~postgresweekly | Issue 582 - How 2024 went for Postgres (8)

5. Hacking on PostgreSQL is Really Hard — Robert has consistently been in the top ten committers to Postgres for many years, but this year he reflected on just how intimidating the process of contributing to Postgres can be, especially for newcomers.

3. Can Postgres Replace Redis as a Cache? — Redis is a popular, high performance in-memory data storage server commonly used for caching, but if we can just use Postgres for everything, could Postgres take on the job instead?

4. pgPedia: A Postgres Encyclopedia of Sorts — An interesting, cleanly formatted wiki-esque reference guide to Postgres’ features and settings that complements the official documentation well. Well worth poking around a bit.

Some of My Favorite Things – Postgres Queries — There’s not really any big Postgres news this week, so why not enjoy this festive gift of some (reasonably complex) SQL queries Shane uses to track database usage in various ways, to see unused indexes, to generate a vacuuming report, and more.

pg_incremental: Incremental Data Processing in Postgres — Marco introduces a new Postgres extension offering automated, incremental batch processing for creating reliable processing pipelines. GitHub repo.

1. SQL Query Optimization: A Comprehensive Developer's Guide — A bumper packed post digging into the optimization of SELECT, INSERT, and DELETE queries, covering areas like using indexes, paginating results, avoiding joins, and how window functions can help (or not). Not Postgres-only but written with Postgres in mind.

Building AI Apps on Postgres? Start with pgai — pgai is a PostgreSQL extension that brings more AI workflows to PostgreSQL, like embedding creation and model completion. pgai empowers developers with AI superpowers, making it easier to build search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications.

Optimizing Postgres Table Layout for Maximum Efficiency — The alignment of data within broader data structures has long been an important factor for optimization in low level programming, but it can affect your Postgres tables too. Renato looks at how table layout can impact both storage efficiency and query performance due to how data is arranged and padded on disk.