PostgreSQL Glossary
PostgreSQL is an open source, object-relational database built with a focus on extensibility, data integrity, and speed. Its concurrency support makes it fully ACID-compliant, and it supports dynamic loading and catalog-driven operations to let users customize its data types, functions, and more.
This glossary defines the core concepts behind PostgreSQL to help build your mental model of how PostgreSQL work and understand what the documentation is referring to when it uses certain terminology.
ACID compliance is a set of database characteristics consisting of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability that ensure that database transactions are completed efficiently.
An access control list, or ACL, is a list of user permissions that controls access to a system resource.
Connection pooling is a cache of database connections used for future requests to the database as required.
Database as a Service, Managed Database Service, or DBaaS for short, is a cloud service that allows users to access a cloud database system without having a personal cloud data system on a subscription basis.
A deadlock is a situation when two or more programs, processes, or other components are mutually waiting for the other in order to access a resource, which prevents all of them from proceeding.
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Hot standby is the act of listening for when a primary node fails in order for the standby node to take its place.
Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is an open source disk encryption specification for block storage devices.
Operations throughput metric is a measurement of throughput of fetch, insert, update, and delete operations across all databases on the server.
Point-in-time recovery, or PITR for short, ensures that automatic backups are made in order to restore or recover data made in a previous state of the server.
A port is a communication endpoint of a network connection. A port is identified using a port number for each transport protocol.