Advertise on podcast: Postgres FM

Nik is joined by Kirk Wolak, Software Architect at KiraSoft, to discuss what a database still needs after pg_restore finishes and before it takes production traffic — what pg_dump and pg_restore leave behind, why autovacuum may not catch up in time, and how Postgres itself could do better. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Times are podcast times of the first mention. Hacking sessions [00:00:27] Hacking Postgres sessions with Andrey, Kirk and Nik (YouTube playlist, PostgresTV) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH8y1BNPAKjKDdJA7sDmFWUkbbYux3TRz[00:00:27] Hacking Postgres website https://hacking.postgres.tv[00:00:27] Hacking Postgres Telegram group https://t.me/postgres_hackingEpisodes [00:00:27] Our previous episode with Kirk: GSoC B-Tree Merge https://postgres.fm/episodes/gsoc-btree-merge[00:03:23] Is pg_dump a backup tool? https://postgres.fm/episodes/is-pg_dump-a-backup-toolpgsql-hackers [00:15:39] pg_restore --include-analyze proposal (Jian He, 2025) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CACJufxGx_YLLxmnZVMuUApiVYqjKrydvEQqD3qxhwM6e0_8jrQ%40mail.gmail.com[00:30:13] ANALYZE after restore (Christopher Kings-Lynne, 2002) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/GNELIHDDFBOCMGBFGEFOOEOPCBAA.chriskl%40familyhealth.com.au[00:31:55] Statistics Import and Export (PG18 statistics transfer) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CADkLM%3DfzX7QX6r78fShWDjNN3Vcr4PVAnvXxQ4DiGy6V%3D0bCUA%40mail.gmail.comCommits [00:04:39] Transfer statistics during pg_upgrade (adds statistics to pg_dump, PG18) https://github.com/postgres/postgres/commit/1fd1bd871012732e3c6c482667d2f2c56f1a9395[00:30:13] vacuumdb --analyze-only processes partitioned tables (Laurenz Albe, PG19) https://github.com/postgres/postgres/commit/6429e5b771dbb98aa56441677b79cdb58f6e1675[00:42:38] Set pd_prune_xid on insert (Melanie Plageman, PG19) https://github.com/postgres/postgres/commit/378a216187aea1b488ce60ed07dd1ac5c14a9984 ~~~ 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 PostgresAI With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artworkIntro and outro music: our own arrangement of Apple Loops from GarageBand (royalty-free under the GarageBand licence)

Nik and Michael are joined by Álvaro Hernández to discuss sharding Postgres with Citus and StackGres, especially the new query router support that has been added very recently. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Álvaro Hernández https://postgres.fm/people/alvaro-hernandez-tortosaOngres https://ongres.comScaling Citus without limits: announcing Query Routers in StackGres https://stackgres.io/blog/scaling-citus-beyond-one-coordinator-announcing-query-routers-stackgres/Open-source Citus matches PlanetScale's Neki at 10M QPS on half the data nodes https://stackgres.io/blog/open-source-citus-matches-planetscales-neki-at-10m-qps-on-half-the-data-nodes/Postgres TV discussion about licenses with Álvaro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rcbyIjA4gIOur episode with Sugu from Multigres https://postgres.fm/episodes/multigresOur (first) episode with Lev from PgDog https://postgres.fm/episodes/pgdogCitus https://github.com/citusdata/citusCitus goes fully open source (2022) https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2022/06/17/citus-11-goes-fully-open-source/6M requests per second using ClickHouse (blog post by Alex Bocharov / Cloudflare) https://blog.cloudflare.com/http-analytics-for-6m-requests-per-second-using-clickhouse/pg_ash https://github.com/NikolayS/pg_ash118 million queries per second on Neki (blog post by Florent Poinsard and Hirad Pourtahmasbi / PlanetScale) https://planetscale.com/blog/118-million-queries-per-second-on-nekiAnalyzing the Limits of Connection Scalability in Postgres (blog post by Andres Freund) https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2020/10/08/analyzing-connection-scalability/ ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Salma El-Sayed and Kirk Wolak to discuss their in-progress and very ambitious Google Summer of Code project around adding Btree Merge support to Postgres. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Salma El-Sayed https://postgres.fm/people/salma-el-sayedKirk Wolak https://postgres.fm/people/kirk-wolakGoogle Summer of Code https://summerofcode.withgoogle.comPostgreSQL GSoC 2026 project ideas https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/GSoC_2026CMU Intro to Database Systems https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYMAgsGH-GtY5rJYZ6zjsd5Kirk, NIK, and Andrey’s Hacking Postgres sessions on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH8y1BNPAKjKDdJA7sDmFWUkbbYux3TRzB-tree Index Bloat Reduction - Approach & Questions (Hackers thread, with patches) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CANBEAPFq3YAOydjUS3xwcUG9L6e3WE5Z4nGPk_Q3RsjSFWTJNA%40mail.gmail.comB-tree merge visualizer https://kirkw.github.io/explainers/btree-merge-explainer.html ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Sai Srirampur to discuss ClickHouse's new managed Postgres service. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Sai Srirampur https://postgres.fm/people/sai-srirampurClickHouse Managed Postgres https://clickhouse.com/cloud/postgresClickPipes https://clickhouse.com/cloud/clickpipeswalshadow https://github.com/ClickHouse/walshadowpg_clickhouse https://github.com/clickHouse/pg_clickhouseClickHouse PostgreSQL powered by Ubicloud https://www.ubicloud.com/blog/clickhouse-postgresql-powered-by-ubicloudHacking Postgres logical decoding sessions https://hacking.postgres.tv/topics/logical-decoding/ wal-rus https://github.com/ClickHouse/wal-ruspg_createsubscriber https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgcreatesubscriber.html ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss hot_standby_feedback — what it controls, whether and when read replicas should be changed to on, and other settings you can change to help too. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  hot_standby_feedback https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-replication.html#GUC-HOT-STANDBY-FEEDBACKhot_standby_feedback: experiments on PostgreSQL 17 (by Nik) https://console.postgres.ai/shared/brief/6018f69d-8975-48e3-8259-a72c77105572Best practices for Amazon RDS PostgreSQL replication (blog post) https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/best-practices-for-amazon-rds-postgresql-replication/log_autovacuum_min_duration https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-logging.html#GUC-LOG-AUTOVACUUM-MIN-DURATIONmax_standby_streaming_delay https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-replication.html#GUC-MAX-STANDBY-STREAMING-DELAYWAIT FOR LSN https://www.postgresql.org/docs/19/sql-wait-for.htmltransaction_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-TRANSACTION-TIMEOUTHot Standby Feedback should default to on in 9.3+ https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/20121130190227.GJ3957%40awork2.anarazel.de ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Shaun Thomas to discuss estimating work_mem, memory management in general, and writing an extension to help. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Shaun Thomas https://postgres.fm/people/shaun-thomaswork_mem https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-resource.html#GUC-WORK-MEMpg_stat_database https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-DATABASE-VIEWALTER ROLE SET configuration_parameter https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-alterrole.html#SQL-ALTERROLE-PARAMS-CONFIGURATION-PARAMETERhash_mem_multiplier https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-resource.html#GUC-HASH-MEM-MULTIPLIERRecent Postgres releases with 28 CVEs fixed https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-186-1711-1615-1519-1424-and-19-beta-3-released-3365/Systemic Risks in the Managed PostgreSQL Industry (part 1 of 6, Mehmet Ince) https://mehmetince.net/part-1-6-systemic-risks-in-the-managed-postgresql-industry-extension-risks-are-real-exploiting-postgis-memory-corruption-bug-at-neondb-supabase-and-many-more/Improving Postgres Connection Scalability: Snapshots (blog post by Andres Freund) https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/adforpostgresql/improving-postgres-connection-scalability-snapshots/1806462 ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Michael Malis, co-creator of pgrust, to discuss their Postgres rewrite, including reliability problems, compatibility testing, faster analytics, and a new JIT-compiled query engine. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Michael Malis https://postgres.fm/people/michael-malispgrust https://github.com/malisper/pgrust The four horsemen behind Postgres outages (blog post by Michael Malis) https://malisper.me/the-four-horsemen-behind-thousands-of-postgres-outagesRebuilding Postgres for faster analytics: batching, operator fusion, and SIMD (blog post by Michael Malis) https://malisper.me/how-we-made-postgres-hundreds-of-times-faster-the-query-engine/kani https://github.com/model-checking/kaniAntithesis https://antithesis.comfsyncgate mailing list thread https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAMsr%2BYHh%2B5Oq4xziwwoEfhoTZgr07vdGG%2Bhu%3D1adXx59aTeaoQ%40mail.gmail.comHow AI Changes the Economics of JIT Compilers (blog post by Michael Malis) https://malisper.me/how-ai-changes-the-economics-of-jit-compilers/Umbra DB https://umbra-db.com ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Radim Marek to discuss MVCC, including his recent article on how Postgres chose to implement it compared to other systems. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Radim Marek https://postgres.fm/people/radim-marekBoringSQL https://boringsql.comPostgreSQL's MVCC is bad. So is everyone else's (blog post by Radim) https://boringsql.com/posts/mvcc-bad-bad/PostgreSQL MVCC documentation https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/mvcc-intro.htmlPostgreSQL Storage Internals series by Radim https://boringsql.com/guides/postgresql-storage-internals/PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgqueThe next ten years of Postgres (talk slides by Álvaro Herrera) https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfde2026/sessions/session/7744/slides/866/edb-keynote-pgconfde-2026.pdfEpisode on RegreSQL https://postgres.fm/episodes/regresqlDryRun MCP https://github.com/boringsql/dryrun ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Tudor Golubenco, CTO of Xata, to discuss their architecture, progress, and open source tooling. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Tudor Golubenco https://postgres.fm/people/tudor-golubencoXata https://xata.ioXata is now open source https://xata.io/blog/xata-is-now-open-sourceDBLab Engine https://postgres.ai/docs/database-labpgstream https://github.com/xataio/pgstreamXata acquires Privacy Dynamics for advanced anonymization https://xata.io/blog/xata-acquires-privacy-dynamicsTonic AI https://www.tonic.aiA thousand Postgres branches for one dollar https://xata.io/blog/a-thousand-postgres-branches-for-1pgroll https://github.com/xataio/pgrollCloudNativePG https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pgPGSimCity https://nikolays.github.io/PGSimCityDeltaX https://github.com/xataio/deltax ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Qian Li and Peter Kraft to talk about DBOS, an open source platform for durable workflows built on Postgres.  Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Qian Li https://postgres.fm/people/qian-liPeter Kraft https://postgres.fm/people/peter-kraftDBOS https://www.dbos.devTemporal https://temporal.ioGadget's use of Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/gadgets-use-of-postgresPostgres LISTEN/NOTIFY blog post from Recall AI https://www.recall.ai/blog/postgres-listen-notify-does-not-scalePostgres 19 commit that improves LISTEN/NOTIFY, avoiding waking backends that have no need to process the notification messages https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=282b1cde9 PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgquepg_durable https://github.com/microsoft/pg_durableAbsurd https://github.com/earendil-works/absurdLISTEN/NOTIFY performance considerations (docs patch submitted by Nik) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAM527d8oDVb2K%2BtTjpjLkd7g14HLDiwwnvv%3Drcn4BMEs%3DMatkQ%40mail.gmail.com#1b6fa752a96aad22bd8ef794fbaf3ea1 ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Fabrízio Mello to discuss his new extension pg_stat_log. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Fabrízio Mello https://postgres.fm/people/fabrizio-de-royes-melloTimbira https://www.timbira.com.brPlanetScale https://planetscale.compg_stat_log https://github.com/fabriziomello/pg_stat_logCustom Cumulative Statistics (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/xfunc-c.html#XFUNC-ADDIN-CUSTOM-CUMULATIVE-STATISTICSCustom Cumulative Statistics (wiki page) https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CustomCumulativeStatslogerrors https://github.com/munakoiso/logerrorspgFouine https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/projects/pgFoundry/pgfouine/pgFouinepgBadger https://github.com/darold/pgbadgerpg_stat_checkpointer https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-CHECKPOINTER-VIEWpg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_samplingRFC: pg_stat_logmsg (patch proposal by Joe Conway) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/89742024-d51a-c66b-90b9-67f837072cd2%40joeconway.com ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by David Steele to talk all things pgBackRest. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  David Steele https://postgres.fm/people/david-steelepgBackRest https://pgbackrest.orgpg_basebackup https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.htmlBarman https://pgbarman.orgpgmoneta https://github.com/pgmoneta/pgmonetaWAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-gReturn pg_control from pg_backup_stop (patch proposal) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/86436ff9-eb98-4c8a-825e-3bcae022107b%40pgbackrest.org#e36e2ad2f410d1a9a1152e36aa66bb48Add StorageReadMulti for prefetched multi-file/range reads from object stores (pgBackRest change that needs review) https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest/pull/2783pg_hardstorage https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pg_hardstorageWhy the cycle of open-source sustainability needs to be virtuous (blog post by Gabriele Bartolini) https://www.gabrielebartolini.it/articles/2026/04/why-the-cycle-of-open-source-sustainability-needs-to-be-virtuousARIN https://www.arin.netStefan Fercot https://pgstef.github.io/aboutpgBackRest sponsors at the time of recording: AWS, Supabase, pgEdge, Tiger Data, Percona, Eon, Xata, Dalibo, Data Egret ~~~ 00:00 – Intro & pgBackRest origin story03:07 – Could pgBackRest live in Postgres core? Why it hasn't happened11:37 – Primary vs. standby backups & corruption safety20:36 – Measuring RPO & RTO in practice26:20 – Checksum performance & S3 storage class tips30:02 – Standby replay bottleneck35:12 – Log shipping, streaming replication, and sharding44:56 – Maintenance reality & the sponsorship crisis47:41 – What's next: repo-to-repo backup & RPO-zero streaming56:00 – Incremental backup1:05:01 – Reliability philosophy1:10:05 – Second maintainer, community growth & wrap-up ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss autovacuum, including what it does, and the basics of why and how to tune it.  Here are some links to things they mentioned:  autovacuum https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/routine-vacuuming.html#AUTOVACUUMautovacuum configuration parameters https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-vacuum.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-AUTOVACUUMWhat’s Missing in Postgres? (our episode with Bruce Momjian) https://postgres.fm/episodes/what-s-missing-in-postgrespg_squeeze (our episode with Antonín Houska) https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_squeezeMy queries to monitor autovacuum (post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/Autovacuum Tuning Basics (post by Tomas Vondra, originally for 2nd Quadrant blog) https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/autovacuum-tuning-basicsZero autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay, Write Storms, and You (post by Jeremy Schneider) https://ardentperf.com/2026/04/12/zero-autovacuum_cost_delay-write-storms-and-you/Our episode on long-running transactions / xmin horizon https://postgres.fm/episodes/long-running-transactions ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by David Ventimiglia to discuss pg_flight_recorder, a new tool he created for monitoring a Postgres database from within. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  David Ventimiglia https://postgres.fm/people/david-ventimigliapg_flight_recorder https://github.com/dventimisupabase/pg_flight_recorderSupabase https://supabase.compg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_samplingpg_ash https://github.com/NikolayS/pg_ashpg_cron https://github.com/citusdata/pg_cronpg_tle https://github.com/aws/pg_tle ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss Nik's new project PgQue, a descendent of Skype's PgQ, for running queue-like workloads in Postgres. Here are some links to things they mentioned:  Our first episode on Queues in Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/queues-in-postgresPgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgqueHN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47817349PgQ https://github.com/pgq/pgqpgmq https://github.com/pgmq/pgmqRiver https://riverqueue.comKeeping a Postgres queue healthy (blog post by Simeon Griggs / PlanetScale) https://planetscale.com/blog/keeping-a-postgres-queue-healthyPostgres Job Queues & Failure By MVCC (blog post by Brandur) https://brandur.org/postgres-queuesMy queries to monitor autovacuum (blog post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/SELECT FOR UPDATE considered harmful (blog post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/select-for-update-considered-harmful-postgresql/Christophe Pettus blog post https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/05/03/pgque-two-snapshots-and-a-diffOur episode on pg_ash https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_ashRediscovering PgQ (Alexander Kukushkin slides) https://speakerdeck.com/cyberdemn/rediscovering-pgqTick frequency tuning https://github.com/NikolayS/PgQue/blob/main/docs/tick-frequency.md ~~~ 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.ai With credit to: Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork