52.11. pg_class
pg_class
The catalog pg_class describes tables and other objects that have columns or are otherwise similar to a table. This includes indexes (but see also pg_index), sequences (but see also pg_sequence), views, materialized views, composite types, and TOAST tables; see relkind. Below, when we mean all of these kinds of objects we speak of "relations". Not all of pg_class's columns are meaningful for all relation kinds.
Column Type Description |
|---|
oid Row identifier |
relname Name of the table, index, view, etc. |
relnamespace The OID of the namespace that contains this relation |
reltype The OID of the data type that corresponds to this table's row type, if any; zero for indexes, sequences, and toast tables, which have no pg_type entry |
reloftype For typed tables, the OID of the underlying composite type; zero for all other relations |
relowner Owner of the relation |
relam The access method used to access this table or index. Not meaningful if the relation is a sequence or has no on-disk file, except for partitioned tables, where, if set, it takes precedence over |
relfilenode Name of the on-disk file of this relation; zero means this is a "mapped" relation whose disk file name is determined by low-level state |
reltablespace The tablespace in which this relation is stored. If zero, the database's default tablespace is implied. Not meaningful if the relation has no on-disk file, except for partitioned tables, where this is the tablespace in which partitions will be created when one is not specified in the creation command. |
relpages Size of the on-disk representation of this table in pages (of size |
reltuples Number of live rows in the table. This is only an estimate used by the planner. It is updated by |
relallvisible Number of pages that are marked all-visible in the table's visibility map. This is only an estimate used by the planner. It is updated by |
relallfrozen Number of pages that are marked all-frozen in the table's visibility map. This is only an estimate used for triggering autovacuums. It can also be used along with relallvisible for scheduling manual vacuums and tuning vacuum's freezing behavior. It is updated by |
reltoastrelid OID of the TOAST table associated with this table, zero if none. The TOAST table stores large attributes "out of line" in a secondary table. |
relhasindex True if this is a table and it has (or recently had) any indexes |
relisshared True if this table is shared across all databases in the cluster. Only certain system catalogs (such as pg_database) are shared. |
relpersistence
|
relkind
|
relnatts Number of user columns in the relation (system columns not counted). There must be this many corresponding entries in pg_attribute. See also pg_attribute.attnum. |
relchecks Number of |
relhasrules True if table has (or once had) rules; see pg_rewrite catalog |
relhastriggers True if table has (or once had) triggers; see pg_trigger catalog |
relhassubclass True if table or index has (or once had) any inheritance children or partitions |
relrowsecurity True if table has row-level security enabled; see pg_policy catalog |
relforcerowsecurity True if row-level security (when enabled) will also apply to table owner; see pg_policy catalog |
relispopulated True if relation is populated (this is true for all relations other than some materialized views) |
relreplident Columns used to form "replica identity" for rows: |
relispartition True if table or index is a partition |
relrewrite For new relations being written during a DDL operation that requires a table rewrite, this contains the OID of the original relation; otherwise zero. That state is only visible internally; this field should never contain anything other than zero for a user-visible relation. |
relfrozenxid All transaction IDs before this one have been replaced with a permanent ("frozen") transaction ID in this table. This is used to track whether the table needs to be vacuumed in order to prevent transaction ID wraparound or to allow |
relminmxid All multixact IDs before this one have been replaced by a transaction ID in this table. This is used to track whether the table needs to be vacuumed in order to prevent multixact ID wraparound or to allow |
relacl Access privileges; see Privileges for details |
reloptions Access-method-specific options, as "keyword=value" strings |
relpartbound If table is a partition (see relispartition), internal representation of the partition bound |
: pg_class Columns
Several of the Boolean flags in pg_class are maintained lazily: they are guaranteed to be true if that's the correct state, but may not be reset to false immediately when the condition is no longer true. For example, relhasindex is set by CREATE INDEX, but it is never cleared by DROP INDEX. Instead, VACUUM clears relhasindex if it finds the table has no indexes. This arrangement avoids race conditions and improves concurrency.