I have a utility that introspects columns of tables using:
select column_name, data_type from information_schema.columns
where table_name=%s
How can I extend this to introspect columns of materialized views?
Your query carries a few shortcomings / room for improvement:
A table name is not unique inside a database, you would have to narrow down to a specific schema, or could get surprising / misleading / totally incorrect results.
It's much more effective / convenient to cast the (optionally) schema-qualified table name to regclass ... see below.
A cast to regtype gives you generic type names instead of internal ones. But that's still only the base type.
Use the system catalog information functions format_type() instead to get an exact type name including modifiers.
With the above improvements you don't need to join to additional tables. Just pg_attribute.
Dropped columns reside in the catalog until the table is vacuumed (fully). You need to exclude those.
SELECT attname, atttypid::regtype AS base_type
, format_type(atttypid, atttypmod) AS full_type
FROM pg_attribute
WHERE attrelid = 'myschema.mytable'::regclass
AND attnum > 0
AND NOT attisdropped; -- no dead columns
As an aside: the views in the information schema are only good for standard compliance and portability (rarely works anyway). If you don't plan to switch your RDBMS, stick with the catalog tables, which are much faster - and more complete, apparently.
It would seem that postgres 9.3 has left materialized views out of the information_schema. (See http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/Re-Materialized-views-WIP-patch-td5740513i40.html for a discussion.)
The following will work for introspection:
select attname, typname
from pg_attribute a
join pg_class c on a.attrelid = c.oid
join pg_type t on a.atttypid = t.oid
where relname = %s and attnum >= 1;
The clause attnum >= 1 suppresses system columns. The type names are pg_specific this way, I guess, but good enough for my purposes.
Related
Are there multiple ways to set n_distinct in PostgreSQL? Both of these seem to be doing the same thing but end up changing a different value within pg_attribute. What is the difference between these two commands?
alter table my_table alter column my_column set (n_distinct = 500);
alter table my_table alter column my_column set statistics 1000;
select
c.relname,
a.attname,
a.attoptions,
a.attstattarget
from
pg_class c
inner join
pg_attribute a
on c.oid = a.attrelid
where
c.relname = 'my_table'
and
a.attname = 'my_column'
order by
c.relname,
a.attname;
Name |Value
-------------|----------------
relname |my_table
attname |my_column
attoptions |{n_distinct=500}
attstattarget|1000
Both of these seem to be doing the same thing
Why would you say that? Both commands are obviously distinct. Both are related to column statistics and query planning. But they do very different things.
The statistics target ...
controls the level of detail of statistics accumulated for this column by ANALYZE. See:
Check statistics targets in PostgreSQL
Basics in the manual.
Setting n_distinct is something completely different. It means hard-coding the number (or ratio) of distinct values to expect for the given column. (But only effective after the next ANALYZE.)
Related answer on dba.SE with more on n_distinct:
Very bad query plan in PostgreSQL 9.6
I have a database with plenty of tables.
I want to tidy up relations that do not fit namewise anymore, due to name changes of the tables.
I was able to fix the constraints, but I am not able to put the lines together to list the sequences and the related columns. As pgAdmin shows under dependencies the column a sequence is connected to, it should be possible to create a SELECT to show sequences and their related column.
Try this:
SELECT a.attrelid::regclass AS table_name,
a.attname AS column_name,
pg_get_serial_sequence(a.attrelid::regclass::text, a.attname) AS sequence_name
FROM pg_attribute AS a
JOIN pg_class AS t ON a.attrelid = t.oid
WHERE t.relkind IN ('r', 'P')
AND NOT a.attisdropped
AND pg_get_serial_sequence(a.attrelid::regclass::text, a.attname) IS NOT NULL;
I am trying to isolate toast data from a table so that I can dump the table without the toast data. I know there must be a way to do that, but I cant get my way there...Suggestions would be highly appreciated
Try a COPY (or psql's \copy) with the query option - you can select the columns to export. You can also choose a CSV format rather than tab-separated, the representation of nulls etc.
TOAST is the way how PostgreSQL is storing your data internally. For you, as a user, there is only values that you delegated to the database to keep for you.
TOAST comes into play mostly for the textual data, when any of the tuple's attributes make tuple's size to be more then 8k (if PostgreSQL compiled with default page size). This happens inside the DB engine, transparently to the user. Say, if you'll insert a row with a text that has round 10k symbols, the corresponding attribute will be TOASTed.
Given how TOAST works, your question appears to look like: How do I dump table without attributes containing big chunks of data? It seems unclear for me what would be the purpose of this, as your dump will be incomplete.
EDIT: I don't know how to find if any attribute of any tuple do have a TOASTed value. Instead, I will eliminate all attributes that can have TOASTed values.
The following query will give you all the columns for a table, that are always in PLAIN storage mode:
SELECT a.attname
FROM pg_class t
JOIN pg_attribute a ON t.oid = a.attrelid
JOIN pg_type typ ON typ.oid = a.atttypid
WHERE t.relkind='r' AND t.relname = 'element'
AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
AND typ.typstorage='p'
ORDER BY a.attnum;
And this query will generate the desired SQL, you can wrap it in the script or into the PL/pgSQL's EXECUTE statement:
SELECT 'COPY '||quote_ident(t.relname)||
'('||string_agg(a.attname, ',' ORDER BY a.attnum)||') TO stdout;'
FROM pg_class t
JOIN pg_attribute a ON t.oid = a.attrelid
JOIN pg_type typ ON typ.oid = a.atttypid
WHERE t.relkind='r' AND t.relname = '<YOUR_TABLE>'
AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
AND typ.typstorage='p'
GROUP BY t.relname;
I have an application that reads the structure of an existing PostgreSQL 9.1 database, compares it against a "should be" state and updates the database accordingly. That works fine, most of the time. However, I had several instances now when reading the current database structure deadlocked. The query responsible reads the existing foreign keys:
SELECT tc.table_schema, tc.table_name, tc.constraint_name, kcu.column_name,
ccu.table_schema, ccu.table_name, ccu.column_name
FROM information_schema.table_constraints AS tc
JOIN information_schema.key_column_usage AS kcu
ON tc.constraint_name = kcu.constraint_name
JOIN information_schema.constraint_column_usage AS ccu
ON ccu.constraint_name = tc.constraint_name
WHERE constraint_type = 'FOREIGN KEY'
Viewing the server status in pgAdmin shows this to be the only active query/transaction that's running on the server. Still, the query doesn't return.
The error is reproducible in a way: When I find a database that produces the error, it will produce the error every time. But not all databases produce the error. This is one mysterious bug, and I'm running out of options and ideas on what else to try or how to work around this. So any input or ideas are highly appreciated!
PS: A colleague of mine just reported he produced the same error using PostgreSQL 8.4.
I tested and found your query very slow, too. The root of this problem is that "tables" in information_schema are in fact complicated views to provide catalogs according to the SQL standard. In this particular case, matters are further complicated as foreign keys can be built on multiple columns. Your query yields duplicate rows for those cases which, I suspect, may be an undesired.
Correlated subqueries with unnest, fed to ARRAY constructors avoid the problem in my query.
This query yields the same information, just without duplicate rows and 100x faster. Also, I would venture to guarantee, without deadlocks.
Only works for PostgreSQL, not portable to other RDBMSes.
SELECT c.conrelid::regclass AS table_name
, c.conname AS fk_name
, ARRAY(SELECT a.attname
FROM unnest(c.conkey) x
JOIN pg_attribute a
ON a.attrelid = c.conrelid AND a.attnum = x) AS fk_columns
, c.confrelid::regclass AS ref_table
, ARRAY(SELECT a.attname
FROM unnest(c.confkey) x
JOIN pg_attribute a
ON a.attrelid = c.confrelid AND a.attnum = x) AS ref_columns
FROM pg_catalog.pg_constraint c
WHERE c.contype = 'f';
-- ORDER BY c.conrelid::regclass::text,2
The cast to ::regclass yields table names as seen with your current search_path. May or may not be what you want. For this query to include the absolute path (schema) for every table name you can set the search_path like this:
SET search_path = pg_catalog;
SELECT ...
To continue your session with your default search_path:
RESET search_path;
Related:
Get column names and data types of a query, table or view
I need to know the column type in PostgreSQL (i.e. varchar(20)). I know that I could probably find this using \d something in psql, but I need it to be done with a select query.
Is this possible in PostgreSQL?
There is a much simpler way in PostgreSQL to get the type of a column.
SELECT pg_typeof(col)::text FROM tbl LIMIT 1
The table must hold at least one row, of course. And you only get the base type without type modifiers (if any). Use the alternative below if you need that, too.
You can use the function for constants as well. The manual on pg_typeof().
For an empty (or any) table you can use query the system catalog pg_attribute to get the full list of columns and their respective type in order:
SELECT attnum, attname AS column, format_type(atttypid, atttypmod) AS type
FROM pg_attribute
WHERE attrelid = 'myschema.mytbl'::regclass -- optionally schema-qualified
AND NOT attisdropped
AND attnum > 0
ORDER BY attnum;
The manual on format_type() and on object identifier types like regclass.
You can fully describe a table using postgres with the following query:
SELECT
a.attname as Column,
pg_catalog.format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod) as Datatype
FROM
pg_catalog.pg_attribute a
WHERE
a.attnum > 0
AND NOT a.attisdropped
AND a.attrelid = (
SELECT c.oid
FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c
LEFT JOIN pg_catalog.pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace
WHERE c.relname ~ '^(TABLENAME)$'
AND pg_catalog.pg_table_is_visible(c.oid)
)
Tith this you will retrieve column names and data type.
It is also possible to start psql client using the -E option
$ psql -E
And then a simple \d mytable will output the queries used by postgres to describe the table. It work for every psql describe commands.
Yes, look at the information_schema.