Ευρωπαϊκό Συνέδριο PostgreSQL PostgreSQL Conference Europe 2024

Diagrams are powerful tools for thought and communication, and databases are full of interesting graphs that translate into useful visual representations. Database documentation, however, ordinarily has room for only one: the entity-relationship diagram or ERD, a birds-eye view of foreign key links between tables. ERDs exemplify a number of problems with documentation more generally, and without sustained effort inevitably fall into disuse and decay.

But documentation is a means, not an end. By putting a few tools together on top of Postgres, we can achieve many of the same goals through visual exploration of the graphs extant within a running database instead of reference to static resources.

We'll discuss:

• how exploration can serve learning and reference needs better than external documentation;
• why less is more in building mental models of a system;
• and where the other useful graphs are hiding, from trigger cascades to role inheritance and beyond!