Welcome to another #PGSQLPhriday post! This month's host is Lætitia Avrot, who picked the topic of Triggers with these questions:

"Do you love them? Do you hate them? Do you sometimes love them sometimes hate them? And, most importantly, why? Do you know legitimate use cases for them? How to mitigate their drawbacks (if you think they have any)?"

Let's dive in!

Triggers are a specialized tool

I rarely use triggers. I don't hate triggers, I just think they should be used sparingly. Like any specialized tool, you should not expect to use triggers for every occasion where they could be used. However... there is one notable use where case I really like triggers: audit tables. Part of the magic of using triggers for auditing data changes in Postgres is the JSON/JSONB support available.

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Thank you everyone who contributed to PgSQL Phriday #005! This month's topic: "Is your data relational?" If I missed any contributions, or if new ones are published, let me know and I'll try to update this post. These snippets are in a somewhat random order, loosely threaded together by sub-topic.

Contributing posts

Hetti D. wrote a great post starting by addressing the bonus question. I put that question last partly because I have struggled with a succinct definition myself. I also put it last because I hoped the initial 3 questions would lead us to answer the bonus question in our own ways. Hetti also discusses storing blobs and objects, and considerations between complexities and trade-offs with more targeted technology.

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I was the host for this month's #PGSQLPhriday topic (#005), and decided on the topic question: Is your data relational? This is my submission on the topic, and how I use Postgres for Relational Plus usages.

Non-relational data

Q: What non-relational data do you store in Postgres and how do you use it?

PostGIS is the most prominent non-relational data I am involved with. Pretty much all of the PostGIS data I am involved with is rooted alongside solidly relational data. Want to know demographics of customers within 10 miles of a specific location? The location portion is spatial, the demographic data is relational.

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Welcome to the 5th installment of the #PGSQLPhriday blogging series. I am thrilled to be this month's host! The topic posts should be published by Friday February 3rd.

When Ryan Booz proposed the idea for #PGSQLPhriday I was immediately excited about it. Other than our first names, Ryan and I have a other few things in common. One of these common points is we both started our database careers in the world of MS SQL Server and later found our way to Postgres. My move to Postgres, and why I discovered Postgres, is at the heart of this month's topic for PGSQL Phriday 005.

Is your data relational?

The entire reason I discovered and started using Postgres was PostGIS. I needed PostGIS because I had a project in 2011 that could benefit from the OpenStreetMap data. The project still needed rock solid support for relational data and the SQL Standard, which Postgres also provides. However, it was the spatial support of PostGIS that pulled me into the world of Postgres.

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This blog post is part of PGSQL Phriday #004. Hettie Dombrovskaya is this month's host! I was very excited to see the topic chosen as Postgres and Software Development. My contribution to this month's #pgsqlphriday topic covers how I manage code through our development processes. Check out Hettie's post for more about this month's topic.

Types of code

Before continuing on to the specific questions for the challenge, I want to define the broad groupings of code I work.

• Mission critical
• Not trivial
• Trivial

Mission critical code is where most of the "special sauce" is at. Mission critical SQL code includes DDL commands to create the database structure such as CREATE TABLE foo and CREATE VIEW baz. This level of code represents the data structure that enables everything else to function.

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