PostgreSQL Tutorial for Beginners

Welcome to PostgreSQL Tutorial for Beginner. We are currently building and maintaining this page for PostgreSQL. This PostgreSQL Tutorial for Beginner page will contain many basic to advance PostgreSQL knowledge. We will try to explain every step in the tutorial with a simple and easy to understand way. 

Table of Content

Target Audience

This tutorial is written for the beginners in order to help them to better understand the PostgreSQL database system.  

What is PostgreSQL

Some of you might be known about PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). Similar to MySQL and MariaDB, PostgreSQL is developed by world wide team of volunteers. There is no company or corporation that control PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is available for Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS X as well. It supports various data types including text, images, sounds, videos and some others. 

PostgreSQL Features

PostgreSQL is a modern RDBMS that comes with the following features:

  • Complex SQL Queries
  • SQL Sub-select
  • Foreign keys
  • Views
  • Multiversion concurrency control

Section 1 Getting Started with PostgreSQL

You can install PostgreSQL on a Windows computer or Linux. If you don’t have it yet, you can follow our guide below to install PostgreSQL on various systems.

Install PostgreSQL

Installing PostgreSQL on Linux is pretty easy. First, download the installer from the EnterpriseDB. Select the PostgreSQL version and Linux version. Start to download the PostgreSQL for Linux installer.

EnterpriseDB provide a seamless PostgreSQL installation on Linux environment. It has a simple installation wizard GUI. Great for beginners.

The installer includes PgAdmin to manage your PostgreSQL server.

Connect to PostgreSQL using PgAdmin. After you have installed PostgreSQL Server, now you need to connect to your server. The free and might be the easiest way is using PgAdmin.

Install PostgreSQL on Windows. If you are running Windows, you can download PostgreSQL installation binary and then install it on your system. The installation is pretty straightforward, just like any other software.

Install PostgreSQL on Docker. Docker container provides an easy way to run PostgreSQL on various systems. 

Connecting to PostgreSQL Server 

Connect to PostgreSQL Server. After successfully installed PostgreSQL Server, you can start connecting to your new server. There are ways to connect and maintenance PostgreSQL Server. You can use the command line and also use PgAdmin if you prefer the GUI mode. 

Enable Remote Access

By default, PostgreSQL only allows a local connection. You won’t be able to connect to PostgreSQL from other computer or from the network. But don’t worry, with a little tweak we can enable remote access to PostgreSQL. Follow the steps on that post to configure and enable remote access to PostgreSQL.

Section 2. Basic Database Operation

Creating a New PostgreSQL Database

On this section, we will learn how to create a new PostgreSQL database. Creating a database on PostgreSQL can be done via Terminal command or via PgAdmin. Before we can create a new database, make sure you can connect to your PostgreSQL Server using the above method. How to create a new database on PostgreSQL.