Sometimes it happens that you reach a point where you know that things cannot be any easier than they already are.

I think in PostgreSQL 9.3 we will pretty much have reached this point when we fire up a simple replica. Back in the old times you had to call pg_start_backup, rsync the entire stuff, call pg_stop_backup and finally come up with a recovery.conf file to setup a single standby. (more…)

The optimizer uses several parameters to optimize queries.

Those parameters have been constant for many years in the past. This was fine for most users. Recently we have seen a couple of systems which were already fully based on SSD disks.

SSDs have a nice advantage over traditional disks: Random disk access is not a nightmare as it used to be on traditional hard drives. On a SSD there is no XX-times difference between random and sequential access anymore. This is an important information when it comes to optimizing a query. (more…)