PODCAST

Postgres FM

Nikolay Samokhvalov and Michael Christofides

A weekly podcast about all things PostgreSQL

technology tech news

All Episodes

59:13

Self-driving Postgres

Postgres FM ·

2025/08/15

Nikolay and Michael discuss self-driving Postgres — what it could mean, using self-driving cars as a reference, and ideas for things to build and optimize for in this area. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Nikolay’s blog post on Self-driving Postgres https://postgres.ai/blog/20250725-self-driving-postgresSAE J3016 levels of driving automation https://www.sae.org/news/2019/01/sae-updates-j3016-automated-driving-graphicOracle Autonomous Database

26:22

caSe-inSENsiTive

Postgres FM ·

2025/08/08

Nikolay and Michael discuss case-insensitive data — when we want to treat columns as case-insensitive, and the pros and cons of using citext, functions like lower(), or a custom collation. Here are some links to things they mentioned:citext https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/citext.htmlOur episode on over-indexing https://postgres.fm/episodes/over-indexingNondeterministic collations https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/collation.html#COLLATION-NONDETERMINISTICHow to migrate from

44:40

Monitoring from Postgres AI

Postgres FM ·

2025/07/25

Nikolay talks to Michael about Postgres AI's new monitoring tool — what it is, how its different to other tools, and some of the thinking behind it. Here are some links to things they mentioned:postgres_ai monitoring https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/postgres_aiDB Lab 4.0 announcement https://github.com/postgres-ai/database-lab-engine/releases/tag/v4.0.0pganalyze https://pganalyze.compostgres-checkup https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/postgres-checkupPercona Monitoring and Management (PMM)

55:43

MultiXact member space exhaustion

Postgres FM ·

2025/07/18

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Andrew Johnson and Nate Brennand from Metronome to discuss MultiXact member space exhaustion — what it is, how they managed to hit it, and some tips to prevent running into it at scale. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Nate Brennand https://postgres.fm/people/nate-brennandAndrew Johnson https://postgres.fm/people/andrew-johnsonMetronome https://metronome.comRoot Cause Analysis: PostgreSQL MultiXact member exhaustion incidents (blog post by

79:27

Multigres

Postgres FM ·

2025/07/11

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Sugu Sougoumarane to discuss Multigres — a project he's joined Supabase to lead, building an adaptation of Vitess for Postgres! Here are some links to things they mentioned:Sugu Sougoumarane https://postgres.fm/people/sugu-sougoumaraneSupabase https://supabase.comAnnouncing Multigres https://supabase.com/blog/multigres-vitess-for-postgresVitess https://github.com/vitessio/vitessSPQR https://github.com/pg-sharding/spqrCitus

50:18

Multi-tenant options

Postgres FM ·

2025/06/20

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Gwen Shapira to discuss multi-tenant architectures — the high level options, the pros and cons of each, and how they're trying to help with Nile. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Gwen Shapira https://postgres.fm/people/gwen-shapiraNile https://www.thenile.devSaaS Tenant Isolation Strategies (AWS whitepaper) https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/saas-tenant-isolation-strategies/saas-tenant-isolation-strategies.html Row Level Security

38:51

Mean vs p99

Postgres FM ·

2025/06/13

Nikolay and Michael discuss looking at queries by mean time — when it makes sense, why ordering by a percentile (like p99) might be better, and the merits of approximating percentiles in pg_stat_statements using the standard deviation column. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Approximate the p99 of a query with pg_stat_statements (blog post by Michael) https://www.pgmustard.com/blog/approximate-the-p99-of-a-query-with-pgstatstatementspg_stat_statements

48:34

What to log

Postgres FM ·

2025/06/06

Nikolay and Michael discuss logging in Postgres — mostly what to log, and why changing quite a few settings can pay off big time in the long term. Here are some links to things they mentioned:What to log https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-logging.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-LOGGING-WHATOur episode about Auditing https://postgres.fm/episodes/auditing Our episode on auto_explain https://postgres.fm/episodes/auto_explain Here are the parameters they mentioned

47:33

How to move off RDS

Postgres FM ·

2025/05/30

Nikolay and Michael discuss moving off managed services — when and why you might want to, and some tips on how for very large databases. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Patroni https://github.com/patroni/patronipgBackRest https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrestWAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-gHetzner Cloud https://www.hetzner.com/cloudPostgres Extensions Day https://pgext.daypg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_samplingpg_stat_kcache

38:53

Locks

Postgres FM ·

2025/05/23

Nikolay and Michael discuss heavyweight locks in Postgres — how to think about them, why you can't avoid them, and some tips for minimising issues. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Locking (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/explicit-locking.htmlPostgres rocks, except when it blocks (blog post by Marco Slot) https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2018/02/15/when-postgresql-blocks/Lock Conflicts (tool by Hussein Nasser) https://pglocks.org/log_lock_waits (docs)

46:28

Top ten dangerous issues

Postgres FM ·

2025/05/09

Nikolay and Michael discuss ten dangerous Postgres related issues — ones that might be painful enough to get onto the CTO and even CEOs desk, and then what you can do proactively. The ten issues discussed are:Heavy lock contentionBloat control and index maintenance Lightweight lock contentionTransaction ID wraparound4-byte integer PKs hitting the limitReplication limitsHard limitsData lossPoor HA choice (split brain)Corruption of various kindsSome previous episodes they mentioned that

50:53

synchronous_commit

Postgres FM ·

2025/05/02

Nikolay and Michael discuss synchronous_commit — what it means on single node setups, for synchronous replication setups, and the pros and cons of the different options for each. Here are some links to things they mentioned:synchronous_commit https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-wal.html#GUC-SYNCHRONOUS-COMMITsynchronous_commit history on pgPedia https://pgpedia.info/s/synchronous_commit.htmlPatroni’s maximum_lag_on_failover setting

35:37

Managed service support

Postgres FM ·

2025/04/25

Nikolay and Michael discuss managed service support — some tips on how to handle cases that aren't going well, tips for requesting features, whether to factor in support when choosing service provider, and whether to use one at all. Here are some links to things they mentioned:YugabyteDB’s new upgrade framework https://www.yugabyte.com/blog/postgresql-upgrade-frameworkEpisode on Blue-green deployments https://postgres.fm/episodes/blue-green-deploymentspg_createsubscriber

42:42

Time-series considerations

Postgres FM ·

2025/04/11

Nikolay and Michael discuss time-series considerations for Postgres — including when it matters, some tips for avoiding issues, performance considerations, and more. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Time series data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_seriesTimescaleDB https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb13 Tips to Improve PostgreSQL Insert Performance https://www.timescale.com/blog/13-tips-to-improve-postgresql-insert-performanceWhy we're leaving the cloud (37 Signals /

38:08

Performance cliffs

Postgres FM ·

2025/04/04

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Tomas Vondra to discuss single query performance cliffs — what they are, why they happen, some things we can do to make them less likely or less severe, and some potential improvements to Postgres that could help. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Tomas Vondra https://postgres.fm/people/tomas-vondraWhere do performance cliffs come from? (Talk by Tomas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzdAelm-QSYWhere do performance cliffs come from? (Slides)

48:34

PgDog

Postgres FM ·

2025/03/28

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Lev Kokotov to discuss PgDog — including whether or when sharding is needed, the origin story (via PgCat), what's already supported, and what's coming next. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Lev Kokotov https://postgres.fm/people/lev-kokotovPgDog https://github.com/pgdogdev/pgdogPgCat https://github.com/postgresml/pgcatAdopting PgCat (Instacart blog post)

44:05

Snapshots

Postgres FM ·

2025/03/21

Nikolay talks Michael through using cloud snapshots — how they can be used to reduce RTO for huge Postgres setups, also to improve provisioning time, and some major catches to be aware of. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Snapshots on RDS https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_CreateSnapshot.htmlpgBackRest https://pgbackrest.orgWAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-gpg_backup_start and pg_backup_stop (docs)

40:59

GIN Indexes

Postgres FM ·

2025/03/14

Nikolay and Michael discuss GIN indexes in Postgres — what they are, what they're used for, and some limitations to be aware of. Here are some links to things they mentioned:GIN Indexes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/gin.htmlGeneralized Search Trees for Database Systems (Hellerstein, Naughton, Pfeffer) https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/vldb95-gist.pdf RUM extension https://pgxn.org/dist/rum/1.1.0/Understanding Postgres GIN Indexes: The Good and the Bad (Lukas Fittl)

40:49

Best Practices

Postgres FM ·

2025/03/07

Nikolay and Michael use a recent "best practices" article as a prompt — giving a few tips each on the topics mentioned, like schema design, performance, backups, and more. Here are some links to things they mentioned:7 Crucial PostgreSQL Best Practices (recent blog post) https://speakdatascience.com/postgresql-best-practices“Don't do this” episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/dont-do-thisArticle discussion on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42992913Mozilla’s SQL Style Guide

32:41

Extended Statistics

Postgres FM ·

2025/02/28

Nikolay and Michael discuss the CREATE STATISTICS feature in Postgres — what it's for, how often it's used, and how to spot cases where it would help. Here are some links to things they mentioned:CREATE STATISTICS https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-createstatistics.htmlcitext https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/citext.htmlStatistics Used by the Planner https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/planner-stats.htmldefault_statistics_target

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Postgres FM

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