Terminology and Notation
An administrator is generally a person who is
in charge of installing and running the server. A user
could be anyone who is using, or wants to use, any part of the
PostgreSQL system. These terms should not
be interpreted too narrowly; this documentation set does not have fixed
presumptions about system administration procedures.
We use /usr/local/pgsql/ as the root
directory of the installation and /usr/local/pgsql/data
as the directory with the database files. These directories may vary
on your site, details can be derived in the Administrator's Guide.
In a command synopsis, brackets
([ and ]) indicate an optional phrase or keyword.
Anything in braces
({ and }) and containing vertical bars
(|)
indicates that you must choose one alternative.
Examples will show commands executed from various accounts and programs.
Commands executed from a Unix shell may be preceded with a dollar sign
($
). Commands executed from particular user
accounts such as root> or postgres> are specially flagged and explained.
SQL commands may be preceded with
=>
or will have no leading prompt, depending on the context.
The notation for
flagging commands is not universally consistent throughout the
documentation set.
Please report problems to the documentation mailing list
pgsql-docs@postgresql.org.