Table of Contents
This chapter provides an overview of how to use SQL to perform simple operations. This tutorial is only intended to give you an introduction and is in no way a complete tutorial on SQL. Numerous books have been written on SQL, including [melt93] and [date97]. You should be aware that some PostgreSQL language features are extensions to the standard.
In the examples that follow, we assume that you have created a
database named mydb
, as described in the previous
chapter, and have been able to start psql.
Examples in this manual can also be found in the
PostgreSQL source distribution
in the directory src/tutorial/
. To use those
files, first change to that directory and run make:
$
cd
....
/src/tutorial$
make
This creates the scripts and compiles the C files containing user-defined
functions and types. (If you installed a pre-packaged version of
PostgreSQL rather than building from source,
look for a directory named tutorial
within the
PostgreSQL documentation. The “make”
part should already have been done for you.)
Then, to start the tutorial, do the following:
$
cd
....
/tutorial$
psql -s mydb
...
mydb=>
\i basics.sql
The \i
command reads in commands from the
specified file. The -s
option puts you in
single step mode which pauses before sending each statement to the
server. The commands used in this section are in the file
basics.sql
.