Onward and Upward

Five years after the initial edition of this book, we’re still in the midst of a Cambrian explosion of data storage options. It’s hard to predict exactly what will evolve out of this explosion in the coming years but we can be fairly certain that the pure domination of any particular strategy (relational or otherwise) is unlikely. Instead, we’ll see increasingly specialized databases, each suited to a particular (but certainly overlapping) set of ideal problem spaces. And just as there are jobs today that call for expertise specifically in administrating relational databases (DBAs), we are going to see the rise of their nonrelational counterparts.

Databases, like programming languages and libraries, are another set of tools that every developer should know. Every good carpenter must understand what’s in their tool belt. And like any good builder, you can never hope to be a master without a familiarity of the many options at your disposal.

Consider this a crash course in the workshop. In this book, you’ll swing some hammers, spin some power drills, play with some nail guns, and in the end be able to build so much more than a birdhouse. So, without further ado, let’s wield our first database: PostgreSQL.