pgAdmin layout

This is a brief overview of pgAdmin general layout and that of the Query tool. It is far from complete, so please feel free to explore yourself. Mousing over an element in the web tool usually gives a brief explanation of what it does.

 

General layout

General layout

You can freely resize the Tree View and Panel View area by mousing over the border between them until you see a left-right-arrow (<-->), then click and hold and move left and right. Once you are in the right position, release the left mouse button.

The Menu Bar (blue bar) contains the sub-menus of pgAdmin. File --> Preferences allows you to configure pgAdmin to your needs (this is not for dbdemo users, you would set the preferences for all other dbdemo users as well). The most important menu is Tools --> Query Tool, opening a query pane. You can open as many query panes as you want. Help --> Online Help will open a new browser tab with the full pgAdmin documentation. On the far right you see the pgAdmin account you are working with. Don't forget to click and logout when you are done.

The Pane or Tab Selection allows you to switch between different panels or tabs (choose the name you prefer). All your open query tools and table views will go here as well and you select by left clicking on them. Arrow for moving left and right will automatically appear if the selection does not fit anymore.
 

Query Tool layout

The Query tool adds it own menu with symbols and splits the Pane View Area horizontally:

Query tool layout

The SQL area is where your SQL command goes, the result area is where explanations and/or results will show. The most important are:

  • Explain (F7) - syntax check of queries, explaining the query plan in the result area
  • Run/Execute (F5) - run the query
  • Stop - stop running query


The Tree View has some useful properties. Every object you mark in the Tree View has a context menu (right click to open). For a table you can

  • look at the first / last 100 rows via View/Edit Data
  • open a Query tool
  • get an open Query tool with a SELECT command on the table with all columns spelled out (Script --> SELECT script)