Have you traced a sql statement back to the source application? Of course you have! Was it time consuming? Probably! SQL queries can hide in plain sight.

If you've read through any of Crunchy's advice on query performance

One of the most requested features by Crunchy Data customers using modern enterprise database environments is some form of data encryption. However, nailing down exactly what someone means when they say "We need our data encrypted" is often a challenge due to the actual requirements not being fully clarified or even understood. So, before anyone tries to implement database encryption it is critically important to understand what needs to be encrypted and what benefit is actually gained by the methods that are employed. This blog post is not going to discuss any deep technical implementations of encryption. Instead, let's discuss what vectors of attack any given encryption method will mitigate since that will greatly influence which method is effective before you even reach any sort of development or deployment phases.

The application of encryption to a database environment can be broken down into three different methods:

1. Data-At-Rest
2. Data-In-Transit
3. Data-In-Use

For many developers, databases are basically magic. Like Penn & Teller, this blog post is set to break the illusion. Databases are just like any other code, they have algorithms and processes. These algorithms and processes are meant to improve performance, but can cause limitations if they are not expected.

Disclaimer

Recently, there has been a bit of a debate here at Crunchy Data around SQL editors. While some members of the Crunchy Team such as Elizabeth (@e_g_christensen) prefer pgAdmin 4, others such as Craig (@craigkerstiens

Whether upgrading PGO itself, or upgrading the PostgreSQL databases PGO manages, seamless upgrades should be a core feature for any cloud or Kubernetes-based database solution. As a result, one of the goals when we set out to build version five of PGO, the Postgres Operator from Crunchy Data, was to provide a seamless and user-friendly upgrade experience.

Today we’re excited to introduce support for major version PostgreSQL upgrades in PGO v5.1. Using the new PGUpgrade API, you can now seamlessly upgrade your clusters across major versions of PostgreSQL. This means upgrading Postgres is now as easy as submitting a simple custom resource, with PGO handling everything else.

Please join me in walking through an example of this powerful new capability, and see just how easy PGO makes the major version upgrade process!

Create a Cluster

A colleague of mine recently tweeted the following, highlighting the challenges often associated with database upgrades:

Last week had 3 calls before noon of people having difficulty with database upgrades and connection scaling.

Two things that should be staples for a database provider and they had no idea until 6 months in when they tried to upgrade.

As an industry we can build better.

— Craig Kerstiens (@craigkerstiens) March 28, 2022

PostGIS is one of the most awesome extensions for PostgreSQL and can turn a relational database into a really powerful GIS (Geographic Information System). The PostGIS community is really great about documentation and training

Today, I'm excited to announce the public beta of Postgres Container Apps for your Postgres databases on Crunchy Bridge. With Postgres Container Apps you can, from directly inside Postgres with a simple function call, spin up a container that is running right alongside your Postgres database. Let's take an immediate look of how we can spin up a Postgres featureserv:

CREATE EXTENSION pgpodman;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis();
SELECT run_container('-dt -p 5435:7800/tcp -e DATABASE_URL=<DATABASE_URL> docker.io/pramsey/pg_featureserv:latest');

pg_featureserv provides access to the powerful spatial database capabilities of PostGIS and PostgreSQL via a lightweight web service. To do this, it implements the OGC API for Features