Relational Databases

and PostgreSQL
Charles Severance
www.pg4e.com
 Sequential
OLD Master NEW
Sorted Update Sorted
1970s

Merge

Transaction
s
Sorted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_729
 Random Access
• When you can randomly access
data...

• How can you lay out data to be

most efficient?

• Sorting might not be the best idea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive_platter
 Relational Databases
Relational databases model data by storing
rows and columns in tables. The power of
the relational database lies in its ability to
efficiently retrieve data from those tables - in
particular, where the query involves multiple
tables and the relationships between those
tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database
 Structured Query Language
• Structured Query Language
(SQL) came out of a
government / industry
partnership

• National Institute of
Standards and Technology
(NIST)
https://youtu.be/rLUm3vst87g
 SQL
Structured Query Language is the
language we use to issue commands
to the database

- Create/Insert data

- Read/Select some data

- Update data

- Delete data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI-SPARC_Architecture
 Terminology
• Database - contains one or more tables

• Relation (or table) - contains tuples and attributes

• Tuple (or row) - a set of fields which generally represent an “object”

like a person or a music track

• Attribute (also column or field) - one of possibly many elements of

data corresponding to the object represented by the row
 A relation is defined as a set of tuples that have the same attributes. A tuple usually represents an
object and information about that object. Objects are typically physical objects or concepts. A
relation is usually described as a table, which is organized into rows and columns. All the data
referenced by an attribute are in the same domain and conform to the same constraints. (wikipedia)
Columns / Attributes

Rows /
Tuples

Tables / Relations
 Common Database Systems
• Major Database Management Systems in wide use

- PostgreSQL – 100% Open source, feature rich

- Oracle - Large, commercial, enterprise-scale, very tweakable

- MySQL - Fast and scalable - commercial open source

- SqlServer - Very nice - from Microsoft (also Access)

• Smaller projects: SQLite, HSQL, …

SQL Architecture
 Using SQL
pgAdmin
(Browser / SQL

Desktop) Database
User
D.B.A. Server
psql PostgresSQL
(Command SQL

Line)
Starting PostgreSQL Command Line
$ psql –U postgres
Password for user postgres: <password here>
psql (9.3.5, server 11.2)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

Super User Prompt

https://xkcd.com/149/
Your First PostgreSQL Command
postgres-# \l
List of databases
Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+---------+-------+-----------------------
postgres | postgres | UTF8 | C |C |
template0 | postgres | UTF8 | C | C | =c/postgres +
| | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres
template1 | postgres | UTF8 | C | C | =c/postgres +
| | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres
(3 rows)

postgres-#
 Creating a User and Database
postgres=# CREATE USER WITH PASSWORD 'secret';
CREATE ROLE
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE people WITH OWNER '';
CREATE DATABASE
postgres=# \q

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/sql-createuser.html
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/sql-createdatabase.html
 Connecting to a Database
$ psql people
Password for user : <password here>
psql (9.3.5, server 11.2)

people=> \dt
No relations found.
people=>

Not a Super User Prompt

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/app-psql.html
people=> CREATE TABLE users(
people(> name VARCHAR(128),
people(> email VARCHAR(128) Creating a Table
people(> );
CREATE TABLE
people=> \dt CREATE TABLE users(
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner name VARCHAR(128),
--------+-------+-------+------- email VARCHAR(128)
public | users | table |
(1 row) );
people=> \d+ users
Table "public.users"
Column | Type | Modifiers | Storage | Stats target | Description
--------+------------------------+-----------+----------+--------------+-------------
name | character varying(128) | | extended | |
email | character varying(128) | | extended | |
Has OIDs: no

people=>
 SQL: Insert
The INSERT statement inserts a row into a table

INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Chuck', '[email protected]') ;

INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Somesh', '[email protected]') ;
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Caitlin', '[email protected]') ;
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Ted', '[email protected]') ;
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Sally', '[email protected]') ;
 SQL: Delete
Deletes a row in a table based on selection criteria

DELETE FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

 SQL: Update
Allows the updating of a field with a WHERE clause

UPDATE users SET name='Charles' WHERE email='[email protected]';

 Retrieving Records: Select
Retrieves a group of records - you can either retrieve all the records
or a subset of the records with a WHERE clause

SELECT * FROM users;

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

 Sorting with ORDER BY
You can add an ORDER BY clause to SELECT statements to
get the results sorted in ascending or descending order

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email;

 The LIKE Clause
We can do wildcard matching in a WHERE clause
using the LIKE operator

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '%e%';

 The LIMIT/OFFSET Clauses
• We can request the first "n" rows, or the first "n" rows after skipping some rows.

• The WHERE and ORDER BY clauses happen *before* the LIMIT / OFFSET
are applied.

• The OFFSET starts from row 0

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email DESC LIMIT 2;

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email OFFSET 1 LIMIT 2;
 Counting Rows with SELECT
You can request to receive the count of the rows that
would be retrieved instead of the rows

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';
 SQL Summary
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Ted', '[email protected]');

DELETE FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

UPDATE users SET name='Charles' WHERE email='[email protected]';

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email;

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '%e%';

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email OFFSET 1 LIMIT 2;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]'

 This is not too exciting (so far)
• Tables pretty much look like big, fast programmable spreadsheets with
rows, columns, and commands.

• The power comes when we have more than one table and we can
exploit the relationships between the tables.
Data Types in PostgreSQL
 Looking at Data Types
• Text fields (small and large)

• Binary fields (small and large)

• Numeric fields

• AUTO_INCREMENT fields
 String Fields
• Understand character sets and are indexable for searching

• CHAR(n) allocates the entire space (faster for small strings where
length is known)

• VARCHAR(n) allocates a variable amount of space depending on the

data length (less space)
 Text Fields

• Have a character set - paragraphs or HTML pages

- TEXT varying length

• Generally not used with indexing or sorting - and only then limited to a
prefix
 Binary Types (rarely used)
• Character = 8 - 32 bits of information depending on character set

• Byte = 8 bits of information

- BYTEA(n) up to 255 bytes

• Small Images - data

• Not indexed or sorted

 Integer Numbers
Integer numbers are very efficient, take little storage, and are easy to process
because CPUs can often compare them with a single instruction.

- SMALLINT (-32768, +32768)

- INTEGER (2 Billion)

- BIGINT - (10**18 ish)

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/datatype-numeric.html
 Floating Point Numbers
Floating point numbers can represent a wide range of values, but accuracy is limited.

- REAL (32-bit) 10**38 with seven digits of accuracy

- DOUBLE PRECISION (64-bit) 10**308 with 14 digits of accuracy

- NUMERIC(accuracy, decimal) – Specified digits of accuracy and digits after the

decimal point

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/datatype-numeric.html
 Dates
• TIMESTAMP - 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'
(4713 BC, 294276 AD)

• DATE - 'YYYY-MM-DD'

• TIME - 'HH:MM:SS'

• Built-in PostgreSQL function NOW()

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/datatype-datetime.html
https://xkcd.com/607/
Database Keys and Indexes
 AUTO_INCREMENT
Often as we make multiple DROP TABLE users;
tables and need to JOIN them
together we need an integer CREATE TABLE users (
primary key for each row so we id SERIAL,
name VARCHAR(128),
can efficiently add a reference to
email VARCHAR(128) UNIQUE,
a row in some other table as a PRIMARY KEY(id)
foreign key. );
 PostgreSQL Functions

Many operations in PostgreSQL need to use the built-in functions (like

NOW() for dates).

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/functions.html
 Indexes
• As a table gets large (they always do), scanning all the data to find a
single row becomes very costly

• When [email protected] logs into Twitter, they must find my

password amongst 500 million users

• There are techniques to greatly shorten the scan as long as you create
data structures and maintain those structures - like shortcuts

• Hashes or Trees are the most common

 B-Trees
A B-tree is a tree data structure that keeps data sorted and allows
searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic
amortized time. The B-tree is optimized for systems that read and write
large blocks of data. It is commonly used in databases and file systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree
 Hashes
A hash function is any algorithm or subroutine
that maps large data sets to smaller data sets,
called keys. For example, a single integer can
serve as an index to an array (cf. associative
array). The values returned by a hash function
are called hash values, hash codes, hash sums,
checksums, or simply hashes.
Hash functions are mostly used to accelerate
table lookup or data comparison tasks such as
finding items in a database...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function
 Summary
• SQL allows us to describe the shape of data to be stored and give many
hints to the database engine as to how we will be accessing or using the
data.

• SQL is a language that provides us operations to Create, Read, Update,

and Delete (CRUD) our data in a database.
 Acknowledgements / Contributions
These slides are Copyright 2010- Charles R. Severance (www.dr- Continue new Contributors and Translators here
chuck.com) as part of www.pg4e.com and made available under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Please maintain this
last slide in all copies of the document to comply with the
attribution requirements of the license. If you make a change, feel
free to add your name and organization to the list of contributors on
this page as you republish the materials.

Initial Development: Charles Severance, University of Michigan

School of Information

Insert new Contributors and Translators here including names and

dates