PGConf.Russia 2025

So much has been said about PostgreSQL as the result of its program code. But Postgres is not just code. It’s the people who create it, develop it, and... leave a piece of themselves through comments.

What stories can we uncover from the comments in PostgreSQL’s code? We’ll discover what the most popular word is, which comments have been in the code since the very first public commit, how the style of communication has evolved with the product, and how we can see the human side behind the lines of code and comments.

Sometimes, issues arise with the operation of PostgreSQL on Linux. We will define a classification of these scenarios and provide solutions, from simple to complex. Which failures lead to data corruption? Which scenarios are more dangerous than others, and what should be monitored? We will review logging examples from DBM.P Skala-R and analyze debugging scenarios, including OS libraries, Linux kernel, drivers, and kernel modules to identify causes and resolve errors.

I’ll talk about the challenges you’ll face if you decide to implement a new TableAM. What to choose: Generic XLog or Custom RMGR? Why use a Custom SMGR? How to integrate PostgreSQL allocators into third-party libraries, even if they don't officially support it? What’s missing for a columnar engine (including vectorization and late materialization), and how can we work around those limitations?

In the second part, I’ll dive into the internals of pgpro_tam — a new native table engine for OLAP that supports standard data formats, various SMGRs, and, if needed, third-party schedulers and execution engines, all while adhering to ACID principles. This is designed to achieve the fastest analytics on PostgreSQL (not just plugging in DuckDB).

Databases are a core component of any information system, and query performance directly impacts overall efficiency.

Last year, we explored suboptimal queries and optimization techniques, and the topic proved highly relevant. In this second installment, we’ll cover:

Using extended statistics for computed columns

Pagination techniques for improved query handling

Real-world optimization examples from 1C