Creating and managing databases

In this section, we will start by creating our first database, then we will learn how to delete a database and, finally, how to create a new database from an existing one. We will also analyze the point of view of the DBA. We will see what happens behind the scenes when we create a new database and learn some basic functions useful to the DBA to get an idea of the real size of the databases.

Let’s see how to create a database from scratch and what happens behind the scenes when a database is created.

Creating a database

To create a database named databasename from scratch, you will need to execute this simple statement:

CREATE DATABASE databasename;

SQL is a case-insensitive language, so we can write all the commands with uppercase or lowercase letters.

Now, let’s see what happens behind the scenes when we create a new database. PostgreSQL performs the following steps:

1. Makes a physical copy...