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Notes for the problems that show up after launch: bad plans, awkward migrations, index debt, vacuum pressure, replica lag, and the small decisions that make PostgreSQL easier to operate.

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SQL Server MariaDB MySQL pgvector and RAG Indexes Slow Queries Locks and Transactions Backups and Durability Replication and WAL Connections and Pooling CPU, Memory, and I/O Vacuum and Bloat Cloud Providers

February 8, 20265 min read

Transactions Around HTTP Calls in Postgres: Don't

Wrapping a transaction around an external API call sounds careful and is actually one of the worst patterns in production database code.

February 7, 202613 min read

PostgreSQL Backup Strategies: Restores, WAL, and Test Drills

Backups only matter if restore is rehearsed. The real work is choosing RPO/RTO, preserving WAL, testing restores, and knowing what data you can afford to lose.

February 6, 20266 min read

Application-Side Retry Logic for Postgres: What to Retry, What Not To

Most application-side retry logic is wrong. It either retries everything (and corrupts data) or nothing (and surfaces transient failures to users). Here is the right framework.

February 5, 20266 min read

Batch Jobs Against Postgres: Production Traffic With Worse Manners

A batch job that worked fine in dev can saturate production. The fixes are not exotic — chunk size, lock duration, retry budget — but most teams skip them.

February 4, 20266 min read

Postgres as a Job Queue: How SKIP LOCKED Changed the Game

Using a Postgres table as a job queue used to be a recipe for contention. SKIP LOCKED makes it tractable. Here is the pattern that actually scales.

February 3, 20268 min read

Advisory Locks in Postgres: A Simple Tool That Deserves Respect

Advisory locks are useful when the database cannot infer the thing you are protecting. They are also dangerous when session scope, pooling, and lock ordering are treated casually.

February 2, 20265 min read

Postgres Arrays: When They Help and When They Hide a Modeling Problem

Arrays are a Postgres feature that can simplify code and a feature that can lock you into bad design. Here is the rule I use to decide when to reach for them.

February 1, 20266 min read

JSONB vs Relational Columns: The Tradeoff Most Schemas Get Wrong

JSONB is great for things that genuinely vary per row. It is wrong for things that are stable. Most teams use it for both, and pay for it in queries that should have been simple.

January 31, 20269 min read

WAL Monitoring in Postgres: What to Watch Before Disk Becomes the Story

WAL problems usually look like disk problems too late. Monitor generation rate, checkpoints, archiving, replication lag, and slot retention before pg_wal owns the incident.

January 30, 20268 min read

NUMERIC vs DOUBLE PRECISION in Postgres: The Difference That Hides in Money

Use NUMERIC when exactness is the product contract. Use DOUBLE PRECISION when measurement error is already part of the domain and speed matters more than decimal identity.

January 29, 20267 min read

Full-Text Search in Postgres: Good Enough, Until It Isn't

Postgres full-text search is great for the cases it covers and frustrating for the cases it doesn't. Knowing where the line is saves a year of trying to make it do what Elasticsearch does.

January 28, 20268 min read

CITEXT in Postgres: Case-Insensitive Text Without the LOWER Trap

CITEXT is a good fit when a column is almost always compared case-insensitively. It is not a universal Unicode answer, and it is not free.