Summary

PostgreSQL is an open source, object-oriented relational database system. It supports many advanced features and complies with the ANSI-SQL standard. It has won industry recognition and user appreciation. The PostgreSQL slogan, The world's most advanced open source database, reflects the sophistication of PostgreSQL's features. It's a result of many years of research and collaboration between academia and industry. Start-up companies often favor PostgreSQL due to licensing costs, and it can aid profitable business models. PostgreSQL is also favored by many developers because of its capabilities and advantages.

PostgreSQL can be used for OLTP and OLAP applications. It is ACID-compliant; thus, it can be used out of the box for OLTP applications. For OLAP applications, PostgreSQL supports the Windows functions, FDW, table inheritance, declarative table partitioning, and parallel query execution. Also, it has many external extensions. Several proprietary DBMSes are based on PostgreSQL. In addition, there are several open source forks that add new features and technologies to PostgreSQL, such as MPP and MapReduce.

PostgreSQL has a very organized active community, including users, developers, companies, and associations. The community contributes to PostgreSQL on a daily basis; many companies have contributed to PostgreSQL by publishing best practices or articles, submitting feature requests to the development group, submitting new features, and developing new tools and software. 

The first interaction with PostgreSQL is quick and easy, and you only need a few minutes to install it. PostgreSQL is shipped with many client tools to help user interactions. PostgreSQL is user-friendly; the psql meta-command, \h, \timing, \pset, auto completion, and comprehensive official documentation make it easy for developers to complete their tasks quickly.

In the next chapter, we'll take a look at the PostgreSQL building components. Also, you'll be able to create your first database and use some DDL statements, such as CREATE TABLE and CREATE VIEW. The next chapter will provide some advice regarding coding and coding styles for SQL, and will provide an overview of high-level component interactions.