Best Michael Christofides Podcasts (2025)

1
Managed service support 35:37

1h ago35:37

35:37

Nikolay and Michael discuss managed service support — some tips on how to handle cases that aren't going well, tips for requesting features, whether to factor in support when choosing service provider, and whether to use one at all. Here are some links to things they mentioned: YugabyteDB’s new upgrade framework https://www.yugabyte.com/blog/postgr…

1
Time-series considerations 42:42

12d ago42:42

42:42

Nikolay and Michael discuss time-series considerations for Postgres — including when it matters, some tips for avoiding issues, performance considerations, and more. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Time series data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_series TimescaleDB https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb 13 Tips to Improve Postgre…

1
Performance cliffs 38:08

19d ago38:08

38:08

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Tomas Vondra to discuss single query performance cliffs — what they are, why they happen, some things we can do to make them less likely or less severe, and some potential improvements to Postgres that could help. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Tomas Vondra https://postgres.fm/people/tomas-vondra Whe…

1
PgDog 48:34

26d ago48:34

48:34

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Lev Kokotov to discuss PgDog — including whether or when sharding is needed, the origin story (via PgCat), what's already supported, and what's coming next. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Lev Kokotov https://postgres.fm/people/lev-kokotov PgDog https://github.com/pgdogdev/pgdog PgCat https://github.c…

1
Snapshots 44:05

1M ago44:05

44:05

Nikolay talks Michael through using cloud snapshots — how they can be used to reduce RTO for huge Postgres setups, also to improve provisioning time, and some major catches to be aware of. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Snapshots on RDS https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_CreateSnapshot.html pgBackRest https:/…

1
GIN Indexes 40:59

1M ago40:59

40:59

Nikolay and Michael discuss GIN indexes in Postgres — what they are, what they're used for, and some limitations to be aware of. Here are some links to things they mentioned: GIN Indexes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/gin.html Generalized Search Trees for Database Systems (Hellerstein, Naughton, Pfeffer) https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/vld…

1
Best Practices 40:49

2M ago40:49

40:49

Nikolay and Michael use a recent "best practices" article as a prompt — giving a few tips each on the topics mentioned, like schema design, performance, backups, and more. Here are some links to things they mentioned: 7 Crucial PostgreSQL Best Practices (recent blog post) https://speakdatascience.com/postgresql-best-practices “Don't do this” episod…

1
Extended Statistics 32:41

2M ago32:41

32:41

Nikolay and Michael discuss the CREATE STATISTICS feature in Postgres — what it's for, how often it's used, and how to spot cases where it would help. Here are some links to things they mentioned: CREATE STATISTICS https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-createstatistics.html citext https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/citext.html Statistics…

1
SQL vs NoSQL 50:01

2M ago50:01

50:01

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Franck Pachot to discuss SQL vs NoSQL — did Franck change teams by joining MongoDB, normalisation vs denormalisation, developer experience, NULLs, and more! Here are some links to things they mentioned: Franck Pachot https://postgres.fm/people/franck-pachot Franck's workshop at PGConf India https://pgconf.in/confer…

1
Return of the BUFFERS 51:46

3M ago51:46

51:46

Nikolay and Michael return to the topic of BUFFERS for the third (and final?) time! They discuss the news that it'll be on by default with EXPLAIN ANALYZE in Postgres 18, and what effect that might have. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Our first BUFFERS episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/buffers-by-default Our second BUFFERS episode…

1
Reads causing writes 26:48

3M ago26:48

26:48

Nikolay and Michael discuss a couple of surprising ways read queries (selects) can cause writes (shared buffers dirtied) in Postgres. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Reads causing writes in Postgres (post by Alex Jesipow) https://jesipow.com/blog/postgres-reads-cause-writes/ Exploring how SELECT queries can produce disk writes (post b…

1
NOT VALID constraints 33:56

3M ago33:56

33:56

Nikolay and Michael discuss adding constraints in an online fashion, using NOT VALID and then VALIDATE CONSTRAINT. Here are some links to things they mentioned: ADD table_constraint NOT VALID https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-altertable.html#SQL-ALTERTABLE-DESC-ADD-TABLE-CONSTRAINT Our episode on zero-downtime migrations https://postgres.…

1
pg_squeeze 36:26

3M ago36:26

36:26

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Antonín Houska to discuss pg_squeeze — what it is, how it started, some of its features, and hopes of getting the functionality into core. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Antonín Houska https://postgres.fm/people/antonin-houska pg_squeeze https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pg_squeeze Cybertec http…

1
pg_duckdb 40:08

4M ago40:08

40:08

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Joe Sciarrino and Jelte Fennema-Nio to discuss pg_duckdb — what it is, how it started, what early users are using it for, and what they're working on next. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Joe Sciarrino https://postgres.fm/people/joe-sciarrino Jelte Fennema-Nio https://postgres.fm/people/jelte-fennema-…

1
RLS vs performance 40:48

4M ago40:48

40:48

Nikolay and Michael discuss Row Level Security in Postgres, focussing on the performance side effects and some tips to avoid (or minimize) them. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Row Security Policies (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-rowsecurity.html 7+ million Postgres tables (recent talk by Kailash Nadh) https://www.…

1
jOOQ 50:31

4M ago50:31

50:31

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Lukas Eder, the creator of jOOQ, to discuss what it is, some nice developer experience features it has, and some fun things he's come across from a Postgres perspective. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Lukas Eder https://postgres.fm/people/lukas-eder jOOQ https://www.jooq.org/ DSL https://en.wikipedia…

1
Column Tetris 41:06

5M ago41:06

41:06

Nikolay and Michael discuss "Column Tetris" — what it is, why it matters, how to order columns for new tables, and how to re-organise existing ones. Here are some links to things they mentioned: “Column Tetris” by Erwin Brandstetter on Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2966524/calculating-and-saving-space-in-postgresql/7431468#7431…

1
pg_stat_statements track_planning 37:55

5M ago37:55

37:55

Nikolay and Michael discuss the track_planning parameter of pg_stat_statements — what it is, how it affects performance, and when or whether you should switch it on. Here are some links to things they mentioned: pg_stat_statements.track_planning https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.html#id-1.11.7.40.9.2.4.1.3 Our episode about p…

1
Is pg_dump a backup tool? 48:44

5M ago48:44

48:44

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek and Robert Haas to discuss both the technical question of whether or not pg_dump is a backup tool, as well as the tone and intent behind the statement "pg_dump is not a backup tool". Here are some links to things they mentioned: Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek https://postgres.fm/people/gulcin-yildi…

1
Append-only tables 44:07

5M ago44:07

44:07

Nikolay and Michael discuss append-only tables in Postgres — what they are, some unique challenges they bring, and some options for compressing / removing / offloading the data eventually. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Append-only https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Append-only Our episode on BRIN indexes https://postgres.fm/episodes/brin…

1
Denormalization 35:08

6M ago35:08

35:08

Nikolay and Michael discuss denormalization in Postgres — when and why to denormalize things, and a couple of specific cases Nikolay came across recently. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Denormalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormalization Our episode on materialized views https://postgres.fm/episodes/materialized-views Our e…

1
Postgres online communities 38:09

6M ago38:09

38:09

Nikolay and Michael discuss online Postgres communities — the ones they prefer, the types of conversations in each, and some other places to ask questions or follow news. Here are some links to things they mentioned: https://www.postgresql.org/community Mailing lists https://www.postgresql.org/list IRC https://www.postgresql.org/community/irc Slack…

1
Advanced psql 52:37

6M ago52:37

52:37

Nikolay and Michael discuss some cool things you can do with psql, the official CLI that ships with Postgres. Here are some links to things they mentioned: psql docs https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-psql.html Our episode on psql vs GUIs https://postgres.fm/episodes/psql-vs-guis postgres_dba https://github.com/NikolayS/postgres_dba Our ep…

1
Postgres Gotchas 40:19

6M ago40:19

40:19

Nikolay and Michael discuss some Postgres Gotchas, things you might expect to work one way in fact working another way. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Our episode on NULLs https://postgres.fm/episodes/nulls-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-unknown Postgres Gotchas (list by Ian Barwick) https://sql-info.de/postgresql/postgres-gotchas…

1
Advanced EXPLAIN 48:47

7M ago48:47

48:47

Nikolay and Michael discuss some more advanced topics around EXPLAIN, including some tips for complex query plans, some recent improvements, and an idea or two that might make it even better. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Michael’s solo episode on EXPLAIN basics https://postgres.fm/episodes/explain Our episode on auto_explain https:…

1
Patroni 45:33

7M ago45:33

45:33

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Alexander Kukushkin, PostgreSQL contributor and maintainer of Patroni, to discuss all things Patroni — what it is, how it works, recent improvements, and more. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Alexander Kukushkin https://postgres.fm/people/alexander-kukushkin Patroni https://github.com/patroni/patroni …

1
Postgres 17 42:03

7M ago42:03

42:03

Nikolay and Michael discuss the fresh new Postgres 17 release! They cover several performance improvements, favourite new features, and some considerations for upgrading. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Postgres 17 release notes https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/release-17.html transaction_timeout episode https://postgres.fm/episodes…

1
Planning time 42:17

7M ago42:17

42:17

Nikolay and Michael discuss planning time in Postgres — what it is, how to spot issues, its relationship to things like partitioning, and some tips for avoiding issues. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Query Planning (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-query.html Are there limits to partition counts? (Blog pos…

1
Slow count 43:25

8M ago43:25

43:25

Nikolay and Michael discuss why counting can be slow in Postgres, and what the options are for counting things quickly at scale. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Aggregate functions (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-aggregate.html PostgREST https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest Get rid of count by default in Pos…

1
Skip scan 57:49

8M ago57:49

57:49

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Peter Geoghegan, major contributor and committer to Postgres, to discuss adding skip scan support to PostgreSQL over versions 17 and 18. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Peter Geoghegan https://postgres.fm/people/peter-geoghegan Peter’s previous (excellent) interview on Postgres TV https://www.youtube.…

1
Postgres Emergency Room 45:27

8M ago45:27

45:27

Nikolay and Michael discuss PostgreSQL emergencies — both the psychological side of incident management, and some technical aspects too. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Site Reliability Engineering resources from Google https://sre.google GitLab Handbook SRE https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/infrastructure/site-reli…

1
Get or Create 50:19

8M ago50:19

50:19

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Haki Benita, a technical lead and database enthusiast who writes an excellent blog and gives popular talks and training sessions too, to discuss the surprisingly complex topic of trying to implement “get or create” in PostgreSQL — handling issues around idempotency, concurrency, and bloat. Here are some links to th…

1
Getting started with benchmarking 56:32

8M ago56:32

56:32

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Melanie Plageman, database internals engineer at Microsoft and major contributor and committer to PostgreSQL, to discuss getting started with benchmarking — how it differs for users and developers of Postgres, how and when it comes up during development, some tools and lessons, as well as what she's working on at t…

1
Index-Only Scans 39:15

9M ago39:15

39:15

Nikolay and Michael discuss Index-Only Scans in Postgres — what they are, how they help, some things to look out for, and some advice. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Index-Only Scans and Covering Indexes (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/indexes-index-only-scans.html Discussion on Twitter about JIT and Parallel Query def…

1
Why Postgres? 41:00

9M ago41:00

41:00

Nikolay and Michael discuss why they chose Postgres — as users, for their businesses, for their careers, as well as some doubts. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Our episode on why Postgres become popular https://postgres.fm/episodes/why-is-postgres-popular Database Systems: The Complete Book (by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman, and …

1
Compression 45:16

9M ago45:16

45:16

Nikolay and Michael discuss compression in Postgres — what's available natively, newer algorithms in recent versions, and several extensions with compression features. Here are some links to things they mentioned: wal_compression https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-wal.html#GUC-WAL-COMPRESSION Our episode on WAL and checkpoint tu…

1
Out of disk 43:26

9M ago43:26

43:26

Nikolay and Michael discuss Postgres running out of disk space — including what happens, what can cause it, how to recover, and most importantly, how to prevent it from happening in the first place. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Disk Full (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/disk-full.html pgcompacttable https://github.com…

1
Postgres startup ecosystem 35:42

10M ago35:42

35:42

Nikolay and Michael discuss the Postgres startup ecosystem — some recent closures, some recent fundraising announcements, and their thoughts on where things are going and what they'd like to see. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Prediction from Dax Raad https://x.com/thdxr/status/1808972166752580039 OtterTune shut down https://x.com/an…

1
Four million TPS 45:50

10M ago45:50

45:50

Nikolay talks Michael through a recent experiment to find the current maximum transactions per second single-node Postgres can achieve — why he was looking into it, what bottlenecks occurred along the way, and ideas for follow up experiments. Here are some links to things they mentioned: How many TPS can we get from a single Postgres node? (Article…

1
Soft delete 37:40

10M ago37:40

37:40

Nikolay and Michael discuss soft deletion in Postgres — what it means, several use cases, some implementation options, and which implementations suit which use cases. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Soft deletion probably isn't worth it (blog post by Brandur) https://brandur.org/soft-deletion Easy alternative soft deletion (blog post …

1
Should we use foreign keys? 51:21

10M ago51:21

51:21

Nikolay and Michael discuss foreign keys in Postgres — what they are, their benefits, their overhead, some edge cases to be aware of, some improvements coming, and whether or not they generally recommend using them. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Foreign keys (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-constraints.html#DDL-CON…

1
pgvectorscale 55:27

11M ago55:27

55:27

Nikolay is joined by Mat Arye and John Pruitt, from Timescale, to discuss their new extension pgvectorscale and high-performance vector search in Postgres more generally. Main links: https://github.com/timescale/pgvectorscale https://www.timescale.com/blog/pgvector-vs-pinecone https://postgres.fm/people/matvey-arye https://postgres.fm/people/john-p…

1
To 100TB, and beyond! 47:42

11M ago47:42

47:42

Michael and Nikolay are joined by three special guests for episode 100 who have all scaled Postgres to significant scale — Arka Ganguli from Notion, Sammy Steele from Figma, and Derk van Veen from Adyen. They cover how their setup has evolved, what their plans are for the future, and get into the weeds of some fun and interesting challenges along t…

1
Sponsoring the community 32:17

11M ago32:17

32:17

Michael is joined by Claire Giordano, Head of Postgres Open Source Community Initiatives at Microsoft, to discuss several ways to contribute to the Postgres community — from core contributions, to extensions, to events, and (of course) podcasts. Here are some links to things they mentioned: What’s new with Postgres at Microsoft (blog post by Claire…

1
Full text search 50:20

11M ago50:20

50:20

Nikolay and Michael discuss full text search in Postgres — some of the history, some of the features, and whether it now makes sense to try to replace or combine it with semantic search. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Full Text Search https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/textsearch.html tsearch2 https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6…

1
Minor releases 39:46

11M ago39:46

39:46

Nikolay and Michael discuss Postgres minor releases — how the schedule works, options for upgrading to them, and the importance of reading the release notes. Here are some links to things they mentioned: PostgreSQL 16.3, 15.7, 14.12, 13.15, and 12.19 released (announcement) https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-163-157-1412-1315-and-1219…

1
Custom vs generic plan 29:00

12M ago29:00

29:00

Nikolay and Michael discuss custom and generic planning in prepared statements — how it works, how issues can present themselves, some ways to view the generic plan, and some benefits of avoiding planning (not just time). Here are some links to things they mentioned: PREPARE https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-prepare.html track_activity_qu…

1
LIMIT vs Performance 45:23

12M ago45:23

45:23

Nikolay and Michael discuss LIMIT in Postgres — what it does, how it can help with performance, and an interesting example where adding it can actually hurt performance(!) Here are some links to things they mentioned: LIMIT considered harmful in PostgreSQL (Twitter thread by Christophe Pettus) https://twitter.com/Xof/status/1413542818673577987 LIMI…

1
Buffers II (the sequel) 36:13

1y ago36:13

36:13

Nikolay and Michael return to the topic of using the buffers explain parameter — with a new analogy, some (conspiracy) theories of why it's still not on by default, and some related chat about the serialize parameter coming in 17. Here are some links to things they mentioned: BUFFERS by default (episode 4) https://postgres.fm/episodes/buffers-by-de…

1
Massive DELETEs 44:28

1y ago44:28

44:28

Nikolay and Michael discuss doing massive DELETE operations in Postgres — what can go wrong, how to prevent major issues, and some ideas to minimise their impact. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Article based on Nikolay’s talk, including batching implementation (translated to English) https://habr-com.translate.goog/en/articles/523536…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Michael Christofides Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen