PGConf.Russia 2025

Over the past year, pgpro_redefinition has undergone significant enhancements. In this talk, we’ll review the key updates, improvements, and new capabilities that have been introduced.

As part of the import substitution process, we encountered the need to find a reliable alternative to Oracle. PostgreSQL was considered the primary candidate for replacement, but during the research, the "vanilla" version revealed a number of critical limitations that hindered a successful transition.

These issues included support for autonomous transactions, batch variables, and several other specifics. What is special about pg_settings? Why do we need autonomous transactions, and how do HOLD cursors relate to this? These and other topics will be discussed in our presentation, where we will also share our experience of implementing Postgres Pro Enterprise.

The visibility map in PostgreSQL is an important mechanism for optimizing database performance, accelerating read operations, data cleanup, and indexing. Despite some limitations, such as memory consumption and fragmentation, its use can significantly enhance performance in high-load systems. Effective utilization of the visibility map requires proper configuration and monitoring, which is especially crucial in systems with large data volumes and high transaction concurrency.

For over a year, Postgres Pro has provided extended vacuum statistics, reflecting its operation on individual relations.

We've started receiving observations from production databases of clients that include these statistics. It has been quite successful, and in 2024, we began actively promoting vacuum statistics in PostgreSQL. In this talk, we will review what these statistics can tell us about the complex life of vacuum, using real-world data from live systems.