PODCAST

Postgres FM

Nikolay Samokhvalov and Michael Christofides

A weekly podcast about all things PostgreSQL

technology tech news

All Episodes

38:22

LWLocks

Postgres FM ·

2025/10/17

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-TABLEOur episode on (heavier) locks https://postgres.fm/episodes/locksNik’s new marathon posts

39:00

User management

Postgres FM ·

2025/10/03

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.htmlALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-alterdefaultprivileges.htmlGRANT https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-grant.htmlREASSIGN OWNED

55:43

Postgres 18

Postgres FM ·

2025/09/26

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-3142Postgres 18 release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/release-18.htmlSkip scan episode with Peter Geoghegan https://postgres.fm/episodes/skip-scanEasier Postgres fine-tuning with

52:59

Gadget's use of Postgres

Postgres FM ·

2025/09/19

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-brundageGadget https://gadget.devZero downtime Postgres upgrades using logical replication (blog post)

49:36

turbopuffer

Postgres FM ·

2025/09/12

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-eskildsenturbopuffer https://turbopuffer.comUse ULID Idempotency Keys (tip 6 in this blog post from Shopify)

46:17

When not to use Postgres

Postgres FM ·

2025/09/05

Nik and Michael discuss when not to use Postgres — specifically use cases where it still makes sense to store data in another system. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Just use Postgres (blog post by Ethan McCue) https://mccue.dev/pages/8-16-24-just-use-postgresJust Use Postgres for Everything (blog post by Stephan Schmidt) https://www.amazingcto.com/postgres-for-everythingReal-time analytics episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/real-time-analyticsCrunchy Data Joins Snowflake

46:13

Disks

Postgres FM ·

2025/08/29

Nik and Michael discuss disks in relation to Postgres — why they matter, how saturation can happen, some modern nuances, and how to prepare to avoid issues. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Nik’s tweet demonstrating a NOTIFY hot spot https://x.com/samokhvalov/status/1959468091035009245Postgres LISTEN/NOTIFY does not scale (blog post by Recall ai) https://www.recall.ai/blog/postgres-listen-notify-does-not-scaletrack_io_timing

41:21

Multi-column indexes

Postgres FM ·

2025/08/22

Nik and Michael discuss multi-column indexes in Postgres — what they are, how to think about them, and some guidance around using them effectively. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Multicolumn Indexes (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/indexes-multicolumn.htmlOur episode on Index-only scans https://postgres.fm/episodes/index-only-scansCombining Multiple Indexes (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/indexes-bitmap-scans.htmlEnable BUFFERS with EXPLAIN ANALYZE

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

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Postgres FM

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