I have little doubt, I have a field of type oid in my database I'm saving the text files, I wonder if I can somehow retrieve the name with which you saved the file. Do not know if in some way to do so successfully *lo_export* or another method.
Thanks in advance for the help.
PostgreSQL does not create a separate file for each large object stored in the database; a fairly normal heap table with btree index is used. So large objects are broken into smaller pieces for easier space management by the database, and intermingled within the 1GB segment files used by that table.
Taking a quick peek at the pg_class table, I see an entry for pg_largeobject, which I think is where all objects stored with the "lo" large object feature are stored. On my system I see a relfilenode of 11869, which means that the initial file for storing data would be 11869 and subsequent files would be 11869.1, 11869.2, etc. I don't know whether there is any way for the relfilenode to be reassigned for large objects, but you should probably check your pg_class entry to be sure.
Generally, large objects stored in the database should not be accessed except through the "lo" functions provided. If you want separate files and the ability to access them directly, you should probably save them directly to disk and store the filename or a URI. You could save them to disk from inside a PostgreSQL function, or externally.
Related
I'm managing a PostgreSQL database server for some users who need to create temporary tables. One user accidentally sent a query with ridiculously many outer joins, and that completely filled the disk up.
PostgreSQL has a temp_file_limit parameter but it seems to me that it is not relevant:
It should be noted that disk space used for explicit temporary tables, as opposed to temporary files used behind-the-scenes in query execution, does not count against this limit.
Is there a way then to put a limit on the size on disk of "explicit" temporary tables? Or limit the row count? What's the best approach to prevent this?
The only way to limit a table's size in PostgreSQL is to put it in a tablespace on a file system of an appropriate size.
Since temporary tables are created in the default tablespace of the database you are connected to, you have to place your database in that size restricted tablespace. To keep your regular tables from being limited in the same way, you'd have to explicitly create them in a different, less limited tablespace. Make sure that your user has no permissions on that less limited tablespace.
This is a rather unappealing solution, so maybe you should rethink your requirement. After all, the user could just as well fill up the disk by inserting the data into a permanent table.
I'm referring to file organization in DBMS. But I can't understand what is Blocking Records. If you can please explain me the term Blocking Records.
Blocking record is, File records divide into Blocks. A database is a collection of large amount of related data. In case of RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), the data is stored in the form of relations or tables.
when stored the data stored in tables but actually this huge amount of data is stored in the form of files in physical memory.(A File is a collection of related records stored on the secondary storage)
There are various strategies for mapping file records into blocks of disk
1. Spanned Mapping -: suppose when File record is too large. hence stored inside the block even if it can only be stored partially hence we stored a record of file in two blocks.
2. Unspanned Mapping -: the record of a file is stored inside the block only if it can be stored completely inside it.
If I am correct, SQLite stores a database per file, and a file can't store more than one databases.
How does PostgreSQL store a database in terms of file(s)? Does it also store a database per file, and a file can't store more than one databases?
(SQLite uses more than one file for the rollback journal or when in WAL mode.)
The PostgreSQL database file layout is documented in its documentation:
Each table and index is stored in a separate file. For ordinary relations, these files are named after the table or index's filenode number, which can be found in pg_class.relfilenode. […] in addition to the main file (a/k/a main fork), each table and index has a free space map …, which stores information about free space available in the relation. The free space map is stored in a file named with the filenode number plus the suffix _fsm. Tables also have a visibility map, stored in a fork with the suffix _vm, to track which pages are known to have no dead tuples. […]
I have a mobile/web project, using pg9.3 as database, and linux as server.
The data won't be huge, but as time goes on, the data increase.
For long term considering, I want to know about:
Questions:
1. Is it necessary for me to create tablespace for my database, or just use the default one?
2. If I create new tablespace, what is the proper location on linux to create the folder, and why?
3. If I don't create it now, and wait until I have to, till then, will it be easy for me to migrate db with data to new tablespace?
Just use the default tablespace, do not create new tablespaces. Tablespaces are only useful if you have multiple physical disks, so you can define which data is stored on which physical disk. The directory where your data is located is not that important for the workings of postgres, so if you only have one disk it is useless to use tablespaces
Should your data grow beyond the capacity of 1 disk, you will have to perform a full data migration anyway to move it to another physical disk, so you can configure tablespaces at that time
The idea behind defining which data is located on which disk (with tablespaces) is that you can do things like putting a big table which is hardly used on a slow disk, and putting this very intensively used table on a separated faster disk. But I assume you're not there yet, so don't over complicate things
I'm interested to get the physical locations of tables, views, functions, data/content available in the tables of PostgreSQL in Linux OS. I've a scenario that PostgreSQL could be installed in SD-Card facility and Hard-Disk. If I've tables, views, functions, data in SD, I want to get the physical locations of the same and merge/copy into my hard-disk whenever I wish to replace the storage space. I hope the storage of database should be in terms of plain files architecture.
Also, is it possible to view the contents of the files? I mean, can I access them?
Kevin and Mike already provided pointers where to find the data directory. For the physical location of a table in the file system, use:
SELECT pg_relation_filepath('my_table');
Don't mess with the files directly unless you know exactly what you are doing.
A database as a whole is represented by a subdirectory in PGDATA/base:
If you use tablespaces it gets more complicated. Read details in the chapter Database File Layout in the manual:
For each database in the cluster there is a subdirectory within
PGDATA/base, named after the database's OID in pg_database. This
subdirectory is the default location for the database's files; in
particular, its system catalogs are stored there.
...
Each table and index is stored in a separate file. For ordinary
relations, these files are named after the table or index's filenode
number, which can be found in pg_class.relfilenode.
...
The pg_relation_filepath() function shows the entire path (relative to
PGDATA) of any relation.
Bold emphasis mine.
The manual about the function pg_relation_filepath().
The query show data_directory; will show you the main data directory. But that doesn't necessarily tell you where things are stored.
PostgreSQL lets you define new tablespaces. A tablespace is a named directory in the filesystem. PostgreSQL lets you store individual tables, indexes, and entire databases in any permissible tablespace. So if a database were created in a specific tablespace, I believe none of its objects would appear in the data directory.
For solid run-time information about where things are stored on disk, you'll probably need to query pg_database, pg_tablespace, or pg_tables from the system catalogs. Tablespace information might also be available in the information_schema views.
But for merging or copying to your hard disk, using these files is almost certainly a Bad Thing. For that kind of work, pg_dump is your friend.
If you're talking about copying the disk files as a form of backup, you should probably read this, especially the section on Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR):
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/backup.html
If you're thinking about trying to directly access and interpret data in the disk files, bypassing the database management system, that is a very bad idea for a lot of reasons. For one, the storage scheme is very complex. For another, it tends to change in every new major release (issued once per year). Thirdly, the ghost of E.F. Codd will probably haunt you; see rules 8, 9, 11, and 12 of Codd's 12 rules.