Connecting to a Postgres database can be a headache for end users and DBAs alike. Not because of the work involved, but the general irritation of managing passwords—an issue common to any system that requires authentication controls.
The user wants to say, “Who am I? None of your business!”
While the database is more comfortable with, “Go away, before I taunt you a second time!”
Well, there’s some middle ground everyone can enjoy, and a few Postgres-specific caveats which add a bit of flavor to the whole interaction.
I’ve been going on and on about esoteric Postgres features for so long, sometimes I forget my own neophyte beginnings. So let’s back way off and talk about how JOINs work. What are they? What do they do? Why would you use one? What can go wrong? It’s easier than you might imagine, but there are definitely some subtleties to account for.
To make this more relatable, let’s start with a club of pet owners that likes to keep track of everything:
I’ve been a Postgres DBA since 2005. After all that time, I’ve come to a conclusion that I’m embarrassed I didn’t reach much earlier: Postgres is awful. This isn’t a “straw that broke the camel’s back” kind of situation; there is a litany of ridiculous idiocy in the project that’s, frankly, more than enough to stave off any DBA, end user, or developer. But I’ll limit my list to five, because clickbait.
Every good database engine has a system catalog that describes the myriad of structures that model and preserve our data. Of course this is expected, as it would be somewhat silly for a database system not to use tables to represent its internal mechanisms. But that doesn’t mean they have to be humanly readable, or even make sense without a series of views or esoteric functions to decipher them. The information_schema standard serves a necessary role in that regard, and the Postgres implementation is extremely comprehensive.
A few days ago, a developer came to me with that inevitable scenario that every DBA secretly dreads: a need for a dynamic table structure. After I’d finished dying inside, I explained the various architectures that could give him what he needed, and then I excused myself to another room so I could weep silently without disturbing my coworkers. But was it really that bad? Databases have come a long way since the Bad Old Days when there were really only two viable approaches to table polymorphism.
