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cybertec-postgresql.com
Company blog · cybertec-postgresql.comdataprogramming
cybertec-postgresql.com is the company blog at cybertec-postgresql.com, writing about data and programming. Since 2017, 95 different Hacker News readers have linked it 189 times, most often “Unexpected downsides of UUID keys in PostgreSQL”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link CYBERTEC's PostgreSQL posts on UUID primary keys and B-tree page splits, zheap storage progress, HOT updates, upgrades, and planner issues, often as sources for their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Unexpected downsides of UUID keys in PostgreSQL5 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2023-06-20
- Hot updates in PostgreSQL for better performance (2020)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-12-10
- Join Strategies and Performance in PostgreSQL3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-29
- /en/postgresql-zheap-current-status/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-09-05
- B-Tree index improvements in PostgreSQL v123 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-26
- PostgreSQL: Limit vs. Fetch First Rows with Ties2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-07-14
- Zheap: Reinvented PostgreSQL Storage2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-07
- /en/beating-uber-with-a-postgresql-prototype/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-11-14
- Things that could be improved in PostgreSQL2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-04
- Are triggers really that slow in Postgres?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-05-22
What Hacker News says?
Anything non-k-sortable in a B[+,-]tree will cause a ton of page splits. This is a more noticeable performance impact in RDBMS with a clustered index (MySQL's InnoDB, MS SQL Server) [0], but it also impacts Postgres [1] in multiple [2] ways. [0]: https://www.percona.com/blog/uuids-are-popular-but-bad-for-p... [1]: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-downsides-... [2]: https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/blo…
Comment linking /en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/
on “Almost every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret”Submitted Postgres scaling advice as a story · 392 points
HN discussionhttps://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/postgresql-zheap-curr... The last status update is from July, so seems like things are progressing.
Comment linking /en/postgresql-zheap-current-status/
on “PostgreSQL 14”Submitted Discovering less-known Postgres v12 features as a story · 243 points
HN discussionWhere did Robert Haas say this? Quick search didn't surface much, except for a blog post from July by Hans-Jürgen Schönig: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/postgresql-zheap-curr... Doesn't sound like they discontinued the project.
Comment linking /en/postgresql-zheap-current-status/
on “PostgreSQL 14”Submitted Super fast aggregations in PostgreSQL 19 as a story · 226 points
HN discussionWe're using it at CYPEX to automatically make customer data consumable for our frontend. https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/products/cypex/
Comment linking /en/products/cypex/
on “PostgREST: REST API for any Postgres database”Submitted PostgreSQL EXPLAIN Output Explained as a story · 222 points
HN discussionThe author doesn't reference any tests that they themselves ran, but they did link a cybertec article [0] with some benchmarks. [0] https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-downsides-...
Comment linking /en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/
on “Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres”Submitted Column order in PostgreSQL does matter as a story · 209 points
HN discussionAside from the lack of tuning mentioned, it wasn’t mentioned what variety of UUID was used - I assume v4. If so, the visibility map impacted the performance [0]. [0]: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-downsides-...
Comment linking /en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/
on “Redis is fast – I'll cache in Postgres”Submitted UUID, serial or identity columns for PostgreSQL auto-generated primary keys? as a story · 204 points
HN discussionThis is already being developed. zheap [1] is based on the undo/redo log system that databases such as Oracle use, and will be one of the options once Postgres supports pluggable storage backends. [1] https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/postgresql-zheap-curr...
Comment linking /en/postgresql-zheap-current-status/
on “Ask HN: What could a modern database do that PostgreSQL and MySQL can't”Submitted Index bloat reduced in PostgreSQL v14 as a story · 179 points
HN discussionLooks like it's still being actively worked on. https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/zheap-undo-logs-disca... https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/postgres/tree/zheap_u...
Comment linking /en/zheap-undo-logs-discarding-in-postgresql/
on “Databases in 2021: A Year in Review”Submitted Understanding Recursive Queries in PostgreSQL as a story · 168 points
HN discussionTHe process is similar, you would convert to csv and then use the \copy command to bulk insert the data. In pg 12, the copy command has grown a lot of very useful features like WHERE filtering, so if you get the chance go for 12: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/tech-preview-improvin...
Comment linking /en/tech-preview-improving-copy-and-bulkloading-in-postgresql-12/
on “Show HN: OctoSQL – Query and join multiple databases and files, written in Go”Submitted PostgreSQL Count(*) Performance Improvements as a story · 140 points
HN discussionUsing UUIDv4 as primary key has unexpected downsides because data locality matters in surprising places [1]. A UUIDv7 primary key seems to reduce / eliminate those problems. If there is also an indexed UUIDv4 column for external id, I suspect it would not be used as often as the primary key index so would not cancel out the performance improvements of UUIDv7. [1] https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-dow…
Comment linking /en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/
on “Exploring PostgreSQL 18's new UUIDv7 support”Submitted Multiranges in Postgres as a story · 139 points
HN discussionCYBERTEC also offers a more advanced Oracle to PostgreSQL migration product: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/de/produkte/cybertec-mig... Here's a talk from two weeks ago by the CEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDRrlgnH7N8 Disclaimer: I work at CYBERTEC
Comment linking /de/produkte/cybertec-migrator/
on “Ora2Pg – Oracle to PostgreSQL database schema converter”Submitted Avoiding “OR” for Better Query Performance as a story · 139 points
HN discussionalso check out ora_migrator https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/ora_migrator (another extension from Cybertec) which uses oracle_fdw under the hood. intro blog post: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/ora_migrator-moving-f...
Comment linking /en/ora_migrator-moving-from-oracle-to-postgresql-even-faster/
on “Ora2Pg – Oracle to PostgreSQL database schema converter”Submitted Are triggers really that slow in Postgres? as a story · 119 points
HN discussion> 1 bit per page Close, it’s 2 bits/page :-) It’s not that it bloats, it’s that the hits are scattered among many pages. My wording wasn’t great on that point. Some tests demonstrating this are here [0]. [0]: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-downsides-...
Comment linking /en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/
on “How to get the most out of Postgres memory settings”Submitted Getting Started with QGIS, PostgreSQL and PostGIS as a story · 118 points
HN discussionI don’t generally blog about it, but I may at some point. For specific discussions on what I wrote about, I recommend (other than reading Postgres’ docs, of course) this [0] and this [1], and anything else on those sites. If you like technical podcasts, postgres.fm [2] is pretty good. [0]: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/hot-updates-in-postgr... [1]: https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/impact-full-page-writes?l…
Comment linking /en/hot-updates-in-postgresql-for-better-performance/
on “Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market”Submitted Pg_timetable: PostgreSQL Job Scheduling as a story · 64 points
HN discussionNope. Performance and WAL bloat will both occur. https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/unexpected-downsides-...
Comment linking /en/unexpected-downsides-of-uuid-keys-in-postgresql/
on “How does a B-tree make queries fast?”Submitted Debugging PostgreSQL More Easily as a story · 63 points
HN discussion
