Both reverts landed after Robert Haas asked the pgsql-hackers list on August 25 whether any of six heavily patched features should come out before 19 ships. One of the two was on his list. One was not.
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PgColumnar 1.0Alpha2 released
Release date: 2026-08-18
Previous release: 1.0-alpha (2026-08-04)
pgColumnar is a columnar table access method for PostgreSQL. This is the second alpha. It adds read-only Apache Iceberg support, reads and writes over S3-compatible object storage, a maintenance daemon, and a broad round of statistics, planner, performance, and security work. The on-disk native format (PGCN v1) is unchanged; existing tables are read and written as before.
This release requires one …
Parquet and Iceberg: An Overview
A pile of containers is not a shipment. A shipment is containers plus a manifest.
Apache Iceberg is the manifest. It is not a file format, it is a table format: a metadata layer that records exactly which Parquet files make up a table at every point in time. That one idea buys you things we used to think required a warehouse. Transactions on object storage, so writers never corrupt …
The Architect
Examine your own work honestly. Which job are you doing? If everything you contributed last quarter could be described as construction, start climbing. Learn the bearing loads. Learn the customer. Learn why the light should come from the east. Develop an opinion about what is beautiful and be ready to defend it. The tools are sitting right there and they have never been cheaper.
Romancing the Claude
He was very tall in a way that seemed apologetic, as if he had been issued the height by mistake and was still trying to give it back. He had a laugh he did not perform. When the moderator asked a genuinely stupid question, Dorian Vale did not smirk at the audience the way the other panelists did. He answered it seriously, and well, and the questioner sat down looking …
Your company is not AI ready
The engineers (myself included) stood on the rooftops and shouted, "People! My dear sheep of the earth, please let me save you from yourselves! Do not buy what the shiny man with the seductive words is selling!"
Direct AI effectiveness: plx example
AI as used by an experienced person with domain knowledge is like having another 5 experienced people doing exactly what you need them to do with minimal intervention.
When a 18TB backup just stopped
18TB backup just stopped. We fixed it through depth of knowledge.
Of Unicorns and Donkeys
Classic and untrue. It isn’t the DBAs that are the issue. It is the developers and their ego which is driven by the unrealistic expectations of the C-suite that is driven by the ridiculous assertions of the investors that drives this problem. DBAs may be an acquired taste but we are the ones that are constantly cleaning up after the developers who could never learn more than the ORM and …
pg_dump Gets a Speed Boost in PostgreSQL 18
An interesting micro optimization for pg_dump is coming in PostgreSQL 18.