All Your GUCs in a Row: default_tablespace
Default_tablespace quietly routes tables and indexes to alternate storage — but three quirks can surprise you, and tablespaces themselves are mostly…
default_tablespacedefault_table_access_method
PostgreSQL's table access method interface lets you plug in alternative storage engines.
default_statistics_target
Raise `default_statistics_target` from 100 to 500 and ANALYZE slows down forever — but sometimes that's the right call.
Query planning is a two-job problem: rewrite your SQL into a better shape, then search billions of possible join orders for the cheapest one.
debug_* family
PostgreSQL's dozen `debug_` parameters are its own testing machinery, exposed as runtime settings.
deadlock_timeout
PostgreSQL's `deadlock_timeout` controls how often deadlocks are searched for, not how long a deadlock will be tolerated.
DateStyle
PostgreSQL's DateStyle parameter does two unrelated things at once, which explains why it confuses everyone.
PostgreSQL's query planner gathers statistics one way; Oracle, Db2, MySQL, SQLite, DuckDB, and Snowflake each chose differently.
data_sync_retry
PostgreSQL's fsync() assumption once broke silently across every database in the world. Here's the scar tissue, and why crashing is the safe option.
data_directory_mode
PostgreSQL 11 lets you create a data directory with group read access (0750) instead of owner-only (0700), enabling unprivileged backup processes to copy files…