PostgreSQL

“Database Patterns and How to Find Them” at SCaLE 2023

I’ll be speaking on Database Antipatterns and How to Find Them at SCaLE 2023, March 9-12, 2023 in Pasadena, CA.

“Extreme PostgreSQL” at PgDay/MED

I’m very happy that I’ll be presenting “Extreme PostgreSQL” at PgDay/MED in Malta (yay, Malta!) on 13 April 2023.

Xtreme PostgreSQL!

The slides from my talk at the February 2023 SFPUG Meeting are now available.

Nordic PgDay 2023

I’m very pleased to be talking about real-life logical replication at Nordic PgDay 2023, in beautiful Stockholm.

A foreign key pathology to avoid

There’s a particular anti-pattern in database design that PostgreSQL handles… not very well.

For example, let’s say you are building something like Twitch. (The real Twitch doesn’t work this way! At least, not as far as I know!) So, you have streams, and you have users, and users watch streams. So, let’s do a schema!

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OK, sometimes you can lock tables.

Previously, I wrote that you should never lock tables. And you usually shouldn’t! But sometimes, there’s a good reason to. Here’s one.

When you are doing a schema-modifying operation, like adding a column to a table, PostgreSQL needs to take an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on the table while it is modifying the system catalogs. Unless it needs to

How slow is DECIMAL, anyway?

In PostgreSQL, NUMERIC is a variable length type of fixed precision. You can have as many digits as you want (and you want to pay the storage for). DOUBLE PRECISION is a floating point type, with variable precision.

Sometimes, the question comes up: How much slower is NUMERIC than DOUBLE PRECISION, anyway?

Here’s a quick, highly unscientific

Why submit a paper to PgDay 2020?

If you have something interesting to day about PostgreSQL, we [would love to get a proposal from you]. Even if you have never spoken before, consider responding to the CfP! PgDay 2020 is particularly friendly to first-time and inexperienced speakers. You’re among friends! If you use PostgreSQL, you almost certainly have opinions and experiences that others would love to hear

PgDaySF 2020!

The very first PgDay San Francisco is coming to the Swedish-American Hall on January 21, 2020. It’s going to be an amazing event.

“Look It Up: Practical PostgreSQL Indexing” at Nordic PGDay 2019

The slides from my presentation at PGDay Nordic 2019 are now available.