Greenplum Database Client Applications

Greenplum Database comes installed with a number of client utility applications located in the $GPHOME/bin directory of your Greenplum Database master host installation. The following are the most commonly used client utility applications:

Name	Usage
createdb	create a new database
createlang	define a new procedural language
createuser	define a new database role
dropdb	remove a database
droplang	remove a procedural language
dropuser	remove a role
psql	PostgreSQL interactive terminal
reindexdb	reindex a database
vacuumdb	garbage-collect and analyze a database

When using these client applications, you must connect to a database through the Greenplum master instance. You will need to know the name of your target database, the host name and port number of the master, and what database user name to connect as. This information can be provided on the command-line using the options -d, -h, -p, and -U respectively. If an argument is found that does not belong to any option, it will be interpreted as the database name first.

All of these options have default values which will be used if the option is not specified. The default host is the local host. The default port number is 5432. The default user name is your OS system user name, as is the default database name. Note that OS user names and Greenplum Database user names are not necessarily the same.

If the default values are not correct, you can set the environment variables PGDATABASE, PGHOST, PGPORT, and PGUSER to the appropriate values, or use a psql ~/.pgpass file to contain frequently-used passwords.

For information about Greenplum Database environment variables, see the Greenplum Database Reference Guide. For information about psql, see the Greenplum Database Utility Guide.

Parent topic: Accessing the Database