System Catalog

The system catalogs are just regular tables that are updated automatically in response to events.

  • ex. the pg_database catalog is updated in response to CREATE DATABASE MY_DB

The system catalogs are the place where a RDBMS stores:

  • schema metadata, such as information about tables and columns
  • and internal bookkeeping information

System catalogs are not part of the SQL standard, and are core to Postgres, unlike the information schema, which is SQL-compliant


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