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You're reading from  Learn PostgreSQL - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inOct 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781837635641
Edition2nd Edition
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Authors (2):
Luca Ferrari
Luca Ferrari
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Luca Ferrari

Luca Ferrari has been passionate about computer science since the Commodore 64 era, and today holds a master's degree (with honors) and a Ph.D. from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He has written several research papers, technical articles, and book chapters. In 2011, he was named an Adjunct Professor by Nipissing University. An avid Unix user, he is a strong advocate of open source, and in his free time, he collaborates with a few projects. He met PostgreSQL back in release 7.3; he was a founder and former president of the Italian PostgreSQL Community (ITPUG). He also talks regularly at technical conferences and events and delivers professional training.
Read more about Luca Ferrari

Enrico Pirozzi
Enrico Pirozzi
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Enrico Pirozzi

Enrico Pirozzi, EnterpriseDB certified on implementation management and tuning, with a master's in computer science, has been a PostgreSQL DBA since 2003. Based in Italy, he has been providing database advice to clients in industries such as manufacturing and web development for 10 years. He has been training others on PostgreSQL since 2008. Dedicated to open source technology since early in his career, he is a cofounder of the PostgreSQL Italian mailing list, PostgreSQL-it, and of the PostgreSQL Italian community site, PSQL
Read more about Enrico Pirozzi

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Auto-explain

Auto-explain is an extension that helps the DBA get an idea of slow queries and their execution plan. Essentially, auto-explain triggers when a running query is slower than a specified threshold, and then dumps the execution plan of the query in the PostgreSQL logs (refer to Chapter 14, Logging and Auditing, for more detail).

Note: the Docker image for this chapter comes with auto-explain and log machinery pre-configured.

In this way, the DBA can get an insight into slow queries and their execution plans without having to re-execute these queries. Thanks to this, the DBA can inspect the execution plans and decide if and where to apply indexes or perform a deeper analysis.

The auto-explain module is configured via a set of auto_explain parameter options that can be inserted in the PostgreSQL configuration (the postgresql.conf file), but you need to remember that in order to activate the module, you need to restart the cluster.

The auto-explain...

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Learn PostgreSQL - Second Edition
Published in: Oct 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781837635641

Authors (2)

author image
Luca Ferrari

Luca Ferrari has been passionate about computer science since the Commodore 64 era, and today holds a master's degree (with honors) and a Ph.D. from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He has written several research papers, technical articles, and book chapters. In 2011, he was named an Adjunct Professor by Nipissing University. An avid Unix user, he is a strong advocate of open source, and in his free time, he collaborates with a few projects. He met PostgreSQL back in release 7.3; he was a founder and former president of the Italian PostgreSQL Community (ITPUG). He also talks regularly at technical conferences and events and delivers professional training.
Read more about Luca Ferrari

author image
Enrico Pirozzi

Enrico Pirozzi, EnterpriseDB certified on implementation management and tuning, with a master's in computer science, has been a PostgreSQL DBA since 2003. Based in Italy, he has been providing database advice to clients in industries such as manufacturing and web development for 10 years. He has been training others on PostgreSQL since 2008. Dedicated to open source technology since early in his career, he is a cofounder of the PostgreSQL Italian mailing list, PostgreSQL-it, and of the PostgreSQL Italian community site, PSQL
Read more about Enrico Pirozzi