The Hallway Track
24 tracked signals on postgresql.
PostgreSQL is becoming the unified 'everything database', replacing fragmented specialized data stacks.
“50% of the developer time, you know, I repeat, 50%, which is pretty much half of the developer time, is wasted in maintaining the pipelines and not really building the new features.”
Microsoft built Azure HorizonDB, a 99.9% Postgres database with separated compute/storage and Rust-built storage, for tier-1 scalability.
“HorizonDB is built on the concept of database as logs and separation of compute and storage, which allows compute and storage to scale independently.”
Microsoft announced public preview of Azure HorizonDB, a cloud-native PostgreSQL with built-in AI features for agents.
“Horizon DB is designed for this new era of AI agents. So it comes with built-in AI models, AI pipelines and AI functions.”
Microsoft launches Horizon DB, a fully managed PostgreSQL service on Azure built for high-availability scale-out.
“Horizon is delivering 3x throughput, uh, compared to any self-managed PostgreSQL SQL setup.”
pg_duckdb is a Postgres extension embedding DuckDB's analytical engine to run fast OLAP queries inside Postgres without data movement.
“It's like bringing the capabilities of OLTP and OLAP at one place.”
Basic SQL/PGQ property graph support has been committed to PostgreSQL 19, enabling relational data to be queried as graphs.
“We have committed basic support for this standard in PostgreSQL 19.”
Postgres CDC via the WAL enables event-driven architectures without dual-write risk, demonstrated across wal2json, Drasi, and Debezium/Kafka.
“In Postgres, every INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE is already being recorded in the WAL.”
PostgreSQL 18's planner optimizations (OR-to-ANY rewrite, B-tree skip scan) deliver large real-world query speedups over 17.
“it's like, 1,741 times faster, like 99.9% reduction in execution time”
A large European bank migrated very large Oracle workloads to Azure Database for PostgreSQL to cut costs.
“the cost becomes a moot point if performance is not met”
Choosing AMD EPYC-powered Azure infrastructure can improve PostgreSQL performance by over 60%.
“the 'Ea' series are often most recommended because the extra memory gives you more room to scale and PostgreSQL absolutely benefits from having more memory per vCPU”
Microsoft pitches migrating Oracle and PostgreSQL workloads to managed Postgres on Azure at Build 2026.
“OpenAI is a good example. Um, they're willing to bet their production workloads on manage Postgress running on Azure.”
PostgreSQL 18 ships major vacuum improvements: async I/O, dynamic autovacuum scaling, and dead-tuple caps.
“PostgreSQL 18 delivers the most significant collection of vacuum and analyze improvements over the years.”
pgcov is a new open-source CLI tool that brings test coverage analysis to PostgreSQL SQL and PL/pgSQL code.
“PostgreSQL code has no coverage visibility yet.”
A practical guide on getting started with PostgreSQL hacking by starting small with patch reviews and bug fixes.
“Do not try to understand everything first. Start with something small enough to finish.”
PostgreSQL accumulated a dozen authentication methods over decades, evolving from trust to external token-based identity providers.
“Every method you'll see on the pg_hba.conf file solved a real problem at a real moment sometime in the past.”
Microsoft engineer argues the PgQ extension outperforms SELECT FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED for implementing Postgres queues.
“it's quite surprising that many people know PgBouncer but never heard of PgQ”
PostgreSQL and SQL Server differ fundamentally in their security models, especially around roles, ownership, and privileges.
“Every login, every user, every group that we know in SQL Server, everything is a role in Postgres.”
A developer walks through building a WAL-sender performance optimization feature for PostgreSQL physical replication.
“It is an exploration of how one can develop a feature which will improve performance of physical replication.”
PostgreSQL logical replication evolved from 9.4 API primitives to native core support, heading toward multi-master.
“We'll go from its earliest building blocks in PostgreSQL 9.4 all the way to the multi-master distributed future that's being actively built right now.”
PostgreSQL performance on large tables degrades silently through bloat, vacuum storms, and WAL explosion without proactive maintenance.
“performance doesn't break suddenly, it degrades silently over time”
Django 5.0 added a GeneratedField ORM layer over PostgreSQL Generated Columns, computed in-database for speed.
“using Django in the right way, you have to try to use the lower level if you want to be faster”
A talk on designing schemas to use PostgreSQL's JSON/JSONB data type effectively rather than fearing it.
“we can tame this data type so that it provides you the best for your database schema”
A Microsoft PostgreSQL program manager explains how fuzzing finds deep bugs in complex codebases like databases.
“Fuzzing is automated testing that throws unexpected inputs.”
A developer demonstrates underused PostgreSQL features—range types, generated columns, and exclusion constraints—to solve real application problems more elegantly than standard SQL.
“engineering still needs creativity”