--- title: "A great Postgres firefighting story" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 442 published_at: "2022-02-16" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/442" --- Plus new bug fix releases all round, and tweaking TOAST compression. | #​442 — February 16, 2022 [Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/442) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/xsnnlqxgrvhnhq7ka7ne.jpg)](https://ardentperf.com/2022/02/10/a-hairy-postgresql-incident/) ⭐️ [A Hairy Postgres Incident](https://ardentperf.com/2022/02/10/a-hairy-postgresql-incident/) — A team upgraded to Postgres 11 in one of their regions and their app began experiencing “problems.” The author came to the rescue in a rather significant way. This is a fantastic tale of problem solving and an example of how complex seemingly simple issues can get. Jeremy Schneider [PostgreSQL 14.2, 13.6, 12.10, 11.15, and 10.20 Released](https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-142-136-1210-1115-and-1020-released-2402/) — Updates for all maintained versions of Postgres to fix over 55 bugs reported over the past several months, covering areas from index corruption and crashes to memory leaks and the query planner. PostgreSQL Global Development Group [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/e1b28fea.jpg)](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/products/cybertec-migrator/) [CYBERTEC MIGRATOR - The Easiest Way from Oracle to Postgres](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/products/cybertec-migrator/) — If your company is locked into an expensive Oracle license, you can save costs by migrating to PostgreSQL. You may wonder, “How can I migrate our databases with the most security and the least downtime possible?” CYBERTEC MIGRATOR is the answer. CYBERTEC sponsor [Postgres Constraints for Newbies](https://blog.crunchydata.com/blog/postgres-constraints-for-newbies) — Some quick explanations and examples of various types of constraint you can put in place in Postgres, including those on foreign keys, uniqueness, null-ness, exclusion, and check constraints. There’s also a handy (if large) query for finding out what constraints already exist in your database. Elizabeth Christensen [TOAST Compression and `toast_tuple_target`](https://blog.anayrat.info/en/2022/02/14/postgresql-toast-compression-and-toast_tuple_target/) — If you have rows in a table that store large amounts of data, Postgres will lean on a mechanism called TOAST to store extra data in a separate place and _refer_ to that from the original table. One benefit of this is that Postgres can compress this data, and you can customize the threshold for this occurring. Adrien Nayrat [Safer Application Users in Postgres](https://blog.crunchydata.com/blog/safer-application-users-in-postgres) — A guide to changing app user permissions so they can’t delete your production database, say. Mike Palmiotto [How Much Disk Space You Can Save Using Smaller Integers?](https://www.depesz.com/2022/02/13/how-much-disk-space-you-can-save-by-using-int4-int-instead-of-int8-bigint/) — Picking over a few bytes used to represent an integer feels too detailed to me, but at scale maybe it could make a difference? Turns out, no, not really, and the amount of planning and ordering needed to make it work is disproportionate to any gains. Hubert depesz Lubaczewski [Studio 3T Manages Your Data, While You Wrestle Your App into Shape](https://studio3t.com/download?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=postgresfeb16) Studio 3T sponsor [How to Fix a Sequence When It Goes Out of Sync in Postgres](https://arctype.com/blog/postgres-sequence/) Antonello Zanini **In brief:** - We mentioned the release of pg_timetable 4.4 last week, but now there's [an official blog post](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/pg_timetable-v4-4-is-available-immediately/) covering the new features more completely. - [PostGIS 3.2.1](http://postgis.net/2022/02/12/postgis-3.2.1/), purely a bug fix release for 3.2, has been released. - Tatsuo Ishii has continued his [series on what's new in Pgpool-II 4.3.](https://pgsqlpgpool.blogspot.com/2022/02/whats-new-in-pgpool-ii-43-part3.html) - Timescale has launched [a new community forum](https://www.timescale.com/blog/listening-to-the-developer-community-yields-benefits-introducing-timescales-community-forum/) and you're welcome to discuss Postgres in addition to Timescale, of course. **Got a new email?** You can [change your address here](https://postgresweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*). --- **Bored of us?** [Click here to stop getting Postgres Weekly](https://postgresweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*). --- **Got a link for us?** Reply and tell us. We can't include everything but we'll look at anything you send. Thanks! --- Published by Cooper Press Ltd. Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom Postgres, PostgreSQL and the Slonik Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada. [Stop getting this newsletter.](https://postgresweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*)