Posts

In PostgreSQL, every database connection is a server-side process. This makes PostgreSQL a robust multi-process rather than a multi-threaded solution. However, occasionally people want to terminate database connections. Maybe something has gone wrong, maybe some kind of query is taking too long, or maybe there is a maintenance window approaching. In this blog you will […]

Many might have seen PostgreSQL issue the following error message: “ERROR: deadlock detected”. But what does it really mean? How can we prevent a deadlock and how can we reproduce the problem? Let’s dive into PostgreSQL locking and understand what deadlock and deadlock_timeout really mean. How does a deadlock happen? Many people approach us because […]

PostgreSQL allows end users to store BLOBs (binary large objects) in the database. Many people use these functions to handle data directly in SQL. There has long been a discussion about whether this is a good thing or not. We expect that particular discussion to go on indefinitely. However, if you are in the “pro […]

Visualizing spatial data is an important task. In this mini-tutorial, you will learn how to quickly visualize OpenStreetMap (OSM) data with PostGIS and QGIS. The idea is to get you started as fast as possible, and to make the most out of your data. Installing QGIS QGIS is freely available as Open Source software and […]

PostgreSQL provides a highly sophisticated and powerful security and permission system. It allows you to define users (= roles), groups and so on. However, without a graphical user interface, it is usually a bit tricky to figure out which role is assigned to whom. The following blogpost explains how this can be done. Learn how […]

Just like any advanced relational database, PostgreSQL uses a cost-based query optimizer that tries to turn your SQL queries into something efficient that executes in as little time as possible. For many people, the workings of the optimizer itself remain a mystery, so we have decided to give users some insight into what is really […]

PostgreSQL is a secure database and we want to keep it that way. It makes sense, then, to consider SSL to encrypt the connection between client and server. This posting will help you to set up SSL authentication for PostgreSQL properly, and hopefully also to understand some background information to make your database more secure. […]

To make it easier for our readers to install PostgreSQL on Ubuntu, we have compiled a quick guide to getting started. Don’t worry, it’s not too hard. You will learn: How to download PostgreSQL How to install PostgreSQL on Ubuntu How to create a database instance How to ensure the service is running Creating your […]

Just like in most databases, in PostgreSQL a trigger is a way to automatically respond to events. Maybe you want to run a function if data is inserted into a table. Maybe you want to audit the deletion of data, or simply respond to some UPDATE statement. That is exactly what a trigger is good […]

PostgreSQL query optimization with CREATE STATISTICS is an important topic. Usually, the PostgreSQL optimizer (query planner) does an excellent job. This is not only true for OLTP but also for data warehousing. However, in some cases the optimizer simply lacks the information to do its job properly. One of these situations has to do with […]

Our PostgreSQL 24×7 support team recently received a request from one of our customers who was facing a performance problem. The solution to the problem could be found in the way PostgreSQL handles query optimization (specifically, statistics). So I thought it would be nice to share some of this knowledge with my beloved readers. The […]

PostgreSQL High-Availability has been one of the most dominant topics in the field for a long time. While there are many different approaches out there, Patroni seems to have become one of the most dominant solutions currently in use out there. Many database clusters are running on Linux. However, we have seen some demand for […]