--- title: "Postgres in the time of monster hardware" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 589 published_at: "2025-02-20" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/589" --- Plus measuring how compatible 'Postgres compatible' implementations really are. | #​589 — February 20, 2025 [Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/589) Together with [![Crunchy Data\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_430,h_100/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:7/xyflkz7n00elwtgja9ne.png)](https://www.crunchydata.com/products/warehouse?utm_source=cp-pg-022025) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/umlwap0o1lqpb2vcpgzp.jpg)](https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/postgres-time-monster-hardware) [Postgres in the Time of Monster Hardware](https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/postgres-time-monster-hardware) — You might think your M4 Max is pretty fast, but imagine having an AMD EPYC with 192 cores per socket and 10 terabytes of RAM that benchmarks at 160x faster than a Xeon-powered server from 15 years ago! Modern CPU power (not to mention faster storage) invites us to ask questions about how we scale database servers in modern times. Lætitia Avrot [PostgreSQL 17.3, 16.7, 15.11, 14.16, and 13.19 Released](https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-173-167-1511-1416-and-1319-released-3015/) — A raft of updates to all maintained lines of Postgres to tackle one security vulnerability and lots of smaller bugs. As minor updates, the upgrade process is simple and doesn’t require any dumping and reloading. PostgreSQL Global Development Group [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/2edbe030.png)](https://www.crunchydata.com/products/warehouse?utm_source=cp-pg-022025) [Postgres, Now with Built-In Warehousing](https://www.crunchydata.com/products/warehouse?utm_source=cp-pg-022025) — Why manage two databases when one does it all? Crunchy Data Warehouse keeps your transactional database running smoothly while adding warehouse features like querying object storage, BI tool connections, and more. Scale efficiently with the Postgres you trust, without the complexity. Crunchy Data sponsor [A _PostgreSQL Compatibility Index_ to Compare Implementations](https://drunkdba.medium.com/postgres-is-3cbae80c84a3) — Postgres has found itself in an envious, though complex, situation of becoming a _lingua franca_ among databases where databases that contain no Postgres code at all attempt to be “compatible” with it in various ways. But _how_ compatible? The _Postgres Compatibility Index_ is an attempt to test and monitor numerous aspects. Mayur [A Look at Virtual Generated Columns in Postgres 18](https://www.dbi-services.com/blog/postgresql-18-virtual-generated-columns/) — Postgres 18 is gaining the ability to have ‘virtual generated columns’ where the expression for a virtual column is computed at read-time so they’re not stored on disk as all [generated columns](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-generated-columns.html) currently are. Daniel Westermann **QUICK BITS:** - 🔒 A vulnerability in `psql` was used to [break into the US Treasury in December](https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/14/postgresql_bug_treasury/), researchers say. - 📕 [Introduction to PostgreSQL for the Data Professional](https://www.red-gate.com/solutions/entrypage/introduction-to-postgresql-for-the-data-professional/) is a new book by Ryan Booz and Grant Fritchey and published by Redgate. It's available for free behind a _'fill out your details'_wall. - 🇪🇺 _PostgreSQL Europe_ has decided to withdraw from Twitter/X but [shares a list of its alternative social media channels here](https://www.postgresql.eu/news/social-media-channels-31/), as well all the conferences they organize. Also, did you know [PostgreSQL Europe has a diversity task force?](https://karenjex.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-postgresql-europe-diversity-task.html) Karen Jex explains more. - [A Postgres CDC connector for ClickPipes](https://clickhouse.com/blog/postgres-cdc-connector-clickpipes-public-beta) is now in public beta. [Representing Graphs in Postgres](https://www.richard-towers.com/2025/02/16/representing-graphs-in-postgres.html) — Postgres isn’t a graph database, but you can emulate the concepts involved. Alternatively, you could use an extension like [Apache AGE](https://age.apache.org/) if you need Cypher-like graph querying support. Richard Towers [Incremental Archival from Postgres to Parquet](https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/incremental-archival-from-postgres-to-parquet-for-analytics) — Crunchy Data’s `pg_parquet` and `pg_incremental` extensions can be used to set up a reliable pipeline to export ranges of rows to the columnar Parquet format on S3. Marco Slot 📄 [Waiting for Postgres 18: Add Delay Time to VACUUM/ANALYZE (VERBOSE) and Autovacuum Logs](https://www.depesz.com/2025/02/19/waiting-for-postgresql-18-add-delay-time-to-vacuum-analyze-verbose-and-autovacuum-logs/) Hubert depesz Lubaczewski 📄 [Cloudflare, Unikernels and Bare Metal: The Life of a Prisma Postgres Query](https://www.prisma.io/blog/cloudflare-unikernels-and-bare-metal-life-of-a-prisma-postgres-query) Nikolas Burk (Prisma) 📄 [Important Postgres Configuration Parameters to Understand](https://stormatics.tech/semabs-planet-postgresql/important-postgresql-parameters) Semab Tariq 🛠 Code and Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/ufgvhucqem3c5ibe7sla.jpg)](https://www.timescale.com/blog/sqlalchemy-and-litellm-make-vector-search-simple) [Expanding pgai Vectorizer](https://www.timescale.com/blog/sqlalchemy-and-litellm-make-vector-search-simple) — [pgai](https://github.com/timescale/pgai/) is Timescale’s suite of tools for making it easier to use AI capabilities from Postgres, including automatically creating and syncing vector embeddings for data. Now they’ve upped the ante with SQLAlchemy support and support for more embedding models via LiteLLM ([more detail here](https://www.timescale.com/blog/one-line-of-sql-all-the-litellm-embeddings)). Timescale - [dynamodb_fdw 1.4](https://github.com/pgspider/dynamodb_fdw) – DynamoDB Foreign Data Wrapper for Postgres. Now supporting Postgres 17. - [Stateless Postgres Query Router (SPQR) 2.4](https://github.com/pg-sharding/spqr) – An approach to horizontal sharding, originally built at Yandex Cloud. - [River 0.17](https://github.com/riverqueue/river/releases/tag/v0.17.0) – Fast and reliable Postgres-powered background jobs for Go. - 📊 [pgwatch v3.1.0](https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pgwatch/releases/tag/v3.1.0) – Postgres metrics monitor/dashboard. - [Prisma 6.4](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/releases/tag/6.4.0) – Popular ORM for Node.js and TypeScript. **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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