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PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, or Postgres, is a popular open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) known for its reliability, security, and robust features, ranking fourth among database platforms globally. It has gained traction due to its cost-effectiveness, active development over 35 years, and trust from large companies like Reddit and Apple. PostgreSQL operates on a server/client model, allowing users to efficiently manage and access data through SQL, a widely-used programming language in data science.

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PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, or Postgres, is a popular open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) known for its reliability, security, and robust features, ranking fourth among database platforms globally. It has gained traction due to its cost-effectiveness, active development over 35 years, and trust from large companies like Reddit and Apple. PostgreSQL operates on a server/client model, allowing users to efficiently manage and access data through SQL, a widely-used programming language in data science.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL or sometimes simply Postgres is a robust relational database management system or RDBMS.
According to the folks at db-engines.com, it ranks as the fourth most popular database platform in the
world behind industry powerhouses, Oracle, MySQL and Microsoft's SQL Server. But unlike those three
platforms Postgres has seen a steady increase in popularity over the past decade. This trend in
popularity can be attributed to a number of factors.

First, PostgreSQL is an open source project which makes it free for any organization of any size to pick up
and apply to their needs. Compare that with some of the other popular platforms that can cost
thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to deploy across an organization and you'll see why
Postgres is a good choice from a simple financial perspective.

Second, Postgres has been in active development for over 35 years and has gained a reputation for being
a reliable, robust, and secure data platform. This is in large part due to its nature as an open source
project where people from all over the world collaborate to examine source code, help identify and fix
bugs, and develop new features.

Finally, as more large businesses push Postgres to its limits, it gives smaller users more confidence in the
platform's capabilities, which makes transitioning from a paid commercial database platform more
justifiable. After all, if organizations the size of Reddit, Apple and Yahoo trust Postgres to meet their
needs then it's definitely up to the task of handling anything that I can throw at it.

Now, I mentioned that Postgres was a relational database management system so let's unpack exactly
what that means.

An RDBMS creates a protective wrapper around your data. It gives your data a place to live, controls how
it gets entered, and under what circumstances it can be viewed, modified, or deleted.

The RDBMS also secures your data and ensures that only people in applications that have expressed
permission to view and change the data have the ability to do so and keeps everyone else locked out.

Finally, an RDBMS manages the performance of the system which helps you enter data and retrieve
information in the most efficient ways possible.

To do all of this, PostgreSQL uses a server/client model. The Postgres server handles the storage, security
and maintenance of your data by storing it in a container called a database. Each Postgres server can
hold many different databases. A client application is then connected to the server so that end users can
input data, modify that data and then retrieve that data back out again. The beauty of this arrangement
is that the server can exist on a centralized computer that provides a single point of contact for all of the
different users in an organization. Then each user uses their own desktop computer, mobile device or
web app, running a client application to access that shared resource pool. In this way, everyone across
the organization is getting the same information, updating the same data tables and viewing the same
detailed reports.

So in order to learn about the PostgreSQL platform, we really need to dive into two components; how
the database server operates and how to use an interface client. In this course we'll be using a client
called pgAdmin to log into the Postgres server and tell it what we want to do. In order to perform all of
the tasks that a PostgreSQL server needs to do to manage your data, you'll need to become familiar with
the SQL programming language.

SQL stands for structured query language and it's a common language used by data science professionals
in practically every database application in use today. This makes the ability to read and write SQL
Commands a very transferable skill that's highly sought after in the workplace. Unlike many traditional
programming languages SQL uses human readable syntax that's straightforward and flexible.

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