---
title: "When the WAL wouldn't stop growing"
publication: "Postgres Weekly"
issue: 496
published_at: "2023-03-08"
canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/496"
---

Plus the final Citus Con schedule, Postgres in the pigsty, and some recent juicy commits. |        

#​496 — March 8, 2023 

[Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/496)  

Together with [![Polyscale\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,e_trim,w_300,h_160/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:7/rrkstxca0vg7e1eww6yw.jpg)](https://www.polyscale.ai/#)  

Postgres Weekly 

[![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/unypu0gl3d9zolnsfd1m.jpg)](https://mathesar.org/)  

[Mathesar: Spreadsheet Interface for a Postgres Database](https://mathesar.org/) — A newly launched open-source tool that provides a grid-style interface to a Postgres database of your choice, with the aim being to enable developers to open up databases more directly to end users. It’s written in Python and is [on GitHub too](https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar). 

Mathesar   [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/d1ea729e.png)](https://www.polyscale.ai/) 

[Like Redis Caching, but in < 5 Minutes](https://www.polyscale.ai/) — Create a low-latency, global database cache without writing code. No need to define data structures or eviction policies. Automatically determine optimal TTLs and invalidate stale data. Start caching, faster. 

PolyScale.ai sponsor   

[The Integer at the End of the Universe: Integer Overflow in Postgres](https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/the-integer-at-the-end-of-the-universe-integer-overflow-in-postgres) — When you’ve got too big an integer for the data type you’re using, trouble occurs. There are a few solutions (or workarounds) in Postgres. Jesse has a (rather epic) query to help you spot the problem on sequences and shares recommendations for a short term or long term fix. 

Jesse Soyland   

[The Tale of the 11TB Write Ahead Log](https://engineering.adjust.com/post/11_tb_wal_in_postgresql/) — There’s nothing like an alert out of the blue on the weekend to keep you on your toes. Adjust’s team were alerted to rapidly spiralling disk usage on their database server and a WAL file was to blame. These stories are always worth a read because they might pop back into your mind when similar situations arise. 

Zakirov, Siroshtan, Scherbaum   

**IN BRIEF:** 

- Postgres 16 may allow [regexes in pg_hba.conf](https://paquier.xyz/postgresql-2/postgres-16-pghba-regexp/) to make user and/or database matching more powerful.
- 📅 [The schedule for _Citus Con_](https://www.citusdata.com/cituscon/2023/schedule/) (taking place online in April) is now live. Speakers include Pamela Fox, Marco Slot, and, notably, a keynote from SQLite superfan and Django founder Simon Willison.
- Samay Sharma, manager of the open source Postgres team at Microsoft, is [this week's _PostgreSQL Person of the Week_ interviewee.](https://postgresql.life/post/samay_sharma/)
- 📅 If you're in Chicago, Henrietta Dombrovskaya [is _very_ keen](https://hdombrovskaya.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/chicago-you-are-missing-out/) for you to make it to [PG Day Chicago](https://postgresql.us/events/pgdaychicago2023/schedule/) next month.   

[PostgREST: Get Started with Automated Postgres APIs](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/postgrest-get-started-automated-postgresql-apis/) — Why write your own code when Copilot.. ChatGPT.. [_PostgREST_](https://postgrest.org/en/stable/) can automatically generate an API atop your Postgres database? Hans-Jürgen shows off the basics. 

Hans-Jürgen Schönig   

[Geocoding with Web APIs in Postgres](https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/geocoding-with-web-apis-in-postgres) — The steps to set up a geocoder with the US census geocoding API inside your database with a [PL/Python](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/plpython.html) function and triggers. 

Jacob Coblentz   

[Five Interesting Patches From January’s Commitfest](https://www.timescale.com/blog/a-postgresql-developers-perspective-five-interesting-patches-from-januarys-commitfest/) — Postgres developer Chris Travers shares his thoughts on improvements to `psql`, a new synonym for infinity, transaction ID wraparound problems, and more. 

Chris Travers (Timescale)   

[Free eBook: Declarative Cloud Infrastructure Management with Terraform](https://www.linode.com/content/declarative-cloud-infrastructure-management-terraform-linode/?utm_source=postgres_weekly&utm_medium=newsletter_sponsorship&utm_campaign=newsletter_sponsorship-postgres_weekly-q1_newsletters&utm_content=&utm_term=) 

Akamai Connected Cloud sponsor   

[Deploy an Amazon RDS for Postgres Multi-AZ DB Cluster Using Terraform Modules](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/deploy-an-amazon-rds-for-postgresql-and-mysql-multi-az-db-cluster-using-terraform-modules/) 
Amin and Kampili (AWS)   

[How to Query Polymorphic Tables Easier Using a View](https://newvick.com/views-for-polymorphic-tables/) 
Newvick X    

🛠 Code and Tools 

[![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/kaxpmjtz0atoxq4ke2rx.jpg)](https://github.com/Vonng/pigsty/releases/tag/v2.0.0)  

[Pigsty 2.0: Postgres In Great STYle?](https://github.com/Vonng/pigsty/releases/tag/v2.0.0) — I’m not sure about their choice of abbreviation, but Pigsty bills itself as an open-sourced ‘RDS alternative’ – not a cloud platform of its own, but essentially a Postgres distribution with [a _lot_ of stuff](https://github.com/Vonng/pigsty#features) packed in. 

Feng Ruohang   

[DBeaver 23: A Universal Database Tool](https://dbeaver.io/) — Written in Java, this is a long standing, open-source, cross-platform database tool for building and running queries, looking at tables, execution plans, etc. [Recent commits](https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver/commit/f13e8b5ac2b4f30136313630c6a7939b76d53c31) seem to show they’re working on adding GPT-3 powered ‘smart completion’ features too.. 

DBeaver Team   

- [PgTyped 2.1](https://github.com/adelsz/pgtyped)
 ↳ Raw SQL in TypeScript with guaranteed type-safety.
- [pgsync 0.7.4](https://github.com/ankane/pgsync)
 ↳ Sync data from one database to another.
- [Bob 0.17](https://github.com/stephenafamo/bob)
 ↳ SQL query builder and ORM generator for Go. 

_(↑ If you're a Go developer, check out [our Go newsletter too](https://golangweekly.com/).)_    

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