Best Michael Christofides Podcasts (2024)

1
How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley 1:29:08

6h ago1:29:08

1:29:08

Ever wonder how driving a forklift at a cheese factory could lead to a career in databases? Postgres committer David Rowley joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share his story about how he got started as a developer and in Postgres. Could an unexpected job lead to your dream career?…

1
Index-Only Scans 39:15

3h 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

1h 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

3h ago45:16

45:16

By Nikolay Samokhvalov and Michael Christofides

1
Out of disk 43:26

1h 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
Podcasting about Postgres with Pino de Candia 1:24:09

22h ago1:24:09

1:24:09

Have you ever eavesdropped on other people’s conversations? Former co-host Pino de Candia joins Claire Giordano on this episode of Talking Postgres (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share their experience on podcasting about Postgres. Is listening to a podcast the next best thing to being in the hallway track at a conference? Does it bring the commun…

1
Postgres startup ecosystem 35:42

19d 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

8d 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

1M 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
The Making of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres with Teresa Giacomini & Aaron Wislang 1:35:04

22d ago1:35:04

1:35:04

It’s not a conference unless you can confer, right? POSETTE organizers Teresa Giacomini and Aaron Wislang join Claire Giordano on the Path To Citus Con* podcast to share backstage perspectives on the making of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres. How do you feel about captions: love or hate? Should livestream talks be pre-recorded or presented live? Why…

1
Should we use foreign keys? 51:21

1M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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
My Journey to Explaining Explain with Michael Christofides 1:25:43

3M ago1:25:43

1:25:43

Did you know that sometimes the fastest way of doing something is not having to do it at all? In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, the podcast for developers who love Postgres, Michael Christofides joins Claire Giordano to chat about his journey to explaining explain (or should we say EXPLAIN!?) Michael shared his origin story as a mathematician …

1
LIMIT vs Performance 45:23

3M 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

4M 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

4M 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…

1
Logical replication common issues 38:12

4M ago38:12

38:12

Nikolay and Michael are joined by Sai Srirampur, CEO and Co-founder of PeerDB, to discuss how to overcome several logical replication issues. They discuss the protocol versions, minimising slot growth, minimising lag, and some tips and tricks for scaling things well. Here are some links to things they mentioned: PeerDB https://www.peerdb.io/ Our ep…

1
Becoming expert at using PostgreSQL with Chris Ellis 1:09:46

4M ago1:09:46

1:09:46

You have to find what works for you and Chris Ellis has never been the kind of person that could go and sit in a library—for Chris, the most productive Postgres place is in a coffee shop. In this episode of the Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres, Chris Ellis joined Claire and Pino to chat about his path to becoming more (an…

1
Don't do this 44:31

4M ago44:31

44:31

Nikolay and Michael discuss several "Don't do this" lists about Postgres — picking out their favourite items, as well as some contentious ones that could be clearer, or not included. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Don’t do this (PostgreSQL wiki page) https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don't_Do_This How to get into trouble using some Po…

1
Search 41:32

4M ago41:32

41:32

Nikolay and Michael have a high-level discussion on all things search — touching on full-text search, semantic search, and faceted search. They discuss what comes in Postgres core, what is possible via extensions, and some thoughts on performance vs implementation complexity vs user experience. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Simon Ri…

1
Health check 40:49

5M ago40:49

40:49

Nikolay and Michael discuss Postgres health checks — what they are, things to include, how often makes sense, and whether improvements to Postgres would increase or decrease the need for them. Here are some links to things they mentioned: MOT (car test in the UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test Let's make PostgreSQL multi-threaded (discussio…

1
superuser 30:28

5M ago30:28

30:28

Nikolay and Michael discuss the superuser role in PostgreSQL — what it is, how and when it shouldn’t be used, and whether most cloud providers are right to not give us it (no prizes for guessing). Here are some links to things they mentioned: superuser (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/role-attributes.html#id-1.6.9.6.2.1.2.1.1 Crunchy …

1
Spinning up on Postgres & AI with Arda Aytekin 1:18:33

5M ago1:18:33

1:18:33

Everywhere you look, people are talking about AI. From Copilot to ChatGPT to Postgres’s powerful AI capabilities (think: pgvector), AI is everywhere. In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, for developers who love Postgres, Arda Aytekin joined Claire and Pino to chat about spinning up on Postgres and AI. Arda shared his origin story in mechanical en…

1
transaction_timeout 26:48

5M ago26:48

26:48

Nikolay and Michael discuss transaction_timeout (a recently committed addition for Postgres 17) — what it's for, how to get around not having it already, and whether it will replace the need to set statement_timeout globally in future. Here are some links to things they mentioned: transaction_timeout (devel docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/dev…

1
Exploring 37 Signals Once Business Model | Rubber Duck Dev Show 117 57:53

5M ago57:53

57:53

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss how Creston built a 2 terabyte database for his new Postgres performance optimization course. To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/117-exploring-37-signals-once-business-model/By Chris & Creston

1
Rails + Postgres 45:23

5M ago45:23

45:23

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Andrew Atkinson, author of High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails, to discuss how Rails and Postgres work together — where the limits are, how people use the ORM, things that are improving, and some things we can do as a Postgres community to make it even better. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Planet …

1
Why isn't Postgres using my index? 35:25

6M ago35:25

35:25

Nikolay and Michael discuss a common question — why Postgres isn't using an index, and what you can do about it! Here are some links to things they mentioned: Why isn’t Postgres using my index? (blog post by Michael) https://www.pgmustard.com/blog/why-isnt-postgres-using-my-index Why isn’t Postgres using my functional index? (Stack Exchange questio…

1
Building a 2 Terabyte Database For My Postgres Course | Rubber Duck Dev Show 116 30:17

6M ago30:17

30:17

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss how Creston built a 2 terabyte database for his new Postgres performance optimization course. To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/116-building-2-terabyte-database-for-postgres-course/By Chris & Creston

1
Overhead of pg_stat_statements and pg_stat_kcache 34:07

6M ago34:07

34:07

Nikolay and Michael discuss the overhead of pg_stat_statements and pg_stat_kcache — mostly focusing on some interesting things Nikolay found while stress-testing some large spot instances up to and beyond 2m TPS(!) Here are some links to things they mentioned: pg_stat_statements https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.html pg_stat_…

1
From developer to PostgreSQL specialist with Derk van Veen 1:11:16

6M ago1:11:16

1:11:16

The best days are when things don’t go as planned. Derk van Veen joined Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on this episode of Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss his journey from Java developer to PostgreSQL specialist and DBA. From his first days with DB2 and Oracle, to his work with Postgres, Derk shared how he …

1
What Developers Should Know About DevOps With Ben Curtis | Rubber Duck Dev Show 115 1:01:22

6M ago1:01:22

1:01:22

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss what software developers should know about DevOps with Ben Curtis, Co-Founder and back-end engineer at Honeybadger. To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/115-what-developers-should-know-about-devops-with-ben-curtis/…

1
Modern SQL 32:09

6M ago32:09

32:09

Michael is joined by Markus Winand, creator of use-the-index-luke.com and modern-sql.com, and author of SQL Performance Explained, to discuss Modern SQL — what Markus means by it, why it's important, some benefits, some examples, and at least one phrase that should be on a t-shirt. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Modern SQL (site) htt…

1
What Developers Should Know About Postgres With Andrew Atkinson | Rubber Duck Dev Show 114 53:05

6M ago53:05

53:05

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss what software developers should know about Postgres with Andrew Atkinson. We also go into his new book: High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails. Kota Weaver joined us as a co-host. To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/114-what-developers-shoul…

1
Bloat 36:17

7M ago36:17

36:17

Michael is joined by Chelsea Dole, Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead of the Data Storage Team at Brex, to discuss bloat. They cover what it is, why it's a problem, strategies for minimising it, and the options when it's really bad. Here are some links to things they mentioned: Managing your tuple graveyard (talk by Chelsea) https://www.youtube.…

1
Explaining Postgres Explain With Michael Christofides | Rubber Duck Dev Show 113 59:37

7M ago59:37

59:37

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss our thoughts on the use of Object Relational Mappers (ORMs) in our development compared with just using Structured Query Language (SQL). To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/113-explaining-explain-with-michael-christofides/…

1
pgvector 49:06

7M ago49:06

49:06

Michael is joined by Jonathan Katz, PostgreSQL Core Team member, Principle Product Manager at AWS, and also pgvector contributor, to discuss pgvector. They cover what it is, why it's so popular all of a sudden, some tuning and tradeoff guidance, and a look to the future. Here are some links to things they mentioned: pgvector https://github.com/pgve…

1
Exploring Robotics With Kota Weaver | Rubber Duck Dev Show 112 1:04:21

7M ago1:04:21

1:04:21

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss our thoughts on the use of Object Relational Mappers (ORMs) in our development compared with just using Structured Query Language (SQL). To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/112-exploring-robotics-with-kota-weaver/…

1
My Journey into Performance Benchmarking with Jelte Fennema-Nio & Marco Slot 1:13:35

6M ago1:13:35

1:13:35

No one likes benchmarking. But it can be one of the highest impact things you do. Jelte Fennema-Nio and Marco Slot joined Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on this episode of Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss their journeys into performance benchmarking. And how it can change the course of your career. Do you n…

1
pgBadger 31:31

7M ago31:31

31:31

Michael is joined by Alicja Kucharczyk, Program Manager for Azure Database for PostgreSQL at Microsoft and organiser of the Warsaw PostgreSQL User Group, to discuss Alicja's favorite tool: pgBadger. They cover what it is, how and when it's useful, and some guidance for getting the most out of it (without causing an outage). Here are some links to t…

1
EXPLAIN 19:33

7M ago19:33

19:33

With Nikolay taking a well-earned break, Michael covers the basics of EXPLAIN — what it is, the parameters available, and a process he recommends for using it. Here are some links to the things mentioned: EXPLAIN (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-explain.html Using EXPLAIN (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/using-explai…

1
work_mem 19:07

7M ago19:07

19:07

Happy holidays! Today's topic is work_mem — how it's used and how to tune it. Related post: https://x.com/samokhvalov/status/1740813478150189172?s=46&t=HSxrW86NZqzPQP9vXVJEWg.By Nikolay Samokhvalov and Michael Christofides

1
Partitioning by ULID 38:53

8M ago38:53

38:53

Nikolay and Michael discuss partitioning by ULID — revisiting some of the old UUID vs bigint key debate in light of some new UUID specs, and how these can be used for partitioning (by time). Here are some links to things they mentioned: Nikolay’s episode on UUID (for primary keys) https://postgres.fm/episodes/uuid Postgres TV hacking session with A…

1
Hash indexes 30:32

8M ago30:32

30:32

Nikolay and Michael discuss hash indexes in Postgres — what they are, some brief history, their pros and cons vs btrees, and whether or when they recommend using them. Update: the idea Nikolay mentioned at the end of this episode turns out to be a little fraught (and as such, inadvisable). Here are some links to things they mentioned: Index types (…

1
My Journey into Postgres Monitoring with Lukas Fittl & Rob Treat 1:21:02

8M ago1:21:02

1:21:02

Do you monitor your Postgres error logs for gold? Lukas Fittl and Rob Treat join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on the Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss their respective journeys into Postgres monitoring. Have you ever asked yourself: “Why is my query so slow?” Or had to figure out which query is slowing thi…

1
ORM vs. SQL | Rubber Duck Dev Show 111 32:57

8M ago32:57

32:57

In this episode of the Rubber Duck Dev Show, we discuss our thoughts on the use of Object Relational Mappers (ORMs) in our development compared with just using Structured Query Language (SQL). To get the show notes for this episode, visit: https://www.rubberduckdevshow.com/episodes/111-orm-vs-sql/By Chris & Creston

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