Drinking Games with PostgreSQL: GIN and RUM

Fulltext support is a very important feature of most modern relational databases. For one, they enable fast information retrieval and for another, they simply allow application designers and operators to remain inside the known relational world. No need for a second database-like system, no need for additional maintenance, no need for yet another library, no need for a fundamentally different query language. You get the point.

Starting with version 8.3, PostgreSQL supports the tsvector and tsquery constructs and with it indexing support for the matching operator. This post will cover more of those indexing technology which we can utilize for accelerating regular expressions, LIKE-queries, fulltext and even JSON-related queries.

PostgreSQL: production-ready Hash Indexes

Up to PostgreSQL 9.6, hash indexes were second class. Using them in production was not recommended; they weren't crash-safe. That's going to change with PostgreSQL 10. And here's what's gonna change.

CI Done Right

Broken.

Recently, some people have had some serious issues with a broken setuptools release [1, 2, 3]. One special complain was about broken CI systems just because of this central package. Replying to those reactions, I had a conversation via twitter about certain design decisions of continuous integration [4, 5].

In this post, I want to assemble part of my personal experience in building those systems for the last couple of years. The result should be a little cozy guideline for those setting up their CI system and CD system within a corporate environment.

PostgreSQL 10 is on its way

A multitude of features and fascinating details.

The next major release of PostgreSQL is on its way. It's a huge release in terms of features, improvements and bugfixes.

First things first

Versioning has been changed to a simpler scheme using only two numbers: major and minor version. So, this will be PostgreSQL 10 followed by 10.1 and 10.2 and so on. Okay, now let's get to the real deal 😉

PostgreSQL 9.6 Released

We are finally there. There is a new major version of PostgreSQL - 9.6.

Here are the news, so go ahead and read what they've done for the community. It's just great!

Cheers!

PostgreSQL: Optimizing Aggregates

Aggregation of vast energy: our sun.

It's time to write about PostgreSQL 9.6 again. With the Release Candidate 1 out in the wild, we slowly approach the end of a very interesting development cycle. Here I would like to talk about the development in the field of aggregates. So, two commits, 9/552 and 9/435, will improve the performance of queries using aggregate functions and GROUP BY clauses:

Followup: systemd user instances

In this last post, I wrote about how to fix systemd user instances for older/broken systemd versions. Here, I'd like to explain how we managed to get the solution for, say, more than a single host where you can't do those changes by hand (at least not while keeping you sane and your customers happy).

In order to keep track here, we need to do the following: