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Step 3: Review auto_explain settings

There are a number of auto_explain settings that allow you to configure which queries will generate EXPLAIN plans. You can read the full Postgres documentation about these here. The right configuration will depend on your server and workload, but we've found the following is a good starting point:

SettingRecommended
auto_explain.log_format
json
auto_explain.log_min_duration
1000
auto_explain.log_analyze
on
auto_explain.log_buffers
on
auto_explain.log_timing
off
auto_explain.log_triggers
on
auto_explain.log_verbose
on
auto_explain.log_nested_statements
on
auto_explain.sample_rate
1

Summary of required changes

auto_explain.log_format
json
auto_explain.log_min_duration
1000

Summary of recommended changes

auto_explain.log_analyze
on
auto_explain.log_buffers
on
auto_explain.log_timing
off
auto_explain.log_triggers
on
auto_explain.log_verbose
on
auto_explain.log_nested_statements
on
auto_explain.sample_rate
1

Heroku allows users to modify several of these settings, but not all of them. Notably, you cannot update the auto_explain.log_format setting with Heroku Postgres currently. Text-format auto_explain output is supported on a best-effort basis, so you may see errors for some EXPLAIN plans.

You can check out the Heroku documentation for how to update these settings. The following is an example of updating log_min_duration:

heroku pg:settings:auto-explain:log-min-duration [database-addon-name] 1000 -a [your-app-name]
Continue to Step 4: Test and verify

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