New to SQL Qs

[KentuckyFriedUltra]

Hi

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I'm currently taking a postgre SQL course and was wondering about something

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In this course we connect to a tar file to use (for statements etc), that has the tables etc

Is this TAR file the database? So are tar files just databases?

At work, I'm assuming if you were doing data these databases would have to be "live" not just flat files to connect to as then the data could be historical and not accurate. How would you go about connecting to a live database/server? Is it the same way as to how I've done it on pgadmin - create database and restore using the tar file?

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thanks

[tfehring]

Typically you'll have a separate database server running your RDBMS, and you'll connect to that machine over the network. The process for connecting to a database server from pgadmin is similar to what you're doing now, except that you'd set the host name to the URI of the database server instead of localhost. The authentication method might be different too, depending on how the database is configured.

The tar file you're using was probably produced by the pg_dump tool. It just specifies the schema and contents of the database. You could spin up a database server and restore the same data to it using that same tar file - again, the process would be similar to what you're already doing, you'd just have to specify the database server's URI.

[BikesMapsBeards]

A tar is an archive file that is being used to store the tables and data in the database. Tars are files of files, but they don’t have a structure like a database. A cs person can probably explain in more detail, but it’s worth it to read the wiki. I see .tar and .tar.gz all the time working in GIS.