PODCAST

Postgres FM

Nikolay Samokhvalov and Michael Christofides

A weekly podcast about all things PostgreSQL

technology tech news

All Episodes

42:45

Over-indexing

Postgres FM ·

2023/10/20

Nikolay and Michael discuss over-indexing — what we mean by it, the regular issues people discuss about it, as well as a novel one Nikolay has come across and benchmarked recently. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Nikolay’s tweet on over-indexing https://twitter.com/samokhvalov/status/1713101666629927112 Heap-Only Tuples (HOT) optimization https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/storage-hot.html Our episode on index maintenance

35:38

Query hints

Postgres FM ·

2023/10/13

Nikolay and Michael discuss query hints — what they are, what we do and don't have in PostgreSQL, and some other things in and around the ecosystem to be aware of. Here are some links to some extra things they mentioned:Query planning (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-query.html Statistics used by the planner (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/planner-stats.html default_statistics_target

29:57

Stop and start Postgres faster

Postgres FM ·

2023/10/07

In this episode (recorded live on YouTube), Nikolay discusses Postgres shutdown and startup times – how to troubleshoot them and, when needed, optimize. Some extra things mentioned in this episode:#PostgresMarathon series – every day, Nikolay posts a new howto-style article https://twitter.com/hashtag/PostgresMarathonDay 2: Postgres shutdown and restart attempts https://twitter.com/samokhvalov/status/1707147450044297673Day 3: How to troubleshoot long Postgres startup

43:04

Backups

Postgres FM ·

2023/09/29

Nikolay and Michael discuss Postgres backups — why we need them, what the options are, whether a dump is a backup or not, and some considerations for lowering RPO and RTO at scale. Here are some links to some extra things they mentioned:pg_dump https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgdump.html pg_basebackup https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.htmlpgBackRest https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest WAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g Barman

39:35

Postgres 16

Postgres FM ·

2023/09/22

Nikolay and Michael discuss the release of PostgreSQL 16 — the most important new features, what they mean for us as users, whether and when to upgrade, and more. Here are some links to some extra things they mentioned:Release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/release-16.htmlNew Features With Examples (PDF from Noriyoshi Shinoda of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Japan)

43:01

Logical replication

Postgres FM ·

2023/09/15

Nikolay and Michael discuss logical replication — some history, initialization, change data capture, how to scale it, some limitiations, and ways that it is getting better. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:Logical replication https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/logical-replication.html GitLab upgraded multi-terabyte, heavily-loaded clusters with zero-downtime https://twitter.com/samokhvalov/status/1700574156222505276 pg_waldump

27:28

Our favourite v16 feature

Postgres FM ·

2023/09/08

Nikolay and Michael discuss their favourite feature each from the upcoming PostgreSQL 16 release. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:v16 draft release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/release-16.htmlPGSQL Phriday #012 invitation from Ryan Booz https://www.pgsqlphriday.com/2023/08/pgsql-phriday-012/ Subscribe options for the podcast https://postgres.fm/subscribeA recent closed source ClickHouse feature

28:20

Connections

Postgres FM ·

2023/09/01

Nikolay and Michael discuss connections — the options, security and performance tradeoffs, and a few other things to be aware of. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:Episode on connection poolers https://postgres.fm/episodes/connection-poolers listen_addresses https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-connection.html#GUC-LISTEN-ADDRESSES SSLMODE Explained (blog post by Andrew Kane) https://ankane.org/postgres-sslmode-explained pg_hba.conf

42:33

Decoupled storage and compute

Postgres FM ·

2023/08/25

Nikolay and Michael discuss a listener question — about products that take Postgres and transform it to something that decouples compute from storage (RDS Aurora, GC AlloyDB, Neon etc.) and whether they see something like this landing upstream in the medium term.Here are some links to some things they mentioned:Amazon Aurora https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/Google Cloud AlloyDB for PostgreSQL https://cloud.google.com/alloydbNeon https://neon.tech/ Google Cloud Spanner

37:04

Self-managing

Postgres FM ·

2023/08/18

Nikolay and Michael discuss self-managing Postgres — both the practicalities of doing so, as well as some managed-service style tooling. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:Our episode on Managed services vs. DIY https://postgres.fm/episodes/managed-services-vs-diy WAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g pgBackRest https://pgbackrest.org/ Barman https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/barman Dead Man’s Snitch https://deadmanssnitch.com/ Netdata https://www.netdata.cloud/ Upgrades

39:45

Sharding

Postgres FM ·

2023/08/11

Nikolay and Michael discuss sharding Postgres — what it means, why and when it's needed, and the available options right now. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:PGSQL Friday monthly blogging event https://www.pgsqlphriday.com/Did “sharding” come from Ultima Online? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438399 Our episode on partitioning: https://postgres.fm/episodes/partitioningVitess https://vitess.io/Citus https://www.citusdata.com/ Lessons learned from sharding Postgres

37:01

Data types

Postgres FM ·

2023/08/04

Nikolay and Michael discuss data types in PostgreSQL — including system types, choosing between types, types provided by extensions, and more. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:Data Types (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/datatype.html 10 tips for beginners https://postgres.ai/blog/20230722-10-postgres-tips-for-beginners Tid Scan (explain glossary) https://www.pgmustard.com/docs/explain/tid-scan Don’t do this (wiki)

40:40

High availability

Postgres FM ·

2023/07/28

Nikolay and Michael discuss HA (high availability) — what it means, tools and techniques for maximising it, while going through some of the more common causes of downtime. Here are some links to some things they mentioned:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability https://postgres.fm/episodes/upgrades https://github.com/shayonj/pg_easy_replicate/ pg_easy_replicate discussion on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36405761

40:18

Beginner tips

Postgres FM ·

2023/07/21

Nikolay and Michael discuss 10 beginner tips Nikolay recently shared — they go into a bit more detail on each, and even disagree a little on one or two! Here are some links to some things they mentioned:Nikolay’s tweet with all 10 tips: https://twitter.com/samokhvalov/status/1679953049899642880 Tip 1: tuples are physical versions of rowsRelated episodes: https://postgres.fm/episodes/how-to-become-a-dba and https://postgres.fm/episodes/hot-updates Tip 2: always use EXPLAIN (ANALYZE,

31:29

Connection poolers

Postgres FM ·

2023/07/14

Nikolay and Michael discuss Postgres connection poolers — when and why we need them, the king that is PgBouncer, and the many new pretenders to the throne. Here are links to a few things they mentioned: max_connections https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-connection.html#GUC-MAX-CONNECTIONS Improving Postgres Connection Scalability: Snapshots (blog post by Andres Freund)

31:24

Anniversary mailbag

Postgres FM ·

2023/07/07

Nikolay and Michael celebrate the podcast's 1 year anniversary by going through several questions and suggestions received over the year. Here are the questions and some links to things we mentioned: Question 1: Effect of wal_log_hints=on after bulk Deletes: Why next select runs slow and generated tons of WAL? https://twitter.com/dmx551/status/1598253188926570496 wal_log_hints https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-wal.html#GUC-WAL-LOG-HINTS Exploring how SELECT Queries can

25:38

pg_upgrade: the tricky and dangerous parts

Postgres FM ·

2023/06/30

Nikolay (alone, again) reveals some issues that might hit those who perform major PostgreSQL upgrades with minimal downtime.Links:- "Upgrades" – PostgresFM episode 037: https://postgres.fm/episodes/upgrades- recovery_target_lsn: https://postgresqlco.nf/doc/en/param/recovery_target_lsn/- recovery_target_action: https://postgresqlco.nf/doc/en/param/recovery_target_action/- pg_easy_replicate https://github.com/shayonj/pg_easy_replicate/- HN discussion of this tool:

22:11

UUID

Postgres FM ·

2023/06/23

Lonely Nikolay discusses the performance aspects of using UUID for primary keys. Here are links to a few things I mentioned: "postgresql" posts on HN, most popular last week (Algolia search): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=true&query=postgresql&sort=byPopularity&type=storyUnexpected downsides of UUID keys in PostgreSQL (a post by Ants Aasma, Cybertec): https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/HN

44:15

Memory

Postgres FM ·

2023/06/16

Nikolay and Michael discuss memory in PostgreSQL — how it works, important settings, and how to go about tuning them. Here are links to a few things we mentioned: Resource Consumption (PostgreSQL docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-resource.htmlAndres Freud tweet about shared_buffers https://twitter.com/AndresFreundTec/status/1438912583554113537 Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya https://hdombrovskaya.wordpress.com/about-the-author/annotated.conf (by ash Berkus)

30:23

Extensions

Postgres FM ·

2023/06/09

Nikolay and Michael discuss Postgres extensions — what they are, how they affect your decisions around Postgres, and some things to keep in mind when using them. Here are links to a few things we mentioned: Extensions (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/external-extensions.html Extension (pgPedia) https://pgpedia.info/e/extension.html pgvector https://github.com/pgvector/pgvector PL/Rust https://github.com/tcdi/plrustZomboDB https://github.com/zombodb/zombodb Why is Postgres

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