This document is the Administrator's Manual for the
PostgreSQL
database management system, originally developed at the University
of California at Berkeley.
PostgreSQL is based on
Postgres release 4.2.
The Postgres project,
led by Professor Michael Stonebraker, was sponsored by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the
Army Research Office (ARO), the National Science
Foundation (NSF), and ESL, Inc.
This manual set is organized into several parts:
- Tutorial
An introduction for new users. Does not cover advanced features.
- User's Guide
General information for users, including available commands and data types.
- Programmer's Guide
Advanced information for application programmers. Topics include
type and function extensibility, library interfaces,
and application design issues.
- Administrator's Guide
Installation and management information. List of supported machines.
- Developer's Guide
Information for Postgres developers.
This is intended for those who are contributing to the
Postgres project;
application development information should appear in the
Programmer's Guide.
Currently included in the Programmer's Guide.
- Reference Manual
Detailed reference information on command syntax.
Currently included in the User's Guide.
In addition to this manual set, there are other resources to help you with
Postgres installation and use:
- man pages
The man pages have general information on command syntax.
- FAQs
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) documents address both general issues
and some platform-specific issues.
- READMEs
README files are available for some contributed packages.
- Web Site
The
Postgres
web site might have some information not appearing in the distribution.
There is a mhonarc catalog of mailing list traffic
which is a rich resource for many topics.
- Mailing Lists
The
pgsql-general
(archive)
mailing list is a good place to have user questions answered.
Other mailing lists are available; consult the Info Central section of the
PostgreSQL web site for details.
- Yourself!
Postgres is an open source product.
As such, it depends on the user community for ongoing support.
As you begin to use Postgres,
you will rely on others for help, either through the
documentation or through the mailing lists.
Consider contributing your knowledge back. If you learn something
which is not in the documentation, write it up and contribute it.
If you add features to the code, contribute it.
Even those without a lot of experience can provide corrections and
minor changes in the documentation, and that is a good way to start.
The
pgsql-docs
(archive)
mailing list is the place to get going.
