---
title: "This Week's PostgreSQL News (#114)"
publication: "Postgres Weekly"
issue: 114
published_at: "2015-07-15"
canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/114"
---

Postgres Weekly 114   . 

[Read this on the Web](http://postgresweekly.com/issues/114) 

[Postgres Weekly](http://postgresweekly.com) Issue 114 — July 15, 2015     

[Try PostgreSQL 9.5](http://blog.mktmp.io/post/123234019958/try-postgres-9-5?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Leading with a roundup of some of the new features in Postgres 9.5, this post leads to an interesting demo where you can create a temporary instance of Postgres 9.5 in the cloud to play with for an hour. mktmpio blog [Unleash The Power of Storing JSON in Postgres](http://blog.codeship.com/unleash-the-power-of-storing-json-in-postgres/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)If you’ve been living under a rock, you may have missed that Postgres supports JSON. But even if you’re aware you may not have given it a try. Boiled down in a single post here’s the overview, the how to, and some of the more advanced things you need to know about using it all with awesome examples. Leigh Halliday [VividCortex and PostgreSQL Monitoring](http://t.signauxhuit.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XYg4WJ3rsN6448bPf6xSsW2BgSpx56dQQddQpf6002?t=https%3A%2F%2Fvividcortex.com%2Fmonitoring%2Fpostgres%2F%3Futm_source%3Dpaid%26utm_medium%3Dpgw&si=6148852320567296&pi=8b0b3550-40de-4aeb-c65d-3fe10a6ae6a8)VividCortex is the easiest, safest, and most detailed way to monitor PostgreSQL. Unlike other tools that just capture a few status metrics, VividCortex measures every query, every process, and every metric on your entire system, down to the microsecond to improve performance. VividCortex#sponsored[![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/2a010466.png)](http://t.signauxhuit.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XYg4WJ3rsN6448bPf6xSsW2BgSpx56dQQddQpf6002?t=https%3A%2F%2Fvividcortex.com%2Fmonitoring%2Fpostgres%2F%3Futm_source%3Dpaid%26utm_medium%3Dpgw&si=6148852320567296&pi=8b0b3550-40de-4aeb-c65d-3fe10a6ae6a8) [How to Scale PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS using pg_shard](https://www.citusdata.com/blog/14-marco/178-scaling-out-postgresql-on-amazon-rds-using-masterless-pg-shard?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)pg_shard is an open source extension from [Citus Data](http://www.citusdata.com) to make sharding your data easier. Here’s a rundown of getting it up and running to help you scale on Amazon’s RDS. Marco Slot [Postgres 9.5 Feature Highlight: pg_file_settings to Finely Track System Configuration](http://michael.otacoo.com/postgresql-2/postgres-9-5-feature-highlight-pg-file-settings/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)PostgreSQL 9.5 is coming up with a new feature aimed at simplifying tracking of GUC parameters when those are set in a multiple set of files by introducing a new system view called pg_file_settings. Michael Paquier [Transactional DDLs](http://www.cybertec.at/transactional-ddls/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)While the comparison to Sybase may be a bit of a dated example, transactional DDL is still one thing that Postgres has that so many other databases lack. Without transactional DDL you suddenly have much more to worry about when running DB migrations, here’s an overview with some of the edge cases without it. Hans-Juergen Schoenig [Materialized View Strategies Using PostgreSQL](http://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/materialized-view-strategies-using-postgresql?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Views are a way to represent the results of a query as a table, and materialized views actually create that data versus just running a query each time. They’re a great way to cache aggregate data when running an expensive query over time. Jack Christensen [Enumerated Types with ActiveRecord and PostgreSQL](http://www.sitepoint.com/enumerated-types-with-activerecord-and-postgresql/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Enumerated types can be extremely handy in your application, and there’s no reason they can’t map directly to your database. Understand more on how to do it directly with ActiveRecord here. SitePoint [postbird: A PostgreSQL Client App for OS X, Windows and Linux](https://github.com/Paxa/postbird?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Open source and a work in progress. Pavel#code [Full Stack Engineer at Namely (New York, NY)](https://namely.workable.com/jobs/42718?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Namely is an agile startup dedicated to building an end-to-end HR platform for businesses of all sizes. We’re looking for a skilled developer to contribute ideas, innovation, solutions and code to our product. Namely#job    

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