--- title: "An experimental JIT compiler for Postgres" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 547 published_at: "2024-03-20" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/547" --- Plus Figma's epic journey to shard their Postgres stack. | #​547 — March 20, 2024 [Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/547) Together with [![Ottertune logo\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,e_trim,w_450,h_100/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:7/d92wjjhrmysrssm2xhjm.png)](https://ottertune.com/product-tour?utm_source=postgres_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march_24_primary) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/tjuxk6slt19hp3wuekxx.jpg)](https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-databases-team-lived-to-tell-the-scale/) [Figma's Nine Month Journey to Shard Its Postgres Stack](https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-databases-team-lived-to-tell-the-scale/) — In a quest to unlock '(nearly) infinite scalability', Figma’s database team had a lot of work to do in moving to a horizontally sharded architecture (_"End to end, it took our team roughly nine months to shard our first table"_). This post goes into the depths of how they planned out and executed the project. Sammy Steele (Figma) [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/c4b57860.png)](https://ottertune.com/product-tour?utm_source=postgres_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march_24_primary) [OtterTune Optimizes Your RDS and Aurora Postgres Databases](https://ottertune.com/product-tour?utm_source=postgres_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march_24_primary) — No mock-ups or fake screenshots — use our product tour to click through all of OtterTune and learn how you can use AI to optimize your Postgres databases. And then put it to the test: do a free, 30-day trial on an unlimited number of databases. OtterTune sponsor ['Look Ma, I Wrote a New JIT Compiler for Postgres'](https://www.pinaraf.info/2024/03/look-ma-i-wrote-a-new-jit-compiler-for-postgresql/) — Before you get too excited, the author’s [pg-copyjit](https://github.com/pinaraf/pg-copyjit) project is _experimental_ (and x86-64 only), but they do seek feedback on how it works out for you — so if you’re feeling brave and are seeking some potential performance gains... Pinaraf / Pierre Ducroquet [Distributed Queries for pgvector](https://jkatz05.com/post/postgres/distributed-pgvector/) — Distributing a workload across multiple databases provides another way to scale once a single instance has maxed out. Jonathan takes a look into how pgvector and Postgres can be used to scale vector workloads horizontally too. Jonathan Katz _IN BRIEF:_ - [Xata launched](https://xata.io/blog/xata-public-release) as a serverless database platform in 2022, but [now it acts like a serverless _Postgres_ platform too](https://xata.io/blog/serverless-postgres-platform) built atop AWS Aurora. - Dalibo's Florent Jardin is [this week's _PostgreSQL Person of the Week_](https://postgresql.life/post/florent_jardin/). - Nile's Gwen Shapira wrote [a neat Twitter/X thread on TOAST](https://twitter.com/gwenshap/status/1770209083225981418) and its effect on performance. [Postgres Performance Boost: HOT Updates and Fill Factor](https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/postgres-performance-boost-hot-updates-and-fill-factor) — There’s a way for Postgres to only update the heap (the table) _without_ having to update all the indexes – a so-called HOT update, where HOT stands for ‘heap only tuple.’ Elizabeth Christensen [When Postgres is Not Enough? Performance Evaluation of Postgres vs. Distributed DBMSs](https://blog.ydb.tech/when-postgres-is-not-enough-performance-evaluation-of-postgresql-vs-distributed-dbmss-23bf39db2d31) — An empirical study of Postgres, CockroachDB, and [YDB](https://ydb.tech/) by way of the TPC-C benchmark, as well as a consideration of reliability/performance trade-offs in Postgres. Evgeniy Ivanov [Extracting Database Metadata for Presentation in Excel Format](https://datanrg.blogspot.com/2024/03/extracting-postgresql-database-metadata.html) Rayis Imayev 📰 Classifieds Can you [create a copy of a 1TB database in one second?](https://neon.tech/blog/how-to-copy-large-postgres-databases-in-seconds?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=postgresweekly&utm_content=classified) With the copy-on-write storage model in [Neon Postgres](https://neon.tech/blog/how-to-copy-large-postgres-databases-in-seconds?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=postgresweekly&utm_content=classified), you can. --- 📢 Free [pgEdge](https://www.pgedge.com/get-started/cloud?utm_campaign=Cloud%20Developer%20Launch&utm_source=Postgres%20Weekly%20Sponsorship&utm_medium=Postgres%20Weekly&utm_term=Postgres%20Weekly&utm_content=Postgres%20Weekly) distributed Postgres DB with 3 node active-active cluster and one-click provisioning across 3 regions. [Free t-shirt to first 500](https://www.pgedge.com/get-started/cloud?utm_campaign=Cloud%20Developer%20Launch&utm_source=Postgres%20Weekly%20Sponsorship&utm_medium=Postgres%20Weekly&utm_term=Postgres%20Weekly&utm_content=Postgres%20Weekly). 🛠 Code and Tools [pgzx: Create Postgres Extensions using Zig](https://github.com/xataio/pgzx) — If you’re familiar with [pgrx](https://github.com/pgcentralfoundation/pgrx) as a way to build Postgres extensions with _Rust_, this is a similar idea with [Zig](https://ziglang.org/), another modern systems language that’s a little more C-like than Rust. Xata [WAL-G 3.0: Database Archive Restoration Tool](https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g/releases/tag/v3.0.0) — A tool for database archival and restoration for Postgres, MySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, and several other DBMSs – v3.0 introduces failover storage, plus a WAL archiving daemon for Postgres in particular. Citus Data Inc. [transqlate: Transpile SQL into the PostgreSQL Dialect](https://gitlab.com/dalibo/transqlate) — Focusing on _Oracle_-flavored SQL, this Go-powered tool (which is admittedly still in the early stages) aims to let you transpile SQL into the ‘PostgreSQL dialect’ in terms of style, syntax, and semantics. DALIBO - [pgweb 0.15](https://sosedoff.github.io/pgweb/) – Cross-platform desktop client for Postgres. - [pgwire 0.20](https://github.com/sunng87/pgwire) – Postgres wire protocol in a Rust library. **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. 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