Postgres videos by pganalyze: I/O Optimization, Indexing, and more.

How to Compare Postgres Plans & Tune Slow Queries with pganalyze

Comparing EXPLAIN plans manually is painstaking process of pattern-matching and query trial-and-error. We’ll show you how to compare Postgres plans in pganalyze where the analysis is done automatically to easily uncover common problems causing slow queries.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

How to identify slow queries using data gathered by pganalyze & its Automated EXPLAIN feature
How to compare query plans against variants to test for performance with the new Query Tuning features
How to debug common scenarios like inefficient joins and nested loops and missing or inefficient indexes
How to fix queries by rewriting them, changing statistics settings, or forcing a better plan

Hands on Postgres 17: What’s New & How It Impacts Performance

Dive deep into the final release, examining what features have been included, what was removed in the beta phase due to bugs that were found, and how the changes in this release will impact your database performance and monitoring.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

How faster B-tree scans and adaptive vacuum strategies improve performance
The introduction of streaming I/O, and when to tune the new “io_combine_limit”
Configurable SLRU cache sizes for better support for running Postgres at large scale
Updated pg_stat_checkpointer and pg_stat_bgwriter views for in-depth monitoring
The impact of built-in C.UTF-8 locale support for better compatibility after OS upgrades
Changes to the Postgres planner, such as CTE statistics propagation, better handling of IN lists in joined tables and more
Improvements to the EXPLAIN command (such as the new SERIALIZE option), to help you optimize queries better
A quick overview of other significant improvements (Incremental backups, logical replication, COPY ON_ERROR, JSON_TABLE & more)

How to Optimize Slow Queries with EXPLAIN to Fix Bad Query Plans

Learn the essential skills of optimizing slow queries with EXPLAIN ANALYZE and get practical advice on how to address common problems.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

How to go from a slow query to a query plan that shows which exact part was slows
Why BUFFERS is important, and how to interpret the hits counter
How to rewrite queries based on plans to speed up performance
The different planner settings and how they influence plan choices
How to identify when plans "fall over" to a bad query plan and why this can happen
Identifying bad row estimates in a query, and how to correct them with better statistics
Using statistics on expressions to help queries that use JSONB
Identifying alternate plans using planner hints with pg_hint_plan
Other ways of overriding the Postgres planner choices
Parameterized Index Scans, and how they are influenced by the join order and join type
Existing and upcoming pganalyze functionality for optimizing slow queries and working with EXPLAIN plans

Automating Postgres Index Selection Using Constraint Programming

Get an introduction to a new approach for automatically determining which set of indexes to create for a given Postgres query workload, based on objectives chosen by the developer or DBA.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

Our approach for processing the Postgres query workload statistics derived from pg_stat_statements
Why we optimize index selection for a given table, not just a single query
A constraint programming optimization model that finds the mathematically optimal solution (set of index choices) based on a given set of constraints and objectives
How to find a set of indexes by minimizing the plan cost of all queries, whilst optimizing for the lowest index write overhead
How to prioritize a subset of queries over others
Controls for considering the impact of indexing to Postgres' HOT Updates
Using the model for consolidating existing indexes into a smaller set, to reduce overhead
How this compares to other approaches, such as Dexter, HypoPG, and research published on automatic index selection in recent years

Advanced Autovacuum Tuning and pganalyze VACUUM advisor

Understand the most important VACUUM metrics, concepts like xmin horizon, how to prevent transaction ID wraparound, estimating bloat, and more.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

How to identify ineffective VACUUMs that run but don’t actually produce any results
Tracking freezing stats to prevent TXID wraparound, and how to find problem tables
The VACUUM xmin horizon, and how it causes “Dead Tuples Not Yet Removable”, and how pganalyze alerts you of this situation
Why BUFFERS is important, and how to interpret the hits counter
How pganalyze calculates the age of transaction IDs using calendar time (not just counting TXIDs)
How pganalyze estimates bloat, and when the estimates are more vs less accurate
The new logic for scale factor and threshold tuning recommendations, and how it works behind the scenes
How VACUUMs that have multiple index phases can use a lot of resources, and how pganalyze recommends changing autovacuum_work_mem to avoid the problem
The pganalyze VACUUM Advisor

How to use the Postgres query planner to debug bad plans and speed up queries

Understand how the Postgres query planner chooses different plans for the same query, and how to debug bad plans.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

How to go from a slow query to a query plan that shows which exact part was slow
Understanding "Scans" and how Postgres decides which index to use
Why BUFFERS is important, and how to interpret the hits counter
How to rewrite queries based on plans to speed up performance
The different planner settings and how they influence plan choices
How to identify when plans "fall over" to a bad query plan and why this can happen
Choosing particular query plans using planner hints with pg_hint_plan
How managed cloud providers offer ways to control query plans (such as Aurora Query Plan Management), and how it compares to pg_hint_plan
Using the Postgres queryid to link pg_stat_statements, pg_stat_activity and auto_explain
Generic query plans, and how to get them from pg_stat_statements output
Looking at query plans over time with pganalyze - and how it works behind the scenes
and much more

How to tune Postgres autovacuum to improve performance and reduce bloat

Tune your autovacuum settings to ensure that VACUUM runs at the right time and is effective for your workload.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

The physicality of tables
The Transaction ID clock
All-visible pages and slow queries
Understanding autovacuum scheduling
Cost delay 101
Aggressive and Failsafe VACUUMs
Dead tuples not yet removable
VACUUMing in the cloud - RDS, Aurora, Cloud SQL & AlloyDB
Estimating and fixing table bloat

How To Reason About Indexing Your Postgres Database

See how Postgres chooses which index to use, and learn a methodology for analyzing queries and optimizing indexes.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

How Postgres chooses which index to use
Background about indexing
What is a “good enough” index?
A structured approach for finding the right indexes
A look behind the scenes: The pganalyze Indexing Engine

Optimizing Postgres I/O Performance and Costs

We dive into I/O optimization in Postgres and how tuning I/O helps reduce overall database costs.

Here is what you will learn in this webinar:

Common causes for I/O spikes in Postgres and how they affect infrastructure costs
How to map high read and/or write IOPS to database activity
Using EXPLAIN plans to find heavy hitting I/O intensive queries
Caching in Postgres, and how the buffer cache hit ratio can be improved to reduce I/O
Finding the root cause of high I/O costs of cloud databases such as Amazon Aurora
and much more