Michael Christofides
Founder of pgMustard
Appears in 89 Episodes
Auditing
Nikolay and Michael discuss auditing — why we might want it, what the options are, and even an idea for a future solution...
Copying a database
Nikolay and Michael discuss copying a database — what the various options are, how to copy large databases, and some pointers on performance.
Transaction ID wraparound
Nikolay and Michael discuss transaction ID wraparound — what it is, and some ideas to minimise the risk of it ever happening to you!
Postgres year in review 2022
Nikolay and Michael discuss some highlights from the Postgres ecosystem this year — including exciting startups, educational resources, sharding, and more.
Row estimates
Nikolay and Michael discuss planner row estimation — how it can cause performance issues, how to spot problems, and various options we have to fix them.
Replication
Nikolay takes Michael through the different replication options for Postgres — looking at different use cases, the options for each, and some things to be careful with.
Timestamps
Nikolay and Michael discuss timestamps and time math in Postgres — particularly around data type choice, functions available, and some things to watch out for.
PostgREST
Nikolay and Michael discuss PostgREST (and some similar projects) — what it is, as well as the pros and cons of using it.
Materialized views
Nikolay and Michael discuss materialized views — what they are, the pros/cons, and some areas they can improve (and hopefully will!)
HOT updates
Nikolay and Michael discuss Heap-Only Tuple (HOT) updates — what they are, the benefits, and things you can do to optimize for them.
Database branching
Nikolay and Michael discuss database branching — how to define it, and the current state of tools and approaches.
Version control for databases
Nikolay and Michael discuss database schema version control — what we've seen, some options, and where we'd like to see improvements.
Contributing to Postgres
Nikolay and Michael discuss contributing to Postgres — whether to the code, or in other ways.
Stored procedures
Nikolay and Michael discuss the age-old topic of implementing business logic on the database side versus the application side.
PostgreSQL 15
Nikolay and Michael discuss PostgreSQL 15 which was released yesterday! We go through our favourite features and some other ones that caught our eye.
102 Query optimization
Nikolay and Michael discuss the next step of query optimization work — the difficult topic of how to verify your changes won't make other things worse.
Why is Postgres popular?
Nikolay and Michael discuss why (and how) Postgres has been gaining popularity in recent years.
Index maintenance
Nikolay and Michael discuss index maintenance — how do we know if or when we need it, and what we need to do.
Query macro analysis intro
Nikolay and Michael discuss query macro analysis — at the whole system level as opposed to an individual query.
WAL and checkpoint tuning
Nikolay talks Michael through a host of nuances about WAL and checkpoint tuning.
Intro to query optimization
Nikolay and Michael discuss query optimization — specifically for a single query, not at the system level.
How to become a DBA
Michael and Nikolay discuss various tasks, expectations, and roles involved in both junior and senior DBA roles, as well as some good learning resources to help along ...
Monitoring checklist
Nikolay takes us through a checklist of important things to monitor, while Michael tries to keep up.
Vacuum
Nikolay and Michael discuss vacuum — what it is, why we need it, some improvements in recent years, and even a creative use for vacuum full.
NULLs: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the unknown
Nikolay and Michael discuss NULLs — including some problems they can cause, a new feature coming in Postgres 15, and some learning resources we like.
BUFFERS by default
Nikolay and Michael discuss BUFFERS — what they are, how they can be very useful for query optimisation, and whether they should be on by default (spoiler alert, we th...
BRIN indexes
Nikolay and Michael discuss BRIN indexes — how are they different to the default B-Tree index, when are they useful, and how they've improved in PostgreSQL 14.
Managed services vs. DIY
Nikolay and Michael discuss some options for hosting Postgres — what are the main reasons for going for a managed service, versus managing it in-house (DIY).
Slow queries and slow transactions
Nikolay and Michael introduce Postgres FM, and then discuss slow queries and slow transactions — what counts as slow, how can we monitor them, and what have we seen in...