Postgres and Open Source Experts

Anytime. Anywhere. Since 1997.

Blog

pgColumnar 1.0-alpha4 released

2026-09-17

pgColumnar 1.0-alpha4 release notes

Release date: 2026-09-17 Previous release: 1.0-alpha3 (2026-09-02)

pgColumnar is a columnar table access method for PostgreSQL. This is the fourth alpha. Its theme is layout and skipping. A table can now be laid out on the Hilbert curve, which keeps neighbouring keys closer together than Z-order does. A star-schema join now skips fact-table groups and rejects non-matching rows, and it does …

PostgreSQL 19: Sept 08 - Sept 16, 2026

Version 19: 71 commits on REL_19_STABLE. Version 20: 46 commits on master. Reverted out of 19: 74 commits, in 6 reverts. Six features tracked, 2 still shipping. Window closed at d8408e8d682.

Summary

71 commits landed on the 19 branch in nine days. The six reverts in the same window name 74 commits between them.

Six reverts, newest first.

  1. Online data checksum transitions. September 16, Daniel Gustafsson.
  2. UPDATE and DELETE …

Two features just left PostgreSQL 19.

Both reverts landed after Robert Haas asked the pgsql-hackers list on August 25 whether any of six heavily patched features should come out before 19 ships. One of the two was on his list. One was not.

PostgreSQL 14 End of Life: What Are Your Options?

PostgreSQL 14 reaches community end of life on November 12th, 2026. This post covers what EOL actually means and what your options are.

PgColumnar 1.0Alpha2 released

Release date: 2026-08-18

Previous release: 1.0-alpha (2026-08-04)

pgColumnar is a columnar table access method for PostgreSQL. This is the second alpha. It adds read-only Apache Iceberg support, reads and writes over S3-compatible object storage, a maintenance daemon, and a broad round of statistics, planner, performance, and security work. The on-disk native format (PGCN v1) is unchanged; existing tables are read and written as before.

This release requires one …

Parquet and Iceberg: An Overview

A pile of containers is not a shipment. A shipment is containers plus a manifest.

Apache Iceberg is the manifest. It is not a file format, it is a table format: a metadata layer that records exactly which Parquet files make up a table at every point in time. That one idea buys you things we used to think required a warehouse. Transactions on object storage, so writers never corrupt …

The Architect

The Architect

Examine your own work honestly. Which job are you doing? If everything you contributed last quarter could be described as construction, start climbing. Learn the bearing loads. Learn the customer. Learn why the light should come from the east. Develop an opinion about what is beautiful and be ready to defend it. The tools are sitting right there and they have never been cheaper.

Romancing the Claude

He was very tall in a way that seemed apologetic, as if he had been issued the height by mistake and was still trying to give it back. He had a laugh he did not perform. When the moderator asked a genuinely stupid question, Dorian Vale did not smirk at the audience the way the other panelists did. He answered it seriously, and well, and the questioner sat down looking …

Your company is not AI ready

The engineers (myself included) stood on the rooftops and shouted, "People! My dear sheep of the earth, please let me save you from yourselves! Do not buy what the shiny man with the seductive words is selling!"

Direct AI effectiveness: plx example

AI as used by an experienced person with domain knowledge is like having another 5 experienced people doing exactly what you need them to do with minimal intervention.