Postgres FM

Nik and Michael discuss the events and trends they thought were most important in the Postgres ecosystem in 2025. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Postgres 18 release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/release-18.htmlOur episode on Postgres 18 https://postgres.fm/episodes/postgres-18LWLock:LockManager benchmarks for Postgres 18 (blog post by Nik) https://postgres.ai/blog/20251009-postgres-marathon-2-005PostgreSQL bug tied to zero-day attack on US Treasury https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/14/postgresql_bug_treasuryPgDog episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/pgdogMultigres episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/multigresNeki announcement https://planetscale.com/blog/announcing-nekiOur 100TB episode from 2024 https://postgres.fm/episodes/to-100tb-and-beyondPlanetScale for Postgres https://planetscale.com/blog/planetscale-for-postgresOracle's MySQL job cuts https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/11/oracle_slammed_for_mysql_jobAmazon Aurora DSQL is now generally available https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/05/amazon-aurora-dsql-generally-availableAnnouncing Azure HorizonDB https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/adforpostgresql/announcing-azure-horizondb/4469710Lessons from Replit and Tiger Data on Storage for Agentic Experimentation https://www.tigerdata.com/blog/lessons-replit-tiger-data-storage-agentic-experimentationInstant database clones with PostgreSQL 18 https://boringsql.com/posts/instant-database-clonesturbopuffer episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/turbopufferCrunchy joins Snowflake https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/crunchy-data-joins-snowflakeNeon joins Databricks https://neon.com/blog/neon-and-databricks~~~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 pgMustardNikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.aiWith credit to:Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss a listener question about archiving a database. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Listener request to talk about archiving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFRK8PiIvTg&lc=UgyiFrO37gEgUaVhRgN4AaABAg Our episode on “Is pg_dump a backup tool?” https://postgres.fm/episodes/is-pg_dump-a-backup-tool ~~~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 pgMustardNikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.aiWith credit to:Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss max_connections, especially in the context of increasing it to solve problems like migrations intermittently failing(!) Here are some links to things they mentioned: max_connections https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-connection.html#GUC-MAX-CONNECTIONSTweet about deployments vs connections issue https://x.com/brankopetric00/status/1991394329886077090Nik tweet in response https://x.com/samokhvalov/status/1991465573684027443Analyzing the Limits of Connection Scalability in Postgres (blog post by Andres Freund) https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2020/10/08/analyzing-connection-scalability/Exponential Backoff And Jitter (blog post by Marc Brooker) https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/exponential-backoff-and-jitter/~~~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 pgMustardNikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.aiWith credit to:Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss the various changes to EXPLAIN that arrived in Postgres 18. Here are some links to things they mentioned: EXPLAIN (official docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-explain.htmlUsing EXPLAIN (official docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/using-explain.html EXPLAIN glossary (pgMustard site) https://www.pgmustard.com/docs/explainPostgres 18 release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/18.0/Enable BUFFERS with EXPLAIN ANALYZE by default (commit) https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=c2a4078ebOur (first) BUFFERS by default episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/buffers-by-default Show index search count in EXPLAIN ANALYZE (commit) https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=0fbceae841cb5a31b13d3f284ac8fdd19822ecebOur episode on Skip scan with Peter Geoghegan https://postgres.fm/episodes/skip-scanWhat do the new Index Searches lines in EXPLAIN mean? https://www.pgmustard.com/blog/what-do-index-searches-in-explain-meanpg_stat_plans presentation by Lukas Fittl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26coQV3f-wkImprove EXPLAIN's display of window functions (commit) https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=8b1b34254Show Parallel Bitmap Heap Scan worker stats in EXPLAIN ANALYZE (commit) https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=5a1e6df3bAdd information about WAL buffers being full (commit) https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=320545bfc ~~~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 pgMustardNikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.aiWith credit to:Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik talks Michael through a recent benchmark he worked with Maxim Boguk on, to see how quickly they could provision a replica. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Ultra-fast replica creation with pgBackRest (blog post by Maxim Boguk and Nik) https://postgres.ai/blog/20251105-postgres-marathon-2-012-ultra-fast-replica-creation-pgbackrestCopying a database episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/copying-a-databaseAdd snapshot backup support for PostgreSQL in wal-g (draft PR by Andrey Borodin) https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g/pull/2101Multi-threaded pg_basebackup discussion 1: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAEHH7R4%3D_GN%2BLSsj0YZOXZ13yc%3DGk9umJOLNopjS%3DimK0c1mWA%40mail.gmail.comMulti-threaded pg_basebackup discussion 2: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/io_method https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-resource.html#GUC-IO-METHOD pgBackRest https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrestAdd sequence synchronization for logical replication (commit) https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=5509055d6956745532e65ab218e15b99d87d66ce Allow process priority to be set (pgBackRest feature added by David Steele) https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest/pull/2693 Hard limit on process-max (pgBackRest issue from 2019) https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest/issues/696 ~~~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 pgMustardNikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.aiWith credit to:Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork