4.3. Creating a New Table

You can create a new table by specifying the table name, along with all column names and their types:

CREATE TABLE weather (
    city            varchar(80),
    temp_lo         int,           -- low temperature
    temp_hi         int,           -- high temperature
    prcp            real,          -- precipitation
    date            date
);

Note that both keywords and identifiers are case-insensitive; identifiers can preserve case by surrounding them with double-quotes as allowed by SQL92. Postgres SQL supports the usual SQL types int, float, real, smallint, char(N), varchar(N), date, time, and timestamp, as well as other types of general utility and a rich set of geometric types. As we will see later, Postgres can be customized with an arbitrary number of user-defined data types. Consequently, type names are not syntactical keywords, except where required to support special cases in the SQL92 standard. So far, the Postgres CREATE command looks exactly like the command used to create a table in a traditional relational system. However, we will presently see that tables have properties that are extensions of the relational model.