Sammlung von Newsfeeds

Got interested recently in speed of pg_dump. Specifically, if, over the years, it has became faster, and if yes, how much. Couple of years ago I was in position where we needed to run pg_dump, and found some inefficiencies, which got later patched. This was around the version 12. So, how does the situation look … Continue reading "pg_dump speed across versions"

Introduction

pgconf.dev 2025 just wrapped up in Montreal, Canada, following its successful debut in Vancouver last year—and once again, it delivered a fantastic mix of deep technical content and strong community social activities.

Version 0.3.1 of the open-source Xata Agent adds support for custom MCP servers and tools, introduces Ollama as a local LLM provider, and includes support for reasoning models O1 and O4-mini.

In what I can't say isn't a tradition at this point, we're in an odd-numbered year so there's news on the pdot front! Get it here!

Just over a week ago, I attended PGConf.DE 2025 in Berlin with the rest of the Data Egret team and gave a talk titled “Data Archiving and Retention in PostgreSQL: Best Practices for Large Datasets.” This post is a written version of my talk for those who couldn’t attend.

Below, you’ll find each slide from the talk — along with what was said.

Introduction

In this post, we’ll cover a way to generate short, alphanumeric, pseudo random identifiers using native Postgres tactics.

These identifiers can be used for things like transactions or reservations, where users need to read and share them easily. This approach is an alternative to using long, random generated values like UUID values, which have downsides for usability and performance.

I last wrote about auto-releasing PostgreSQL extensions on PGXN back in 2020, but I thought it worthwhile, following my Postgres Extensions Day talk last week, to return again to the basics.

Improved user experience with new transformers, YAML configuration, CLI refactoring and table filtering.

I’m pleased to welcome seven new Google Summer of Code 2025 contributors to the Postgres community!

I encourage you to welcome contributors during these first weeks to get them excited and invested in our community. You will meet them on mailing lists, Slack, Discord, and other media.

The table below details information about this year’s project, contributors, and mentors!

A very short edition this week...

PostgreSQL 18 changes this week

Following last week's beta1 release , things seem to have been quite quiet on all fronts, which hopefully means people are busy testing and not finding issues. From previous experience, this is the point in the release cycle where I start to review the changes over the past year and work out what I've missed ( feedback always welcome!).

Next month, I'll be hosting 2 or 3 discussions of Masahiko Sawada's talk, PostgreSQL meets ART - Using Adaptive Radix Tree to speed up vacuuming, from 2024.pgconf.dev. If you're interested in joining us, please sign up using this form and I will send you an invite to one of the sessions.

Read more »

The final PostgresSQL Extension Mini-Summit took place on May 7. Gabriele Bartolini gave an overview of PostgreSQL extension management in CloudNativePG (CNPG).

Taming ReorderBufferWrite - Boost Logical Decoding in PostgresPerformance bottlenecks in Postgres logical replication or Change Data Capture (CDC) stream can be subtle, but one specific wait event, ReorderBufferWrite, often points directly at how your application interacts with the database during these processes. Let's unpack this wait-event and see how your application's workload patterns can

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.6.0alpha1! Best Served with PostgreSQL 18 Beta1 and GEOS 3.13.1.

This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 2.1.0+ is needed.

The PostGIS Team is pleased to release PostGIS 3.5.3.

This version requires PostgreSQL 12 - 18beta1, GEOS 3.8 or higher, and Proj 6.1+. To take advantage of all features, GEOS 3.12+ is needed. SFCGAL 1.4+ is needed to enable postgis_sfcgal support. To take advantage of all SFCGAL features, SFCGAL 1.5+ is needed.

Backfilling data into a TimescaleDB hypertable in production can be very tricky, especially when automated processes like compression policies are involved. From past experience, we have seen that if backfill operations aren’t handled properly, they can interfere with these automated tasks, sometimes causing them to stop working altogether. 

This blog covers a safer and more reliable approach to backfilling hypertables, along with best practices to prevent disruptions to compression and other background processes.

What is a Backfill Operation?

An Vercammen, Gregory Gioffredi and Wim Bertels organized PGConf.BE 2025, with help from Vera Demaiter and Aimée Lynn Backiel.

Pre-Conference Travels: Debian & Berlin

The week before this year's PGConf.DE, I attended the Debian MiniDebConf in Hamburg. Adding Berlin to the itinerary made for a busy two weeks on the road. Still, it gave me time to prep for my PGConf talk while catching up on Debian-related discussions.

Relaunching Xata as "Postgres at scale". A Postgres platform with Copy-on-Write branching, data masking, and separation of storage from compute.

I’m pleased to welcome Mankirat Singh to the Postgres community as a 2025 Google Summer of Code contributor. Mankirat will be developing an ABI compliance checker and reporting system to help identify and prevent unintentional ABI changes in future minor Postgres releases.