PostgreSQL Explain Plan-Nodes Grid

While reading up about the various PostgreSQL EXPLAIN Plan nodes from multiple sources, I realized a clear lack of a consolidated grid / cheat-sheet, from which I could (in-one-view) cross-check how the plan nodes perform on a comparative basis. While at it, I also tried to attribute what their (good / bad) characteristics are.

Hope this (Work-In-Progress) lookup table helps others on the same path. Any additions / updates are more than welcome.

Update:
The image below is an old-snapshot of the document. The updated web document is available here.

PgAdmin doesn't (directly) support restoring from PLAIN format backups (yet)

Was working with my team at office recently and had a request from the team to learn how to 'Restore' an existing backup using PgAdmin. I thought this was easy, since PgAdmin allows for both 'Backup' and 'Restore' but investigating further, I found that PgAdmin only allows for Restore in formats other than 'PLAIN'.

Cross-checked this on the internet and found references here, here and here saying the same thing. 

PgAdmin doesn't (directly) support Restore'ing from plain text backups. To restore a backup, backed up using PLAIN format, you'd need to pass it through a command line utility called 'psql' that is available in both PgAdmin as well as postgres server installations.

I think it's high time that PgAdmin support this feature, especially when all the building blocks are already in-place. Lets see if I could take out time and submit a patch for this.

... till later.

Setup Ubuntu for PgAdmin Development (from Git)

This article is a primer for those wanting to start developing on PgAdmin on an Ubuntu 12.10.

Getting Ubuntu ready for development

• sudo apt-get install build-essential
• sudo apt-get install git
• sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
• sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev
• sudo apt-get install autotools-dev
• sudo apt-get install automake
• sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.8-dev
• sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

Install PostgreSQL Database

• Click here for detailed steps.

Get PgAdmin source

• mkdir pgadmin
• cd pgadmin/
• git clone git://git.postgresql.org/git/pgadmin3.git
• Would take some time (~10 minutes) but YMMV
• cd pgadmin3/
• bash bootstrap
• ./configure
• make
• make install

These steps should give you a freshly compiled PgAdmin3 binary, customized for your system.