Sunday, December 11. 2011
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In our article The Pure Relational database is dead there
were a lot of misunderstandings as a result of our poor choice of words. People thought we were bashing the relational model because in their mind that was what
pure meant. I got hit with a lot of poetic insults. I still can't think of an alternative word to use for what I meant. Simple doesn't really do it as even relational databases with just standard types
were far from simple when you consider the planner and all the other stuff going on under the hood to protect you from the underlying storage structure. What I was trying to say is that in the beginning most relational databases
just supported a standard set of types which you could not expand on and most people when they think relational today still think just that. That type of relational database is in my book dead or almost dead.
How did this all start. Well whenever we use something like PostgreSQL to store anything complex -- take your pick: geometry data, tree like structures which we use
ltree for, full-text query constructs, and Yes XML we get bashed by some know-it-all who has a very narrow view of what a relational database should be doing and suggesting we use a NoSQL database, a graph engine or a full text engine or normalize our data more. I have also learned XML is a dirty word to many people. I mistakenly thought XML was a complex type people could
relate to, but turns out they can relate to it so well that it brings up tragic memories I can only equate to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder suffered by war veterans or (early or wrong) technology adopters. That was not
my intent either. XML was just merely an example. I will not say you should use XML in your tables, but I will also not say you should stay clear of it as many people wanted me to say. I will say its use is rare, but it has its place. It has its place just as any other complex type and it has its own special needs for navigation, indexing etc. which many relational databases handle fine enough.
Continue reading "The Relational Model is very much alive"
Tuesday, May 10. 2011
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Question: What is the difference between CURRENT_TIMESTAMP and clock_timestamp()
Answer: CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is an ANSI-SQL Standard variable you will find in many relational databases including PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Firebird, IBM DB2 and MySQL to name a few
that records the start of the transaction. The important thing to keep in mind about it is there is only one entry per transaction so if you have a long running transaction,
you won't be seeing it changing as you go along.
clock_timestamp() is a PostgreSQL function that always returns the current clock's timestamp. I don't think I'm alone in using it for doing simple benchmarking and other things
where for example I need to record the timings of each part of a function within the function using pedestrian RAISE NOTICE debug print statements.
There is another cool way I like using it, and that is for a batch of records each with an expensive function call, benchmarking how long it takes to process each record.
One of the things I'm working on is improving the speed of the tiger_geocoder packaged in PostGIS 2.0. The first root of attack seemed to me would be the normalize_address function
which I was noticing was taking anywhere from 10% to 50% of my time in the geocode process. That's a ton of time if you are trying to batch geocode a ton of records. The thing is
the function is very particular to how badly formed the address is so a whole batch could be held up by one bad apple and since the batch doesn't return until all are processed, it makes
the whole thing seem to take a while.
So rather than looping thru each, I thought it would be cool if I could run the batch, but for each record have it tell me how long it took to process relative to the rest so I could get
a sense of what a problem address looks like. So I wrote this query:
WITH ctbenchmark
AS
(SELECT *,
the_time - COALESCE(lag(the_time) OVER(ORDER BY the_time), CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) As process_time,
the_time - CURRENT_TIMESTAMP As diff_from_start
FROM (SELECT address_1, city, state, zip,
pprint_addy(normalize_address(coalesce(address_1,'') || ', ' || coalesce(city || ' ','') || state || ' ' || zip)) As pp_addr,
clock_timestamp() As the_time
FROM testgeocode LIMIT 1000) As foo )
SELECT *
FROM ctbenchmark
WHERE process_time > '00:00:00.016'::interval;
Which returned an output something like this:
address_1 | city | state | zip | pp_addr | the_time | process_time | diff_from_start
------------------+------------+-------+------- +-------------------------------------------+--------------+------------------
48 MAIN ST .. | S.. | MA | 021.. | 48 MAIN .. | 2011-05-10 03:24:43.078-04 | 00:00:00.032 | 00:00:00.032
15 ... | | MA | 018... | 15 GREN... | 2011-05-10 03:24:50.796-04 | 00:00:00.031 | 00:00:07.75
Saturday, April 30. 2011
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We like to enforce business rules at the database level wherever
we can, for the simple reason, particularly the business we are in, most database update happens
outside the end-user application layer.
That is not to say you shouldn't enforce at the application level too, but that the database is the last
line of defense, is usually more self-documenting than application code can be, and also protects you from your
programmers, even when that your programmers is you.
Domains are objects that you will find in many high-end
standards-compliant databases. They exist in SQL Server, Oracle, IBM Db2, Firebird, and PostgreSQL to name a few.
Domains have existed for a really long time in PostgreSQL. In PostGIS topology, Sandro Santilli (usually known as strk), takes advantage of them for fleshing out the topology support, and I got turned on to them by him.
With that said - let's dive into domains.
What are domains?
Domains are essentially a reusable packaging of check constraints. You use them as if they were a custom data type.
The nice thing about them is that they are usually transparent to applications that
don't understand them.
Example 1: Enforce pay ending/pay day happens only on certain days of the week
Here is an example -- suppose you had a payment system, and you had a rule that the pay thru end date has to
fall on a Friday. You could create a domain such as the following:
CREATE DOMAIN dom_payday
AS date
CONSTRAINT check_dow CHECK (trim(to_char(VALUE, 'day')) = 'friday');
COMMENT ON DOMAIN dom_payday IS 'Company payday rules';
Continue reading "Using Domains to Enforce Business Rules"
Friday, April 08. 2011
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In a prior article Use of Out and InOut Parameters
we demonstrated how to use OUT parameters and INOUT parameters to return a set of records from a PostgreSQL function.
There is another approach to doing this, and that is to use the ANSI Standard RETURNS TABLE construct.
If you come from a SQL Server or IBM DB2 background, the RETURNS TABLE construct is probably most familiar, but still
how you use it and what is legal in it is a little different than it is in SQL Server or IBM DB2. We'll save the
contrast compare as a topic for another article.
In terms of performance between using OUT vs. RETURNS TABLE, we haven't noticed much of a difference. The main thing that is
nice about RETURNS TABLE is just that it's syntactically more pleasing in the sense that its clearer the structure of what you are returning.
In these next examples, we'll demonstrate similar examples we showed in the aforementioned article except using the
RETURNS TABLE .
Be warned that the RETURNS TABLE construct is only available for PostgreSQL 8.4+, while the OUT approach
has existed since PostgreSQL 8.1. With that said, if you need your code to work on 8.3 or lower, you can't use RETURNS TABLE.
When in doubt about a feature and you are creating code that needs to support earlier versions of PostgreSQL
(as we have to in the PostGIS development group),
or you want to get stubborn users off old antiquated versions of PostgreSQL and need a bit of ammunition
(as we have to (on PostGIS development including our own developers - and you know who you are :) ) )
check the
PostgreSQL feature matrix.
It will save you a lot of grief.
Continue reading "Using RETURNS TABLE vs. OUT parameters"
Wednesday, March 30. 2011
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I am happy to report, that the final proof of the PostGIS in Action E-Book got released today
and the printed version is scheduled for release Aprill 11th, 2011 and should be available on Amazon and other locations around then. The other e-Reader formats will come after that.
You can buy from here or download the two free chapters, if you haven't already.
Each hard-copy purchase comes with a free E-Book version. There is a coupon in the back of the book when you get it to get the E-Book versions.
Yes, I know it's been a really really long time.
On the bright side, we produced twice as much content as we had set out to do and that was with keeping things as concise as we
could get away with, still managing to cover more than we set out to cover, and stripping out as many unnecessary words as we could muster.
So 520 pages and almost 2 years later, this is where we are.
A good chunk of the additional bulk of the book was the appendices which are about 150 pages
total and focus strictly on PostgreSQL and SQL. After many comments from early reviewers, we thought it unfair not to have a good chunk of PostgreSQL
and just general relational database content to familiarize programmers and GIS folks with the RDBMS that PostGIS lives in. Most GIS folk unfortunately
have the hardest time with getting up to speed with SQL and just standard RDBMS management.
Two free chapters and accompanying code for all chapters
The two free chapters we selectively picked because we thought they would be most beneficial to newcomers and people new to relational databases.
So the free chapters are:
- Chapter 1: What is a spatial database? Which provides a fast paced history of PostGIS, PostgreSQL, Spatial Databases and moves into
an even faster journey into converting flat file restaurant locations to spatial point geometries, loading in an ESRI shapefile of roads. Then shows you how to write standard
spatial queries and render the results.
- Appendix C: SQL Primer -- goes through querying information_schemas, the common points of writing SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL statements and the finer points of using aggregate functions, Windowing constructs and common table expressions as well
as a brief overview of how PostgreSQL stacks up with other relational databases (SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL, Firebird) in SQL features.
- All the chapter code and accompanying data. It's a bit hefty at 57 MB.
So even if you don't buy our book, we hope you find the free chapters useful.
You can get a more detailed listing of all the chapters from the PostGIS in Action book site.
We'd like to thank all those who supported us through this long and unpredictable journey. Hopefully we'll have several more, though hopefully
a bit less nerve-racking than this first one.
Friday, February 25. 2011
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Many of our customers ask us this question so we thought we'd lay down our thoughts.
The last couple of our articles have been how to do this and that in PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL or having PostgreSQL coexist with an existing SQL Server install.
A major reason for that is that in many of our projects we have a choice of what database to choose for a new piece of an application as long as it can play nicely with the existing infrastructure.
Our core database competencies are still PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and MySQL with it leaning
more toward PostgreSQL each day. We are perhaps somewhat unique in the PostgreSQL community in that Oracle never comes into our equation of decisions (though Oracle and PostgreSQL are perhaps more similar than the others).
Oracle is too expensive for most of our clientele
so it's a non-issue, and when our clients do have Oracle -- it's thrust upon them by thier ERP/CRM vendor and is essentially off limits to them.
Continue reading "Why choose or not choose PostgreSQL?"
Friday, December 24. 2010
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Question: You have a table of people and a table that specifies the activities each person is involved
in. You want to return a result that has one record per person and a column that has a listing of activities for each person
separated by semicolons and alphabetically sorted by activity. You also want the whole set alphabetically sorted by person's name.
This is a question we are always asked and since we mentor on various flavors of databases,
we need to be able to switch gears and provide an answer that works on the client's database. Most
often the additional requirement is that you can't install new functions in the database. This means that
for PostgreSQL/SQL Server that both support defining custom aggregates, that is out as an option.
Normally we try to come up with an answer that works in most databases, but sadly the only solution that works in
most is to push the problem off to the client front end and throw up your hands and proclaim -- "This ain't something that should be
done in the database and is a reporting problem." That is in fact what many database purists do, and all I can say to them is wake up and smell the coffee before you are out of a job.
We feel that data
transformation is an important function of a database, and if your database is incapable of massaging the data into a format
your various client apps can easily digest, WELL THAT's A PROBLEM.
We shall now document this answer rather than trying to answer for the nteenth time. For starter's
PostgreSQL has a lot of answers to this question, probably more so than any other, though some are easier to execute than others
and many depend on the version of PostgreSQL you are using. SQL Server has 2 classes of answers neither of which is terribly appealing,
but we'll go over the ones that don't require you to be able to install .NET stored functions in your database since we said that is often a requirement.
MySQL has a fairly
simple, elegant and very portable way that it has had for a really long time.
Continue reading "String Aggregation in PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and MySQL"
Sunday, August 22. 2010
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PostgreSQL offers several options for displaying and querying tree like structures.
In Using Recursive Common Table Expressions (CTE) to represent tree structures
we demonstrated how to use common table expressions to display a tree like structure. Common Table Expressions required PostgreSQL 8.4 and above but was fairly ANSI standards compliant. In addition to that
approach you have the option of using recursive functions. There is yet another common approach for this which is specific to PostgreSQL. This is using the ltree contrib datatype
that has been supported for sometime in PostgreSQL. For one of our recent projects, we chose ltree over the other approaches because the performance is much better when you need to do ad-hoc queries over the tree since it can take advantage of btree and gist indexes
and also has built-in tree query expressions that make ad-hoc queries simpler to do; similar in concept to the tsearch query syntax for querying text.
In this article we'll demonstrate how to use ltree and along the way also show the PostgreSQL 9.0 new features conditional triggers and ordered aggregates.
Continue reading "Using LTree to Represent and Query Hierarchy and Tree Structures"
Monday, September 07. 2009
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One of the most common questions people ask is Which tools work with PostgreSQL. In a sense the measure of a database's
maturity/popularity are the number of vendors willing to produce management and development tools for it. Luckily there are a lot of vendors producing tools for PostgreSQL and the list is growing.
One set of tools people are interested in are Database administration, ER diagramming, Query tools, and quickie application generators (RAD).
For this issue of our product showcase, we will not talk about one product, but several that fit in the aforementioned category.
All the listed products work with PostgreSQL and can be used for database administration and/or architecting or provide some sort of
light reporting/rapid application building suite. By light reporting/application building, we mean
a tool with a simple wizard that a novice can use to build somewhat functional applications in minutes or days. This rules out all-purpose development
things like raw PHP, .NET, Visual Studio, database drivers etc. Things we consider in this realm are things like OpenOffice Base and
MS Access. Most of these tools are either free or have 30-day try before you buy options.
You can't really say one tool is absolutely better than another since each has its own strengths and caters to slightly different audiences and also
you may like the way one tool does one important thing really well, though it may be mediocre in other respects. We also left out a lot of products we are not familiar with and may have gotten
some things wrong.
If we left out your favorite product and you feel it meets these criteria, or you feel we made any errors, please let us know, and we'll add or correct it.
We will be including Free open source as well as proprietary products in this mix. If we left out what you consider an
important criteria, please let us know and we'll try to squeeze it in somewhere.
Continue reading "Database Administration, Reporting, and Light application development"
Thursday, July 16. 2009
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Common table expressions are perhaps our favorite feature in PostgreSQL 8.4 even more so than windowing functions. Strangely enough I find myself using them more in SQL Server too now that PostgreSQL supports it.
CTEs are not only nice syntactic sugar, but they also produce better more efficient queries. To our knowledge only Firebird (see note below), PostgreSQL,SQL Server, and IBM DB2 support this, though I heard somewhere
that Oracle does too or is planning too UPDATE: As noted below Oracle as of version 9 supports non-recursive CTEs. For recursion you need to use the Oracle proprietary corresponding by syntax.
As far as CTEs go, the syntax between PostgreSQL, SQL Server 2005/2008, IBM DB2 and Firebird
is pretty much the same when not using recursive queries. When using recursive queries, PostgreSQL and Firebird use WITH RECURSIVE to denote a recursive CTE where as SQL Server and IBM DB2 its just WITH.
All 4 databases allow you to have multiple table expressions within one WITH clause anda RECURSIVE CTE expression can have both recursive and non-recursive CTEs. This makes writing complex queries especially where you have the same expressions used multiple times in the query,
a lot easier to debug and also more performant.
In our article on How to force PostgreSQL to use a pre-calculated value
we talked about techniques for forcing PostgreSQL to cache a highly costly function. For PostgreSQL 8.3 and below, the winning solution was using OFFSET which is not terribly cross platform and has the disadvantage of
materializing the subselect. David Fetter had suggested
for 8.4, why not try CTEs. Yes CTEs not only are syntactically nice, more portable, but they help you write more efficient queries. To demonstrate, we shall repeat the same exercise we did in that
article, but using CTEs instead.
Continue reading "PostgresQL 8.4: Common Table Expressions (CTE), performance improvement, precalculated functions revisited"
Monday, July 13. 2009
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One of the very handy features introduced in PostgreSQL 8.4 is the new aggregate function called array_agg which is a companion function to the unnest function we discussed earlier. This
takes a set of elements similar to what COUNT, SUM etc do and builds an array out of them. This approach is faster than the old used array_append , array_accum since it does not rebuild the array on each iteration.
Sadly it does not appear to be completely swappable with array_append as there does not seem to be a mechanism to use it to build your own custom aggregate functions that need to maintain the set of objects flowing thru the aggregate without venturing into C land. This we tried to do
in our median example but were unsuccessful.
In PostGIS 1.4 Paul borrowed some of this array_agg logic to make the
PostGIS spatial aggregates much much faster with large numbers of geometries. So collecting polygons or making a line out of say 30,000 geometries which normally would have taken 2 minutes or more (just accumulating), got reduced to under 10 seconds in many cases.
That did require C code even when installed against PostgreSQL 8.4. Though in PostGIS you reap the benefits as far as geometries go even
if you are running lower than 8.4.
We had originally thought array_agg was a PostgreSQL only creation, but it turns out that array_agg is a function defined in the ANSI SQL:2008 specs and for one appears to exist in IBM DB2 as well. I don't think
Oracle or any other database supports it as of yet.
As we had demonstrated in the other article, we shall demonstrate the olden days and what array_agg brings to the table to make your life easier.
Continue reading "PostgreSQL 8.4 Faster array building with array_agg"
Wednesday, July 01. 2009
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PostgreSQL 8.4 has ANSI SQL:2003 window functions support. These are often classified under the umbrella terms of basic Analytical or Online Application Processing (OLAP) functions.
They are used most commonly for producing cumulative sums, moving averages and generally rolling calculations that need to look at a subset of the overall dataset (a window frame of data) often relative to a particular row.
For users who use SQL window constructs extensively, this may have been one reason in the past to not to give PostgreSQL a second look. While you may not
consider PostgreSQL as a replacement for existing projects because of the cost of migration, recoding and testing, this added new feature is definitely a selling point
for new project consideration.
If you rely heavily on windowing functions, the things you probably want to know most about the new PostgreSQL 8.4 offering are:
- What SQL window functionality is supported?
- How does PostgreSQL 8.4 offering compare to that of the database you are currently using?
- Is the subset of functionality you use supported?
To make this an easier exercise we have curled thru the documents of the other database vendors to distill what the SQL Windowing functionality they provide in their core product.
If you find any mistakes or ambiguities in the below please don't hesitate to let us know and we will gladly amend.
For those who are not sure what this is and what all the big fuss is about, please read our rich commentary on the topic of window functions.
Continue reading "Window Functions Comparison Between PostgreSQL 8.4, SQL Server 2008, Oracle, IBM DB2"
Wednesday, May 27. 2009
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One thing that is pretty neat about windowing functions in PostgreSQL 8.4 aside from built-in windowing functions (row_number(), rank(), lead(), lag(), dense_rank(), percent_rank(), cume_dist(), first_value, last_value, nth_value) as documented in the manual Windowing Functions is that you can use windows with most aggregate functions (built-in or custom defined) as well as define your own specific windowing functions. In a later article, we'll demonstrate creating custom windowing functions.
In our PGCon 2009 PostGIS presentation one of the last slides demonstrates using lead() and lag() windowing functions
to show a family's income level in the same record with the income levels of the next door neighbors in the fictitious town we created. This is not terribly useful unless you live
in a somewhat dysfunctional neighborhood where everyone is concerned about how rich their neighbors are compared to themselves. Our town was very dysfunctional but mostly geographically dysfunctional. We will have much more useful use cases of this as applied to GIS in our upcoming PostGIS in Action book.
Hitoshi Harada and David Fetter did a presentation of this in PGCon 2009 which sadly we missed since we were giving our own presentation.
Check out the PGCon2009 PostgreSQL 8.4 Windowing Functions Video. Also check out the slides at Introducing Windowing Functions.
Those who have used SQL Server 2005+, Oracle or IBM DBII are probably familar or have run into examples of Windowing functions in those products. Windowing in PostgreSQL 8.4 works more or less the same way. In a prior article, we demonstrated how to return running totals and sums using rudimentary SQL.
To precelebrate the eminent arrival of PostgreSQL 8.4 and the current PostgreSQL 8.4 beta 2 release, we shall demonstrate the same exercise using the new ANSI SQL:2003 Windowing functionality built
into the upcoming PostgreSQL 8.4.
Continue reading "Running totals and sums using PostgreSQL 8.4 Windowing functions"
Thursday, February 19. 2009
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This article is a bit of a companion to our article on Setting up PostgreSQL as a Linked Server in Microsoft SQL Server 64-bit
In this article we shall demonstrate using Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 OPENQUERY AND OPENROWSET to add, delete and update data in PostgreSQL.
First we must start by saying there are a number of ways of copying data between databases. While OPENROWSET is not necessarily the fasted,
in certain cases such as when you are wrapping this in a stored procedure, it is one of the most convenient ways of doing this.
Why on earth would you want to copy data back and forth between 2 servers and 2 disparate DBMS systems for that matter?
We all would like to think we are an island and live in a world with one DBMS system, but we don't. There are many reasons for having multiple DBMS providers in
an organization. Some are better for some things than others, some are more integrated in an environment -- (for example in a windows shop the SQL Server drivers are already loaded on all
windows machines, but PostgreSQL provides the advantage of being able to run on more platforms such a FreeBSD/Unix/Linux box and with cheaper cost and more options for PL programming so is often better for a front-facing DMZ accessible database),
and there are numerous other reasons that are too hard to itemize. The other question of why triggering from SQL Server instead of PostgreSQL is because
its just a little easier from Microsoft SQL Server. The OPENROWSET and OPENQUERY logic that SQL Server provides is just simply better and easier to use than the dblink provided for PostgreSQL. Anyrate with that said lets move on with the show.
Although this example is focused on using PostgreSQL with Microsoft SQL Server, the same technique applies when
copying retrieving updating data from other databases such as MySQL or Oracle or DB II.
Continue reading "Using Microsoft SQL Server to Update PostgreSQL Data"
Sunday, September 07. 2008
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As we mentioned in a previous article, RECURSIVE queries, often referred to in SQL ANSI specs and by DB2 and SQL Server as
Common Table Expressions (CTE) will make it into the 8.4 release and can already be found in the dev source. Technically CTE is a
superset and RECURSIVE queries are a subclass of CTE. Looks like basic windowing functionality will make it in 8.4 as well.
A summary of where your favorite patches are at can be found at the September 2008 PostgreSQL 8.4 commit-fest summary page http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:2008-09.
Continue reading "CTEs and Windowing Functions in 8.4"
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