Postgres FM | pg_wait

April 24, 2026 • 44 Minutes

pg_wait_tracer

Nik and Michael are joined by Dmitry Fomin to discuss his new tool pg_wait_tracer, as well as changes that could be made to core to allow wait event tracing with lower overhead, and on managed services.

Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Dmitry Fomin https://postgres.fm/people/dmitry-fomin
pg_wait_tracer https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_wait_tracer
pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling
pg_10046 https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_10046
Jeremy Schneider reply on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7414966981847748608
RDS for PostgreSQL wait event docs https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/PostgreSQL.Tuning.concepts.summary.html
Custom wait events for extensions (added in PostgreSQL 17) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/xfunc-c.html#XFUNC-ADDIN-WAIT-EVENTS
Hacking Postgres with Dmitry, Kirk, and Nik (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gtuc2lnnsE
Hacking Postgres with Dmitry, Kirk, and Nik (Part 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kqpjnpl5Gc
Tanel Poder https://tanelpoder.com/about/
USDT static tracepoints for wait event tracing (proof of concept by Nik) https://github.com/NikolayS/postgres/pull/18
Add wait_event_timing: Oracle-style wait event instrumentation (patch by Dmitry) https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/postgres/pull/1
PgQue benchmarks https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque/blob/main/docs/benchmarks.md
The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation and Modeling (by Raj K. Jain) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259310412_The_Art_of_Computer_Systems_Performance_Analysis_Techniques_For_Experimental_Design_Measurement_Simulation_and_Modeling_NY_Wiley
Performance modeling and design of computer systems queueing theory in action (by Prof. Mor Harchol-Balter) https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/PerformanceModeling/book.html
Oracle Performance Firefighting (by Craig_Shallahamer) https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780984102303/Oracle-Performance-Firefighting-Craig-Shallahamer-0984102302/plp
Process Mining: Data Science in Action (by Wil van der Aalst) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-49851-4

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What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

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