PGConf.Russia 2025

Diagnostic Methods: Analyzing the Issue of Long CREATE DATABASE Execution

This talk covers two cases of long CREATE DATABASE execution in PostgreSQL 11, which, in a Corosync/Pacemaker cluster configuration, caused node failover due to a monitoring timeout from the clustering software. The first case is related to a large shared buffers size, while the second involves the use of the WITH OWNER option during database creation and a large pg_shdepend system table (a feature of using the jBPM software).

Dozens of PostgreSQL instances have replaced a single large Oracle database. One of our key business systems was completely redesigned and rebuilt on an import-independent solution.  

This talk will cover the unique challenges, architecture, issues, and operational aspects of this migration. Expect an insightful deep dive into the process!

t’s well known that pg_upgrade is the go-to tool for fast PostgreSQL upgrades. However, even with this tool, there are cases where the upgrade process takes far longer than expected.

In our case, upgrading a PostgreSQL database with 350,000 tables meant either waiting 3.5 hours or finding a better approach. By digging into the pg_upgrade source code, we discovered a way to speed up the process significantly. In this talk, we’ll share how we did it.

This talk will likely be of interest to network providers who can enhance their cool features by adding something to the syntax to simplify administration, as well as anyone interested in machine learning. We will explore the SQL parsing mechanism, what, where, and how to modify it in order to introduce new syntax constructs. Additionally, I will demonstrate the capabilities of machine learning on tabular data, all within the database, using the new syntax.