There is something new you may not have seen in the release notes for Postgres 17. No, not a new feature - I mean inside the actual release notes themselves! The Postgres project uses the git program to track commits to the project, and now each item in the release notes has a link to the actual commit (or multiple commits) that enabled it.

The Postgres hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) is an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to contribute to the PostgreSQL code. The Postgres project does not use PRs (pull requests) or GitHub issues. So if you want to contribute an idea, or help with code reviews, the hackers mailing list is the canonical way to do so. More information on contributing is on the Postgres wiki at: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/So,_you_want_to_be_a_developer

Postgres is an amazing database system, but it does come with a five-year life cycle. This means you need to perform a major upgrade of it at least every five years. Luckily, Postgres ships with the pg_upgrade program, which enables a quick and easy migration from one major version of Postgres to another.

Let's work through an example of how to upgrade - in this case, we will go from Postgres 12 to Postgres 16. You should always aim to go to the highest version possible. Check postgresql.org to see what the current version is. If you get stuck, the official documentation

Strangely quiet around here

My colleague Bob Pacheco asked me to help with a strange problem he was witnessing for a client. A new Postgres cluster was getting created on a Kubernetes

You may have noticed a file called postmaster.pid inside your data directory. This file gets created when Postgres first starts up, and gets removed on a clean shutdown. It seems to contain some random numbers and strings, but what do they all mean?

The file will look like this:

2757
/home/greg/pg/17/data
176540940
5432
/tmp
*
   8675309        12
ready

I’ve nearly finished solving the 2022 series in Advent of Code in PostgreSQL on our blog, many of these are available on our browser based Postgres playground as well. As many of you embark on your own Advent of Code adventures for 2023 this week, or maybe watch from afar, I wanted to pull together some themes, recommendations, tips, and tricks that I’ve seen work with the solutions. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you can solve almost anything with PostgreSQL!

psql holiday presets

Disclaimer

This article will contain spoilers both on how I solved 2022 Day 23's challenge "Unstable Diffusion" using SQL, as well as general ideas on how to approach the problem. I recommend trying to solve it yourself first, using your favorite language.

AOC Day 23

Disclaimer

This article will contain spoilers both on how I solved 2022 Day 22's challenge "Monkey Map" using SQL, as well as general ideas on how to approach the problem. I recommend trying to solve it yourself first, using your favorite language.

AOC Day 22

Disclaimer

This article will contain spoilers both on how I solved 2022 Day 21's challenge "Monkey Math" using SQL, as well as general ideas on how to approach the problem. I recommend trying to solve it yourself first, using your favorite language.

AOC Day 21

Disclaimer

This article will contain spoilers both on how I solved 2022 Day 20's challenge "Grove Positioning System" using SQL, as well as general ideas on how to approach the problem. I recommend trying to solve it yourself first, using your favorite language. Will I get these all posted before next year's AOC starts? Consider it a bonus challenge! :)

AOC Day 20