--- title: "Microsoft acquires Citus Data" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 290 published_at: "2019-01-30" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/290" --- The latest Postgres news, articles, tools, and projects. #290 — January 30, 2019 [Read on the Web](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/290) Postgres Weekly ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/jdtcqvqtmtfmgninlrcd.jpg) [Microsoft Acquires Citus Data, the Postgres Horizontal Scaling Company](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/01/24/microsoft-acquires-citus-data-re-affirming-its-commitment-to-open-source-and-accelerating-azure-postgresql-performance-and-scale/) — Citus has become well known for its eponymous Postgres extension that makes Postgres more easily horizontally scalable. This acquisition is an interesting demonstration of both Microsoft’s commitment to supporting its open source database users on Azure and to Postgres generally. Microsoft [Lessons Learned Scaling Postgres to 1.2 Billion Records per Month](https://medium.com/@gajus/lessons-learned-scaling-postgresql-database-to-1-2bn-records-month-edc5449b3067) — The experiences of engineers building a cinema tracking service covering 3200 cinemas and 47,000 showtimes a day. They cover how they reviewed providers, experiences with materialized views, and using the database as a job queue. Gajus Kuizinas [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/2100ff85.jpg)](https://www.quest.com/FY2019_Q4_AMER_DBPerf_CooperPress_FoglightPostgres_Jan_eNewsletter_ADV) [Diagnose & Resolve Performance Across Your PostgreSQL Environment](https://www.quest.com/FY2019_Q4_AMER_DBPerf_CooperPress_FoglightPostgres_Jan_eNewsletter_ADV) — Manage the health of your infrastructure. Intuitive web-based dashboards alert you to issues that might affect performance or availability, and a clear enterprise-wide view helps you optimize your entire PostgreSQL environment. Download your free trial. Quest Software sponsor [A Look at Six Top GUI Tools for Postgres](https://severalnines.com/blog/top-gui-tools-postgresql) — Using a GUI is rarely a _must_, but GUI-based tools can be useful in some cases. Here’s a brief review of five options including pgAdmin, Navicat and ClusterControl. Sebastian Insausti (Severalnines) [Terrific Throughput Tracking for Postgres](https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/pg-phriday-terrific-throughput-tracking/) — Did you know it’s possible to use some of Postgres’s built-in information functions to monitor the throughput of your instance? Shaun Thomas (2ndQuadrant) [Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Now Supports T3 Instance Types](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/01/amazon-rds-postgresql-now-supports-t3-instance-types/) — One for the AWS users. T3 instances are the newer form of ‘burstable’ instances and particularly suited for intermittent usage. Amazon Web Services, Inc. [A Major Feature Update for the pgwatch2 Postgres Monitoring Tool](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/major-feature-update-for-the-pgwatch2-postgres-monitoring-tool/) — [pgwatch2](https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pgwatch2) is a popular self-contained Postgres metrics monitoring and dashboard system. Kaarel Moppel [eBook: Best Practices for Optimizing Postgres Query Performance](https://pganalyze.com/ebooks/optimizing-postgres-query-performance?utm_source=PostgresWeeklySecondary) — Learn how to get a 3x performance improvement on your Postgres database and 500x reduced data loaded from disk in this free pganalyze eBook. pganalyze sponsor [A Flowchart of Postgres's Backend](https://www.postgresql.org/developer/backend/) — A diagram of how Postgres works behind the scenes. You can click on each item to get more information. PostgreSQL Global Development Group [Scheduling Backups En Masse with the Postgres Operator](https://info.crunchydata.com/blog/schedule-pgbackrest-backups-with-the-postgres-operator) — A solid disaster recovery plan for Postgres clusters combined with [pgBackRest](https://pgbackrest.org/) and the Crunchy PostgreSQL Operator will help you manage your backups across thousands of instances with only a few commands. Jonathan S. Katz [DB Doc 6.0 Released: A Postgres Schema Documentation Tool](https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1914/) — A commercial tool (with trial). Now supports Postgres 11. Yohz Software supported by [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/v1545062952/na5isnukkrtglivbcqvs.png)](https://www.strongdm.com/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019-01-16%20-%20%5BNL%5D%20-%20%5BSchD%5D%20-%20%5BSDM%5D%20-%20PGW-TIP-JAN) 💡 Tip of the Week How to visualize your query plans [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/n5lbz4p2vrgwjxh1nvin.jpg)](http://tatiyants.com/pev/#/plans/new) The [`EXPLAIN` command](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-explain.html) displays the execution plan that Postgres's planner generates for a supplied SQL statement which lets you see the approach it'll take to get the required results. Things like whether indexes are used (and which ones), what tables are joined, what join algorithms are used, etc. The output _can_ be a little tricky to visualize and understand in its raw form, however, but luckily there's a free online tool to help. Run your `EXPLAIN` query with the `ANALYZE`, `COSTS`, `VERBOSE`, `BUFFERS` and `FORMAT JSON` options and then paste the results, along with your query, into [the Postgres EXPLAIN Visualizer.](http://tatiyants.com/pev/#/plans/new) This week's tip is sponsored by _[strongDM](https://www.strongdm.com/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019-01-16%20-%20%5BNL%5D%20-%20%5BSchD%5D%20-%20%5BSDM%5D%20-%20PGW-TIP-JAN)_, the best way to secure access to your servers/databases. [Schedule a 10 min demo.](https://www.strongdm.com/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019-01-16%20-%20%5BNL%5D%20-%20%5BSchD%5D%20-%20%5BSDM%5D%20-%20PGW-TIP-JAN) Curated by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/) and [Craig Kerstiens](https://twitter.com/craigkerstiens) [Change your email address](https://postgresweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or[Stop getting this newsletter](https://postgresweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*) © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom