PostgreSQL contains some hidden gems which have been around for many years and help to silently speed up your queries. They optimize your SQL statements in a clever and totally transparent way. One of those hidden gems is the ability to synchronize sequential scans. Actually, this feature has been around for 15+ years, but has […]

Autovacuum has been part of PostgreSQL for a long time. But how does it really work? Can you simply turn it on and off? People keep asking us these questions about enabling and disabling autovacuum a lot. PostgreSQL relies on MVCC to handle concurrency in a multiuser environment. The problem which arises when handling concurrent […]

Bulk loading is the quickest way to import large amounts of data into a PostgreSQL database. There are various ways to facilitate large-scale imports, and many different ways to scale are also available. This post will show you how to use some of these tricks, and explain how fast importing works. You can use this […]

Performance tuning does not only mean adjusting postgresql.conf properly, or making sure that your kernel parameters are properly tuned. Performance tuning also implies that we have to find performance bottlenecks first, isolate slow queries and understand what the system is doing. I believe the best and most efficient way to detect performance problems is to […]

There are two types of replication available in PostgreSQL at the moment: Streaming replication & Logical replication. If you are looking to set up streaming replication for PostgreSQL 13, this is the page you have been looking for. This tutorial will show you how to configure PostgreSQL replication and how to set up your database servers […]

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. […]