Connecting to PostgreSQL using pgAdmin

If you are using SSMS to connect SQL Server, you probably looking for similar tool for PostgreSQL. Well, you are in luck, for that we have pgAdmin GUI tool.

If you launching pgAdmin tool on the server where you installed PostgreSQL, it most probably launch and auto connect to the local server by default.

If it doesn't or connecting from another computer, you will have to register the server in pgAdmin tool. To do that, right click on the "Servers" node you see under object explorer window, and choose Register -> Server...

This will bring you a dialog box with connection settings. First tab you see is "General" tab.

You can give a name to the connection and specify a background color too.

Next tab is the  most important tab where you specify host address, port number and credentials.

In above screenshot I have shown how I connected from remote machine. I have entered the host IP address and port number, which is the default port number. Then I left others as defaults, such as database name (postgres) and default user name (postgres). You can choose to save your password or enter every time you connect.

Other tabs control advanced connection settings, such as SSL parameters etc. which I will not touch in this article.

So once you done click on the "Save" button and your server is registered and connected.

If you want to run a query on pgAdmin tool, you can use the query tool in there. To open it, expand the "Databases" node and select your database, right click on it and choose "Query tool".

This will open up new window/tab on the admin tool. Note that there are few tabs already opened by default.

Like in SSMS, you can run queries on here and see results in the bottom pane.

There are few other components in this admin tool, but I think I will cover them later, in a specific article to them.