🐘 6-Week Roadmap to Mastering PostgreSQL for Developers

Hey there 👋

👋 Introduction

If you’ve been building apps with Node/Express, chances are you’ve touched PostgreSQL.
Maybe just for basic CRUD queries.

But here’s the truth:
👉 PostgreSQL is way more powerful than a simple “rows in, rows out” database.

Indexes, CTEs, JSONB, window functions, transactions — PostgreSQL has a treasure chest of features waiting to be unlocked. And the best part? You don’t need to be a DBA wizard to use them. You just need the right roadmap and some practice.

That’s what this 6-week plan is about. Step by step, we’ll explore advanced PostgreSQL concepts, build small projects, and by the end, ship a capstone project that ties everything together.

Each week is broken into daily blogs (Day 1, Day 2, …), so it’s bite-sized and fun.
By the end of 6 weeks, you’ll be comfortable using PostgreSQL like a pro developer, not just a beginner.

🗓️ The Plan

Here’s what we’ll cover week by week:

Week 1: Leveling Up SQL Basics

Schema design & normalization
Primary keys, foreign keys, constraints
Joins (INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, FULL)
Grouping, filtering, aggregates
Subqueries & EXISTS
Mini Project: Student Courses Database (with proper constraints)

Week 2: Indexing & Performance

Types of indexes (B-Tree, Hash, GIN, GiST)
Covering indexes
Query plans & EXPLAIN ANALYZE
Performance tuning basics
Mini Project: Blog platform with search optimization

Week 3: Advanced SQL Features

Common Table Expressions (CTEs)
Recursive queries
Window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, PARTITION BY)
Materialized views
Mini Project: Leaderboard system for a quiz app

Week 4: JSON & Full-Text Search

JSON & JSONB columns
Querying JSON data
Full-text search basics
Trigrams & similarity search
Mini Project: Product catalog with search & filtering

Week 5: Transactions & Concurrency

ACID & isolation levels
Transactions (BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK)
Deadlocks & how to avoid them
Row-level locking (FOR UPDATE)
Mini Project: Banking system with safe transfers

Week 6: Extensions, Triggers & Capstone

Using extensions (uuid-ossp, pgcrypto, postgis)
Stored procedures & triggers
Event-driven PostgreSQL with LISTEN/NOTIFY
Capstone Project: Multi-tenant SaaS backend with advanced Postgres features

Week 1 🏗️ SQL Foundations	Week 2 ⚡ Indexing & Performance	Week 3 🌀 Advanced SQL
Day 1: Schema design	Day 1: B-Tree & Hash indexes	Day 1: Intro to CTEs
Day 2: Constraints & keys	Day 2: GIN & GiST	Day 2: Recursive CTEs
Day 3: Joins recap	Day 3: Covering indexes	Day 3: Window functions
Day 4: Aggregations	Day 4: EXPLAIN ANALYZE	Day 4: Materialized views
Day 5: Subqueries	Day 5: Query optimization	Day 5: Mini project: Leaderboard

Week 4 🔎 JSON & Search	Week 5 🔐 Transactions	Week 6 🚀 Extensions & Capstone
Day 1: JSON vs JSONB	Day 1: Transactions 101	Day 1: Postgres extensions
Day 2: Querying JSON	Day 2: Isolation levels	Day 2: Stored procedures
Day 3: Full-text search	Day 3: Deadlocks	Day 3: Triggers
Day 4: Trigram search	Day 4: Row-level locking	Day 4: LISTEN/NOTIFY
Day 5: Mini project: Product search	Day 5: Mini project: Banking	Day 5: Capstone: SaaS backend

🔑 Legend:

🏗️ SQL Foundations
⚡ Indexing & Performance
🌀 Advanced SQL
🔎 JSON & Search
🔐 Transactions & Concurrency
🚀 Extensions & Capstone

💡 How We’ll Learn

Concept First – A casual explanation with real-world dev examples.
Visual/Mindmap – When possible, a diagram or flow to simplify.
Code in SQL – Short snippets you can run on psql or pgAdmin.
Practice Problems – Challenges to try out after each topic.
Mini Projects – Hands-on apps so concepts stick.

🎯 End Goal

By the end of 6 weeks, you’ll:

Understand not just how, but why Postgres features matter.
Write efficient, production-ready SQL queries.
Confidently design schemas, handle concurrency, and scale apps.
Have a capstone project that showcases your skills for your portfolio.

📌 Each daily blog will be linked here once it’s published. So think of this as the master roadmap.

Ready? Let’s dive in → Week 1, Day 1: Schema Design