--- title: "A security issue forces new releases of Postgres all round" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 343 published_at: "2020-02-19" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/343" --- This week's Postgres news, views, and tools. #343 — February 19, 2020 [Read on the Web](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/343) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/stjqbsburp6eg7cn5ehl.jpg)](https://github.com/mgartner/pg_flame) [pg_flame: A Flamegraph Generator for `EXPLAIN ANALYZE`'s Output](https://github.com/mgartner/pg_flame) — Reads a JSON query plan from stdin and writes the HTML for the flamegraph HTML to stdout. Available to use via Docker, if you want to keep things simple. Marcus Gartner [Postgres 12.2, 11.7, 10.12, 9.6.17, 9.5.21, and 9.4.26 Released](https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/2011/) — A true smorgasbord of versions here, with basically every major production of Postgres getting an update to fix a critical security issue, as well as variety of minor bug fixes. **This is also Postgres 9.4’s last release with 9.4 now at its “end of life”.** PostgreSQL Global Development Group [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/fc0897bd.png)](https://www.datadoghq.com/postgres-monitoring/?utm_source=Advertisement&utm_medium=CooperPress&utm_campaign=CooperPress-PostgresWeeklyP) [Monitor Custom Postgres Metrics in Real-Time with Datadog](https://www.datadoghq.com/postgres-monitoring/?utm_source=Advertisement&utm_medium=CooperPress&utm_campaign=CooperPress-PostgresWeeklyP) — Monitor and visualize Postgres performance in context end-to-end alongside the rest of your stack. Create custom, drag-and-drop dashboards to quickly view analytics on any Postgres metric. Try Datadog free. Datadog sponsor [Isolation Repeatable Reads in Postgres vs MySQL](https://postgresql.verite.pro/blog/2020/02/14/isolation-repeatable-read-postgresql-mysql.html) — By default, Postgres and MySQL use different levels of isolation within transactions. _Within_ a running transaction, Postgres will see changes made by other transactions once committed, whereas MySQL uses “repeatable read” where the results of a query remain consistent throughout a transaction. There’s a bit more to it than that, though, and this post deftly shows us how it all works. Daniel Vérité [An Experience of Migrating to CockroachDB from Postgres](https://www.openmymind.net/Migrating-To-CockroachDB/) — We love Postgres, but we love a story even more, so it’s interesting to hear about the experiences this engineer had when shifting from Postgres to CockroachDB (for the reason of better “out of the box support for high availability”). Karl Seguin [Useless Vacuuming](http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2020/02/useless-vacuuming.html) — What can you do when autovacuum seems to be running fine, but there are still vacuum related problems? Robert explains such a situation and how to resolve it. Robert Haas [Take Advantage of `pg_settings` When Dealing with Your Config](https://fluca1978.github.io/2020/02/13/pgsettings.html) — Just looking at your config files or assuming you know what the default settings are is risky. The `pg_settings` view gives you an authoritative view of what’s going on. Luca Ferrari [The Why and How of Compressing WAL Archives](https://www.percona.com/blog/2020/02/13/compression-of-postgresql-wal-archives-becoming-more-important/) — Why the compression of WAL archives is becoming more important, and how to do it. Jobin Augustine [Postgres Vision 2020 - Get Your Early Bird Tickets](https://www.postgresvision.com/?utm_source=Cooperpress&utm_medium=ad) — The leading Postgres conference will be back in Boston this year from June 22-24. Get a 2-day conference pass for $199. EnterpriseDB sponsor [cloudfs_fdw: A Foreign Data Wrapper for Accessing Files on Cloud Filesystems](https://github.com/ergo70/cloudfs_fdw) — Specifically, it handles CSV, JSON, Excel and ODF files on S3 or over HTTP(s). Ernst-Georg Schmid [Schemalint: A Linter for Postgres Schemas](https://github.com/kristiandupont/schemalint) — A linter that lets you raise errors on issues like casing or column types (so think more like ESLint than a basic formatter). Kristian Dupont [wal2json: A JSON Output Plugin for Changeset Extraction](https://github.com/eulerto/wal2json) — A JSON object is produced per transaction (_or_ tuple) containing both the new and old tuples for updates. Euler Taveira de Oliveira supported by [![PostgresConf\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/v1580736678/cttmroruvfsupeor4bug.png)](https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2020) 💡**Tip of the Week** Quickly seeing the size of your database(s) A very quick tip this week (after the gargantuan scrollfest of a tip in [issue 341](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/341))! Want to quickly see how big a database is? You can do it in a single query: select pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size('n2')); pg_size_pretty ---------------- 446 MB (1 row) Replace `n2` with the name of your database of choice. Or, if you prefer, get the results for all of the databases you can access on your server like so: select name, pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size(datname)) as size postgres-# from pg_database; name | size -----------+--------- postgres | 7079 kB template1 | 7079 kB template0 | 6969 kB n2 | 446 MB If you want to go deeper by looking at specific _table_ or index sizes, head back to our more in-depth tip back in [issue 294.](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/294) This week's tip is sponsored by [PostgresConf](https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2020). Postgres Conference 2020: The largest gathering about [People, Postgres, and Data](https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2020). Join 800+ attendees and 100+ speakers to build opportunities for the global Postgres ecosystem. 🗓**Upcoming Events** - [PgConf India](https://pgconf.in/conferences/pgconfin2020) (Febuary 26-28 in Bengaluru, India) — A dedicated training day and a multi-track two-day conference. - [Postgres Conference 2020](https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2020) (March 23-27 in New York, United States) — A broad and large scale (indeed, the largest, they say) Postgres event. - [Nordic PgDay 2020](https://2020.nordicpgday.org/) (March 24 in Helsinki, Finland) - [pgDay Paris 2020](https://2020.pgday.paris/#%2319) (March 26 in Paris, France) — [The schedule for this event](https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgdayparis2020/schedule/) is now available. - [Swiss PGDay 2020](http://www.pgday.ch/2020/) (June 18-19 in Switzerland) — A two track conference (one in English, one in German) aimed at the entire Postgres community. - [Postgres Ibiza 2020](https://pgibz.io/) (June 25-26 in Ibiza, Spain) — A two day conference on the sunny island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean. I recall this one getting some great trip reports last year! If you are running a Postgres related event that's beyond the scale of a small local meetup or user group (so, say, 50+ people with people likely to travel to your event from afar), let us know and we can include it here in future issues. Curated by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/), [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/peterc), 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