--- title: "Why Andy Pavlo dislikes Postgres's MVCC" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 504 published_at: "2023-05-03" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/504" --- Plus big compression gains in Postgres 16, pREST 1.3, and a reintroduction to psql. | #​504 — May 3, 2023 [Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/504) Together with [![Hydra\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_524,h_127/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:7/bmhxbsirg1zkckgnwcor.png)](https://github.com/hydradatabase/hydra) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/wzfzrxxdbglzuwj24ak7.jpg)](https://ottertune.com/blog/the-part-of-postgresql-we-hate-the-most/) ['The Part of Postgres We Hate the Most'](https://ottertune.com/blog/the-part-of-postgresql-we-hate-the-most/) — We’d usually be cynical about an opinion piece with such a title but this one is co-authored by [Andy Pavlo](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/). He and Bohan Zhang make the claim that Postgres’s approach to multi-version concurrency control ‘sucks’ and they go into detail as to why. Bohan Zhang and Andy Pavlo (Ottertune) [LZ4 and ZSTD `pg_dump` compression in Postgres 16](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/lz4-zstd-pg_dump-compression-postgresql-16/) — [LZ4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ4_%28compression_algorithm%29) and [Zstandard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zstd) are two additional compression methods being added to `pg_dump` in Postgres 16. LZ4 offers speed, but zstd yields _striking size reductions_ for compressed dumps, as seen here. Pavlo Golub [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/f2c4e41e.png)](https://github.com/hydradatabase/hydra) [Hydra: An Open Source Alternative to AWS Redshift?](https://github.com/hydradatabase/hydra) — This is the codebase behind the [mythologically named company](https://t.sidekickopen69.com/Ctc/5G+23284/d2Nvbx04/Jk82-6q7W5BW0B06lZ3lgW61jwKb2pqP87W5lm_nS5CHGlYW89YCp16tx8QNW67N_rr1nbQRrW8jVT3L9lPrXnW8b63Hr1TrLFHW75dgCW2N8QNHW7HVKty6xcmlHN3lj2FkCT7FLW3YQ9pK1JR1FMW3ZWn7n5Sp635V5LCjp1Bcl9dW7ClY1Y4nGqZ1W6951Db3btDX2W36jYlx96VWDRW7t-RMr3csDHdW7zCwcg5nkmcTN2VDdhxbHnm0f21Fr-d04) (founded by Joseph Sciarrino & Jonathan Dance of Heroku) building a columnar, vectorized Postgres that's showing some impressive speed-ups. Data warehouses are too expensive, so let's give this project a bump up. Hydra sponsor [Understanding How Parallel Queries Run](https://stormatics.tech/blogs/understanding-postgresql-parallel-query) — If the execution strategy for a query can be divided into parts that can be executed simultaneously by numerous workers, there are performance gains to be had. This post explains the basics and some of the config settings that affect parallel query runs. Muhammad Ali (Stormatics) **IN BRIEF:** - The _Vercel_ hosting platform has introduced [a new suite of storage options for users,](https://vercel.com/blog/vercel-storage) including _Vercel Postgres_, a [Neon](https://neon.tech/)-powered serverless Postgres offering. - Amazon Aurora Serverless v1 [now supports Postgres 13.](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/05/amazon-aurora-serverless-v1-postgresql-13/) - This week's _PostgreSQL Person of the Week_ is [Hécate](https://postgresql.life/post/hecate/) who helps organize [PgDay Paris.](https://2023.pgday.paris/) - If I know one thing about Hettie Dombrovskaya, it's that she loves _PG Day Chicago_, so it's no surprise she's written up [the complete history of the event.](https://hdombrovskaya.wordpress.com/2023/04/28/the-complete-history-of-pg-day-chicago/) We certainly need more Hetties cheerleading for regional Postgres events :-) - 📅 It's not till October, but [PGConf NYC is looking for speakers.](https://2023.pgconf.nyc/callforpapers/) Submissions are due by June 12. [A Tale of Docker and 'Sudden Death' for Postgres](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/docker-sudden-death-for-postgresql/) — It sounds more morbid than it is, but Laurenz has a useful story about a problem a customer was having with Postgres crashing when running in a Docker container. Laurenz Albe [Handy Introductory `psql` Tips and Tricks](https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/databases/postgresql/postgresql-basics-essential-psql-tips-and-tricks/) — An introductory look at `psql` and how to use it, though that’s always a helpful thing to refresh in my case. Ryan Booz [Postgres 15 on Encrypted ZFS and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS](https://manishrjain.com/postgres-on-zfs) Manish R Jain [Joining Historical Data Between Amazon Athena and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/joining-historical-data-between-amazon-athena-and-amazon-rds-for-postgresql/) Deepak Sharma (AWS) [How to Upgrade Postgres 14 to 15 on Ubuntu 23.04](https://www.paulox.net/2023/04/27/upgrading-postgresql-from-version-14-to-15-on-ubuntu-23-04-lunar-lobster/) Paolo Melchiorre Code and Tools [pREST 1.3: Instant RESTFul APIs for Postgres Data](https://prestd.com/) — It’s a bit like the more established PostgREST but written in Go rather than Haskell (here’s [more of a comparison](https://github.com/prest/prest/discussions/41)). [GitHub repo.](https://github.com/prest/prest) pREST Team - [credcheck 1.1](https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/credcheck-v11-released-2631/) ↳ Extension to enforce credential policies. - [PgManage 1.0b](https://www.commandprompt.com/blog/pgmanage-10b-released/) ↳ Browser-based database interface. - [PgTyped 2.2](https://github.com/adelsz/pgtyped) ↳ Raw SQL in TypeScript with type safety. - [PostgresML 2.4.4](https://github.com/postgresml/postgresml) ↳ End-to-end machine learning with SQL. - [pgrx 0.8.2](https://github.com/tcdi/pgrx) ↳ Build Postgres Extensions with Rust. - [Psycopg 3.1.9](https://github.com/psycopg/psycopg) ↳ Popular Postgres database adapter for Python. - [PostgREST 11.0.1](https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest) ↳ REST API for any Postgres database. - [ruby-pg 1.5.3](https://github.com/ged/ruby-pg) ↳ Client library for Ruby. **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. 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