Zero-Downtime Schema Migrations in PostgreSQL: Expand-Contract, Lock Timeouts, and Safe ALTER TABLE
PostgreSQL takes an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock for most ALTER TABLE operations. That lock conflicts with everything — reads, writes, even
Tag: SQL
MVCC and VACUUM in PostgreSQL: Dead Tuples, Autovacuum Tuning, and What PG18 Changed
Every UPDATE in PostgreSQL is secretly an INSERT-plus-a-tombstone. The old row version stays on disk, fully readable to any transaction
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Reading EXPLAIN ANALYZE: Why Postgres Ignores Your Index
Every slow query investigation eventually reaches the same moment: you run EXPLAIN ANALYZE, and the plan makes no sense. Postgres
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PostgreSQL vs MySQL in 2026: A Practitioner’s Comparison
PostgreSQL versus MySQL is one of the oldest rivalries in software, and like most old rivalries it is mostly narrated
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SQLite in Production: The Database You Already Ship
Most applications don’t need a database server. They need durable, queryable state — and somewhere along the way the industry
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SQL Window Functions in PostgreSQL: Running Totals, Rankings, and the End of Self-Joins
Every reporting query has a moment where GROUP BY stops being enough. You need the aggregate and the row it
Apache Iceberg vs Delta Lake vs Hudi: Choosing Your Lakehouse Table Format
The data lakehouse has gone from contested idea to default architecture in just a few years, and the table format
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PostgreSQL Connection Pooling: PgBouncer Modes, Pitfalls, and Production Config
PostgreSQL connections are expensive. Each backend process consumes roughly 10 MB of resident memory, holds a socket, and runs a
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PostgreSQL Indexing Strategies: Choosing the Right Index for Every Query
Most production performance problems in database-backed applications trace back to the same root cause: missing or misused indexes. Not slow
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Change Data Capture with PostgreSQL and Debezium: Building Reliable Event Pipelines
Every application that updates a database and then does something else — pushes to a search index, invalidates a cache,
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