Microsoft PostgreSQL OSS engine team: reflecting on 2024
In "Microsoft PostgreSQL OSS engine team: reflecting on 2024", the first part of a two part blog post, you will learn about who the Microsoft PostgreSQL OSS Engine team is, their code contributions to the upstream PostgreSQL & journey during 2024. In the second part, you will get a sneak preview of upcoming work in 2025 (and PG18 cycle) and more.January 2025 Recap: Azure Postgres Flexible Server
Hello Azure Community, Happy 2025! This January, we’re introducing some exciting updates for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, including a big one called pg_diskann. With pg_diskann, you can work more efficiently with large amounts of data using an advanced vector indexing algorithm. On top of that, we’ve added fresh security features, better backup options, and other handy improvements—all designed to make your work smoother. Let’s jump right in! Feature Highlights Public Preview of pg_diskann Support for the latest Postgres minor versions New Extensions and version updates New QuickStart guide for .NET SDK Server parameter enhancements New 'pg_signal_autovacuum_worker' role Public Preview of pg_diskann We’re thrilled to announce the open public preview of DiskANN, a leading vector indexing algorithm, on Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server! Now you can use DiskANN on any new Postgres server without having to sign-up for the preview! In the latest version 0.4.0, we introduced parallel index build for faster index build times as well as addressing numerous bugs and improved index stability and performance. For additional details on pg_diskann, please refer to DiskANN documentation. Support for the Latest Postgres Minor Versions Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server now supports the latest minor versions: 17.2, 16.6, 15.10, 14.15, 13.18, and 12.22. These upgrades are automatically applied during our scheduled maintenance, ensuring your database always operates on the most secure and optimized versions available—without manual intervention. This update addresses numerous bug fixes and security improvements to bolster system stability and performance. For additional details, please refer to the PostgreSQL community announcement regarding these new minor version releases. New Extensions and Version Updates We're excited to announce support for three powerful PostgreSQL extensions: postgresql-hll, topn, and tdigest, now supported on Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server. These extensions enhance your ability to handle complex, data-intensive workloads seamlessly. The postgresql-hll extension enables efficient approximation of unique elements using the HyperLogLog data structure, ideal for large-scale analytics. For additional details, please refer to the postgresql-hll documentation. With the topn extension, you can quickly compute the most frequently occurring values in datasets, perfect for large data analysis and real-time dashboards. For additional details, please refer to the topn documentation. The tdigest extension allows accurate quantile estimation for numeric data, making it easier to analyze percentiles and distributions at scale. For additional details, please refer to the tdigest documentation. New QuickStart guide for .NET SDK A new QuickStart guide is available that focuses on using the Azure PostgreSQL for .NET SDK to perform Flexible Server management operations. This guide will get you started with the basic setup of a .NET project, including commands to download the necessary packages and various code examples. These examples will help you understand how to manage a Flexible Server instance, including deploying, configuring firewall rules, and other settings. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this guide is the perfect way to begin working with C# code to interact with Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. Please check out the detailed guidelines on this SDK with this link: Quickstart: Create With Azure Libraries (SDK) For .NET - Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server | Microsoft Learn . Server Parameter Enhancements We've enhanced several server parameters to boost your database's performance and customizability. Prominent updates include the ability to adjust settings for vacuum behavior, memory allocation, and client connection defaults, significantly enhancing system performance and stability. These updates allow greater control over your database operations and are tailored to enhance both functionality and user experience across diverse environments. For a comprehensive list of all adjustable parameters and their descriptions, visit our Server Parameter Documentation. New 'pg_signal_autovacuum_worker' role We are introducing the pg_signal_autovacuum_worker role for PostgreSQL versions 15 and higher, now available in Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. This role lets non-super users terminate the autovacuum process when needed, such as before performing DDL operations. It's a more flexible and secure way to manage autovacuum without requiring super-user privileges. For more details around this new feature, please visit our documentation: http://aka.ms/pg-flex-pg_signal_autovaccum_worker . Azure Postgres Learning Bytes 🎓 Passwordless Connection to Database Service This month's Learning Bytes highlights how to establish a passwordless connection using Azure service connectors to the database. This method uses managed identities to eliminate manual secret management. First, include these dependencies in your pom.xml file: <dependency> <groupid>org.postgresql</groupid> <artifactid>postgresql</artifactid> <version>42.3.6</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupid>com.azure</groupid> <artifactid>azure-identity-extensions</artifactid> <version>1.1.5</version> </dependency> Next, use the following Java code to connect to your database. You can add your connection string from the database to ‘YOUR_CONNECTION_STRING’ import java.sql.*; String url = System.getenv("YOUR_CONNECTION_STRING"); String pluginName = "com.azure.identity.extensions.jdbc.postgresql.AzurePostgresqlAuthenticationPlugin"; Connection connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url + "&authenticationPluginClassName=" + pluginName); For a more detailed tutorial on step-by-step setup for different languages and frameworks, check our tutorial on Microsoft Learn. Conclusion Thanks for checking out the new features we released this January. Every update makes Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server better, safer, and easier to use. Try them out and see how they can help you. We really value your thoughts and suggestions—they help us make our service better. Here’s to a great year ahead with lots of new improvements. Stay tuned for more updates!CFP talk proposal ideas for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025
Some of you have been asking for advice about what to submit to the CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025. So this post aims to give you ideas that might help you submit a talk proposal (or 2, or 3) before the upcoming CFP deadline. If you’re not yet familiar with this conference, POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025 is a free & virtual developer event now in its 4th year, organized by the Postgres team at Microsoft. I love the virtual aspect of POSETTE because the conference talks are so accessible—for both speakers and attendees. If you’re a speaker, you don’t need travel budget $$—and you don’t have to leave home. Also, the talk you’ve poured all that energy into is not limited to the people in the room, and has the potential to reach so many more people. If you’re an attendee, well, all you need is an internet connection The CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres will be open until Sunday Feb 9th at 11:59pm PST. So as of the publication date of this blog post, you still have time to submit a CFP proposal (or 2, or 3, or 4)—and to remind your Postgres teammates and friends of the speaking opportunity. If you have a Postgres experience, success story, failure, best practice, “how-to”, collection of tips, lesson about something that's new, or deep dive to share—not just about the core of Postgres, but about anything in the Postgres ecosystem, including extensions, and tooling, and monitoring—maybe you should consider submitting a talk proposal to the CFP for POSETTE. If you’re not sure about whether to give a conference talk, there are a boatload of reasons why you should. And there’s also a podcast episode with Álvaro Herrera, Boriss Mejías, and Pino de Candia that makes the case for why giving conference talks matters. For inspiration, you can also take a look at the playlist of POSETTE 2024 talks. And if you’re looking for even more CFP ideas, you’ve come to the right place! Read on… Ideas for talks you might propose in the POSETTE CFP On the CFP page there is a list of possible talk titles (screenshot below) you might submit—these are good ideas, although the list is by no means exhaustive, and we welcome talk proposals that are not on this list. Figure 1: POSETTE CFP talk topics taken from the CFP page on PosetteConf.com On Telegram the other day, when answering the question “Do you have any ideas of what I should submit?”, I found myself suggesting different TYPES of talks. Not specific ideas and talk titles, but rather I framed the different categories. So I decided to share these different “types” and “classes” of talks with all of you, in the hopes this might gives you a good talk proposal idea. First you need to pick your audience: Before you think about what type of talk to give, remember that the POSETTE team is focused on serving the needs of both the USER community—as well as the Postgres contributor & hacker communities. That means first you need to decide on your audience. Are you giving a talk for PostgreSQL users, or Azure Database for PostgreSQL customers, or the PostgreSQL contributor community? All are good choices. Then you need to decide: what do you want to accomplish with your talk? Do you want to skill up the Postgres hacker community?: If you want to help skill-up the developer/contributor community, maybe pick a part of Postgres that new contributors often ask a lot of questions about, get stuck on, need help with, etc—and give a “tour” of its mechanics, starting with the basics. Do you want to help grow the Postgres community?: If you want to help grow the Postgres community of contributors and developers, you could propose a talk that would motivate tomorrow's developers/contributors to get involved in the project. Imagine you were going to a university to give a talk about "why work on Postgres"… what would you say? And how would you entice people to work on Postgres? What pain points would you challenge them with? What benefits would you share from your own Postgres experience that might inspire these developers to think seriously about Postgres as a career path? You could also shine a light on the different ways people can (and do!) contribute to the Postgres community: from mentoring to translations to organizing conferences to podcasts to speaking at conferences to publishing PostgreSQL Person of the Week. Do you want to share your expertise with Postgres users?: If you want your talk to benefit users, maybe pick an area that you are already expert in (or want an excuse to dig into and learn about?) and create a Beginners Guide for it? Or Advanced Tips for it? Or Surprising Benefits of? Or Things People Might Not Know? Especially if there is a part of Postgres you feel like people sometimes mis-use, or don't take enough advantage of.... Do you want to share your customer experiences with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Postgres more generally?: Maybe you have a wild success story you think others will benefit from. Or you want to share a problem you had and how you used Postgres to solve it? People love customer stories. Do you want to shine a light on the broader Postgres ecosystem?: If you want to target users with your talk, don’t limit yourself the Postgres core. There is a rich ecosystem that surrounds Postgres and people need to understand the ecosystem, too. So maybe there are tools or Postgres extensions or forks or startups that you can give a useful talk about? Do you want to help experts in other database technologies learn about Postgres?: If you have expertise in other databases as well as Postgres, maybe you can help people who who are skilled in running workloads on other databases and are looking to skill up on Postgres—by helping them understand what’s similar, and what’s different. As if you’re giving them a dictionary to translate from their familiar database to Postgres, and vice versa. There are so many more possibilities: Often I look at the schedule from previous years to look for inspiration (and to make sure that my talk proposal is not a duplicate of a talk that’s already been given.) And I think about pain points, things people get confused about, or questions that come up a lot. Another thing to keep in mind: how can you help your story to "stick"? Can you make it entertaining? How do you share your story in a way that keeps people watching (versus looking at their phone instead?) Key things to know about POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025 CFP deadline: The CFP for POSETTE will close on Sunday, Feb 9th 2025 @ 11:59pm Pacific Time (PST) No travel required: free & virtual developer event Length of talks: 25 minutes/session Language: All talks will be in English Talks will be pre-recorded: All talks will be pre-recorded by the POSETTE team during the weeks of Apr 28th and May 5th (with accepted speakers presenting remotely) When is the event?: Jun 10-12, 2025 Format of the virtual event: All pre-recorded talks will be livestreamed in one of 4 unique livestreams on Jun 10-12, 2025—all with parallel live text chats on Discord. Two of the livestreams will be in Americas-friendly times of day (8:00am-2:00pm PDT) and two of the livestreams will be in EMEA-friendly times of day (8:00am-2:00pm CEST). All talks will be published online after the event is over. More info about the CFP: All the details, including key dates and how to submit on Sessionize, are spelled out on the CFP page for POSETTE 2025 Code-of-conduct: You can find the Code of Conduct for POSETTE online. Please help us to provide a respectful, friendly, and professional experience for everybody involved in this virtual conference. Figure 2: The CFP is open for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025 until Sunday Feb 9th at 11:59pm PST. What Postgres story do you want to share?Introducing support for Graph data in Azure Database for PostgreSQL (Preview)
We are excited to announce the addition of Apache AGE extension in Azure Database for PostgreSQL, a significant advancement that provides graph processing capabilities within the PostgreSQL ecosystem. This new extension brings a powerful toolset for developers looking to leverage a graph database with the robust enterprise features of Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
