2.1. Introduction
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/
. (Binary
distributions of
PostgreSQL
might not
provide those files.) 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. Then, to start the tutorial, do the following:
$psql -s mydb...mydb=>\i basics.sql
The
\i
command reads in commands from the
specified file.
psql
's
-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
.