--- title: "Don't pretend your Postgres views are tables" publication: "Postgres Weekly" issue: 648 published_at: "2026-05-13" canonical_url: "https://postgresweekly.com/issues/648" --- Plus how to build SQL-only Postgres extensions, comparing JSONB indexing approaches, and tracing Postgres with eBPF. #​648 — May 13, 2026 [Web Version](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/648) Together with [![Tiger Data logo\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_1280,h_282/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:30/px1u7kjyvz7xnbm6ytir.png)](https://www.tigerdata.com/go/trial?utm_source=content-syndication&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=postgres-weekly-newsletter) Postgres Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/ateqfl1iffefiwqk6t0z.jpg)](https://boringsql.com/posts/strong-views/) [Strong Views on Postgres `VIEW`s](https://boringsql.com/posts/strong-views/) — Why views are clean to use but painful to change in Postgres, with a tour of how they work under the hood and what’s missing from `ALTER VIEW`. Surprisingly, the mechanism that would fix it already exists inside `pg_dump`… Radim Marek [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/9f5d16f6.png)](https://www.tigerdata.com/go/trial?utm_source=content-syndication&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=postgres-weekly-newsletter) [REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW Shouldn't Block Prod](https://www.tigerdata.com/go/trial?utm_source=content-syndication&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=postgres-weekly-newsletter) — You wrote the materialized view to pre-compute rollups. Now it locks the table on refresh. Get $1000 in credit to try what replaces it. TimescaleDB continuous aggregates update incrementally on live data. No REFRESH, no lock, no cron. Tiger Data (creators of TimescaleDB) sponsor [Making JSONB More Queryable with Generated Columns](https://richyen.com/postgres/2026/05/11/generated_columns_jsonb.html) — A benchmark-driven comparison of GIN, expression indexes, and generated columns. Richard finds the B-tree-based options beat GIN on query latency, storage, and writes, with generated columns the most maintainable. Richard Yen **IN BRIEF:** - [Render](https://render.com/), a popular hosting platform, has added an [official integration with ParadeDB](https://www.paradedb.com/blog/render), the Elastic-like Postgres search extension. - [_Neon_ turned off Full Page Writes](https://neon.com/blog/turning-off-fpw-for-faster-writes) for up to 5x write throughput. [No Compiler Required: Writing SQL-Only Extensions](https://www.pgedge.com/blog/no-compiler-required-writing-sql-only-postgres-extensions) — It’s easy to think of Postgres extensions as complex multi-language projects (many of the most popular ones are!) but they can be built entirely from SQL you already know. Shaun walks through creating such an extension here. Shaun Thomas [A Field Guide to Alternative Storage Engines for Postgres](https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/05/08/a-field-guide-to-alternative-storage-engines-for-postgresql/) — Six years after [the table access method API](https://www.postgresql.fastware.com/blog/postgresql-table-access-methods) shipped in Postgres 12, Christophe surveys what the ecosystem actually looks like and why it’s messier than the early predictions suggested. Christophe Pettus ▶[From MemSQL to HorizonDB: An Engineer's Journey with Adam Prout](https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/from-memsql-to-horizondb-an-engineers-journey-with-adam-prout) — The founding architect of Azure HorizonDB on his 20-year journey through relational databases to Postgres. Talking Postgres Podcast podcast 📄 [Tracing Postgres Using eBPF and Hardware Breakpoints](https://jnidzwetzki.github.io/2026/05/08/ebpf-hw-breakpoints-postgresql.html) – TIL you can track variables like `nextXid` and `nextOid` as they’re updated in memory. On Linux, at least. Jan Nidzwetzki 📄 [A Beginner's Guide to SSL in Postgres](https://stormatics.tech/blogs/ssl-in-postgresql) – A handy primer, including a list of common mistakes to avoid. Shridhar Khanal 📰 Classifieds ⚡ Not enough Postgres experts? [pgEdge AI DBA Workbench](https://www.pgedge.com/download/ai-dba-workbench) gives every team a senior DBA, 24x7. ANY Postgres. [Open source](https://www.pgedge.com/download/ai-dba-workbench). --- 🐘 Self-hosting Postgres? [Try out ParadeDB](https://paradedb.com), a Postgres extension that enables Elasticsearch-quality full-text, vector and hybrid search. No ETL pipeline, no Elastic cluster. **RELEASES AND CODE:** [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/juc08pf0bya10r8midlf.jpg)](https://dventimisupabase.github.io/pg_flight_recorder/) [pg_flight_recorder: Continuous State Sampling via `pg_cron`](https://dventimisupabase.github.io/pg_flight_recorder/) — A pure SQL extension that uses `pg_cron` to continuously snapshot Postgres state (`pg_stat_activity`, `pg_stat_statements`, `pg_locks`, etc.) to give you access to a rolling history of what was happening when things went wrong. Dmitry Ventin (Supabase) [pg_sorted_heap 0.13.0: Physically Sorted Storage with HNSW Vector Search](https://skuznetsov.github.io/pg_sorted_heap/) — An early-stage extension offering physically sorted tables with zone-map block pruning and a planner-integrated HNSW vector index, no `pgvector` required. Aimed at GraphRAG and vector retrieval workloads. Sergey Kuznetsov - ⚠️ [PgBouncer 1.25.2](https://www.pgbouncer.org/changelog.html#pgbouncer-125x) – A security maintenance release patching four CVEs. - [PGQueuer 1.0](https://janbjorge.github.io/pgqueuer/) – Python job queue library offering real-time, concurrent background job processing atop Postgres ([v1.0 release notes](https://github.com/janbjorge/pgqueuer/releases/tag/v1.0.0)). - 🔎 [pg_textsearch 1.2](https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearch) – The BM25 relevance-ranked full-text search extension adds _"proper support for physical replication"_. - [pg_clickhouse 0.3](https://github.com/ClickHouse/pg_clickhouse) – Perform analytics queries on ClickHouse without rewriting SQL. [More on this release here.](https://justatheory.com/2026/05/pg_clickhouse-0.3.0/) - 🕒 [TimescaleDB 2.27.0](https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/releases/tag/2.27.0) – The time-series extension gets substantially faster performance on certain queries. - [pg_trickle 0.58](https://github.com/trickle-labs/pg-trickle) – Declarative, auto-refreshing materialized views. **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. 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