--- title: "This Week's PostgreSQL News (#195)" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 195 published_at: "2017-02-22" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/195" --- Postgres Weekly 195 . [Read this on the Web](http://postgresweekly.com/issues/195) [Postgres Weekly](http://postgresweekly.com) Issue 195 — February 22, 2017 [Deep Dive Into Postgres Stats: An Introduction](http://blog.postgresql-consulting.com/2017/02/deep-dive-into-postgres-stats.html?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Under the covers Postgres keeps a lot of stats about your data in order to better execute queries. Here’s the first part of a series that starts to tell you everything you could want to know about how it works. Alexey Lesovsky [Getting Assertive with PL/pgSQL's 'ASSERT' Statement](http://bonesmoses.org/2017/02/17/pg-phriday-getting-assertive/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)When building complex SQL functions, ASSERT can be used to avoid undesirable states as well demonstrated here. Shaun M.​ Thomas#tutorial [Citus 6.1 Released: Horizontal Scaling for PostgreSQL](https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/02/16/citus-61-released/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)The Citus extension that helps scale out Postgres has a new release including tenant isolation for multi-tenant apps, new reference table APIs, view support for distributed tables, and distributed vacuum/analyze. Citus Data#news [[Webinar\] What's New in MySQL 8.0 and PostgreSQL 9.6](https://www.vividcortex.com/resources/whats-new-in-mysql-8.0-and-postgresql-9.6?utm_campaign=Postgres%20Weekly&utm_source=ppc)In this recording from VividCortex's live webinar, Baron Schwartz discusses some of the new features and capabilities available in MySQL 8.0 and PostgreSQL 9.6. Watch to learn how MySQL and PostgreSQL have changed with these most recent updates. VividCortex#sponsored[![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/3e84b766.png)](https://www.vividcortex.com/resources/whats-new-in-mysql-8.0-and-postgresql-9.6?utm_campaign=Postgres%20Weekly&utm_source=ppc) [How PostgreSQL Is Tested](http://blog.pgconf.us/2017/02/how-postgresql-is-tested.html?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Want to learn how databases get tested and in particular Postgres? This talk from last year’s PGConf US digs in to the testing processes the Postgres project uses. Joshua Drake#video [Still No Query Hints?](http://momjian.us/main/blogs/pgblog/2017.html?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email#February_17_2017)_“So, it is 2017 and Postgres still doesn’t support query hints like other relational databases? Yep, it’s true, and probably will be forever…”_ Bruce Momjian#opinion [Logging Transactions That Dropped Tables](https://blog.hagander.net/logging-transactions-that-dropped-tables-236/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)If you’ve ever had a case where a table was dropped and you want to find out what did it, this post looks at how to find the culprit transaction. Magnus Hagander [Statistics on Expressive Indexes](http://momjian.us/main/blogs/pgblog/2017.html?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email#February_20_2017)_“Not only do expression indexes allow rapid lookups of matching expressions, but they also provide optimizer statistics, which improve row estimates and hence query plans.”_ Bruce Momjian [Dealing With User Timezones in Postgres](http://idlehands.codes/dealing-with-timezones-in-postgres?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)How to get Postgres to do the heavy lifting for you. Jeffrey Matthias [How Do I Store Phone Numbers in PostgreSQL?](http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/164796/how-do-i-store-phone-numbers-in-postgresql?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Using Google’s [libphonenumber](https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber) via [pg_libphonenumber](https://github.com/blm768/pg-libphonenumber) is one compelling option. Stack Exchange [Metrics Maven: Calculating a Weighted Moving Average in PostgreSQL](https://compose.com/articles/metrics-maven-calculating-a-weighted-moving-average-in-postgresql/?utm_source=cooper&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=postgresql)In this episode of our Metrics Maven series our data scientist shows how to calculate weighted moving average. Compose#sponsored [Users Table Mutations: 3 Ways of Building and Altering a 'Users' Table](https://hackernoon.com/users-table-mutations-209fa19412d6?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email) Raphael Ht [pgcsv: Load CSV Files Into Postgres Without Explicit Schema Creation](https://github.com/pudo/pgcsv?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email)Postgres has \copy support for loading CSVs and other files into Postgres. This tool goes one step further and simplifies the process, even taking care of creating the tables for you. GitHub#code [node-postgres: PostgreSQL Client for Node.js](https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=email) Brian Carlson#code Postgres Weekly is curated by [Craig Kerstiens](https://twitter.com/craigkerstiens) [Read this issue on the Web](http://postgresweekly.com/issues/195) [See our archives](http://postgresweekly.com/issues) [Change your email address](*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*) [Stop getting this newsletter](*|UNSUB|*) Published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/) Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Lincoln Way, Louth, LN11 0LS, UK