--- title: "pgBackRest is no longer being maintained" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 646 published_at: "2026-04-29" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/646" --- Plus hardening Postgres against agentic users, a faster TimescaleDB, and Netlify joins the Postgres club. #​646 — April 29, 2026 [Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/646) Together with [![Greptile\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_1280,h_308/co_white,e_outline:25/mvysygc5u6xqa3gvmetk.png)](https://www.greptile.com/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=paid-community&utm_campaign=postgresweekly_primary_apr29) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/svn0ifjdvxcuekp2vrof.jpg)](https://mydbanotebook.org/posts/pgbackrest-is-dead.-now-what/) [pgBackRest Is 'Dead': Now What?](https://mydbanotebook.org/posts/pgbackrest-is-dead.-now-what/) — The biggest Postgres story on social media is [pgBackRest’s repo](https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest) being archived and gaining a ‘notice of obsolescence’. David Steele hasn’t got the time to keep maintaining what is, for many shops, the de facto Postgres backup/restore/recovery tool. Lætitia does a great job of explaining the project’s significance, alternatives, and possible ways forward. Lætitia Avrot 💡 Several Postgres authors have written about the development, including [Christophe Pettus](https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/04/27/notice-of-obsolescence/), [Jan Wieremjewicz](https://percona.community/blog/2026/04/28/pgbackrest-is-archived-what-now/), and [Stefanie Janine Stölting](https://proopensource.it/blog/postgresql-ecosystem-problems-2026) [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/c7fe5b07.png)](https://www.greptile.com/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=paid-community&utm_campaign=postgresweekly_primary_apr29) [Catch Postgres Bugs Before Your PRs Merge](https://www.greptile.com/?utm_source=postgresweekly&utm_medium=paid-community&utm_campaign=postgresweekly_primary_apr29) — Migrations, indexes, and query changes are easy to miss in review. Greptile reviews each PR with full repo context, flags real issues, and suggests fixes that match your team. Works with GitHub and GitLab. Greptile sponsor [My Queries to Monitor Autovacuum](https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/) — An experienced Postgres consultant shares his working set of queries for keeping autovacuum honest, including a "vacuum urgency" calculation, monitoring transaction ID wraparound risk, and keeping an eye on table bloat. Laurenz Albe (Cybertec) [Parallel Autovacuum in Postgres 19: It's Not About the CPU](https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/04/28/parallel-autovacuum/) — Learn about Postgres 19’s new `autovacuum_max_parallel_workers` and `autovacuum_parallel_workers` settings, and why parallel autovacuum primarily benefits tables with many or expensive indexes, rather than being a general CPU usage knob. Christophe Pettus [Understanding Bitmap Heap Scans in Postgres](https://richyen.com/postgres/2026/04/27/bitmap_heap_scan.html) — A short explainer for a scan type that confuses everyone the first time it shows up in `EXPLAIN`. Understanding how they work can make execution plans much easier to interpret. Richard Yen 💡 Postgres's [Using `EXPLAIN` page](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/using-explain.html) is also helpful on this topic. 🤖 [Databases Were Not Designed for This](https://arpitbhayani.me/blogs/defensive-databases/) — Databases largely respond to human-written, or at least human-_considered_, queries, but AI agents can violate this assumption. Arpit suggests things you can tweak to survive a new world of unexpected queries and client behavior. Arpit Bhayani 🎉 [Netlify Database is Now Available](https://www.netlify.com/blog/netlify-database/) – Another cloud deployment provider joins the Postgres party with databases for all users ([within these limits](https://docs.netlify.com/build/data-and-storage/netlify-database/billing-and-usage/#limits)). Netlify 📄 [Managed Postgres, Examined: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL](https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/04/28/managed-postgres-examined-amazon-rds-for-postgresql/) – First in a series of independent, objective reviews of what different Postgres platforms bring to the table... _(pun intended!)_ Christophe Pettus 🌐 [Finding the Centre of Jamaica with PostGIS and SQL](https://auchindown.com/blog/2026/finding-jamaicas-centre) – `st_centroid` and `st_geometricmedian` offer two routes, and two different answers. Rhys Stewart 📄 [Benchmarking How Workflow Execution Scales on Postgres](https://www.dbos.dev/blog/benchmarking-workflow-execution-scalability-on-postgres) Peter Kraft (DBOS) 📰 Classifieds 🔥 [AI monitoring & diagnostics for ANY Postgres v14+ instance](https://www.pgedge.com/download/ai-dba-workbench). 34 probes, 3-tier anomaly detection, agentic AI assistant. [Open source](https://www.pgedge.com/download/ai-dba-workbench). **RELEASES AND CODE:** 🔎 [pg_textsearch 1.1: BM25 Ranked Text Search Extension](https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearch/releases/tag/v1.1.0) — Say hello to concurrent inserts for higher write-path performance with update-heavy workloads, the ability to set a memory usage limit (and monitor said usage), and the ability to index `text[]`, `varchar[]`, and `bpchar[]` columns directly. Tiger Data [Leandex: A Pure SQL Way to Keep Your Indexes Lean](https://github.com/NikolayS/leandex) — Nik’s [PgQue](https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque) was our most popular link last week, but he’s already back with a new tool. `leandex` is another pure-SQL 'anti-extension' project that detects index bloat and safely rebuilds indexes concurrently as appropriate. Nik Samokhvalov 🪿 [Honker: Add Postgres `NOTIFY`/`LISTEN` Semantics to SQLite](https://github.com/russellromney/honker) — Brings `NOTIFY`/`LISTEN`-style event delivery to SQLite with low latency and cross-process communication, without needing a separate daemon or broker. Russell Romney - [TimescaleDB 2.26](https://www.tigerdata.com/blog/timescaledb-2-26) – The time-series data extension gets 3.5x faster `time_bucket()` aggregations, 70x faster summary queries, and faster multi-column lookups. - 🌐 [Martin 1.8](https://martin.maplibre.org/) – The fast Rust-powered PostGIS map tile server now supports hot-reloading tiles if they get updated. - [pg_trickle 0.38](https://github.com/grove/pg-trickle/releases/tag/v0.38.0) – Declarative, auto-refreshing materialized views extension. - [PgDoorman 3.6](https://github.com/ozontech/pg_doorman) – Multithreaded Postgres connection pooler. - [pgrwl 1.0.33](https://github.com/pgrwl/pgrwl) – WAL receiver written in Go. **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|*).