Postgres FM

Nik and Michael are joined by Dmitry Fomin to discuss his new tool pg_wait_tracer, as well as changes that could be made to core to allow wait event tracing with lower overhead, and on managed services.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 
Dmitry Fomin https://postgres.fm/people/dmitry-fomin
pg_wait_tracer https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_wait_tracer
pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling
pg_10046 https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_10046
Jeremy Schneider reply on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7414966981847748608
RDS for PostgreSQL wait event docs https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/PostgreSQL.Tuning.concepts.summary.html
Custom wait events for extensions (added in PostgreSQL 17) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/xfunc-c.html#XFUNC-ADDIN-WAIT-EVENTS
Hacking Postgres with Dmitry, Kirk, and Nik (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gtuc2lnnsE
Hacking Postgres with Dmitry, Kirk, and Nik (Part 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kqpjnpl5Gc
Tanel Poder https://tanelpoder.com/about/
USDT static tracepoints for wait event tracing (proof of concept by Nik) https://github.com/NikolayS/postgres/pull/18
Add wait_event_timing: Oracle-style wait event instrumentation (patch by Dmitry) https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/postgres/pull/1
PgQue benchmarks https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque/blob/main/docs/benchmarks.md
The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation and Modeling (by Raj K. Jain) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259310412_The_Art_of_Computer_Systems_Performance_Analysis_Techniques_For_Experimental_Design_Measurement_Simulation_and_Modeling_NY_Wiley
Performance modeling and design of computer systems queueing theory in action (by Prof. Mor Harchol-Balter) https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/PerformanceModeling/book.html
Oracle Performance Firefighting (by Craig_Shallahamer) https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780984102303/Oracle-Performance-Firefighting-Craig-Shallahamer-0984102302/plp
Process Mining: Data Science in Action (by Wil van der Aalst) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-49851-4

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What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

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Postgres FM is produced by:
Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:
Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss a list of things to check when designing new schema in Postgres.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned:
Use BIGINT in Postgres (blog post by Ryan Lambert) https://blog.rustprooflabs.com/2021/06/postgres-bigint-by-default
Postgres 18 and UUIDv7 (blog post by Gwen Shapira) https://www.thenile.dev/blog/uuidv7
How to use UUID (how-to guide by Nik) https://postgres.ai/docs/postgres-howtos/schema-design/data-types/how-to-use-uuid
Our episode on constraints https://postgres.fm/episodes/constraints
Our episode on NULLs https://postgres.fm/episodes/nulls-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-unknown
MultiXact member space exhaustion episode (with Metronome) https://postgres.fm/episodes/multixact-member-space-exhaustion
Our Column Tetris episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/column-tetris
Saving Space Basically for Free (blog post by James Coleman from Braintree) https://medium.com/paypal-tech/postgresql-at-scale-saving-space-basically-for-free-d94483d9ed9a
Over-indexing episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/over-indexing
Under-indexing episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/under-indexing
Gadget's use of Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/gadgets-use-of-postgres
Partitioning episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/partitioning
RLS vs performance episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/rls-vs-performance

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What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

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Postgres FM is produced by:
Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:
Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Bruce Momjian to discuss his new talk "What’s Missing in Postgres?"
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 
Bruce Momjian https://postgres.fm/people/bruce-momjian
EDB https://www.enterprisedb.com
What’s Missing in Postgres? (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/missing.pdf
The Wonderful World of WAL (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/wal.pdf
Getting started with benchmarking (our episode with Melanie Plageman) https://postgres.fm/episodes/getting-started-with-benchmarking
Myths and Truths about Synchronous Replication in Postgres (talk by Alexander Kukushkin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFn9qRGzTMc
The Future of Postgres Sharding (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/sharding.pdf
MultiXact member space exhaustion https://postgres.fm/episodes/multixact-member-space-exhaustion

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What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~
Postgres FM is produced by:
Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:
Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss long-running transactions, including when they're harmless, when they cause issues, and how to mitigate those issues.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 
transaction_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-TRANSACTION-TIMEOUT
Our episode on transaction_timeout https://postgres.fm/episodes/transaction_timeout
Our episode on slow queries (which was also our first ever episode!) https://postgres.fm/episodes/slow-queries-and-slow-transactions
Our episode on locks https://postgres.fm/episodes/locks
lock_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-LOCK-TIMEOUT
Transaction Isolation levels https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/transaction-iso.html
pg_current_xact_id_if_assigned() https://pgpedia.info/p/pg_current_xact_id_if_assigned.html
Monitor xmin horizon to prevent XID/MultiXID wraparound and high bloat (how-to guide by Nik) https://postgres.ai/docs/postgres-howtos/performance-optimization/monitoring/how-to-monitor-xmin-horizon
idle_replication_slot_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-replication.html#GUC-IDLE-REPLICATION-SLOT-TIMEOUT
PREPARE TRANSACTION https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-prepare-transaction.html
log_autovacuum_min_duration https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/runtime-config-logging.html#GUC-LOG-AUTOVACUUM-MIN-DURATION
PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful (blog post by Nikolay) https://postgres.ai/blog/20210831-postgresql-subtransactions-considered-harmful
statement_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-STATEMENT-TIMEOUT
idle_in_transaction_session_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-IDLE-IN-TRANSACTION-SESSION-TIMEOUT
lock_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-LOCK-TIMEOUT

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What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~
Postgres FM is produced by:
Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:
Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Regina Obe and Paul Ramsey to discuss PostGIS.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned:
Regina Obe https://postgres.fm/people/regina-obe
Paul Ramsey https://postgres.fm/people/paul-ramsey
PostGIS https://postgis.net
MobilityDB https://github.com/MobilityDB/MobilityDB
pgRouting https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting
Google BigQuery GIS public alpha blog post https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/whats-happening-bigquery-integrated-machine-learning-maps-and-more
PostGIS Day 2025 talk recordings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuNO_cW2g-0&list=PLavJpcg8cl1EkQWoCbczsOjFTe-SHg_8m
pg_lake https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/pg_lake
GeoParquet https://geoparquet.org
ST_DWithin https://postgis.net/docs/ST_DWithin.html
Postgres JSONB Columns and TOAST: A Performance Guide https://www.snowflake.com/en/engineering-blog/postgres-jsonb-columns-and-toast
FOSS4G https://foss4g.org
OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org
PgDay Boston https://2026.pgdayboston.org
SKILL.md file https://github.com/postgis/postgis/blob/68dde711039986b47eb62feda45bb24b13b0ea37/doc/SKILL.md
Production query plans without production data (blog post by Radim Marek) https://boringsql.com/posts/portable-stats
PostgreSQL: Up and Running, 4th Edition (by Regina Obe, Leo Hsu) https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/postgresql-up-and/9798341660885

~~~
What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~
Postgres FM is produced by:
Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:
Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork