Chapter 52. System Views

Table of Contents

52.1. Overview
52.2. pg_available_extensions
52.3. pg_available_extension_versions
52.4. pg_backend_memory_contexts
52.5. pg_config
52.6. pg_cursors
52.7. pg_file_settings
52.8. pg_group
52.9. pg_hba_file_rules
52.10. pg_ident_file_mappings
52.11. pg_indexes
52.12. pg_locks
52.13. pg_matviews
52.14. pg_policies
52.15. pg_prepared_statements
52.16. pg_prepared_xacts
52.17. pg_publication_tables
52.18. pg_replication_origin_status
52.19. pg_replication_slots
52.20. pg_roles
52.21. pg_rules
52.22. pg_seclabels
52.23. pg_sequences
52.24. pg_settings
52.25. pg_shadow
52.26. pg_shmem_allocations
52.27. pg_stats
52.28. pg_stats_ext
52.29. pg_stats_ext_exprs
52.30. pg_tables
52.31. pg_timezone_abbrevs
52.32. pg_timezone_names
52.33. pg_user
52.34. pg_user_mappings
52.35. pg_views
52.36. pg_wait_events

In addition to the system catalogs, PostgreSQL provides a number of built-in views. Some system views provide convenient access to some commonly used queries on the system catalogs. Other views provide access to internal server state.

The information schema (Chapter 35) provides an alternative set of views which overlap the functionality of the system views. Since the information schema is SQL-standard whereas the views described here are PostgreSQL-specific, it's usually better to use the information schema if it provides all the information you need.

Table 52.1 lists the system views described here. More detailed documentation of each view follows below. There are some additional views that provide access to accumulated statistics; they are described in Table 27.2.