Postgres FM

Nik and Michael are joined by David Steele to talk all things pgBackRest.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  David Steele https://postgres.fm/people/david-steele pgBackRest https://pgbackrest.org pg_basebackup https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.html Barman https://pgbarman.org pgmoneta https://github.com/pgmoneta/pgmoneta WAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g Ret...

Nik and Michael discuss autovacuum, including what it does, and the basics of why and how to tune it.    Here are some links to things they mentioned:  autovacuum https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/routine-vacuuming.html#AUTOVACUUM autovacuum configuration parameters https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-vacuum.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-AUTOVACUUM What’s Missing in Postgres? (our e...

Nik and Michael are joined by David Ventimiglia to discuss pg_flight_recorder, a new tool he created for monitoring a Postgres database from within.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  David Ventimiglia https://postgres.fm/people/david-ventimiglia pg_flight_recorder https://github.com/dventimisupabase/pg_flight_recorder Supabase https://supabase.com pg_wait_sampling https://github.com...

Nik and Michael discuss Nik's new project PgQue, a descendent of Skype's PgQ, for running queue-like workloads in Postgres.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Our first episode on Queues in Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/queues-in-postgres PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47817349 PgQ  https://github.com/pgq/pgq pgmq ht...

Nik and Michael are joined by Dmitry Fomin to discuss his new tool pg_wait_tracer, as well as changes that could be made to core to allow wait event tracing with lower overhead, and on managed services.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Dmitry Fomin https://postgres.fm/people/dmitry-fomin pg_wait_tracer https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_wait_tracer pg_wait_sampling https://github.c...

Nik and Michael discuss a list of things to check when designing new schema in Postgres.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Use BIGINT in Postgres (blog post by Ryan Lambert) https://blog.rustprooflabs.com/2021/06/postgres-bigint-by-default Postgres 18 and UUIDv7 (blog post by Gwen Shapira) https://www.thenile.dev/blog/uuidv7 How to use UUID (how-to guide by Nik) https://postgres.ai/d...

Nik and Michael are joined by Bruce Momjian to discuss his new talk "What’s Missing in Postgres?"   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Bruce Momjian https://postgres.fm/people/bruce-momjian EDB https://www.enterprisedb.com What’s Missing in Postgres? (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/missing.pdf The Wonderful World of WAL (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/w...

Nik and Michael discuss long-running transactions, including when they're harmless, when they cause issues, and how to mitigate those issues.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  transaction_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-TRANSACTION-TIMEOUT Our episode on transaction_timeout https://postgres.fm/episodes/transaction_timeout Our episode on...

Nik and Michael are joined by Regina Obe and Paul Ramsey to discuss PostGIS.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Regina Obe https://postgres.fm/people/regina-obe Paul Ramsey https://postgres.fm/people/paul-ramsey PostGIS https://postgis.net MobilityDB https://github.com/MobilityDB/MobilityDB pgRouting https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting Google BigQuery GIS public alpha blog post htt...

Nik and Michael discuss query plan flips in Postgres — what they are, some causes, mitigations, longer term solutions, and the recent outage at Clerk.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Recent postmortem from Clerk https://clerk.com/blog/2026-02-19-system-outage-postmortem The real cost of random I/O (blog post by Tomas Vondra) https://vondra.me/posts/the-real-cost-of-random-io autov...

Nik and Michael discuss pg_ash — a new tool (not extension!) from Nik that samples and stores wait events from pg_stat_activity.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  pg_ash https://github.com/NikolayS/pg_ash pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling Amazon RDS performance insights https://aws.amazon.com/rds/performance-insights Our episode on wait events https://...

Nik and Michael discuss query level comments, object level comments, and another way of adding object level metadata.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Object comments https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-comment.html Query comment syntax (from an old version of the docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.0/syntax519.htm SQL Comments, Please! (Post by Markus Winand) https://m...

Nik and Michael are joined by Lev Kokotov for an update on all things PgDog.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Lev Kokotov https://postgres.fm/people/lev-kokotov PgDog https://github.com/pgdogdev/pgdog Our first PgDog episode (March 2025) https://postgres.fm/episodes/pgdog Sharding pgvector (blog post by Lev) https://pgdog.dev/blog/sharding-pgvector Prepared statements and partitione...

Nik and Michael are joined by Radim Marek from boringSQL to talk about RegreSQL, a regression testing tool for SQL queries they forked and improved recently.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Radim Marek https://postgres.fm/people/radim-marek boringSQL https://boringsql.com RegreSQL: Regression Testing for PostgreSQL Queries (blog post by Radim) https://boringsql.com/posts/regresql-t...

Nik and Michael discuss the events and trends they thought were most important in the Postgres ecosystem in 2025.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Postgres 18 release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/release-18.html Our episode on Postgres 18 https://postgres.fm/episodes/postgres-18 LWLock:LockManager benchmarks for Postgres 18 (blog post by Nik) https://postgres.ai/blog/20...

Nik and Michael discuss a listener question about archiving a database.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Listener request to talk about archiving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFRK8PiIvTg&lc=UgyiFrO37gEgUaVhRgN4AaABAg   Our episode on “Is pg_dump a backup tool?” https://postgres.fm/episodes/is-pg_dump-a-backup-tool   ~~~ What did you like or not like? What should we discuss n...

Nik and Michael discuss max_connections, especially in the context of increasing it to solve problems like migrations intermittently failing(!)   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  max_connections https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-connection.html#GUC-MAX-CONNECTIONS Tweet about deployments vs connections issue https://x.com/brankopetric00/status/1991394329886077090...

Nik and Michael discuss the various changes to EXPLAIN that arrived in Postgres 18.   Here are some links to things they mentioned:  EXPLAIN (official docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-explain.html Using EXPLAIN (official docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/using-explain.html   EXPLAIN glossary (pgMustard site) https://www.pgmustard.com/docs/explain Postgres 18 release no...

Nik talks Michael through a recent benchmark he worked with Maxim Boguk on, to see how quickly they could provision a replica.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Ultra-fast replica creation with pgBackRest (blog post by Maxim Boguk and Nik) https://postgres.ai/blog/20251105-postgres-marathon-2-012-ultra-fast-replica-creation-pgbackrest Copying a database episode https://postgres.fm/ep...

Nik and Michael discuss the concept of gapless sequences — when you might want one, why sequences in Postgres can have gaps, and an idea or two if you do want them. And one quick clarification: changing the CACHE option in CREATE SEQUENCE can lead to even more gaps, the docs mention it explicitly.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: CREATE SEQUENCE https://www.postgresql.org/docs/curre...

Nik and Michael discuss lightweight locks in Postgres — how they differ to (heavier) locks, some occasions they can be troublesome, and some resources for working out what to do if you hit issues.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Wait Events of Type LWLock https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#WAIT-EVENT-LWLOCK-TABLE Our episode on (heavier) locks https://pos...

Nik and Michael discuss user management in Postgres — how roles work, making administration easier, setting passwords, and avoiding them being logged.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Roles https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/user-manag.html   Privileges https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-priv.html ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-alt...

Nik and Michael discuss the newly released Postgres 18 — the bigger things it includes, some of their personal highlights, and some thoughts towards the future.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Postgres 18 announcement https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-18-released-3142 Postgres 18 release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/release-18.html Skip scan episode with...

Nik and Michael are joined by Harry Brundage from Gadget to talk about their recent zero-downtime major version upgrade, how they use Postgres more generally, their dream database, and some challenges of providing Postgres as an abstracted service at scale.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Harry Brundage https://postgres.fm/people/harry-brundage Gadget https://gadget.dev Zero downti...

Nik and Michael are joined by Simon Eskildsen from turbopuffer — among other things, they discuss ANN index types, tradeoffs that can make sense for search workloads, and when it can make sense to move search out of Postgres.   Here are some links to things they mentioned: Simon Eskildsen https://postgres.fm/people/simon-eskildsen turbopuffer https://turbopuffer.com Use ULID Idempotency Keys (tip...