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44.44. System Views

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 33) 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 44-45 lists the system views described here. More detailed documentation of each view follows below. There are some additional views that provide access to the results of the statistics collector; they are described in Table 26-1.

Except where noted, all the views described here are read-only.

Table 44-45. System Views

View Name Purpose
pg_cursors open cursors
pg_group groups of database users
pg_indexes indexes
pg_locks currently held locks
pg_prepared_statements prepared statements
pg_prepared_xacts prepared transactions
pg_roles database roles
pg_rules rules
pg_settings parameter settings
pg_shadow database users
pg_stats planner statistics
pg_tables tables
pg_timezone_abbrevs time zone abbreviations
pg_timezone_names time zone names
pg_user database users
pg_user_mappings user mappings
pg_views views