Creating auto increment columns in PostgreSQL is easy. Simply use two pseudo data types serial and serial8, respectively, then PostgreSQL will automatically take care of your auto increment columns. However, once in a while problems can still occur. Let us take a look and see. Sequences: Avoid manual values To understand the underlying problem, one […]

© Laurenz Albe 2020   Recently, while troubleshooting PostgreSQL performance problems, I ran into problems with subtransactions twice. So I thought this was a nice topic for another blog post. What are subtransactions? Everybody knows database transactions. In PostgreSQL, which is operating in autocommit mode, you have to start a transaction that spans multiple statements […]

© Laurenz Albe 2019   Many people know that explicit table locks with LOCK TABLE are bad style and usually a consequence of bad design. The main reason is that they hamper concurrency and hence performance. Through a recent support case I learned that there are even worse effects of explicit table locks. Table locks […]

xmax is a PostgreSQL system column that is used to implement Multiversion Concurrency Control (MVCC). The documentation is somewhat terse: The identity (transaction ID) of the deleting transaction, or zero for an undeleted row version. It is possible for this column to be nonzero in a visible row version. That usually indicates that the deleting […]