Chapter 14. PostgreSQL as an Extensible RDBMS

PostgreSQL is an extensible database. I hope you've learned this much by now. It is extensible by virtue of the design that it has. As discussed before, PostgreSQL uses a catalog-driven design. In fact, PostgreSQL is more catalog-driven than most of the traditional relational databases. The key benefit here is that the catalogs can be changed or added to, in order to modify or extend the database functionality. PostgreSQL also supports dynamic loading, that is, a user-written code can be provided as a shared library, and PostgreSQL will load it as required.

Extensibility is critical for many businesses, which have needs that are specific to that business or industry. Sometimes, the tools provided by ...

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