Category: Hans-Juergen Schoenig
Hans-Jürgen Schönig has worked with PostgreSQL since the 90’s. He is the CEO and technical lead of CYBERTEC PostgreSQL International, a market leader in the field. He’s served countless customers around the globe since the year 2000. He is also the author of the well-received “Mastering PostgreSQL” book series, as well as several other books about PostgreSQL replication and administration.
Citus: 7 commonly used advanced SQL tools
When you run advanced SQL in Citus, what’s possible? Which SQL statements work, and which ones don’t? Citus is a PostgreSQL extension that adds powerful sharding capabilities to PostgreSQL. However, every solution does have limitations. Therefore, it makes sense to take a look at the latest version of Citus and learn how to properly use […]
Citus: Row store vs. column store in PostgreSQL
Row store vs. column store – a lot has been written about this topic in the context of PostgreSQL and Citus. What does it really mean and what are the implications? Are column stores “always cool” and “always beneficial”? No, there’s more to it – which requires a closer look. When trying to understand the […]
“hired” vs. “fired” – fuzzy search in PostgreSQL
When dealing with data (and life in general) small things can have a major impact. The difference between “hired” and “fired” is just one simple character, but in many cases it does have real world implications. The question is: How can we use good old community Open Source PostgreSQL to do a fuzzy search, in […]
Data locality: Scaling PostgreSQL with Citus intelligently
While sharding is often advertised as “THE solution to PostgreSQL scalability”, it is necessary to keep some technical aspects in consideration in terms of performance. The rule is: Sharding should not be used without a deeper awareness of what it is you are actually doing to the data. It’s important to keep in mind that […]
Monitoring PostgreSQL replication
PostgreSQL replication is not just a way to scale your database to run ever larger workloads: it’s also a way to make your database infrastructure redundant, more reliable and resilient. There is, however, a potential for replication lag, which needs to be monitored. How can you monitor replication lag in PostgreSQL? What is replication lag? […]
Citus: Sharding your first table
Citus is a capable sharding solution for PostgreSQL. It solves a ton of scalability issues: these can be addressed using a sharding approach. We at CYBERTEC have used Citus for some time and can wholeheartedly recommend it (check out our services to find out more). Since the need for PostgreSQL sharding is constantly growing, we […]
Killing performance with PostgreSQL partitioning
PostgreSQL is a powerful database which supports partitioning. In contrast to Oracle partitioning is part of the PostgreSQL core engine and does not need any additional licensing or extensions. If you migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL this will be a major advantage. However, just like any other technology, partitioning is not without risk. While it […]
What is a schema in PostgreSQL?
One way to organize data in PostgreSQL is to make use of schemas. What is a schema in PostgreSQL? And more importantly: What is the purpose of a schema and how can schemas be used to make your life easier? Let’s dive in and find out. The purpose of a schema Before you figure out […]
PostgreSQL: DELETE vs. TRUNCATE
Data isn’t only about storage and accumulation – sometimes it’s also about deletion, cleanup and archiving. In SQL there’s more than one way to empty a table. Two essential methods are available: DELETE TRUNCATE DELETE vs. TRUNCATE Both commands serve totally different purposes, which are sometimes not fully understood. The key difference is that DELETE […]
PostgREST: Get started with automated PostgreSQL APIs
This blog introduces you to PostgREST and helps you to get started with it quickly. What is PostgREST? First think about this: a modern database application usually doesn’t connect to the database directly and issue arbitrary SQL commands. In general, there is always some kind of abstraction layer in between. This layer could be Hibernate […]
Stored procedures in PostgreSQL: getting started
Stored procedures are a core concept which can be found in most relational database systems. They have proven to be useful in many areas and have been widely adopted by developers and DBA’s alike. Stored procedures basics In PostgreSQL stored procedures have been around for a number of years. The syntax of this important command […]
PostgreSQL: Finding the current timestamp
PostgreSQL provides all kinds of time-related functions. But time is not as easy as it seems. One question many people keep asking: How can I find the current timestamp? What time is it? While this seems like an easy question the answer isn’t as clear-cut as you might expect. Basically, there are three functions we […]