· 3 min · PostgreSQL

All Your GUCs in a Row: application_name

Set application_name in every connection string. It's the cheapest observability win PostgreSQL offers—one GUC that makes 2am debugging actually possible.

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· 10 min · PostgreSQL

PREEMPT_NONE Is Dead; Your Postgres Probably Doesn’t Care

A blue elephant and a penguin are examining a large pile of electronics in dismay. Linux 7.0 doesn't halve Postgres throughput—but a 96-vCPU benchmark without huge pages does.

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· 3 min · PostgreSQL

Async I/O in PostgreSQL 19: The Year After

PostgreSQL 19 brings self-tuning worker pools and read-ahead improvements to async I/O, plus EXPLAIN ANALYZE (IO) to finally see what's happening under the…

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· 2 min · PostgreSQL

All your GUCs in a row: allow_system_table_mods

A GUC with a dire warning: `allow_system_table_mods` lets superusers edit PostgreSQL's system catalogs, and the docs say it can cause irretrievable data loss.

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· 6 min · PostgreSQL

Give Us Access, Already

A rusty padlack symbolizing the lack of access to a database system. Hiring a PostgreSQL consultant without giving them database access defeats the purpose.

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· 2 min · PostgreSQL

All your GUCs in a row: allow_in_place_tablespaces

allow_in_place_tablespaces This obscure PostgreSQL setting exists only for the test suite to simulate replication on a single machine. You will never need it in production.

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· 6 min · PostgreSQL

Hints, Part 3: Advice, Not Orders

PostgreSQL 19 proposes `pg_plan_advice`: a pluggable plan-advice mechanism that lets you capture plan shapes via EXPLAIN and apply them without touching SQL.

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· 2 min · PostgreSQL

All your GUCs in a row: allow_alter_system

PostgreSQL 17 added allow_alter_system to prevent accidental configuration drift when superusers reach for ALTER SYSTEM instead of your configuration…

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· 5 min · PostgreSQL

Hints, Part 2: Features We Do Not Want

PostgreSQL has officially rejected Oracle-style hints for two decades.

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· 4 min · PostgreSQL

Hints, Part 1: The State of the Art Everywhere But Here

Query hints exist in every major database except PostgreSQL — until now.

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