Postgres Weekly Issue 32
October 16, 2013
Featured
PostgreSQL 2013-10-10 Update Release
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released a bug-fix update to all current versions of the PostgreSQL database system, including versions 9.3.1, 9.2.5, 9.1.10, 9.0.14, and 8.4.18. These releases fix many issues reported by the community over the last six months.
PostgreSQL News
Postgres 9.3 - How Urgent Is That Update?
A new point release is out for Postgres 9.3. Fortunately unlike many releases where its unclear if it actually affects you, Josh Berkus has done a great job of clearly spelling out the changes.
Josh Berkus
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The rest
First Thing You Do Is Take A Backup
No matter what precautions you take database corruption can still occur, having backups in place is a critical piece. Should you not have them already resisting the urge to get back up and running as possible is important to ensure you do have a stable place to recover from. A real world experience highlights this further.
Database Soup
Geolocation with PostgreSQL
Dealing with location is table stakes for most applications these days, so having a database that plays well with it makes life easier for everyone. One large and common piece of that is converting IPs to locations. Postgres has a great custom datatype to handle IPs and here’s a look at it and mapping to location.
Multicorn: A Powerful Foreign Data Wrapper for PostgreSQL
Foreign data wrappers or FDWs are one of the more exciting features to the future of Postgres recently. Though for most the idea of writing C code to create on isn’t overly exciting. Multicorn is a great wrapper to create FDWs in python and here’s a good initial dive into it.
Fancy SQL Monday: Finding Broken Keys
Its not overly common but when corruption does occur it can be related to your index keys. A quick way of discovering this is dump/restore to find key constraints. While the cleanup is a bit more manual than the detection, the act of identifying them is still incredibly valuable.
Database Soup
Jobs
Database Administrator at Uber (San Francisco, CA)
Uber is an ambitious and exciting company dedicated to disrupting the transportation industry. They’re looking for a database admin with PostgreSQL DBA experience, solid fundamentals in database management, and knowledge of PostgreSQL 9 onward.
Uber