To get the most out of this book

This book has been written for a broad audience. In order to follow the examples presented in this book, it makes sense to have at least some experience with SQL and maybe even PostgreSQL in general (although this is not a strict requirement). In general, it is a good idea to be familiar with the UNIX command line.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/MasteringPostgreSQL10_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "To figure out what is going wrong, PostgreSQL offers the EXPLAIN command."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

test=# EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM t_test 
ORDER BY id DESC 
LIMIT 10; 

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.