Features and extensions postgresql

PostgreSQL Developer Ergonomics: How EXPLAIN, SQL/JSON, and Replication Features Are Making Life Easier

When you’re deep in the trenches of database work—optimizing queries, debugging replication lag, or untangling JSON transforms—the quality of your tools matters. PostgreSQL has always been powerful, but the community has been laser-focused on something equally important: making that power accessible. Developer ergonomics—how smoothly you can understand, debug, and deploy database logic—is front and center […]

David Sterling 
postgresql

PostgreSQL Looking Ahead to 2026

PostgreSQL heads into 2026 with more momentum than it has had in years, driven by PostgreSQL 18’s async I/O, a rapidly maturing AI/vector story, and continued pressure to make Postgres cheaper to run in the cloud. For teams already standardized on Postgres, the next 12–18 months look less like “incremental tuning” and more like a […]

David Sterling 
AI Features and extensions pgvector

PostgreSQL pgvector and RAG: Best Practices and Examples for Better Results

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become one of the most practical applications of AI in production systems, and PostgreSQL’s pgvector extension has emerged as a robust solution for implementing vector search. However, getting optimal results requires more than just installing pgvector and throwing embeddings at it. Let’s explore proven best practices and real-world examples to help […]

David Sterling 
Features and extensions postgresql

What Is pgvector and When You Should Use It Instead of a Dedicated Vector DB

pgvector is a PostgreSQL extension that adds a native vector data type and similarity search so you can turn Postgres into a capable “vector DB” without adding new infrastructure. For many workloads—especially RAG over modest corpora, recommendations tied tightly to transactional data, and anomaly detection in existing Postgres-backed systems—pgvector is often simpler and cheaper than […]

David Sterling 
postgis postgresql

Beyond the Basics: 5 Powerful PostGIS Queries You Can Use Today

You’ve got PostGISqueries up and running—now what? If you completed the 15-minute quickstart, you’ve seen the basics: creating spatial tables, inserting points, and running simple distance queries. But PostGIS offers so much more. In this follow-up guide, I’ll show you five immediately useful PostGIS techniques that go beyond simple point queries. These are practical patterns […]

David Sterling 
AI Features and extensions pgvector pgvectorscale

PostgreSQL Vector Search: From Possible to Competitive with pgvector and pgvectorscale

PostgreSQL has quietly crossed an important line in the last year: AI with Postgres is no longer a science project, it is genuinely competitive with specialized vector databases at production scale. From “possible” to “competitive” For a long time, the story around AI and Postgres sounded like “you can do it if you really want […]

David Sterling 
Performance and tuning postgresql

PostgreSQL 18 Async I/O on AWS: Why 2–3× Throughput Doesn’t Mean 3× Smaller Instances

The PostgreSQL 18 async I/O feature has generated a lot of excitement—and for good reason. Lab benchmarks show 2–3× better read throughput on cloud storage compared to synchronous I/O. But if you’re expecting to downsize your AWS RDS instances by 3× and pocket massive savings, I have news: real-world deployments tell a more nuanced story. […]

David Sterling 
Learning resources postgresql

Essential PostgreSQL Books Every Engineer Should Own

1. Learn PostgreSQL (latest edition) “Learn PostgreSQL” (recent editions target PostgreSQL 15–16) is a beginner-friendly, end-to-end introduction that stays useful even after you’re no longer a beginner. It walks through SQL basics, core internals like transactions and MVCC, replication, security, backups, and monitoring, with hands-on exercises that resemble real production use cases.goodreads+1​ Why a PostgreSQL […]

David Sterling