Nik and Michael are joined by Shaun Thomas to discuss estimating work_mem, memory management in general, and writing an extension to help.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Shaun Thomas https://postgres.fm/people/shaun-thomas
• work_mem https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-resource.html#GUC-WORK-MEM
• pg_stat_database https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-DATABASE-VIEW
• ALTER ROLE SET configuration_parameter https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-alterrole.html#SQL-ALTERROLE-PARAMS-CONFIGURATION-PARAMETER
• hash_mem_multiplier https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-resource.html#GUC-HASH-MEM-MULTIPLIER
• Recent Postgres releases with 28 CVEs fixed https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-186-1711-1615-1519-1424-and-19-beta-3-released-3365/
• Systemic Risks in the Managed PostgreSQL Industry (part 1 of 6, Mehmet Ince) https://mehmetince.net/part-1-6-systemic-risks-in-the-managed-postgresql-industry-extension-risks-are-real-exploiting-postgis-memory-corruption-bug-at-neondb-supabase-and-many-more/
• Improving Postgres Connection Scalability: Snapshots (blog post by Andres Freund) https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/adforpostgresql/improving-postgres-connection-scalability-snapshots/1806462

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Michael Malis, co-creator of pgrust, to discuss their Postgres rewrite, including reliability problems, compatibility testing, faster analytics, and a new JIT-compiled query engine.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Michael Malis https://postgres.fm/people/michael-malis
• pgrust https://github.com/malisper/pgrust 
• The four horsemen behind Postgres outages (blog post by Michael Malis) https://malisper.me/the-four-horsemen-behind-thousands-of-postgres-outages
• Rebuilding Postgres for faster analytics: batching, operator fusion, and SIMD (blog post by Michael Malis) https://malisper.me/how-we-made-postgres-hundreds-of-times-faster-the-query-engine/
• kani https://github.com/model-checking/kani
• Antithesis https://antithesis.com
• fsyncgate mailing list thread https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAMsr%2BYHh%2B5Oq4xziwwoEfhoTZgr07vdGG%2Bhu%3D1adXx59aTeaoQ%40mail.gmail.com
• How AI Changes the Economics of JIT Compilers (blog post by Michael Malis) https://malisper.me/how-ai-changes-the-economics-of-jit-compilers/
• Umbra DB https://umbra-db.com

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Radim Marek to discuss MVCC, including his recent article on how Postgres chose to implement it compared to other systems.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Radim Marek https://postgres.fm/people/radim-marek
• BoringSQL https://boringsql.com
• PostgreSQL's MVCC is bad. So is everyone else's (blog post by Radim) https://boringsql.com/posts/mvcc-bad-bad/
• PostgreSQL MVCC documentation https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/mvcc-intro.html
• PostgreSQL Storage Internals series by Radim https://boringsql.com/guides/postgresql-storage-internals/
• PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque
• The next ten years of Postgres (talk slides by Álvaro Herrera) https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfde2026/sessions/session/7744/slides/866/edb-keynote-pgconfde-2026.pdf
• Episode on RegreSQL https://postgres.fm/episodes/regresql
• DryRun MCP https://github.com/boringsql/dryrun

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Tudor Golubenco, CTO of Xata, to discuss their architecture, progress, and open source tooling.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Tudor Golubenco https://postgres.fm/people/tudor-golubenco
• Xata https://xata.io
• Xata is now open source https://xata.io/blog/xata-is-now-open-source
• DBLab Engine https://postgres.ai/docs/database-lab
• pgstream https://github.com/xataio/pgstream
• Xata acquires Privacy Dynamics for advanced anonymization https://xata.io/blog/xata-acquires-privacy-dynamics
• Tonic AI https://www.tonic.ai
• A thousand Postgres branches for one dollar https://xata.io/blog/a-thousand-postgres-branches-for-1
• pgroll https://github.com/xataio/pgroll
• CloudNativePG https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pg
• PGSimCity https://nikolays.github.io/PGSimCity
• DeltaX https://github.com/xataio/deltax

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Qian Li and Peter Kraft to talk about DBOS, an open source platform for durable workflows built on Postgres. 
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Qian Li https://postgres.fm/people/qian-li
• Peter Kraft https://postgres.fm/people/peter-kraft
• DBOS https://www.dbos.dev
• Temporal https://temporal.io
• Gadget's use of Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/gadgets-use-of-postgres
• Postgres LISTEN/NOTIFY blog post from Recall AI https://www.recall.ai/blog/postgres-listen-notify-does-not-scale
• Postgres 19 commit that improves LISTEN/NOTIFY, avoiding waking backends that have no need to process the notification messages https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=282b1cde9
•  PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque
• pg_durable https://github.com/microsoft/pg_durable
• Absurd https://github.com/earendil-works/absurd
• LISTEN/NOTIFY performance considerations (docs patch submitted by Nik) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAM527d8oDVb2K%2BtTjpjLkd7g14HLDiwwnvv%3Drcn4BMEs%3DMatkQ%40mail.gmail.com#1b6fa752a96aad22bd8ef794fbaf3ea1

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by Fabrízio Mello to discuss his new extension pg_stat_log.

Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Fabrízio Mello https://postgres.fm/people/fabrizio-de-royes-mello
• Timbira https://www.timbira.com.br
• PlanetScale https://planetscale.com
• pg_stat_log https://github.com/fabriziomello/pg_stat_log
• Custom Cumulative Statistics (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/xfunc-c.html#XFUNC-ADDIN-CUSTOM-CUMULATIVE-STATISTICS
• Custom Cumulative Statistics (wiki page) https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CustomCumulativeStats
• logerrors https://github.com/munakoiso/logerrors
• pgFouine https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/projects/pgFoundry/pgfouine/pgFouine
• pgBadger https://github.com/darold/pgbadger
• pg_stat_checkpointer https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-CHECKPOINTER-VIEW
• pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling
• RFC: pg_stat_logmsg (patch proposal by Joe Conway) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/89742024-d51a-c66b-90b9-67f837072cd2%40joeconway.com

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by David Steele to talk all things pgBackRest.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• David Steele https://postgres.fm/people/david-steele
• pgBackRest https://pgbackrest.org
• pg_basebackup https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.html
• Barman https://pgbarman.org
• pgmoneta https://github.com/pgmoneta/pgmoneta
• WAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g
• Return pg_control from pg_backup_stop (patch proposal) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/86436ff9-eb98-4c8a-825e-3bcae022107b%40pgbackrest.org#e36e2ad2f410d1a9a1152e36aa66bb48
• Add StorageReadMulti for prefetched multi-file/range reads from object stores (pgBackRest change that needs review) https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest/pull/2783
• pg_hardstorage https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pg_hardstorage
• Why the cycle of open-source sustainability needs to be virtuous (blog post by Gabriele Bartolini) https://www.gabrielebartolini.it/articles/2026/04/why-the-cycle-of-open-source-sustainability-needs-to-be-virtuous
• ARIN https://www.arin.net
• Stefan Fercot https://pgstef.github.io/about
• pgBackRest sponsors at the time of recording: AWS, Supabase, pgEdge, Tiger Data, Percona, Eon, Xata, Dalibo, Data Egret

~~~

00:00 – Intro & pgBackRest origin story
03:07 – Could pgBackRest live in Postgres core? Why it hasn't happened
11:37 – Primary vs. standby backups & corruption safety
20:36 – Measuring RPO & RTO in practice
26:20 – Checksum performance & S3 storage class tips
30:02 – Standby replay bottleneck
35:12 – Log shipping, streaming replication, and sharding
44:56 – Maintenance reality & the sponsorship crisis
47:41 – What's next: repo-to-repo backup & RPO-zero streaming
56:00 – Incremental backup
1:05:01 – Reliability philosophy
1:10:05 – Second maintainer, community growth & wrap-up

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss autovacuum, including what it does, and the basics of why and how to tune it. 
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• autovacuum https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/routine-vacuuming.html#AUTOVACUUM
• autovacuum configuration parameters https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-vacuum.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-AUTOVACUUM
• What’s Missing in Postgres? (our episode with Bruce Momjian) https://postgres.fm/episodes/what-s-missing-in-postgres
• pg_squeeze (our episode with Antonín Houska) https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_squeeze
• My queries to monitor autovacuum (post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/
• Autovacuum Tuning Basics (post by Tomas Vondra, originally for 2nd Quadrant blog) https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/autovacuum-tuning-basics
• Zero autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay, Write Storms, and You (post by Jeremy Schneider) https://ardentperf.com/2026/04/12/zero-autovacuum_cost_delay-write-storms-and-you/
• Our episode on long-running transactions / xmin horizon https://postgres.fm/episodes/long-running-transactions

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael are joined by David Ventimiglia to discuss pg_flight_recorder, a new tool he created for monitoring a Postgres database from within.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• David Ventimiglia https://postgres.fm/people/david-ventimiglia
• pg_flight_recorder https://github.com/dventimisupabase/pg_flight_recorder
• Supabase https://supabase.com
• pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling
• pg_ash https://github.com/NikolayS/pg_ash
• pg_cron https://github.com/citusdata/pg_cron
• pg_tle https://github.com/aws/pg_tle

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Nik and Michael discuss Nik's new project PgQue, a descendent of Skype's PgQ, for running queue-like workloads in Postgres.
 
Here are some links to things they mentioned: 

• Our first episode on Queues in Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/queues-in-postgres
• PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque
• HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47817349
• PgQ https://github.com/pgq/pgq
• pgmq https://github.com/pgmq/pgmq
• River https://riverqueue.com
• Keeping a Postgres queue healthy (blog post by Simeon Griggs / PlanetScale) https://planetscale.com/blog/keeping-a-postgres-queue-healthy
• Postgres Job Queues & Failure By MVCC (blog post by Brandur) https://brandur.org/postgres-queues
• My queries to monitor autovacuum (blog post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/
• SELECT FOR UPDATE considered harmful (blog post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/select-for-update-considered-harmful-postgresql/
• Christophe Pettus blog post https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/05/03/pgque-two-snapshots-and-a-diff
• Our episode on pg_ash https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_ash
• Rediscovering PgQ (Alexander Kukushkin slides) https://speakerdeck.com/cyberdemn/rediscovering-pgq
• Tick frequency tuning https://github.com/NikolayS/PgQue/blob/main/docs/tick-frequency.md

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

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

~~~

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!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork