PostgreSQL employs sophisticated techniques for data storage and indexing to ensure efficient data management and fast query performance. This guide explores PostgreSQL’s mechanisms, showcases practical examples, and includes simulated performance metrics to illustrate the impact of indexing.

Data Storage in PostgreSQL

Table Structure and TOAST (The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique)

Table Structure: PostgreSQL stores table data in a format known as a heap. Each table’s heap contains one or more pages (blocks), where each page is typically 8KB in size. This size can be altered when compiling PostgreSQL from source. PostgreSQL organizes table data in a heap structure with 8KB pages by default. Rows exceeding a page size are handled using TOAST, which compresses and stores oversized attributes in secondary storage.