PostgreSQL version 12 introduced a new option on the VACUUM command, INDEX_CLEANUP. You should (almost) never use it.

First, a quick review of how vacuuming works on PostgreSQL. The primary task of vacuuming is to find dead tuples (tuples that still exist on disk but can’t ever be visible to any transaction anymore), and reclaim them as free

We’ve gone through a lot of detail about locales and collations here, but what should you do when it is time to set up a database? Here is a cookbook with some common scenarios, with recommendations.

In previous installments in this series about locales and collations in PostgreSQL, we’ve made some vague allusions to the speed of the various collation functions. Let’s be a bit more analytical now.

The data here was gathered on a 4GB Linode instance running Ubuntu 24.04 and PostgreSQL 17.1. The test data was 1,000,000 records, each one a string of

In this installment of our series on locales and PostgreSQL, we’ll talk about what can happen with the library that provides locales changes out from under a PostgreSQL database. It’s not pretty.

In our this installment about character encodings, locations, and locales in PostgreSQL, we’re talking about locale providers.

This is the second installment in our discussion of locales, character encodings, and collations in PostgreSQL. In this installment, we’ll talk about character encodings as they relate to PostgreSQL.

If you are not familiar with the quote.

This is part one of a series on PostgreSQL and collations, and how to use them without tears. This is an introduction to the general concepts of glyphs, character encodings, collations, and locales.

I turned the last blog post into a talk; you can get the slides here.

The PostgreSQL roles and privileges system can be full of surprises.

Let’s say we have a database test, owned by user owner. In it, we create a very secret function f that we do not want just anyone to be able to execute:

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test=> select current_user;
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 current_user 
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The slides for my talk “Look It Up: Real-Life Database Indexing” are now available.