01Dec 2023 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

PostgreSQL Events – A Newbies Perspective: #PGSQLPhriday 014

PostgreSQL
For this month's #PGSQLPhriday 014 blogging event, Pavlo Golub has asked a pretty simple question: What do you think about PostgreSQL events? Prior to this year, I'd never attended an event focused on PostgreSQL. Heck, I'd never attended an event that had an intentional track or learning pathway, or whatever, focused on PostgreSQL. In the past year though, I've now attended four. As a complete newbie, let me tell you a little bit about the PostgreSQL community as I see it. Welcoming The very first word that comes to mind when I think about the PostgreSQL community is that it is welcoming. Like the SQL Server community that I've been practically living with for the last almost 20 years, the people who make up the PostgreSQL community are very kind,…
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02Jun 2023 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PGSQL Phriday #009: On Rollback

PostgreSQL
The invitation this month for #PGSqlPhriday comes from Dian Fay. The topic is pretty simple, database change management. Now, I may have, once or twice, spoken about database change management, database DevOps, automating deployments, and all that sort of thing. Maybe. Once or twice. OK. This is my topic. I've got some great examples on taking changes from the schema on your PostgreSQL databases and then deploying them. All the technical stuff you could want. However, I don't want to talk about that today. Instead, I want to talk about something really important, the concept of rollbacks when it comes to database deployments. Why Are Rollbacks Difficult? The entire purpose of your PostgreSQL database is to persist, that is to store, the data. Then, of course, offer up a way…
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08May 2023 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Why Put PostgreSQL in Azure

PostgreSQL
I've had people come up to me and say "PostgreSQL is open source and therefore license free. Why on earth would I put PostgreSQL in Azure?" Honestly, I think that's a very fair question. The shortest possible answer is, of course, you don't have to. You can host your own PostgreSQL instances on local hardware, or build out VMs in Azure and put PostgreSQL out there, some other VM host, or maybe in Kubernetes containers, I mean, yeah, you have tons of options. So why PostgreSQL in Azure, and specifically, I mean the Platform as a Service offering? Let's talk about it. PostgreSQL in Azure Let's assume for a moment that you're PostgreSQL expert (I'm not, but I do play one on TV). You know exactly how to set up…
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06Mar 2023 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

#PGSQLPhriday 006: Wrap Up & Summary

PostgreSQL
Your mission, if you chose to accept it, was to share a single tip/hint/fact/something that you wish you'd known about PostgreSQL when you were just getting started learning it. Well, we've got several people who have put together some excellent posts. Let's go over 'em all, in no particular order. First up, Lætitia Avrot has a post all about the PostgreSQL documentation and it is well worth the read. I couldn't agree more with all her points. Plus, I love, love, LOVE the summary list of pointers to documentation broken down by role. Thanks so much for sharing all this. I also wrote a post about the docs. Lætitia covers them better. Next, Andreas Scherbaum has some very cool tips for using psql. My knowledge here is a bit slim.…
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03Mar 2023 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

#PGSQLPhriday 006: What I Wish I Knew While Learning PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL
Well, for those who don't know me, I'm just barely started on my PostgreSQL journey. So, what the heck can I contribute to this conversation? Not much, but I do have one tip. It's about the official documentation and search engines. YaDuBiGo When you use Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Google, or whatever search engine you use, what you don't get is a simple, "here are the pages you asked for". All the search engines use various mechanisms to surface you "here's the BEST and MOST POPULAR pages you asked for." What defines best in these circumstances? Most accurate? Maybe, maybe not. I've never worked for one of these organizations and they tend to keep their algorithms to themselves, for obvious reasons, both good & evil. However, I do know one thing…
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24Feb 2023 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

One Thing You Wish You Knew While Learning PostgreSQL: PGSqlPhriday #006

PostgreSQL
I will not even attempt to hide it, I'm very much in the learning phase of my PostgreSQL journey. As such, I'm constantly picking up new facts. However, I'm interested in that one thing that you wish someone had told you. That tiny bit of "AH HA!!!" information that you have now, but it took you a while to find. Just that teeniest, tiniest slice of the behavior of PostgreSQL that proved to be a game-changer for you. In short, help me and all the others out there trying to learn this stuff. Make learning PostgreSQL just a little bit faster & easier for us. Please. Why am I asking? Because this is all a part of #PGSqlPhriday 006. What is #PGSqlPhriday and how do I participate? As to what…
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02Dec 2022 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

PGSQL PHRIDAY #3: What is the PostgreSQL Community To You?

PostgreSQL
Very excited to take part in my third #PGSQLPhriday blogging event, even more so because it's a topic that's quite near and dear to my heart, community. To say that I'm new to the PostgreSQL community isn't simply an understatement. Other than some online stuff, I haven't been anywhere near the PostgreSQL community. That's not for a lack of trying (multiple sessions submitted to multiple events), but so far, still just doing the online thing. So, I don't know that I'm fully qualified to discuss what, specifically, the PostgreSQL community means to me. Instead, let's talk about why you want a vibrant and strong community. I'm going to start with my qualifications to discuss community (not that anyone, anywhere, needs qualifications to take part in community, man, I dislike gatekeeping).…
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04Nov 2022 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Validating Backups: PGSQL Phriday #002

PostgreSQL
It's time again for the another PGSQL Phriday, this time, the question has been asked: How do you do PostgreSQL backups? Honesty up front. I'm very much just beginning my journey of learning PostgreSQL. I've been documenting that learning over here at Simple-Talk (more on the way there), including backups. For this post, I'm not going to tell you about my "experience" maintaining a PostgreSQL backup routine because, well, there isn't any. Instead, I have something else to say about backups that I learned, the hard way I might add, while working in SQL Server, that is 100% applicable to PostgreSQL. Backups Do Not Matter You heard me. In a post that's supposed to be about how you do backups, I'm telling you backups don't matter, and yeah, I'm serious.…
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07Oct 2022 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

PGSQL Phriday #001: Two Truths and a Lie

PostgreSQL
As a part of my own journey of learning within PostgreSQL, I've decided that I'm going to take part in PGSQL Phriday as often as I can, just as a way to continue to stretch my knowledge of this platform. Along the way, hopefully, I can help you learn a little too. The topic of this first post is Two Truths and a Lie about PostgreSQL. Now, the lie could easily be that I'm in any way qualified to talk about this topic, however, I can do a little better than that. Let's start off with simple, but important information, backups: Pg_dump can go to either a straight set of SQL, or, to a compressed digital formatPg_dumpall backups can be used to restore over existing databases with dataYou can use…
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29Aug 2022 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

AWS RDS Restore To A Point In Time

AWS, PostgreSQL, RDS
The single most important part of backups are not backups. The single most important part of backups are restores. It doesn't matter a lick if you have 100, flawless backups of your database if you can't restore one of them. So, let's get started and talk about how perform an RDS restore. RDS Restore I'm going to use the portal because I like how GUIs allow me to easily illustrate what I'm doing. However, I'll probably do another post soon on how to use the command line to do this. That is the better approach in most cases. If you connect up to a database within RDS, you get a menu, Actions: Right there, near the bottom is what we're looking for, Restore to point in time. Clicking on this…
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