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PostgreSQL 14 Internals Book (postgrespro.com)
452 points by kelvich on July 13, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 34 comments



Postgrespro's blog ( https://habr.com/en/company/postgrespro/blog/ ) and http://www.interdb.jp/pg/index.html are incredible resources to learn about Postgres internals in depth.

Are there resources of similar quality available for MySQL / MariaDB internals ?


There seems to be a demand for developers who know the internals of Postgres to evolve and customize it given that it is being used, at different levels of abstraction/layers, by basically all cloud providers (AWS, MS, Google, etc) and by some DB SaaS. BTW, that would be a cool job to have...


We’re hiring for this role at supabase (if you’re looking): https://boards.greenhouse.io/supabase/jobs/4307456004


A ton of companies are building on top of PostgreSQL — Yugabyte, Supabase, EdgeDB and Neon.


Hopefully pushing back upstream. I don't really care what they do, as long as they push back their usually awesome changes upstream.

Great to see these sorts of things, Postgres has been amazing and glad people realise it.


Most of the changes aren’t relevant to upstream - a lot these companies seem to be using Postgres as a frontend over some kind of secret sauce, usually related to custom storage or deployments or the like. Postgres seems very modular and pluggable that way.

I assume for the common Postgres core changes everyone is already incentivised to contribute changes back upstream - the companies are banking on Postgres popularity can need it to have an excellent reputation even outside of their specific customised offering.


Another recent one, AlloyDB from Google Cloud. Looks pretty interesting/promising. Sort of like their competitor to AWS Aurora, built on top of Postgres, with the added ability to handle OLAP workloads well (along with apparently great OLTP performance).

TimescaleDB and Citus are notable too.

But yeah, if you’re building a DB product, starting with Postgres and customizing from there seems like an excellent approach.


Timescale is hiring for a Software Engineer (Database Internals) and this could also be a senior-level hire. It's based on PostgreSQL but if the rest of the resume stacks up it's not 100% essential that you've worked on PostgreSQL internals before. Global, remote.


> It's based on PostgreSQL but if the rest of the resume stacks up it's not 100% essential that you've worked on PostgreSQL internals before

What would be an ideal resume for someone who never worked on Postgres


more like ice cold.


If you want more, here's another site with similar focus: http://www.interdb.jp/pg/index.html


Looks amazing. Would love to be able to buy part 1 as it's own book! Perhaps worth making it a series of books instead of parts?


> If you want to use any part of this document and/or any figure, please contact me. If you work at Amazon, you cannot use and refer to this document because of the copyright violation issues.

This is an interesting inclusion, would they be referring to copies of this book being sold on Amazon? Or usage in their documentation? I'm genuinely curious what the issue is with them...


Not sure but I assume it's Amazon offering Postgres as a service through AWS Aurora.


Unlikely, Postgres license is as liberal as they get:

> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies.

https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/


Many providers offer postgres as a service.



Oh I will surely buy this!

This series of deep articles about Postgres index types looks like it's by the same authors, and is one of the few sources I've found that really goes into the data structures used:

https://habr.com/en/company/postgrespro/blog/441962/

I expect those articles will turn into chapters in this book.


that is awesome, thank you for posting it

I would love to know where to send bugs (a convenient place may be a repo in their GH org (https://github.com/postgrespro), to potentially avoid duplicate reports)


As this book's translator, I'm really excited to see the interest it triggers. Thank you for willing to help!

I'll nudge our team about an open mirror, but meanwhile you can contact us at edu@postgrespro.ru. Bug reports on what's already out there will be very helpful to further improve both this part and what is yet to come.


where can I buy it? Looks great


Nowhere any time soon, I guess, as the author is Russian.


I think the book is free because Egor and PostgresPro want to develop the community. If you want to pay back - you can just start contributing to Postgres. No need to wait :)


> The translation is currently in progress. Right now, only Part I is available. Other parts will follow soon. Stay tuned!


That doesn't answer where it can be purchased, nor does it imply that it will be available for purchase when all translations are complete. At 167 pages, part 1 could conceivably be it's own book for purchase. I too would love a resource like this as a book and would be willing to pay for it. I would even purchase each part individually as they become available.


As in it's available in another language already?


Yes, it seems to be Russian originally. See the first page of the book:

    PostgreSQL 14 Internals
    by Egor Rogov
    Translated from Russian by Liudmila Mantrova
    © Postgres Professional, 2022



ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT



Am I the only one who can't connect to this host? It resolves to a Russian IP address. Home ISP


A comment above points out that it's a book originally written in Russian, so.


PostgresPro is a Russia company. I wonder if the on going war would affect postgres accept contribution from them.


What's the point of saying this?




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