On 2020-Jun-03, Martin Mueller wrote: > On the topic of what other databases do better: I much prefer Postgres to > Mysql because it has better string functions and better as well as very > courteous error messages. But MySQL has one feature that sometimes makes me > want to return it: it stores the most important metadata about tables in a > Mysql table that can be queried as if it were just another table. That is a > really feature. I makes it very easy to look for a table that you edited most > recently, including a lot of other things. > > Why doesn’t Postgres have that feature? Or is there a different and equally > easy way of getting at these things that I am just missing?
Every little schema detail in Postgres is in a catalog table that you can query. See pg_class for a list of relations; pg_attribute for attributes; and so on. You can learn a lot about them just by running "psql -E" and executing \d -- look at the queries that appear above the resultset. We even have a whole section in our docs about the layout of the system catalogs. Also, there are views that make the whole thing easier. See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/catalogs.html -- Álvaro Herrera https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services
