This blog is about my work on thePostgres open source database, and is published onPlanet PostgreSQL.PgLife allows monitoring of all Postgres community activity.
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New PresentationThursday, September 4, 2025
I just gave a new presentation atPGConf.Brazil titledThree Key Attributes ofPostgres. It is similar to my existingThe Postgres Trajectory talk, but with more of a business and global focus.It also apsql output slide full of puns at the beginning, and hints to the puns at the end. I will be presenting myDatabases in the AI Trenches talk tomorrow.
Presentation UpdatesSunday, July 20, 2025
I regularly update my slides to reflect improvements, corrections, and changes to Postgres. Recently I have made changes to two of my slide decks that I would like to highlight. First, my talkPostgres Scaling Opportunities is a rarely-presented deck about the ways Postgres can be scaled. One thing I always felt diminished the usefulness of that presentation was a clear explanation of why scaling databases is so complex. In 2021, I wrote ablog post about the complexities of database scaling and I recently realized that would be good content to add to theintroductory section of this slide deck, so I have now addedfour slides to cover this.
Second, myDatabases in the AI Trenches has been popular since I first delivered it in January. I always felt thatslide 80 was the most important slide because it pulled together all the previous material. However, the slide wasvery dense and therefore hard to understand. By reordering the items and adding color and section numbers, I think I have improved the slide and its ability to summarize the talk. Ifyou seen the talk already, you might want to review the updated slide 80.
Update: I have added asummary diagram.2025-08-11
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Postgres 18 Release NotesFriday, May 2, 2025
I have just completed the first draft of the Postgres 18release notes. It includes a little developer community feedbackbut still needs morexml markup and links.
The release notefeature count is 206. There is a strong list of optimizer, monitoring, and constraint improvements.Postgres 18 Beta 1 should be released soon. The final Postgres 18 release is planned for September/October of thisyear.
Post a Comment New User Management Presentation OnlineTuesday, April 15, 2025
I wroteUser, User, Who Is the User? in January of 2024, but didn't publish the slides at that time. I wasplanning to publish them once I delivered the presentation, but it has been a year and I have still not delivered the talk, so I decided to publish the slides now.
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Geopolitical PostgresWednesday, April 9, 2025
Postgres is a data storage tool, and as a tool it is neutral in how it is used. Tools can be used for good, for harm, and because Postgres is open source, the community doesn't evenknow how it is used.
My first knowledge of non-traditional uses of Postgres was in 2003 during a Postgrestraining. During a break, someone whispered to me that one of theattendees was from a pornographic video company, and that Postgres was very popular in that industry. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense — many database companiesdidn't want to do business with them, but Postgres was open source so they could use it easily.
The flexibility of Postgres to be used without restrictions didn't become apparent to me again until 2014, when Russia invadedCrimea and fermented awar in Ukraine's Donbas region. Russia was internationallysanctioned, and many technology companiesstopped doing business in Russia, causing Russian companies to scramble for alternatives. Inreaction Russia implemented a nation-wide effort called"import substitution" to replace imported goods and products withlocally produced ones. A logical database alternative was Postgres, for the same reason it was a popular option for pornographic video companies.
Adoption of Postgres in Russia skyrocketed. Existing Russian Postgres companies were suddenly in great demand, and new companies were formed. Theinvasion of Ukraine in 2022 greatly increased Russian sanctions. Today, thoughRussian Postgres community members struggle to attend in-person conferences, there has been littleimpact on theircommunity involvement.
The sanctions on Russia have triggered other countries to consider information technology self-sufficiency. Enterprises in these countries were already switching to Postgres, but thewish to have a data storage tool that that is independent of international sanctions has brought government pressure on these enterprises to speed up their migrations. China, with itsoften-threatenedinvasion of Taiwan, is particularly keen to achieveself-sufficiency. The recent implementation of U.S.tariffs further cemented the valueof software self-sufficiency.
Using Postgres in frowned-up industries or to minimize international sanctions or tariffs are probably not the goals that the designers of open source intended, but they did have theconcept ofunrestricted use. No one can restrict your use of opensource, which is a good thing — no one wants someone else deciding if their software usage is acceptable.
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Wish I Was Wrong AboutTdeSaturday, February 22, 2025
I first blogged about Transparent Data Encryption (tde) in2019, which was more thoroughly analyzed ina blog post in2023. An emailexchange in December 2024 summarized the most up-to-date status of thisfeature:
When I started focusing ontde, it was going to require changes to buffer reads/writes,wal, and require a way to store secret keys. I thought those changeswould be acceptable giventde's security value. Once file I/O changes were required, I think the balance tilted totde requiring too many code changes givenits security value (not policy compliance value).
That analysis was not challenged in the email thread, which makes me conclude that a Postgres core implementation oftde is unlikely in the near future. An interesting emailthreadreply was morephilosophical:
The number of forks [oftde], though, makes me feel this is a "when", not "if" feature. Has there been any other complex feature forked/implemented by so many? Maybecolumnar storage?
This argues that a Postgres core implementation oftde is inevitable since there are few cases where multiple commercial feature implementations have not been eventuallyimplemented in core. A counter argument is thattde might not fit that pattern since its value is mostly regulatory and ease-of-deployment. Time will tell.
Post a Comment New AI Presentation OnlineTuesday, January 28, 2025
I delivered my presentationDatabases in the AI Trenches today as part of a tutorial atPrague PostgreSQL Developer Day, so I have placed my slidesonline. It focuses on semantic search, generative AI, andrag, and builds on my discriminative AI talk,Postgres and the Artificial Intelligence Landscape. I will also be giving this talk onSaturday and theTuesday after that.
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