database-design

PostgreSQL Table Design

Core Rules

• Define a PRIMARY KEY for reference tables (users, orders, etc.). Not always needed for time-series/event/log data. When used, prefer BIGINT GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY; use UUID only when global uniqueness/opacity is needed.
• Normalize first (to 3NF) to eliminate data redundancy and update anomalies; denormalize only for measured, high-ROI reads where join performance is proven problematic. Premature denormalization creates maintenance burden.
• Add NOT NULL everywhere it’s semantically required; use DEFAULTs for common values.
• Create indexes for access paths you actually query: PK/unique (auto), FK columns (manual!), frequent filters/sorts, and join keys.
• Prefer TIMESTAMPTZ for event time; NUMERIC for money; TEXT for strings; BIGINT for integer values, DOUBLE PRECISION for floats (or NUMERIC for exact decimal arithmetic).

PostgreSQL “Gotchas”

• Identifiers: unquoted → lowercased. Avoid quoted/mixed-case names. Convention: use snake_case for table/column names.
• Unique + NULLs: UNIQUE allows multiple NULLs. Use UNIQUE (...) NULLS NOT DISTINCT (PG15+) to restrict to one NULL.
• FK indexes: PostgreSQL does not auto-index FK columns. Add them.
• No silent coercions: length/precision overflows error out (no truncation). Example: inserting 999 into NUMERIC(2,0) fails with error, unlike some databases that silently truncate or round.
• **Sequences/