---
title: "System Views"
id: views
pg_version: "20devel"
---

<a id="views"></a>

# System Views

## Table of Contents

- [53.1. Overview](views-overview.md)
- [53.2. pg_aios](view-pg-aios.md)
- [53.3. pg_available_extensions](view-pg-available-extensions.md)
- [53.4. pg_available_extension_versions](view-pg-available-extension-versions.md)
- [53.5. pg_backend_memory_contexts](view-pg-backend-memory-contexts.md)
- [53.6. pg_config](view-pg-config.md)
- [53.7. pg_cursors](view-pg-cursors.md)
- [53.8. pg_dsm_registry_allocations](view-pg-dsm-registry-allocations.md)
- [53.9. pg_file_settings](view-pg-file-settings.md)
- [53.10. pg_group](view-pg-group.md)
- [53.11. pg_hba_file_rules](view-pg-hba-file-rules.md)
- [53.12. pg_ident_file_mappings](view-pg-ident-file-mappings.md)
- [53.13. pg_indexes](view-pg-indexes.md)
- [53.14. pg_locks](view-pg-locks.md)
- [53.15. pg_matviews](view-pg-matviews.md)
- [53.16. pg_policies](view-pg-policies.md)
- [53.17. pg_prepared_statements](view-pg-prepared-statements.md)
- [53.18. pg_prepared_xacts](view-pg-prepared-xacts.md)
- [53.19. pg_publication_sequences](view-pg-publication-sequences.md)
- [53.20. pg_publication_tables](view-pg-publication-tables.md)
- [53.21. pg_replication_origin_status](view-pg-replication-origin-status.md)
- [53.22. pg_replication_slots](view-pg-replication-slots.md)
- [53.23. pg_roles](view-pg-roles.md)
- [53.24. pg_rules](view-pg-rules.md)
- [53.25. pg_seclabels](view-pg-seclabels.md)
- [53.26. pg_sequences](view-pg-sequences.md)
- [53.27. pg_settings](view-pg-settings.md)
- [53.28. pg_shadow](view-pg-shadow.md)
- [53.29. pg_shmem_allocations](view-pg-shmem-allocations.md)
- [53.30. pg_shmem_allocations_numa](view-pg-shmem-allocations-numa.md)
- [53.31. pg_stats](view-pg-stats.md)
- [53.32. pg_stats_ext](view-pg-stats-ext.md)
- [53.33. pg_stats_ext_exprs](view-pg-stats-ext-exprs.md)
- [53.34. pg_tables](view-pg-tables.md)
- [53.35. pg_timezone_abbrevs](view-pg-timezone-abbrevs.md)
- [53.36. pg_timezone_names](view-pg-timezone-names.md)
- [53.37. pg_user](view-pg-user.md)
- [53.38. pg_user_mappings](view-pg-user-mappings.md)
- [53.39. pg_views](view-pg-views.md)
- [53.40. pg_wait_events](view-pg-wait-events.md)

In addition to the system catalogs, PostgreSQL provides a number of built-in views. Some system views provide convenient access to some commonly used queries on the system catalogs. Other views provide access to internal server state. 

The information schema ([Chapter 35](information-schema.md)) provides an alternative set of views which overlap the functionality of the system views. Since the information schema is SQL-standard whereas the views described here are PostgreSQL-specific, it's usually better to use the information schema if it provides all the information you need. 

[Table 53.1](views-overview.md#view-table) lists the system views described here. More detailed documentation of each view follows below. There are some additional views that provide access to accumulated statistics; they are described in [Table 27.2](monitoring-stats.md#monitoring-stats-views-table).