_catalog. This pattern is a secure
schema usage pattern unless an untrusted user is the database owner or holds the CREATEROLE
privilege, in which case no secure schema usage pattern exists.

• Remove the public schema from the default search path, by modifying postgresql.conf or
by issuing ALTER ROLE ALL SET search_path = "$user". Everyone retains the
ability to create objects in the public schema, but only qualified names will choose those objects.
While qualified table references are fine, calls to functions in the public schema will be unsafe or
unreliable. If you create functions or extensions in the public schema, use the first pattern instead.
Otherwise, like the first pattern, this is secure unless an untrusted user is the database owner or
holds the CREATEROLE privilege.

• Keep the default. All users access the public schema implicitly. This simulates the situation where
schemas are not available at all, giving a smooth transition from the non-schema-aware world.
However, this is never a secure pattern. It is acceptable only when the database has a single user
or a few mutually-trusting users.

For any pattern, to install shared applications (tables to be used by everyone, additional functions pro-
vided by third parties, etc.), put them into separate schemas. Remember to grant appropriate privileges
to allow the other users to access them. Users can then refer to these additional objects by qualifying
the names with a schema name, or they can put the additional schemas into their search path, as they
choose.

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 Data Definition

5.9.7. Portability
In the SQL standard, the notion of objects in the same schema being owned by different users does
not exist. Moreover, some implementations do not allow you to create schemas that have a different
name than their owner. In fact, the concepts of schema and user are nearly equivalent in a database
system that implements only the basic schema support specified in the standard. Therefore, many users
consider qualified names to really consist of user_name.table_name. This is how PostgreSQL
will effectively behave if you create a per-user schema for every user.

Also, there is no concept of a public schema in the SQL standard. For maximum conformance to
the standard, you should not use the public schema.

Of course, some SQL database systems might not implement schemas at all, or provide namespace
support by allowing (possibly limited) cross-database access. If you need to work with those systems,
then maximum portability would be achieved by not using schemas at all.

5.10. Inheritance
PostgreSQL implements table inheritance, which can be a useful tool for database designers.
(SQL:1999 and later define a type inheritance feature, which differs in many respects from the features
described here.)

Let's start with an example: suppose we are trying to build a data model for cities. Each state has many
cities, but only one capital. We want to be able to quickly retrieve the capital city for any particular
state. This can be done by creating two tables, one for state capitals and one for cities that are not
capitals. However, what happens when we want to ask for data about a city, regardless of whether it is
a capital or not? The inheritance feature can help to resolve this problem. We define the capitals
table so that it inherits from cities:

CREATE TABLE cities (

name text,
population float,
elevation int -- in feet
);

CREATE TABLE capitals (

state char(2)
) INHERITS (cities);

In this case, the capitals table inherits all the columns of its parent table, cities. State capitals
also have an extra column, state, that shows their state.

In PostgreSQL, a table can inherit from zero or more other tables, and a query can reference either
all rows of a table or all rows of a table plus all of its descendant tables. The latter behavior is the
default. For example, the following query finds the names of all cities, including state capitals, that
are located at an elevation over 500 feet:

SELECT name, elevation

FROM cities
WHERE elevation > 500;

Given the sample data from the PostgreSQL tutorial (see Section 2.1), this returns:

name | elevation
-----------+-----------

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 Data Definition

Las Vegas | 2174

Mariposa | 1953
Madison | 845

On the other hand, the following query finds all the cities that are not state capitals and are situated
at an elevation over 500 feet:

SELECT name, elevation

FROM ONLY cities
WHERE elevation > 500;

name | elevation
-----------+-----------
Las Vegas | 2174
Mariposa | 1953

Here the ONLY keyword indicates that the query should apply only to cities, and not any tables
below cities in the inheritance hierarchy. Many of the commands that we have already discussed
— SELECT, UPDATE and DELETE — support the ONLY keyword.

You can also write the table name with a trailing * to explicitly specify that descendant tables are
included:

SELECT name, elevation

FROM cities*
WHERE elevation > 500;

Writing * is not necessary, since this behavior is always the default. However, this syntax is still
supported for compatibility with older releases where the default could be changed.

In some cases you might wish to know which table a particular row originated from. There is a system
column called tableoid in each table which can tell you the originating table:

SELECT c.tableoid, c.name, c.elevation

FROM cities c
WHERE c.elevation > 500;

which returns:

tableoid | name | elevation

----------+-----------+-----------
139793 | Las Vegas | 2174
139793 | Mariposa | 1953
139798 | Madison | 845

(If you try to reproduce this example, you will probably get different numeric OIDs.) By doing a join
with pg_class you can see the actual table names:

SELECT p.relname, c.name, c.elevation

FROM cities c, pg_class p
WHERE c.elevation > 500 AND c.tableoid = p.oid;

which returns:

88
 Data Definition

relname | name | elevation

----------+-----------+-----------
cities | Las Vegas | 2174
cities | Mariposa | 1953
capitals | Madison | 845

Another way to get the same effect is to use the regclass alias type, which will print the table OID
symbolically:

SELECT c.tableoid::regclass, c.name, c.elevation

FROM cities c
WHERE c.elevation > 500;

Inheritance does not automatically propagate data from INSERT or COPY commands to other tables
in the inheritance hierarchy. In our example, the following INSERT statement will fail:

INSERT INTO cities (name, population, elevation, state)

VALUES ('Albany', NULL, NULL, 'NY');

We might hope that the data would somehow be routed to the capitals table, but this does not
happen: INSERT always inserts into exactly the table specified. In some cases it is possible to redirect
the insertion using a rule (see Chapter 41). However that does not help for the above case because
the cities table does not contain the column state, and so the command will be rejected before
the rule can be applied.

All check constraints and not-null constraints on a parent table are automatically inherited by its chil-
dren, unless explicitly specified otherwise with NO INHERIT clauses. Other types of constraints
(unique, primary key, and foreign key constraints) are not inherited.

A table can inherit from more than one parent table, in which case it has the union of the columns
defined by the parent tables. Any columns declared in the child table's definition are added to these.
If the same column name appears in multiple parent tables, or in both a parent table and the child's
definition, then these columns are “merged” so that there is only one such column in the child table. To
be merged, columns must have the same data types, else an error is raised. Inheritable check constraints
and not-null constraints are merged in a similar fashion. Thus, for example, a merged column will be
marked not-null if any one of the column definitions it came from is marked not-null. Check constraints
are merged if they have the same name, and the merge will fail if their conditions are different.

Table inheritance is typically established when the child table is created, using the INHERITS clause
of the CREATE TABLE statement. Alternatively, a table which is already defined in a compatible way
can have a new parent relationship added, using the INHERIT variant of ALTER TABLE. To do this
the new child table must already include columns with the same names and types as the columns of the
parent. It must also include check constraints with the same names and check expressions as those of
the parent. Similarly an inheritance link can be removed from a child using the NO INHERIT variant
of ALTER TABLE. Dynamically adding and removing inheritance links like this can be useful when
the inheritance relationship is being used for table partitioning (see Section 5.11).

One convenient way to create a compatible table that will later be made a new child is to use the
LIKE clause in CREATE TABLE. This creates a new table with the same columns as the source table.
If there are any CHECK constraints defined on the source table, the INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS
option to LIKE should be specified, as the new child must have constraints matching the parent to
be considered compatible.

A parent table cannot be dropped while any of its children remain. Neither can columns or check
constraints of child tables be dropped or altered if they are inherited from any parent tables. If you
wish to remove a table and all of its descendants, one easy way is to drop the parent table with the
CASCADE option (see Section 5.14).

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 Data Definition

ALTER TABLE will propagate any changes in column data definitions and check constraints down
the inheritance hierarchy. Again, dropping columns that are depended on by other tables is only pos-
sible when using the CASCADE option. ALTER TABLE follows the same rules for duplicate column
merging and rejection that apply during CREATE TABLE.

Inherited queries perform access permission checks on the parent table only. Thus, for example, grant-
ing UPDATE permission on the cities table implies permission to update rows in the capitals
table as well, when they are accessed through cities. This preserves the appearance that the data
is (also) in the parent table. But the capitals table could not be updated directly without an addi-
tional grant. In a similar way, the parent table's row security policies (see Section 5.8) are applied to
rows coming from child tables during an inherited query. A child table's policies, if any, are applied
only when it is the table explicitly named in the query; and in that case, any policies attached to its
parent(s) are ignored.

Foreign tables (see Section 5.12) can also be part of inheritance hierarchies, either as parent or child
tables, just as regular tables can be. If a foreign table is part of an inheritance hierarchy then any
operations not supported by the foreign table are not supported on the whole hierarchy either.

5.10.1. Caveats
Note that not all SQL commands are able to work on inheritance hierarchies. Commands that are used
for data querying, data modification, or schema modification (e.g., SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, most
variants of ALTER TABLE, but not INSERT or ALTER TABLE ... RENAME) typically default
to including child tables and support the ONLY notation to exclude them. Commands that do database
maintenance and tuning (e.g., REINDEX, VACUUM) typically only work on individual, physical tables
and do not support recursing over inheritance hierarchies. The respective behavior of each individual
command is documented in its reference page (SQL Commands).

A serious limitation of the inheritance feature is that indexes (including unique constraints) and foreign
key constraints only apply to single tables, not to their inheritance children. This is true on both the
referencing and referenced sides of a foreign key constraint. Thus, in the terms of the above example:

• If we declared cities.name to be UNIQUE or a PRIMARY KEY, this would not stop the cap-
itals table from having rows with names duplicating rows in cities. And those duplicate rows
would by default show up in queries from cities. In fact, by default capitals would have no
unique constraint at all, and so could contain multiple rows with the same name. You could add a
unique constraint to capitals, but this would not prevent duplication compared to cities.

• Similarly, if we were to specify that cities.name REFERENCES some other table, this constraint
would not automatically propagate to capitals. In this case you could work around it by manually
adding the same REFERENCES constraint to capitals.

• Specifying that another table's column REFERENCES cities(name) would allow the other
table to contain city names, but not capital names. There is no good workaround for this case.

Some functionality not implemented for inheritance hierarchies is implemented for declarative parti-
tioning. Considerable care is needed in deciding whether partitioning with legacy inheritance is useful
for your application.

5.11. Table Partitioning

PostgreSQL supports basic table partitioning. This section describes why and how to implement par-
titioning as part of your database design.

5.11.1. Overview
Partitioning refers to splitting what is logically one large table into smaller physical pieces. Partitioning
can provide several benefits:

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 Data Definition

• Query performance can be improved dramatically in certain situations, particularly when most of
the heavily accessed rows of the table are in a single partition or a small number of partitions.
Partitioning effectively substitutes for the upper tree levels of indexes, making it more likely that
the heavily-used parts of the indexes fit in memory.

• When queries or updates access a large percentage of a single partition, performance can be im-
proved by using a sequential scan of that partition instead of using an index, which would require
random-access reads scattered across the whole table.

• Bulk loads and deletes can be accomplished by adding or removing partitions, if the usage pattern is
accounted for in the partitioning design. Dropping an individual partition using DROP TABLE, or
doing ALTER TABLE DETACH PARTITION, is far faster than a bulk operation. These commands
also entirely avoid the VACUUM overhead caused by a bulk DELETE.

• Seldom-used data can be migrated to cheaper and slower storage media.

These benefits will normally be worthwhile only when a table would otherwise be very large. The
exact point at which a table will benefit from partitioning depends on the application, although a rule
of thumb is that the size of the table should exceed the physical memory of the database server.

PostgreSQL offers built-in support for the following forms of partitioning:

Range Partitioning

The table is partitioned into “ranges” defined by a key column or set of columns, with no overlap
between the ranges of values assigned to different partitions. For example, one might partition by
date ranges, or by ranges of identifiers for particular business objects. Each range's bounds are
understood as being inclusive at the lower end and exclusive at the upper end. For example, if
one partition's range is from 1 to 10, and the next one's range is from 10 to 20, then value 10
belongs to the second partition not the first.

List Partitioning

The table is partitioned by explicitly listing which key value(s) appear in each partition.

Hash Partitioning

The table is partitioned by specifying a modulus and a remainder for each partition. Each partition
will hold the rows for which the hash value of the partition key divided by the specified modulus
will produce the specified remainder.

If your application needs to use other forms of partitioning not listed above, alternative methods such
as inheritance and UNION ALL views can be used instead. Such methods offer flexibility but do not
have some of the performance benefits of built-in declarative partitioning.

5.11.2. Declarative Partitioning

PostgreSQL allows you to declare that a table is divided into partitions. The table that is divided is
referred to as a partitioned table. The declaration includes the partitioning method as described above,
plus a list of columns or expressions to be used as the partition key.

The partitioned table itself is a “virtual” table having no storage of its own. Instead, the storage belongs
to partitions, which are otherwise-ordinary tables associated with the partitioned table. Each partition
stores a subset of the data as defined by its partition bounds. All rows inserted into a partitioned table
will be routed to the appropriate one of the partitions based on the values of the partition key column(s).
Updating the partition key of a row will cause it to be moved into a different partition if it no longer
satisfies the partition bounds of its original partition.

Partitions may themselves be defined as partitioned tables, resulting in sub-partitioning. Although

all partitions must have the same columns as their partitioned parent, partitions may have their own

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 Data Definition

indexes, constraints and default values, distinct from those of other partitions. See CREATE TABLE
for more details on creating partitioned tables and partitions.

It is not possible to turn a regular table into a partitioned table or vice versa. However, it is possible to
add an existing regular or partitioned table as a partition of a partitioned table, or remove a partition
from a partitioned table turning it into a standalone table; this can simplify and speed up many main-
tenance processes. See ALTER TABLE to learn more about the ATTACH PARTITION and DETACH
PARTITION sub-commands.

Partitions can also be foreign tables, although considerable care is needed because it is then the user's
responsibility that the contents of the foreign table satisfy the partitioning rule. There are some other
restrictions as well. See CREATE FOREIGN TABLE for more information.

5.11.2.1. Example
Suppose we are constructing a database for a large ice cream company. The company measures peak
temperatures every day as well as ice cream sales in each region. Conceptually, we want a table like:

CREATE TABLE measurement (

city_id int not null,
logdate date not null,
peaktemp int,
unitsales int
);

We know that most queries will access just the last week's, month's or quarter's data, since the main
use of this table will be to prepare online reports for management. To reduce the amount of old data
that needs to be stored, we decide to keep only the most recent 3 years worth of data. At the beginning
of each month we will remove the oldest month's data. In this situation we can use partitioning to help
us meet all of our different requirements for the measurements table.

To use declarative partitioning in this case, use the following steps:

1. Create the measurement table as a partitioned table by specifying the PARTITION BY clause,
which includes the partitioning method (RANGE in this case) and the list of column(s) to use as
the partition key.

CREATE TABLE measurement (

city_id int not null,
logdate date not null,
peaktemp int,
unitsales int
) PARTITION BY RANGE (logdate);
2. Create partitions. Each partition's definition must specify bounds that correspond to the partitioning
method and partition key of the parent. Note that specifying bounds such that the new partition's
values would overlap with those in one or more existing partitions will cause an error.

Partitions thus created are in every way normal PostgreSQL tables (or, possibly, foreign tables).
It is possible to specify a tablespace and storage parameters for each partition separately.

For our example, each partition should hold one month's worth of data, to match the requirement
of deleting one month's data at a time. So the commands might look like:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m02 PARTITION OF measurement

FOR VALUES FROM ('2006-02-01') TO ('2006-03-01');

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m03 PARTITION OF measurement

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 Data Definition

FOR VALUES FROM ('2006-03-01') TO ('2006-04-01');

...
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m11 PARTITION OF measurement
FOR VALUES FROM ('2007-11-01') TO ('2007-12-01');

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m12 PARTITION OF measurement

FOR VALUES FROM ('2007-12-01') TO ('2008-01-01')
TABLESPACE fasttablespace;

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m01 PARTITION OF measurement

FOR VALUES FROM ('2008-01-01') TO ('2008-02-01')
WITH (parallel_workers = 4)
TABLESPACE fasttablespace;

(Recall that adjacent partitions can share a bound value, since range upper bounds are treated as
exclusive bounds.)

If you wish to implement sub-partitioning, again specify the PARTITION BY clause in the com-
mands used to create individual partitions, for example:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m02 PARTITION OF measurement

FOR VALUES FROM ('2006-02-01') TO ('2006-03-01')
PARTITION BY RANGE (peaktemp);

After creating partitions of measurement_y2006m02, any data inserted into measurement

that is mapped to measurement_y2006m02 (or data that is directly inserted into measure-
ment_y2006m02, which is allowed provided its partition constraint is satisfied) will be further
redirected to one of its partitions based on the peaktemp column. The partition key specified may
overlap with the parent's partition key, although care should be taken when specifying the bounds
of a sub-partition such that the set of data it accepts constitutes a subset of what the partition's own
bounds allow; the system does not try to check whether that's really the case.

Inserting data into the parent table that does not map to one of the existing partitions will cause an
error; an appropriate partition must be added manually.

It is not necessary to manually create table constraints describing the partition boundary conditions
for partitions. Such constraints will be created automatically.
3. Create an index on the key column(s), as well as any other indexes you might want, on the par-
titioned table. (The key index is not strictly necessary, but in most scenarios it is helpful.) This
automatically creates a matching index on each partition, and any partitions you create or attach
later will also have such an index. An index or unique constraint declared on a partitioned table
is “virtual” in the same way that the partitioned table is: the actual data is in child indexes on the
individual partition tables.

CREATE INDEX ON measurement (logdate);

4. Ensure that the enable_partition_pruning configuration parameter is not disabled in post-
gresql.conf. If it is, queries will not be optimized as desired.

In the above example we would be creating a new partition each month, so it might be wise to write
a script that generates the required DDL automatically.

5.11.2.2. Partition Maintenance

Normally the set of partitions established when initially defining the table is not intended to remain
static. It is common to want to remove partitions holding old data and periodically add new partitions
for new data. One of the most important advantages of partitioning is precisely that it allows this

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 Data Definition

otherwise painful task to be executed nearly instantaneously by manipulating the partition structure,
rather than physically moving large amounts of data around.

The simplest option for removing old data is to drop the partition that is no longer necessary:

DROP TABLE measurement_y2006m02;

This can very quickly delete millions of records because it doesn't have to individually delete every
record. Note however that the above command requires taking an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on
the parent table.

Another option that is often preferable is to remove the partition from the partitioned table but retain
access to it as a table in its own right. This has two forms:

ALTER TABLE measurement DETACH PARTITION measurement_y2006m02;

ALTER TABLE measurement DETACH PARTITION measurement_y2006m02
CONCURRENTLY;

These allow further operations to be performed on the data before it is dropped. For example, this is
often a useful time to back up the data using COPY, pg_dump, or similar tools. It might also be a useful
time to aggregate data into smaller formats, perform other data manipulations, or run reports. The
first form of the command requires an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on the parent table. Adding the
CONCURRENTLY qualifier as in the second form allows the detach operation to require only SHARE
UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock on the parent table, but see ALTER TABLE ... DETACH PARTITION
for details on the restrictions.

Similarly we can add a new partition to handle new data. We can create an empty partition in the
partitioned table just as the original partitions were created above:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m02 PARTITION OF measurement

FOR VALUES FROM ('2008-02-01') TO ('2008-03-01')
TABLESPACE fasttablespace;

As an alternative, it is sometimes more convenient to create the new table outside the partition struc-
ture, and make it a proper partition later. This allows new data to be loaded, checked, and transformed
prior to it appearing in the partitioned table. The CREATE TABLE ... LIKE option is helpful to
avoid tediously repeating the parent table's definition:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m02

(LIKE measurement INCLUDING DEFAULTS INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS)
TABLESPACE fasttablespace;

ALTER TABLE measurement_y2008m02 ADD CONSTRAINT y2008m02

CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-02-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2008-03-01' );

\copy measurement_y2008m02 from 'measurement_y2008m02'

-- possibly some other data preparation work

ALTER TABLE measurement ATTACH PARTITION measurement_y2008m02

FOR VALUES FROM ('2008-02-01') TO ('2008-03-01' );

The ATTACH PARTITION command requires taking a SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock on
the partitioned table.

Before running the ATTACH PARTITION command, it is recommended to create a CHECK constraint
on the table to be attached that matches the expected partition constraint, as illustrated above. That

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 Data Definition

way, the system will be able to skip the scan which is otherwise needed to validate the implicit partition
constraint. Without the CHECK constraint, the table will be scanned to validate the partition constraint
while holding an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on that partition. It is recommended to drop the now-
redundant CHECK constraint after the ATTACH PARTITION is complete. If the table being attached
is itself a partitioned table, then each of its sub-partitions will be recursively locked and scanned until
either a suitable CHECK constraint is encountered or the leaf partitions are reached.

Similarly, if the partitioned table has a DEFAULT partition, it is recommended to create a CHECK con-
straint which excludes the to-be-attached partition's constraint. If this is not done then the DEFAULT
partition will be scanned to verify that it contains no records which should be located in the partition
being attached. This operation will be performed whilst holding an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on the
DEFAULT partition. If the DEFAULT partition is itself a partitioned table, then each of its partitions
will be recursively checked in the same way as the table being attached, as mentioned above.

As explained above, it is possible to create indexes on partitioned tables so that they are applied au-
tomatically to the entire hierarchy. This is very convenient, as not only will the existing partitions
become indexed, but also any partitions that are created in the future will. One limitation is that it's
not possible to use the CONCURRENTLY qualifier when creating such a partitioned index. To avoid
long lock times, it is possible to use CREATE INDEX ON ONLY the partitioned table; such an index
is marked invalid, and the partitions do not get the index applied automatically. The indexes on parti-
tions can be created individually using CONCURRENTLY, and then attached to the index on the parent
using ALTER INDEX .. ATTACH PARTITION. Once indexes for all partitions are attached to
the parent index, the parent index is marked valid automatically. Example:

CREATE INDEX measurement_usls_idx ON ONLY measurement (unitsales);

CREATE INDEX measurement_usls_200602_idx

ON measurement_y2006m02 (unitsales);
ALTER INDEX measurement_usls_idx
ATTACH PARTITION measurement_usls_200602_idx;
...

This technique can be used with UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY constraints too; the indexes are created
implicitly when the constraint is created. Example:

ALTER TABLE ONLY measurement ADD UNIQUE (city_id, logdate);

ALTER TABLE measurement_y2006m02 ADD UNIQUE (city_id, logdate);

ALTER INDEX measurement_city_id_logdate_key
ATTACH PARTITION measurement_y2006m02_city_id_logdate_key;
...

5.11.2.3. Limitations
The following limitations apply to partitioned tables:

• To create a unique or primary key constraint on a partitioned table, the partition keys must not in-
clude any expressions or function calls and the constraint's columns must include all of the partition
key columns. This limitation exists because the individual indexes making up the constraint can
only directly enforce uniqueness within their own partitions; therefore, the partition structure itself
must guarantee that there are not duplicates in different partitions.

• There is no way to create an exclusion constraint spanning the whole partitioned table. It is only
possible to put such a constraint on each leaf partition individually. Again, this limitation stems
from not being able to enforce cross-partition restrictions.

• BEFORE ROW triggers on INSERT cannot change which partition is the final destination for a
new row.

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 Data Definition

• Mixing temporary and permanent relations in the same partition tree is not allowed. Hence, if the
partitioned table is permanent, so must be its partitions and likewise if the partitioned table is tem-
porary. When using temporary relations, all members of the partition tree have to be from the same
session.

Individual partitions are linked to their partitioned table using inheritance behind-the-scenes. However,
it is not possible to use all of the generic features of inheritance with declaratively partitioned tables
or their partitions, as discussed below. Notably, a partition cannot have any parents other than the
partitioned table it is a partition of, nor can a table inherit from both a partitioned table and a regular
table. That means partitioned tables and their partitions never share an inheritance hierarchy with
regular tables.

Since a partition hierarchy consisting of the partitioned table and its partitions is still an inheritance
hierarchy, tableoid and all the normal rules of inheritance apply as described in Section 5.10, with
a few exceptions:

• Partitions cannot have columns that are not present in the parent. It is not possible to specify columns
when creating partitions with CREATE TABLE, nor is it possible to add columns to partitions
after-the-fact using ALTER TABLE. Tables may be added as a partition with ALTER TABLE ...
ATTACH PARTITION only if their columns exactly match the parent.

• Both CHECK and NOT NULL constraints of a partitioned table are always inherited by all its parti-
tions. CHECK constraints that are marked NO INHERIT are not allowed to be created on partitioned
tables. You cannot drop a NOT NULL constraint on a partition's column if the same constraint is
present in the parent table.

• Using ONLY to add or drop a constraint on only the partitioned table is supported as long as there
are no partitions. Once partitions exist, using ONLY will result in an error. Instead, constraints on
the partitions themselves can be added and (if they are not present in the parent table) dropped.

• As a partitioned table does not have any data itself, attempts to use TRUNCATE ONLY on a parti-
tioned table will always return an error.

5.11.3. Partitioning Using Inheritance

While the built-in declarative partitioning is suitable for most common use cases, there are some
circumstances where a more flexible approach may be useful. Partitioning can be implemented using
table inheritance, which allows for several features not supported by declarative partitioning, such as:

• For declarative partitioning, partitions must have exactly the same set of columns as the partitioned
table, whereas with table inheritance, child tables may have extra columns not present in the parent.

• Table inheritance allows for multiple inheritance.

• Declarative partitioning only supports range, list and hash partitioning, whereas table inheritance
allows data to be divided in a manner of the user's choosing. (Note, however, that if constraint
exclusion is unable to prune child tables effectively, query performance might be poor.)

5.11.3.1. Example
This example builds a partitioning structure equivalent to the declarative partitioning example above.
Use the following steps:

1. Create the “root” table, from which all of the “child” tables will inherit. This table will contain
no data. Do not define any check constraints on this table, unless you intend them to be applied
equally to all child tables. There is no point in defining any indexes or unique constraints on it,
either. For our example, the root table is the measurement table as originally defined:

CREATE TABLE measurement (

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 Data Definition

city_id int not null,

logdate date not null,
peaktemp int,
unitsales int
);
2. Create several “child” tables that each inherit from the root table. Normally, these tables will not
add any columns to the set inherited from the root. Just as with declarative partitioning, these tables
are in every way normal PostgreSQL tables (or foreign tables).

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m02 () INHERITS (measurement);

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m03 () INHERITS (measurement);
...
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m11 () INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m12 () INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m01 () INHERITS (measurement);
3. Add non-overlapping table constraints to the child tables to define the allowed key values in each.

Typical examples would be:

CHECK ( x = 1 )
CHECK ( county IN ( 'Oxfordshire', 'Buckinghamshire',
'Warwickshire' ))
CHECK ( outletID >= 100 AND outletID < 200 )

Ensure that the constraints guarantee that there is no overlap between the key values permitted in
different child tables. A common mistake is to set up range constraints like:

CHECK ( outletID BETWEEN 100 AND 200 )

CHECK ( outletID BETWEEN 200 AND 300 )

This is wrong since it is not clear which child table the key value 200 belongs in. Instead, ranges
should be defined in this style:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m02 (

CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2006-02-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2006-03-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m03 (

CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2006-03-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2006-04-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

...
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m11 (
CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2007-11-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2007-12-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m12 (

CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2007-12-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2008-01-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m01 (

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 Data Definition

CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01' AND logdate < DATE

'2008-02-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);
4. For each child table, create an index on the key column(s), as well as any other indexes you might
want.

CREATE INDEX measurement_y2006m02_logdate ON

measurement_y2006m02 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2006m03_logdate ON
measurement_y2006m03 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2007m11_logdate ON
measurement_y2007m11 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2007m12_logdate ON
measurement_y2007m12 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2008m01_logdate ON
measurement_y2008m01 (logdate);
5. We want our application to be able to say INSERT INTO measurement ... and have the
data be redirected into the appropriate child table. We can arrange that by attaching a suitable
trigger function to the root table. If data will be added only to the latest child, we can use a very
simple trigger function:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION measurement_insert_trigger()

RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
INSERT INTO measurement_y2008m01 VALUES (NEW.*);
RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

After creating the function, we create a trigger which calls the trigger function:

CREATE TRIGGER insert_measurement_trigger

BEFORE INSERT ON measurement
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE FUNCTION measurement_insert_trigger();

We must redefine the trigger function each month so that it always inserts into the current child
table. The trigger definition does not need to be updated, however.

We might want to insert data and have the server automatically locate the child table into which
the row should be added. We could do this with a more complex trigger function, for example:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION measurement_insert_trigger()

RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
IF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2006-02-01' AND
NEW.logdate < DATE '2006-03-01' ) THEN
INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m02 VALUES (NEW.*);
ELSIF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2006-03-01' AND
NEW.logdate < DATE '2006-04-01' ) THEN
INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m03 VALUES (NEW.*);
...
ELSIF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01' AND
NEW.logdate < DATE '2008-02-01' ) THEN
INSERT INTO measurement_y2008m01 VALUES (NEW.*);

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 Data Definition

ELSE
RAISE EXCEPTION 'Date out of range. Fix the
measurement_insert_trigger() function!';
END IF;
RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The trigger definition is the same as before. Note that each IF test must exactly match the CHECK
constraint for its child table.

While this function is more complex than the single-month case, it doesn't need to be updated as
often, since branches can be added in advance of being needed.

Note
In practice, it might be best to check the newest child first, if most inserts go into that
child. For simplicity, we have shown the trigger's tests in the same order as in other parts
of this example.

A different approach to redirecting inserts into the appropriate child table is to set up rules, instead
of a trigger, on the root table. For example:

CREATE RULE measurement_insert_y2006m02 AS

ON INSERT TO measurement WHERE
( logdate >= DATE '2006-02-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2006-03-01' )
DO INSTEAD
INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m02 VALUES (NEW.*);
...
CREATE RULE measurement_insert_y2008m01 AS
ON INSERT TO measurement WHERE
( logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2008-02-01' )
DO INSTEAD
INSERT INTO measurement_y2008m01 VALUES (NEW.*);

A rule has significantly more overhead than a trigger, but the overhead is paid once per query
rather than once per row, so this method might be advantageous for bulk-insert situations. In most
cases, however, the trigger method will offer better performance.

Be aware that COPY ignores rules. If you want to use COPY to insert data, you'll need to copy into
the correct child table rather than directly into the root. COPY does fire triggers, so you can use
it normally if you use the trigger approach.

Another disadvantage of the rule approach is that there is no simple way to force an error if the set
of rules doesn't cover the insertion date; the data will silently go into the root table instead.
6. Ensure that the constraint_exclusion configuration parameter is not disabled in post-
gresql.conf; otherwise child tables may be accessed unnecessarily.

As we can see, a complex table hierarchy could require a substantial amount of DDL. In the above
example we would be creating a new child table each month, so it might be wise to write a script that
generates the required DDL automatically.

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 Data Definition

5.11.3.2. Maintenance for Inheritance Partitioning

To remove old data quickly, simply drop the child table that is no longer necessary:

DROP TABLE measurement_y2006m02;

To remove the child table from the inheritance hierarchy table but retain access to it as a table in its
own right:

ALTER TABLE measurement_y2006m02 NO INHERIT measurement;

To add a new child table to handle new data, create an empty child table just as the original children
were created above:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m02 (

CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-02-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2008-03-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

Alternatively, one may want to create and populate the new child table before adding it to the table
hierarchy. This could allow data to be loaded, checked, and transformed before being made visible
to queries on the parent table.

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m02

(LIKE measurement INCLUDING DEFAULTS INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS);
ALTER TABLE measurement_y2008m02 ADD CONSTRAINT y2008m02
CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-02-01' AND logdate < DATE
'2008-03-01' );
\copy measurement_y2008m02 from 'measurement_y2008m02'
-- possibly some other data preparation work
ALTER TABLE measurement_y2008m02 INHERIT measurement;

5.11.3.3. Caveats
The following caveats apply to partitioning implemented using inheritance:

• There is no automatic way to verify that all of the CHECK constraints are mutually exclusive. It is
safer to create code that generates child tables and creates and/or modifies associated objects than
to write each by hand.

• Indexes and foreign key constraints apply to single tables and not to their inheritance children, hence
they have some caveats to be aware of.

• The schemes shown here assume that the values of a row's key column(s) never change, or at least do
not change enough to require it to move to another partition. An UPDATE that attempts to do that will
fail because of the CHECK constraints. If you need to handle such cases, you can put suitable update
triggers on the child tables, but it makes management of the structure much more complicated.

• If you are using manual VACUUM or ANALYZE commands, don't forget that you need to run them
on each child table individually. A command like:

ANALYZE measurement;

will only process the root table.

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 Data Definition

• INSERT statements with ON CONFLICT clauses are unlikely to work as expected, as the ON
CONFLICT action is only taken in case of unique violations on the specified target relation, not
its child relations.

• Triggers or rules will be needed to route rows to the desired child table, unless the application is
explicitly aware of the partitioning scheme. Triggers may be complicated to write, and will be much
slower than the tuple routing performed internally by declarative partitioning.

5.11.4. Partition Pruning

Partition pruning is a query optimization technique that improves performance for declaratively par-
titioned tables. As an example:

SET enable_partition_pruning = on; -- the default

SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE
'2008-01-01';

Without partition pruning, the above query would scan each of the partitions of the measurement
table. With partition pruning enabled, the planner will examine the definition of each partition and
prove that the partition need not be scanned because it could not contain any rows meeting the query's
WHERE clause. When the planner can prove this, it excludes (prunes) the partition from the query plan.

By using the EXPLAIN command and the enable_partition_pruning configuration parameter, it's pos-
sible to show the difference between a plan for which partitions have been pruned and one for which
they have not. A typical unoptimized plan for this type of table setup is:

SET enable_partition_pruning = off;

EXPLAIN SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE
'2008-01-01';
QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------
Aggregate (cost=188.76..188.77 rows=1 width=8)
-> Append (cost=0.00..181.05 rows=3085 width=0)
-> Seq Scan on measurement_y2006m02 (cost=0.00..33.12
rows=617 width=0)
Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
-> Seq Scan on measurement_y2006m03 (cost=0.00..33.12
rows=617 width=0)
Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
...
-> Seq Scan on measurement_y2007m11 (cost=0.00..33.12
rows=617 width=0)
Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
-> Seq Scan on measurement_y2007m12 (cost=0.00..33.12
rows=617 width=0)
Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
-> Seq Scan on measurement_y2008m01 (cost=0.00..33.12
rows=617 width=0)
Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)

Some or all of the partitions might use index scans instead of full-table sequential scans, but the point
here is that there is no need to scan the older partitions at all to answer this query. When we enable
partition pruning, we get a significantly cheaper plan that will deliver the same answer:

SET enable_partition_pruning = on;

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 Data Definition

EXPLAIN SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE

'2008-01-01';
QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------
Aggregate (cost=37.75..37.76 rows=1 width=8)
-> Seq Scan on measurement_y2008m01 (cost=0.00..33.12 rows=617
width=0)
Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)

Note that partition pruning is driven only by the constraints defined implicitly by the partition keys,
not by the presence of indexes. Therefore it isn't necessary to define indexes on the key columns.
Whether an index needs to be created for a given partition depends on whether you expect that queries
that scan the partition will generally scan a large part of the partition or just a small part. An index
will be helpful in the latter case but not the former.

Partition pruning can be performed not only during the planning of a given query, but also during its
execution. This is useful as it can allow more partitions to be pruned when clauses contain expressions
whose values are not known at query planning time, for example, parameters defined in a PREPARE
statement, using a value obtained from a subquery, or using a parameterized value on the inner side of
a nested loop join. Partition pruning during execution can be performed at any of the following times:

• During initialization of the query plan. Partition pruning can be performed here for parameter values
which are known during the initialization phase of execution. Partitions which are pruned during
this stage will not show up in the query's EXPLAIN or EXPLAIN ANALYZE. It is possible to de-
termine the number of partitions which were removed during this phase by observing the “Subplans
Removed” property in the EXPLAIN output.

• During actual execution of the query plan. Partition pruning may also be performed here to remove
partitions using values which are only known during actual query execution. This includes values
from subqueries and values from execution-time parameters such as those from parameterized nest-
ed loop joins. Since the value of these parameters may change many times during the execution of
the query, partition pruning is performed whenever one of the execution parameters being used by
partition pruning changes. Determining if partitions were pruned during this phase requires careful
inspection of the loops property in the EXPLAIN ANALYZE output. Subplans corresponding to
different partitions may have different values for it depending on how many times each of them
was pruned during execution. Some may be shown as (never executed) if they were pruned
every time.

Partition pruning can be disabled using the enable_partition_pruning setting.

5.11.5. Partitioning and Constraint Exclusion

Constraint exclusion is a query optimization technique similar to partition pruning. While it is primar-
ily used for partitioning implemented using the legacy inheritance method, it can be used for other
purposes, including with declarative partitioning.

Constraint exclusion works in a very similar way to partition pruning, except that it uses each table's
CHECK constraints — which gives it its name — whereas partition pruning uses the table's partition
bounds, which exist only in the case of declarative partitioning. Another difference is that constraint
exclusion is only applied at plan time; there is no attempt to remove partitions at execution time.

The fact that constraint exclusion uses CHECK constraints, which makes it slow compared to partition
pruning, can sometimes be used as an advantage: because constraints can be defined even on declar-
atively-partitioned tables, in addition to their internal partition bounds, constraint exclusion may be
able to elide additional partitions from the query plan.

The default (and recommended) setting of constraint_exclusion is neither on nor off, but an inter-
mediate setting called partition, which causes the technique to be applied only to queries that are

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 Data Definition

likely to be working on inheritance partitioned tables. The on setting causes the planner to examine
CHECK constraints in all queries, even simple ones that are unlikely to benefit.

The following caveats apply to constraint exclusion:

• Constraint exclusion is only applied during query planning, unlike partition pruning, which can also
be applied during query execution.

• Constraint exclusion only works when the query's WHERE clause contains constants (or externally
supplied parameters). For example, a comparison against a non-immutable function such as CUR-
RENT_TIMESTAMP cannot be optimized, since the planner cannot know which child table the
function's value might fall into at run time.

• Keep the partitioning constraints simple, else the planner may not be able to prove that child tables
might not need to be visited. Use simple equality conditions for list partitioning, or simple range
tests for range partitioning, as illustrated in the preceding examples. A good rule of thumb is that
partitioning constraints should contain only comparisons of the partitioning column(s) to constants
using B-tree-indexable operators, because only B-tree-indexable column(s) are allowed in the par-
tition key.

• All constraints on all children of the parent table are examined during constraint exclusion, so large
numbers of children are likely to increase query planning time considerably. So the legacy inheri-
tance based partitioning will work well with up to perhaps a hundred child tables; don't try to use
many thousands of children.

5.11.6. Best Practices for Declarative Partitioning

The choice of how to partition a table should be made carefully, as the performance of query planning
and execution can be negatively affected by poor design.

One of the most critical design decisions will be the column or columns by which you partition your
data. Often the best choice will be to partition by the column or set of columns which most commonly
appear in WHERE clauses of queries being executed on the partitioned table. WHERE clauses that are
compatible with the partition bound constraints can be used to prune unneeded partitions. However,
you may be forced into making other decisions by requirements for the PRIMARY KEY or a UNIQUE
constraint. Removal of unwanted data is also a factor to consider when planning your partitioning
strategy. An entire partition can be detached fairly quickly, so it may be beneficial to design the par-
tition strategy in such a way that all data to be removed at once is located in a single partition.

Choosing the target number of partitions that the table should be divided into is also a critical decision
to make. Not having enough partitions may mean that indexes remain too large and that data locality
remains poor which could result in low cache hit ratios. However, dividing the table into too many
partitions can also cause issues. Too many partitions can mean longer query planning times and higher
memory consumption during both query planning and execution, as further described below. When
choosing how to partition your table, it's also important to consider what changes may occur in the
future. For example, if you choose to have one partition per customer and you currently have a small
number of large customers, consider the implications if in several years you instead find yourself with
a large number of small customers. In this case, it may be better to choose to partition by HASH and
choose a reasonable number of partitions rather than trying to partition by LIST and hoping that the
number of customers does not increase beyond what it is practical to partition the data by.

Sub-partitioning can be useful to further divide partitions that are expected to become larger than other
partitions. Another option is to use range partitioning with multiple columns in the partition key. Either
of these can easily lead to excessive numbers of partitions, so restraint is advisable.

It is important to consider the overhead of partitioning during query planning and execution. The
query planner is generally able to handle partition hierarchies with up to a few thousand partitions
fairly well, provided that typical queries allow the query planner to prune all but a small number
of partitions. Planning times become longer and memory consumption becomes higher when more

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 Data Definition

partitions remain after the planner performs partition pruning. Another reason to be concerned about
having a large number of partitions is that the server's memory consumption may grow significantly
over time, especially if many sessions touch large numbers of partitions. That's because each partition
requires its metadata to be loaded into the local memory of each session that touches it.

With data warehouse type workloads, it can make sense to use a larger number of partitions than with
an OLTP type workload. Generally, in data warehouses, query planning time is less of a concern as
the majority of processing time is spent during query execution. With either of these two types of
workload, it is important to make the right decisions early, as re-partitioning large quantities of data
can be painfully slow. Simulations of the intended workload are often beneficial for optimizing the
partitioning strategy. Never just assume that more partitions are better than fewer partitions, nor vice-
versa.

5.12. Foreign Data

PostgreSQL implements portions of the SQL/MED specification, allowing you to access data that
resides outside PostgreSQL using regular SQL queries. Such data is referred to as foreign data. (Note
that this usage is not to be confused with foreign keys, which are a type of constraint within the
database.)

Foreign data is accessed with help from a foreign data wrapper. A foreign data wrapper is a library
that can communicate with an external data source, hiding the details of connecting to the data source
and obtaining data from it. There are some foreign data wrappers available as contrib modules; see
Appendix F. Other kinds of foreign data wrappers might be found as third party products. If none of
the existing foreign data wrappers suit your needs, you can write your own; see Chapter 57.

To access foreign data, you need to create a foreign server object, which defines how to connect to
a particular external data source according to the set of options used by its supporting foreign data
wrapper. Then you need to create one or more foreign tables, which define the structure of the remote
data. A foreign table can be used in queries just like a normal table, but a foreign table has no storage
in the PostgreSQL server. Whenever it is used, PostgreSQL asks the foreign data wrapper to fetch data
from the external source, or transmit data to the external source in the case of update commands.

Accessing remote data may require authenticating to the external data source. This information can
be provided by a user mapping, which can provide additional data such as user names and passwords
based on the current PostgreSQL role.

For additional information, see CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, CREATE SERVER, CRE-
ATE USER MAPPING, CREATE FOREIGN TABLE, and IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA.

5.13. Other Database Objects

Tables are the central objects in a relational database structure, because they hold your data. But they
are not the only objects that exist in a database. Many other kinds of objects can be created to make the
use and management of the data more efficient or convenient. They are not discussed in this chapter,
but we give you a list here so that you are aware of what is possible:

• Views

• Functions, procedures, and operators

• Data types and domains

• Triggers and rewrite rules

Detailed information on these topics appears in Part V.

5.14. Dependency Tracking

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 Data Definition

When you create complex database structures involving many tables with foreign key constraints,
views, triggers, functions, etc. you implicitly create a net of dependencies between the objects. For
instance, a table with a foreign key constraint depends on the table it references.

To ensure the integrity of the entire database structure, PostgreSQL makes sure that you cannot drop
objects that other objects still depend on. For example, attempting to drop the products table we con-
sidered in Section 5.4.5, with the orders table depending on it, would result in an error message like
this:

DROP TABLE products;

ERROR: cannot drop table products because other objects depend on

it
DETAIL: constraint orders_product_no_fkey on table orders depends
on table products
HINT: Use DROP ... CASCADE to drop the dependent objects too.

The error message contains a useful hint: if you do not want to bother deleting all the dependent objects
individually, you can run:

DROP TABLE products CASCADE;

and all the dependent objects will be removed, as will any objects that depend on them, recursively.
In this case, it doesn't remove the orders table, it only removes the foreign key constraint. It stops
there because nothing depends on the foreign key constraint. (If you want to check what DROP ...
CASCADE will do, run DROP without CASCADE and read the DETAIL output.)

Almost all DROP commands in PostgreSQL support specifying CASCADE. Of course, the nature of
the possible dependencies varies with the type of the object. You can also write RESTRICT instead
of CASCADE to get the default behavior, which is to prevent dropping objects that any other objects
depend on.

Note
According to the SQL standard, specifying either RESTRICT or CASCADE is required in
a DROP command. No database system actually enforces that rule, but whether the default
behavior is RESTRICT or CASCADE varies across systems.

If a DROP command lists multiple objects, CASCADE is only required when there are dependencies
outside the specified group. For example, when saying DROP TABLE tab1, tab2 the existence
of a foreign key referencing tab1 from tab2 would not mean that CASCADE is needed to succeed.

For user-defined functions, PostgreSQL tracks dependencies associated with a function's external-
ly-visible properties, such as its argument and result types, but not dependencies that could only be
known by examining the function body. As an example, consider this situation:

CREATE TYPE rainbow AS ENUM ('red', 'orange', 'yellow',

'green', 'blue', 'purple');

CREATE TABLE my_colors (color rainbow, note text);

CREATE FUNCTION get_color_note (rainbow) RETURNS text AS

'SELECT note FROM my_colors WHERE color = $1'
LANGUAGE SQL;

105
 Data Definition

(See Section 38.5 for an explanation of SQL-language functions.) PostgreSQL will be aware that the
get_color_note function depends on the rainbow type: dropping the type would force dropping
the function, because its argument type would no longer be defined. But PostgreSQL will not consider
get_color_note to depend on the my_colors table, and so will not drop the function if the table
is dropped. While there are disadvantages to this approach, there are also benefits. The function is still
valid in some sense if the table is missing, though executing it would cause an error; creating a new
table of the same name would allow the function to work again.

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Chapter 6. Data Manipulation
The previous chapter discussed how to create tables and other structures to hold your data. Now it is
time to fill the tables with data. This chapter covers how to insert, update, and delete table data. The
chapter after this will finally explain how to extract your long-lost data from the database.

6.1. Inserting Data

When a table is created, it contains no data. The first thing to do before a database can be of much use
is to insert data. Data is inserted one row at a time. You can also insert more than one row in a single
command, but it is not possible to insert something that is not a complete row. Even if you know only
some column values, a complete row must be created.

To create a new row, use the INSERT command. The command requires the table name and column
values. For example, consider the products table from Chapter 5:

CREATE TABLE products (

product_no integer,
name text,
price numeric
);

An example command to insert a row would be:

INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, 'Cheese', 9.99);

The data values are listed in the order in which the columns appear in the table, separated by commas.
Usually, the data values will be literals (constants), but scalar expressions are also allowed.

The above syntax has the drawback that you need to know the order of the columns in the table. To
avoid this you can also list the columns explicitly. For example, both of the following commands have
the same effect as the one above:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price) VALUES (1, 'Cheese',

9.99);
INSERT INTO products (name, price, product_no) VALUES ('Cheese',
9.99, 1);

Many users consider it good practice to always list the column names.

If you don't have values for all the columns, you can omit some of them. In that case, the columns will
be filled with their default values. For example:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name) VALUES (1, 'Cheese');

INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, 'Cheese');

The second form is a PostgreSQL extension. It fills the columns from the left with as many values as
are given, and the rest will be defaulted.

For clarity, you can also request default values explicitly, for individual columns or for the entire row:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price) VALUES (1, 'Cheese',

DEFAULT);

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 Data Manipulation

INSERT INTO products DEFAULT VALUES;

You can insert multiple rows in a single command:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price) VALUES

(1, 'Cheese', 9.99),
(2, 'Bread', 1.99),
(3, 'Milk', 2.99);

It is also possible to insert the result of a query (which might be no rows, one row, or many rows):

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price)

SELECT product_no, name, price FROM new_products
WHERE release_date = 'today';

This provides the full power of the SQL query mechanism (Chapter 7) for computing the rows to be
inserted.

Tip
When inserting a lot of data at the same time, consider using the COPY command. It is not
as flexible as the INSERT command, but is more efficient. Refer to Section 14.4 for more
information on improving bulk loading performance.

6.2. Updating Data

The modification of data that is already in the database is referred to as updating. You can update
individual rows, all the rows in a table, or a subset of all rows. Each column can be updated separately;
the other columns are not affected.

To update existing rows, use the UPDATE command. This requires three pieces of information:

1. The name of the table and column to update

2. The new value of the column
3. Which row(s) to update

Recall from Chapter 5 that SQL does not, in general, provide a unique identifier for rows. Therefore it
is not always possible to directly specify which row to update. Instead, you specify which conditions
a row must meet in order to be updated. Only if you have a primary key in the table (independent
of whether you declared it or not) can you reliably address individual rows by choosing a condition
that matches the primary key. Graphical database access tools rely on this fact to allow you to update
rows individually.

For example, this command updates all products that have a price of 5 to have a price of 10:

UPDATE products SET price = 10 WHERE price = 5;

This might cause zero, one, or many rows to be updated. It is not an error to attempt an update that
does not match any rows.

Let's look at that command in detail. First is the key word UPDATE followed by the table name. As
usual, the table name can be schema-qualified, otherwise it is looked up in the path. Next is the key
word SET followed by the column name, an equal sign, and the new column value. The new column
value can be any scalar expression, not just a constant. For example, if you want to raise the price of
all products by 10% you could use:

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 Data Manipulation

UPDATE products SET price = price * 1.10;

As you see, the expression for the new value can refer to the existing value(s) in the row. We also left
out the WHERE clause. If it is omitted, it means that all rows in the table are updated. If it is present,
only those rows that match the WHERE condition are updated. Note that the equals sign in the SET
clause is an assignment while the one in the WHERE clause is a comparison, but this does not create any
ambiguity. Of course, the WHERE condition does not have to be an equality test. Many other operators
are available (see Chapter 9). But the expression needs to evaluate to a Boolean result.

You can update more than one column in an UPDATE command by listing more than one assignment
in the SET clause. For example:

UPDATE mytable SET a = 5, b = 3, c = 1 WHERE a > 0;

6.3. Deleting Data

So far we have explained how to add data to tables and how to change data. What remains is to discuss
how to remove data that is no longer needed. Just as adding data is only possible in whole rows, you
can only remove entire rows from a table. In the previous section we explained that SQL does not
provide a way to directly address individual rows. Therefore, removing rows can only be done by
specifying conditions that the rows to be removed have to match. If you have a primary key in the table
then you can specify the exact row. But you can also remove groups of rows matching a condition,
or you can remove all rows in the table at once.

You use the DELETE command to remove rows; the syntax is very similar to the UPDATE command.
For instance, to remove all rows from the products table that have a price of 10, use:

DELETE FROM products WHERE price = 10;

If you simply write:

DELETE FROM products;

then all rows in the table will be deleted! Caveat programmer.

6.4. Returning Data from Modified Rows

Sometimes it is useful to obtain data from modified rows while they are being manipulated. The
INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands all have an optional RETURNING clause that supports
this. Use of RETURNING avoids performing an extra database query to collect the data, and is espe-
cially valuable when it would otherwise be difficult to identify the modified rows reliably.

The allowed contents of a RETURNING clause are the same as a SELECT command's output list (see
Section 7.3). It can contain column names of the command's target table, or value expressions using
those columns. A common shorthand is RETURNING *, which selects all columns of the target table
in order.

In an INSERT, the data available to RETURNING is the row as it was inserted. This is not so useful in
trivial inserts, since it would just repeat the data provided by the client. But it can be very handy when
relying on computed default values. For example, when using a serial column to provide unique
identifiers, RETURNING can return the ID assigned to a new row:

CREATE TABLE users (firstname text, lastname text, id serial

primary key);

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 Data Manipulation

INSERT INTO users (firstname, lastname) VALUES ('Joe', 'Cool')

RETURNING id;

The RETURNING clause is also very useful with INSERT ... SELECT.

In an UPDATE, the data available to RETURNING is the new content of the modified row. For example:

UPDATE products SET price = price * 1.10

WHERE price <= 99.99
RETURNING name, price AS new_price;

In a DELETE, the data available to RETURNING is the content of the deleted row. For example:

DELETE FROM products

WHERE obsoletion_date = 'today'
RETURNING *;

If there are triggers (Chapter 39) on the target table, the data available to RETURNING is the row as
modified by the triggers. Thus, inspecting columns computed by triggers is another common use-case
for RETURNING.

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Chapter 7. Queries
The previous chapters explained how to create tables, how to fill them with data, and how to manipulate
that data. Now we finally discuss how to retrieve the data from the database.

7.1. Overview
The process of retrieving or the command to retrieve data from a database is called a query. In SQL
the SELECT command is used to specify queries. The general syntax of the SELECT command is

[WITH with_queries] SELECT select_list FROM table_expression

[sort_specification]

The following sections describe the details of the select list, the table expression, and the sort specifi-
cation. WITH queries are treated last since they are an advanced feature.

A simple kind of query has the form:

SELECT * FROM table1;

Assuming that there is a table called table1, this command would retrieve all rows and all user-
defined columns from table1. (The method of retrieval depends on the client application. For ex-
ample, the psql program will display an ASCII-art table on the screen, while client libraries will offer
functions to extract individual values from the query result.) The select list specification * means all
columns that the table expression happens to provide. A select list can also select a subset of the avail-
able columns or make calculations using the columns. For example, if table1 has columns named
a, b, and c (and perhaps others) you can make the following query:

SELECT a, b + c FROM table1;

(assuming that b and c are of a numerical data type). See Section 7.3 for more details.

FROM table1 is a simple kind of table expression: it reads just one table. In general, table expres-
sions can be complex constructs of base tables, joins, and subqueries. But you can also omit the table
expression entirely and use the SELECT command as a calculator:

SELECT 3 * 4;

This is more useful if the expressions in the select list return varying results. For example, you could
call a function this way:

SELECT random();

7.2. Table Expressions

A table expression computes a table. The table expression contains a FROM clause that is optionally
followed by WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses. Trivial table expressions simply refer to a
table on disk, a so-called base table, but more complex expressions can be used to modify or combine
base tables in various ways.

The optional WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses in the table expression specify a pipeline of
successive transformations performed on the table derived in the FROM clause. All these transforma-

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 Queries

tions produce a virtual table that provides the rows that are passed to the select list to compute the
output rows of the query.

7.2.1. The FROM Clause

The FROM clause derives a table from one or more other tables given in a comma-separated table
reference list.

FROM table_reference [, table_reference [, ...]]

A table reference can be a table name (possibly schema-qualified), or a derived table such as a sub-
query, a JOIN construct, or complex combinations of these. If more than one table reference is listed
in the FROM clause, the tables are cross-joined (that is, the Cartesian product of their rows is formed;
see below). The result of the FROM list is an intermediate virtual table that can then be subject to trans-
formations by the WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses and is finally the result of the overall
table expression.

When a table reference names a table that is the parent of a table inheritance hierarchy, the table
reference produces rows of not only that table but all of its descendant tables, unless the key word
ONLY precedes the table name. However, the reference produces only the columns that appear in the
named table — any columns added in subtables are ignored.

Instead of writing ONLY before the table name, you can write * after the table name to explicitly
specify that descendant tables are included. There is no real reason to use this syntax any more, be-
cause searching descendant tables is now always the default behavior. However, it is supported for
compatibility with older releases.

7.2.1.1. Joined Tables

A joined table is a table derived from two other (real or derived) tables according to the rules of the
particular join type. Inner, outer, and cross-joins are available. The general syntax of a joined table is

T1 join_type T2 [ join_condition ]

Joins of all types can be chained together, or nested: either or both T1 and T2 can be joined tables.
Parentheses can be used around JOIN clauses to control the join order. In the absence of parentheses,
JOIN clauses nest left-to-right.

Join Types
Cross join

T1 CROSS JOIN T2

For every possible combination of rows from T1 and T2 (i.e., a Cartesian product), the joined
table will contain a row consisting of all columns in T1 followed by all columns in T2. If the
tables have N and M rows respectively, the joined table will have N * M rows.

FROM T1 CROSS JOIN T2 is equivalent to FROM T1 INNER JOIN T2 ON TRUE (see

below). It is also equivalent to FROM T1, T2.

Note
This latter equivalence does not hold exactly when more than two tables appear, because
JOIN binds more tightly than comma. For example FROM T1 CROSS JOIN T2
INNER JOIN T3 ON condition is not the same as FROM T1, T2 INNER JOIN

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 Queries

T3 ON condition because the condition can reference T1 in the first case but
not the second.

Qualified joins

T1 { [INNER] | { LEFT | RIGHT | FULL } [OUTER] } JOIN T2

ON boolean_expression
T1 { [INNER] | { LEFT | RIGHT | FULL } [OUTER] } JOIN T2 USING
( join column list )
T1 NATURAL { [INNER] | { LEFT | RIGHT | FULL } [OUTER] } JOIN T2

The words INNER and OUTER are optional in all forms. INNER is the default; LEFT, RIGHT,
and FULL imply an outer join.

The join condition is specified in the ON or USING clause, or implicitly by the word NATURAL.
The join condition determines which rows from the two source tables are considered to “match”,
as explained in detail below.

The possible types of qualified join are:

INNER JOIN

For each row R1 of T1, the joined table has a row for each row in T2 that satisfies the join
condition with R1.

LEFT OUTER JOIN

First, an inner join is performed. Then, for each row in T1 that does not satisfy the join
condition with any row in T2, a joined row is added with null values in columns of T2. Thus,
the joined table always has at least one row for each row in T1.

RIGHT OUTER JOIN

First, an inner join is performed. Then, for each row in T2 that does not satisfy the join
condition with any row in T1, a joined row is added with null values in columns of T1. This
is the converse of a left join: the result table will always have a row for each row in T2.

FULL OUTER JOIN

First, an inner join is performed. Then, for each row in T1 that does not satisfy the join
condition with any row in T2, a joined row is added with null values in columns of T2. Also,
for each row of T2 that does not satisfy the join condition with any row in T1, a joined row
with null values in the columns of T1 is added.

The ON clause is the most general kind of join condition: it takes a Boolean value expression of
the same kind as is used in a WHERE clause. A pair of rows from T1 and T2 match if the ON
expression evaluates to true.

The USING clause is a shorthand that allows you to take advantage of the specific situation where
both sides of the join use the same name for the joining column(s). It takes a comma-separated
list of the shared column names and forms a join condition that includes an equality comparison
for each one. For example, joining T1 and T2 with USING (a, b) produces the join condition
ON T1.a = T2.a AND T1.b = T2.b.

Furthermore, the output of JOIN USING suppresses redundant columns: there is no need to print
both of the matched columns, since they must have equal values. While JOIN ON produces all
columns from T1 followed by all columns from T2, JOIN USING produces one output column
for each of the listed column pairs (in the listed order), followed by any remaining columns from
T1, followed by any remaining columns from T2.

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Finally, NATURAL is a shorthand form of USING: it forms a USING list consisting of all column
names that appear in both input tables. As with USING, these columns appear only once in the
output table. If there are no common column names, NATURAL JOIN behaves like JOIN ...
ON TRUE, producing a cross-product join.

Note
USING is reasonably safe from column changes in the joined relations since only the listed
columns are combined. NATURAL is considerably more risky since any schema changes
to either relation that cause a new matching column name to be present will cause the join
to combine that new column as well.

To put this together, assume we have tables t1:

num | name
-----+------
1 | a
2 | b
3 | c

and t2:

num | value
-----+-------
1 | xxx
3 | yyy
5 | zzz

then we get the following results for the various joins:

=> SELECT * FROM t1 CROSS JOIN t2;

num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
1 | a | 3 | yyy
1 | a | 5 | zzz
2 | b | 1 | xxx
2 | b | 3 | yyy
2 | b | 5 | zzz
3 | c | 1 | xxx
3 | c | 3 | yyy
3 | c | 5 | zzz
(9 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;

num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
3 | c | 3 | yyy
(2 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 USING (num);

num | name | value
-----+------+-------
1 | a | xxx

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3 | c | yyy
(2 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 NATURAL INNER JOIN t2;

num | name | value
-----+------+-------
1 | a | xxx
3 | c | yyy
(2 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;

num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
2 | b | |
3 | c | 3 | yyy
(3 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 USING (num);

num | name | value
-----+------+-------
1 | a | xxx
2 | b |
3 | c | yyy
(3 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 RIGHT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;

num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
3 | c | 3 | yyy
| | 5 | zzz
(3 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 FULL JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;

num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
2 | b | |
3 | c | 3 | yyy
| | 5 | zzz
(4 rows)

The join condition specified with ON can also contain conditions that do not relate directly to the join.
This can prove useful for some queries but needs to be thought out carefully. For example:

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num AND t2.value =

'xxx';
num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
2 | b | |
3 | c | |
(3 rows)

Notice that placing the restriction in the WHERE clause produces a different result:

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 Queries

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num WHERE t2.value

= 'xxx';
num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
1 | a | 1 | xxx
(1 row)

This is because a restriction placed in the ON clause is processed before the join, while a restriction
placed in the WHERE clause is processed after the join. That does not matter with inner joins, but it
matters a lot with outer joins.

7.2.1.2. Table and Column Aliases

A temporary name can be given to tables and complex table references to be used for references to
the derived table in the rest of the query. This is called a table alias.

To create a table alias, write

FROM table_reference AS alias

or

FROM table_reference alias

The AS key word is optional noise. alias can be any identifier.

A typical application of table aliases is to assign short identifiers to long table names to keep the join
clauses readable. For example:

SELECT * FROM some_very_long_table_name s JOIN

another_fairly_long_name a ON s.id = a.num;

The alias becomes the new name of the table reference so far as the current query is concerned — it
is not allowed to refer to the table by the original name elsewhere in the query. Thus, this is not valid:

SELECT * FROM my_table AS m WHERE my_table.a > 5; -- wrong

Table aliases are mainly for notational convenience, but it is necessary to use them when joining a
table to itself, e.g.:

SELECT * FROM people AS mother JOIN people AS child ON mother.id =

child.mother_id;

Additionally, an alias is required if the table reference is a subquery (see Section 7.2.1.3).

Parentheses are used to resolve ambiguities. In the following example, the first statement assigns the
alias b to the second instance of my_table, but the second statement assigns the alias to the result
of the join:

SELECT * FROM my_table AS a CROSS JOIN my_table AS b ...

SELECT * FROM (my_table AS a CROSS JOIN my_table) AS b ...

Another form of table aliasing gives temporary names to the columns of the table, as well as the table
itself:

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FROM table_reference [AS] alias ( column1 [, column2 [, ...]] )

If fewer column aliases are specified than the actual table has columns, the remaining columns are not
renamed. This syntax is especially useful for self-joins or subqueries.

When an alias is applied to the output of a JOIN clause, the alias hides the original name(s) within
the JOIN. For example:

SELECT a.* FROM my_table AS a JOIN your_table AS b ON ...

is valid SQL, but:

SELECT a.* FROM (my_table AS a JOIN your_table AS b ON ...) AS c

is not valid; the table alias a is not visible outside the alias c.

7.2.1.3. Subqueries
Subqueries specifying a derived table must be enclosed in parentheses and must be assigned a table
alias name (as in Section 7.2.1.2). For example:

FROM (SELECT * FROM table1) AS alias_name

This example is equivalent to FROM table1 AS alias_name. More interesting cases, which
cannot be reduced to a plain join, arise when the subquery involves grouping or aggregation.

A subquery can also be a VALUES list:

FROM (VALUES ('anne', 'smith'), ('bob', 'jones'), ('joe', 'blow'))

AS names(first, last)

Again, a table alias is required. Assigning alias names to the columns of the VALUES list is optional,
but is good practice. For more information see Section 7.7.

7.2.1.4. Table Functions

Table functions are functions that produce a set of rows, made up of either base data types (scalar
types) or composite data types (table rows). They are used like a table, view, or subquery in the FROM
clause of a query. Columns returned by table functions can be included in SELECT, JOIN, or WHERE
clauses in the same manner as columns of a table, view, or subquery.

Table functions may also be combined using the ROWS FROM syntax, with the results returned in
parallel columns; the number of result rows in this case is that of the largest function result, with
smaller results padded with null values to match.

function_call [WITH ORDINALITY] [[AS] table_alias [(column_alias

[, ... ])]]
ROWS FROM( function_call [, ... ] ) [WITH ORDINALITY]
[[AS] table_alias [(column_alias [, ... ])]]

If the WITH ORDINALITY clause is specified, an additional column of type bigint will be added
to the function result columns. This column numbers the rows of the function result set, starting from
1. (This is a generalization of the SQL-standard syntax for UNNEST ... WITH ORDINALITY.)
By default, the ordinal column is called ordinality, but a different column name can be assigned
to it using an AS clause.

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The special table function UNNEST may be called with any number of array parameters, and it returns
a corresponding number of columns, as if UNNEST (Section 9.19) had been called on each parameter
separately and combined using the ROWS FROM construct.

UNNEST( array_expression [, ... ] ) [WITH ORDINALITY]

[[AS] table_alias [(column_alias [, ... ])]]

If no table_alias is specified, the function name is used as the table name; in the case of a ROWS
FROM() construct, the first function's name is used.

If column aliases are not supplied, then for a function returning a base data type, the column name is
also the same as the function name. For a function returning a composite type, the result columns get
the names of the individual attributes of the type.

Some examples:

CREATE TABLE foo (fooid int, foosubid int, fooname text);

CREATE FUNCTION getfoo(int) RETURNS SETOF foo AS $$

SELECT * FROM foo WHERE fooid = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM getfoo(1) AS t1;

SELECT * FROM foo

WHERE foosubid IN (
SELECT foosubid
FROM getfoo(foo.fooid) z
WHERE z.fooid = foo.fooid
);

CREATE VIEW vw_getfoo AS SELECT * FROM getfoo(1);

SELECT * FROM vw_getfoo;

In some cases it is useful to define table functions that can return different column sets depending on
how they are invoked. To support this, the table function can be declared as returning the pseudo-type
record with no OUT parameters. When such a function is used in a query, the expected row structure
must be specified in the query itself, so that the system can know how to parse and plan the query.
This syntax looks like:

function_call [AS] alias (column_definition [, ... ])

function_call AS [alias] (column_definition [, ... ])
ROWS FROM( ... function_call AS (column_definition [, ... ])
[, ... ] )

When not using the ROWS FROM() syntax, the column_definition list replaces the column
alias list that could otherwise be attached to the FROM item; the names in the column definitions serve
as column aliases. When using the ROWS FROM() syntax, a column_definition list can be
attached to each member function separately; or if there is only one member function and no WITH
ORDINALITY clause, a column_definition list can be written in place of a column alias list
following ROWS FROM().

Consider this example:

SELECT *

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FROM dblink('dbname=mydb', 'SELECT proname, prosrc FROM

pg_proc')
AS t1(proname name, prosrc text)
WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';

The dblink function (part of the dblink module) executes a remote query. It is declared to return
record since it might be used for any kind of query. The actual column set must be specified in the
calling query so that the parser knows, for example, what * should expand to.

This example uses ROWS FROM:

SELECT *
FROM ROWS FROM
(
json_to_recordset('[{"a":40,"b":"foo"},
{"a":"100","b":"bar"}]')
AS (a INTEGER, b TEXT),
generate_series(1, 3)
) AS x (p, q, s)
ORDER BY p;

p | q | s
-----+-----+---
40 | foo | 1
100 | bar | 2
| | 3

It joins two functions into a single FROM target. json_to_recordset() is instructed to return
two columns, the first integer and the second text. The result of generate_series() is used
directly. The ORDER BY clause sorts the column values as integers.

7.2.1.5. LATERAL Subqueries

Subqueries appearing in FROM can be preceded by the key word LATERAL. This allows them to ref-
erence columns provided by preceding FROM items. (Without LATERAL, each subquery is evaluated
independently and so cannot cross-reference any other FROM item.)

Table functions appearing in FROM can also be preceded by the key word LATERAL, but for functions
the key word is optional; the function's arguments can contain references to columns provided by
preceding FROM items in any case.

A LATERAL item can appear at top level in the FROM list, or within a JOIN tree. In the latter case it
can also refer to any items that are on the left-hand side of a JOIN that it is on the right-hand side of.

When a FROM item contains LATERAL cross-references, evaluation proceeds as follows: for each
row of the FROM item providing the cross-referenced column(s), or set of rows of multiple FROM
items providing the columns, the LATERAL item is evaluated using that row or row set's values of
the columns. The resulting row(s) are joined as usual with the rows they were computed from. This is
repeated for each row or set of rows from the column source table(s).

A trivial example of LATERAL is

SELECT * FROM foo, LATERAL (SELECT * FROM bar WHERE bar.id =

foo.bar_id) ss;

This is not especially useful since it has exactly the same result as the more conventional

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SELECT * FROM foo, bar WHERE bar.id = foo.bar_id;

LATERAL is primarily useful when the cross-referenced column is necessary for computing the row(s)
to be joined. A common application is providing an argument value for a set-returning function. For
example, supposing that vertices(polygon) returns the set of vertices of a polygon, we could
identify close-together vertices of polygons stored in a table with:

SELECT p1.id, p2.id, v1, v2

FROM polygons p1, polygons p2,
LATERAL vertices(p1.poly) v1,
LATERAL vertices(p2.poly) v2
WHERE (v1 <-> v2) < 10 AND p1.id != p2.id;

This query could also be written

SELECT p1.id, p2.id, v1, v2

FROM polygons p1 CROSS JOIN LATERAL vertices(p1.poly) v1,
polygons p2 CROSS JOIN LATERAL vertices(p2.poly) v2
WHERE (v1 <-> v2) < 10 AND p1.id != p2.id;

or in several other equivalent formulations. (As already mentioned, the LATERAL key word is unnec-
essary in this example, but we use it for clarity.)

It is often particularly handy to LEFT JOIN to a LATERAL subquery, so that source rows will appear
in the result even if the LATERAL subquery produces no rows for them. For example, if get_prod-
uct_names() returns the names of products made by a manufacturer, but some manufacturers in
our table currently produce no products, we could find out which ones those are like this:

SELECT m.name
FROM manufacturers m LEFT JOIN LATERAL get_product_names(m.id)
pname ON true
WHERE pname IS NULL;

7.2.2. The WHERE Clause

The syntax of the WHERE clause is

WHERE search_condition

where search_condition is any value expression (see Section 4.2) that returns a value of type
boolean.

After the processing of the FROM clause is done, each row of the derived virtual table is checked
against the search condition. If the result of the condition is true, the row is kept in the output table,
otherwise (i.e., if the result is false or null) it is discarded. The search condition typically references
at least one column of the table generated in the FROM clause; this is not required, but otherwise the
WHERE clause will be fairly useless.

Note
The join condition of an inner join can be written either in the WHERE clause or in the JOIN
clause. For example, these table expressions are equivalent:

FROM a, b WHERE a.id = b.id AND b.val > 5

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and:

FROM a INNER JOIN b ON (a.id = b.id) WHERE b.val > 5

or perhaps even:

FROM a NATURAL JOIN b WHERE b.val > 5

Which one of these you use is mainly a matter of style. The JOIN syntax in the FROM clause
is probably not as portable to other SQL database management systems, even though it is in
the SQL standard. For outer joins there is no choice: they must be done in the FROM clause.
The ON or USING clause of an outer join is not equivalent to a WHERE condition, because
it results in the addition of rows (for unmatched input rows) as well as the removal of rows
in the final result.

Here are some examples of WHERE clauses:

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 > 5

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 IN (1, 2, 3)

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 IN (SELECT c1 FROM t2)

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 IN (SELECT c3 FROM t2 WHERE c2 =

fdt.c1 + 10)

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 BETWEEN (SELECT c3 FROM t2 WHERE c2 =

fdt.c1 + 10) AND 100

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE EXISTS (SELECT c1 FROM t2 WHERE c2 >
fdt.c1)

fdt is the table derived in the FROM clause. Rows that do not meet the search condition of the WHERE
clause are eliminated from fdt. Notice the use of scalar subqueries as value expressions. Just like any
other query, the subqueries can employ complex table expressions. Notice also how fdt is referenced
in the subqueries. Qualifying c1 as fdt.c1 is only necessary if c1 is also the name of a column
in the derived input table of the subquery. But qualifying the column name adds clarity even when
it is not needed. This example shows how the column naming scope of an outer query extends into
its inner queries.

7.2.3. The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses

After passing the WHERE filter, the derived input table might be subject to grouping, using the GROUP
BY clause, and elimination of group rows using the HAVING clause.

SELECT select_list
FROM ...
[WHERE ...]
GROUP BY grouping_column_reference
[, grouping_column_reference]...

The GROUP BY clause is used to group together those rows in a table that have the same values in
all the columns listed. The order in which the columns are listed does not matter. The effect is to

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combine each set of rows having common values into one group row that represents all rows in the
group. This is done to eliminate redundancy in the output and/or compute aggregates that apply to
these groups. For instance:

=> SELECT * FROM test1;

x | y
---+---
a | 3
c | 2
b | 5
a | 1
(4 rows)

=> SELECT x FROM test1 GROUP BY x;

x
---
a
b
c
(3 rows)

In the second query, we could not have written SELECT * FROM test1 GROUP BY x, because
there is no single value for the column y that could be associated with each group. The grouped-by
columns can be referenced in the select list since they have a single value in each group.

In general, if a table is grouped, columns that are not listed in GROUP BY cannot be referenced except
in aggregate expressions. An example with aggregate expressions is:

=> SELECT x, sum(y) FROM test1 GROUP BY x;

x | sum
---+-----
a | 4
b | 5
c | 2
(3 rows)

Here sum is an aggregate function that computes a single value over the entire group. More information
about the available aggregate functions can be found in Section 9.21.

Tip
Grouping without aggregate expressions effectively calculates the set of distinct values in a
column. This can also be achieved using the DISTINCT clause (see Section 7.3.3).

Here is another example: it calculates the total sales for each product (rather than the total sales of
all products):

SELECT product_id, p.name, (sum(s.units) * p.price) AS sales

FROM products p LEFT JOIN sales s USING (product_id)
GROUP BY product_id, p.name, p.price;

In this example, the columns product_id, p.name, and p.price must be in the GROUP BY
clause since they are referenced in the query select list (but see below). The column s.units does
not have to be in the GROUP BY list since it is only used in an aggregate expression (sum(...)),

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which represents the sales of a product. For each product, the query returns a summary row about all
sales of the product.

If the products table is set up so that, say, product_id is the primary key, then it would be enough to
group by product_id in the above example, since name and price would be functionally dependent
on the product ID, and so there would be no ambiguity about which name and price value to return
for each product ID group.

In strict SQL, GROUP BY can only group by columns of the source table but PostgreSQL extends
this to also allow GROUP BY to group by columns in the select list. Grouping by value expressions
instead of simple column names is also allowed.

If a table has been grouped using GROUP BY, but only certain groups are of interest, the HAVING
clause can be used, much like a WHERE clause, to eliminate groups from the result. The syntax is:

SELECT select_list FROM ... [WHERE ...] GROUP BY ...

HAVING boolean_expression

Expressions in the HAVING clause can refer both to grouped expressions and to ungrouped expressions
(which necessarily involve an aggregate function).

Example:

=> SELECT x, sum(y) FROM test1 GROUP BY x HAVING sum(y) > 3;

x | sum
---+-----
a | 4
b | 5
(2 rows)

=> SELECT x, sum(y) FROM test1 GROUP BY x HAVING x < 'c';

x | sum
---+-----
a | 4
b | 5
(2 rows)

Again, a more realistic example:

SELECT product_id, p.name, (sum(s.units) * (p.price - p.cost)) AS

profit
FROM products p LEFT JOIN sales s USING (product_id)
WHERE s.date > CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '4 weeks'
GROUP BY product_id, p.name, p.price, p.cost
HAVING sum(p.price * s.units) > 5000;

In the example above, the WHERE clause is selecting rows by a column that is not grouped (the ex-
pression is only true for sales during the last four weeks), while the HAVING clause restricts the output
to groups with total gross sales over 5000. Note that the aggregate expressions do not necessarily need
to be the same in all parts of the query.

If a query contains aggregate function calls, but no GROUP BY clause, grouping still occurs: the result
is a single group row (or perhaps no rows at all, if the single row is then eliminated by HAVING).
The same is true if it contains a HAVING clause, even without any aggregate function calls or GROUP
BY clause.

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7.2.4. GROUPING SETS, CUBE, and ROLLUP

More complex grouping operations than those described above are possible using the concept of group-
ing sets. The data selected by the FROM and WHERE clauses is grouped separately by each specified
grouping set, aggregates computed for each group just as for simple GROUP BY clauses, and then
the results returned. For example:

=> SELECT * FROM items_sold;

brand | size | sales
-------+------+-------
Foo | L | 10
Foo | M | 20
Bar | M | 15
Bar | L | 5
(4 rows)

=> SELECT brand, size, sum(sales) FROM items_sold GROUP BY GROUPING

SETS ((brand), (size), ());
brand | size | sum
-------+------+-----
Foo | | 30
Bar | | 20
| L | 15
| M | 35
| | 50
(5 rows)

Each sublist of GROUPING SETS may specify zero or more columns or expressions and is interpreted
the same way as though it were directly in the GROUP BY clause. An empty grouping set means that
all rows are aggregated down to a single group (which is output even if no input rows were present),
as described above for the case of aggregate functions with no GROUP BY clause.

References to the grouping columns or expressions are replaced by null values in result rows for
grouping sets in which those columns do not appear. To distinguish which grouping a particular output
row resulted from, see Table 9.61.

A shorthand notation is provided for specifying two common types of grouping set. A clause of the
form

ROLLUP ( e1, e2, e3, ... )

represents the given list of expressions and all prefixes of the list including the empty list; thus it is
equivalent to

GROUPING SETS (
( e1, e2, e3, ... ),
...
( e1, e2 ),
( e1 ),
( )
)

This is commonly used for analysis over hierarchical data; e.g., total salary by department, division,
and company-wide total.

A clause of the form

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 Queries

CUBE ( e1, e2, ... )

represents the given list and all of its possible subsets (i.e., the power set). Thus

CUBE ( a, b, c )

is equivalent to

GROUPING SETS (
( a, b, c ),
( a, b ),
( a, c ),
( a ),
( b, c ),
( b ),
( c ),
( )
)

The individual elements of a CUBE or ROLLUP clause may be either individual expressions, or sublists
of elements in parentheses. In the latter case, the sublists are treated as single units for the purposes
of generating the individual grouping sets. For example:

CUBE ( (a, b), (c, d) )

is equivalent to

GROUPING SETS (
( a, b, c, d ),
( a, b ),
( c, d ),
( )
)

and

ROLLUP ( a, (b, c), d )

is equivalent to

GROUPING SETS (
( a, b, c, d ),
( a, b, c ),
( a ),
( )
)

The CUBE and ROLLUP constructs can be used either directly in the GROUP BY clause, or nested
inside a GROUPING SETS clause. If one GROUPING SETS clause is nested inside another, the
effect is the same as if all the elements of the inner clause had been written directly in the outer clause.

If multiple grouping items are specified in a single GROUP BY clause, then the final list of grouping
sets is the cross product of the individual items. For example:

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 Queries

GROUP BY a, CUBE (b, c), GROUPING SETS ((d), (e))

is equivalent to

GROUP BY GROUPING SETS (

(a, b, c, d), (a, b, c, e),
(a, b, d), (a, b, e),
(a, c, d), (a, c, e),
(a, d), (a, e)
)

When specifying multiple grouping items together, the final set of grouping sets might contain du-
plicates. For example:

GROUP BY ROLLUP (a, b), ROLLUP (a, c)

is equivalent to

GROUP BY GROUPING SETS (

(a, b, c),
(a, b),
(a, b),
(a, c),
(a),
(a),
(a, c),
(a),
()
)

If these duplicates are undesirable, they can be removed using the DISTINCT clause directly on the
GROUP BY. Therefore:

GROUP BY DISTINCT ROLLUP (a, b), ROLLUP (a, c)

is equivalent to

GROUP BY GROUPING SETS (

(a, b, c),
(a, b),
(a, c),
(a),
()
)

This is not the same as using SELECT DISTINCT because the output rows may still contain dupli-
cates. If any of the ungrouped columns contains NULL, it will be indistinguishable from the NULL
used when that same column is grouped.

Note
The construct (a, b) is normally recognized in expressions as a row constructor. Within the
GROUP BY clause, this does not apply at the top levels of expressions, and (a, b) is parsed

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