I’ve recently seen some really broad tables (hundreds of columns) in a somewhat inefficiently structured database. Our PostgreSQL support customer complained about strange runtime behavior which could not be easily explained. To help other PostgreSQL users in this same situation, I decided to reveal the secrets of a fairly common performance problem many people don’t […]

© Laurenz Albe 2022 I was recently confronted with a nice example of how adding FOR UPDATE to a query can introduce transaction anomalies. This article will explain how that happens and how you can cope with the problem. Be ready to learn some PostgreSQL implementation details! The example Setting the stage We have a […]

© Laurenz Albe 2022 Sometimes a PostgreSQL query takes forever. Usually, it is easy to interrupt (cancel) such a statement, but sometimes it can turn into a problem, and a query cannot be canceled. This article discusses what might be the cause. I’ll also show you a trick how to solve the problem (not for […]

It’s been many years since the first ideas to implement the MERGE command surfaced on the PostgreSQL mailing list. Now this important feature has finally made it into PostgreSQL core, in PostgreSQL 15. To show people how this vital command works, I have decided to come up with a technical preview to introduce my readers […]

Understanding Multiranges Range types have been around in PostgreSQL for quite some time and are successfully used by developers to store various kinds of intervals with upper and lower bounds. However, in PostgreSQL 14 a major new feature has been added to the database which makes this feature even more powerful: multiranges. To help you […]

© Laurenz Albe 2022 You might, at first glance, believe that DROP ROLE (or DROP USER, which is the same) is a simple matter. However, that’s not always the case. So I thought it might be a good idea to show you the problems involved and how to solve them. Why is there no DROP […]

© Laurenz Albe 2022 It is known that high network latency is bad for database performance. PostgreSQL v14 has introduced “pipeline mode” for the libpq C API, which is particularly useful to get decent performance over high-latency network connections. If you are using a hosted database in “the cloud”, then this article might be interesting […]

There are certain types of questions which accompany any PostgreSQL consultant throughout his or her entire career. Invariably, one of those questions is: “How can we compare the content of two tables?” This is an important thing to know, because we might want to ensure that data is identical after a migration, or perhaps we […]

We want to announce that the beta release of pgwatch2 v1.9 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features that will be available in the final release of pgwatch2 v1.9, though some details of the release could change before then. You can find information about all of the new features and […]

BY Kaarel Moppel Pretty often I’m asked: Does our PostgreSQL monitoring tool pgwatch2 work with managed cloud database service providers like Google Cloud? Well, the short answer would be, “Yes, we scan!”. But as always the devil is in the details. You should be aware of a couple of nuances/extra steps. In order to shed […]

Manage encryption keys with PostgreSQL TDE PostgreSQL TDE is a version of PostgreSQL which offers on-disk encryption for PostgreSQL. Currently we at CYBERTEC maintain this piece of software for public use. What we have noticed recently is that people kept asking about how to integrate PostgreSQL TDE with existing key management solutions. To help you […]

Some time ago, I posted some information about zheap, a storage engine for PostgreSQL. The idea behind zheap is to make UPDATE statements run faster in order to keep table bloat under control. Currently, PostgreSQL copies data on UPDATE and puts the copy of the row into the same data file. While this isn’t a […]