Introduction

My friend, Denis Magda, wrote a wonderful book called Just Use Postgres!, and I’m glad that I got the chance to read it.

Audience

This book is useful for any software developer who’s either using PostgreSQL or plans on using it because it covers a lot of features that are very useful for modern applications.

No matter your level of seniority, you are definitely going to learn from Denis’ book.

Content

Just Use Postgres! has 402 pages, 3 parts, and 11 chapters.

The first part is an introduction to PostgreSQL and covers a lot of topics, such as querying, data integrity, transactions, views, as well as modern SQL features, such as common table expressions, recursive queries, and window functions.

A very important chapter from the first part is the one about indexes since PostgreSQL provides many options that can cover a wide range of data access requirements. Besides the well-known B+Tree, you are going to strengthen your knowledge about hash indexes, partial indexes, multi-column indexes, and function indexes.

The second part is dedicated to non-relational features, such as JSON and full-text search. This part explores both the PostgreSQL-specific column types, as well as the associated querying features and indexing options.

In the third part, Denis wrote about the vast ecosystem of Postgres extensions. You will learn about pgvector, which is suitable for storing embeddings for ML and GenAI projects.

There is a chapter about time series that covers TimescaleDB, an extension that was designed for software applications that need to store time series data.

Afterwards, Denis talks about storing and querying geospatial data using the PostGIS extension and using the Full Text Search capabilities of PostgreSQL. Although not as complex as ElasticSearch, for many use cases, the Postgres tsvector may be good enough, freeing you from having to maintain multiple data storage systems, as is the case when using both PostgreSQL and ElasticSearch.

The final chapter is dedicated to using PostgreSQL to implement message queues. Besides the commonly-used SKIP LOCKED, this chapter presents the LISTEN and NOTIFY mechanism, and the pgmq extension.

At the end of the book, there are several Annexes that cover additional topics that are worth reading:

• The first Annex is dedicated to performance tuning and covers execution plans, indexing best practices, connection pooling, and projections
• In the second Annex, you will learn about PostgreSQL limitations and the circumstances when it’s better to choose a different database system that’s more suitable for your very specific data access requirements.

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Conclusion

As I wrote in the afterword of this book, I got very excited when Denis told me that he was writing a book about PostgreSQL since I had collaborated with him while he was working for YugabyteDB, and I was very impressed by his knowledge about database systems.

As an application developer, this book is definitely a must-read because the knowledge that you acquire about database systems and SQL is going to help you design better software architectures that are tuned to get the best out of the underlying database system.

In conclusion, if you want to learn more about PostgreSQL, then you should definitely read Just Use PostgreSQL!.

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