Your PostgreSQL workflow just found its new home in Cursor
TL; DR: Our Visual Studio Code extension for PostgreSQL is now available on the Open VSX registry: Cursor users get first-class database tooling without leaving the editor that already understands their code. The context switch problem If you use Cursor, you know the feeling. You’re deep in an agentic flow. Composer is scaffolding a feature across multiple files. Tab is anticipating your next move. Then you need to check a table's schema or run a quick query, so you switch to a different tool, and then you lose your flow state, and spend 30 seconds remembering which connection goes to which environment. That context switch is expensive. Not in minutes, but in momentum. Why we built for Cursor (and Open VSX) Cursor is built on the VS Code ecosystem, which means it supports VS Code extensions natively. It uses the Open VSX registry: an open, vendor-neutral extension marketplace where database tooling options have been limited. We saw an opportunity: bring a modern PostgreSQL extension directly to where developers do their most productive work. By publishing to Open VSX, we make sure that developers across the entire VS Code-compatible ecosystem, including Cursor, Windsurf, AWS Kiro, Theia, and Ona all have access without workarounds. Where AI-powered editing meets database awareness Here’s what gets interesting. Cursor indexes your entire codebase semantically. It knows your Drizzle schemas, your raw SQL files, and your migration directories. Our extension completes the picture by giving the editor a live connection to the actual database. Here’s where they intersect: Schema explorer in your sidebar: browse tables, columns, indexes, and functions without leaving the editor. When Cursor’s agent asks “what columns does the users table have?”, the answer is already visible. Screenshot: Object Explorer sidebar showing tables, columns, and indexes expanded Connection-aware IntelliSense: autocomplete table names, column names, and functions based on your live database schema. This pairs naturally with Cursor’s Tab completions: the AI writes the application logic, and IntelliSense validates the SQL. Inline EXPLAIN diagnostics: catch performance issues before they ship. Write a query and see whether it uses an index or triggers a sequential scan, all without running a separate tool. Zero-config connection discovery: we detect .env files, docker-compose.yml, and ORM connection strings in your project. Your database connection follows your workspace, not a global settings file buried three menus deep. Result export and inline execution: select SQL, run it, and see results in a clean panel. Export to JSON or CSV when you need to share findings with your team. Features that make Cursor + PostgreSQL even better Beyond the basics, the extension includes capabilities that pair especially well with AI-powered workflows: MCP server for AI assistants: the extension registers a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so Cursor’s agent can discover and interact with your PostgreSQL databases directly through a standardized tool interface. Ask your AI assistant to inspect a table, run a diagnostic query, or analyze a plan: it has the tools to do it. Agent Mode database tools: dedicated DBAgent MCP tools give AI assistants richer database-analysis capabilities, from schema introspection to performance diagnostics and instruction management. Query plan visualization: explore EXPLAIN output in four synchronized views: an interactive node graph, icicle chart, sortable table, and raw source. Color-coded severity groups expose bottlenecks at a glance, and AI-assisted analysis provides optimization suggestions. Performance dashboard: investigate database performance with DB load charts, query activity, wait-event analysis, session health, and blocking chains. Use natural language to inspect trends, identify bottlenecks, and generate diagnostic SQL. Object Explorer search: find database objects by name without expanding the tree. Search across connections, databases, and schemas. Filter by object type or schema name and navigate directly to any result. Schema-aware “New Query”: right-click a schema in Object Explorer to open a new query with the appropriate search_path already set. No more manual SET search_path before writing queries. Multi-source connection profiles: save connection profiles to your user settings, workspace, or folder. Check workspace profiles into source control so every team member gets the right database connections when they open the project. SSH tunneling built in: connect to databases on private networks through SSH tunnels configured directly in the connection dialog, with ssh-agent support for private key authentication. Built for how you actually work Modern development means ephemeral environments, branch-specific databases, and containers everywhere. The extension is designed around this reality: Automatic detection of PostgreSQL instances running in Docker Project-scoped connections that travel with your workspace Support for standard PostgreSQL connections Integration with both local and cloud versions of PostgreSQL from multiple vendors, and first-class support for Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure HorizonDB, with provisioning, backup management, and network configuration: all without leaving the editor. Status bar indicator showing your active database at a glance Get started Install from the Open VSX Registry: search for it in Cursor’s extension panel or install the .vsix directly. Your existing VS Code workflow carries over unchanged. If you’re already using Cursor for its agentic capabilities, adding database awareness to the editor means fewer tabs, fewer context switches, and a tighter feedback loop between your application code and the data layer underneath it. Available now on Open VSX. Works with Cursor, Antigravity, VSCodium, and all the VS Code compatible editors.Introducing PostgreSQL Hub for Azure Developers
PostgreSQL Hub for Azure Developers is live. A centralized destination with curated sample apps, tutorials, videos, structured learning pathways, and a community space to connect with Microsoft and ecosystem experts. Whether you're building your first Postgres app or scaling AI agents on Azure, this hub has you covered.SELECT * FROM build2026_sessions WHERE postgres = true;
Microsoft Build 2026 is around the corner, and this year it’s shaping up to be a big one for PostgreSQL experts and enthusiasts. If you’re a developer working with Postgres, or just love exploring new database technology, there's plenty to get excited about. Microsoft’s new cloud-first evolution of PostgreSQL, Azure HorizonDB, alongside sessions featuring Azure Database for PostgreSQL, will highlight how Postgres is powering the next wave of AI-driven applications. A new horizon in Postgres Build 2026 arrives at a time when the role of databases in modern apps is evolving rapidly. From enabling AI model integration to scaling seamlessly across the cloud, PostgreSQL developers today are dealing with more complex demands than ever. That’s why Azure HorizonDB – Microsoft’s new cloud-native PostgreSQL service – is generating so much buzz ahead of Build. What is Azure HorizonDB? In short, it’s a reimagined version of PostgreSQL designed for cloud-scale performance and AI-era workloads. Azure HorizonDB, introduces a distributed architecture that decouples compute and storage, delivering sub-millisecond latencies and three times the throughput of self-managed Postgres at massive scale. It aims to preserve Postgres’s beloved features and SQL ecosystem while adding next-generation capabilities: built-in vector indexing for high-speed AI/ML retrieval, the ability to run AI models and vector operations directly in the database, and multi-zone replication for resilience. For Postgres developers, this means less time stitching together external data stores or machine learning services – and more time building powerful apps on a unified platform that’s both familiar and built for the future. The bottom line: Microsoft Build 2026 is an ideal opportunity for developers to see Azure HorizonDB in action, learn best practices for modern PostgreSQL architectures, and understand how to leverage Postgres in new scenarios like generative AI and multi-agent applications. Read on for a rundown of sessions covering these topics, complete with what you’ll learn from each one. Top sessions for PostgreSQL databases on Azure Below are key sessions tailored for PostgreSQL users and those interested in Azure HorizonDB, with session types and highlights of what you’ll gain by attending. 🎤 Breakout: From Rows to Reasoning: Designing Databases for AI Apps and Agents (BRK223, 45 min, in-person and digital options) Discover how to architect databases that can power tomorrow’s intelligent applications. This technical breakout will show how AI-ready databases can move beyond plain transactions. You’ll see live demos of integrating transactional, analytical, and vector data in one unified platform, with Azure’s new database capabilities, including Azure HorizonDB. Learn how to simplify your stack by eliminating separate analytics engines or vector stores. The session will highlight patterns that reduce data movement and latency so your apps can efficiently reason over live data with minimal complexity. 🧪 Hands-on lab: Create Advanced Postgres-Powered Agentic Apps with Azure HorizonDB (LAB511, 75 min, in person and digital options) Roll up your sleeves and get hands-on building a real multi-agent AI application with Postgres. In this advanced lab, you’ll create a production-ready AI agent powered by Azure HorizonDB as an all-in-one data, search, and intelligence layer. Experiment with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) by combining semantic vector search (DiskANN) with traditional SQL queries right inside the database. Implement hybrid search and agent workflows without resorting to external vector databases or glue code – thanks to HorizonDB’s built-in vector indexing and in-database AI model capabilities. This lab is perfect for developers who want to experience how HorizonDB can simplify your stack and boost performance for AI-driven apps. Multiple hands-on labs are offered to suite your schedule. 💻 Demo: Simplify App Dev with Cloud-Native PostgreSQL in Azure HorizonDB (DEM364, 25 min, in-person and digital options) See how to cut your development time and complexity with built-in AI and search features in Postgres. This fast-paced demo shows how Azure HorizonDB helps eliminate the need for separate search engines and AI services by pulling those capabilities straight into PostgreSQL. Expect to learn how you can run hybrid vector + keyword queries using SQL, integrate AI models directly from within the database, and apply full-text search (BM25) and semantic ranking to get smarter results. If you’re eager to deliver intelligent apps faster, with fewer moving parts, this session will show how HorizonDB simplifies your architecture without sacrificing performance. ⚡Lightning Talk: Cloud-Native PostgreSQL, Rebuilt for Scale: Azure HorizonDB (LTG413, 15 min, in-person only) Get a rapid-fire introduction to the architecture behind HorizonDB’s eye-popping performance. This short talk dives into how HorizonDB re-architects core PostgreSQL to deliver effortless scale out and blazing speed. Learn how decoupled compute and storage, predictive caching, and multi-region replication combine to achieve sub-millisecond query latencies and 3× higher throughput than standard Postgres. If you care about performance tuning and high-scale database design, don’t miss this quick primer on the tech under HorizonDB’s hood. 👥 Interactive Table Talk: Scaling PostgreSQL for AI Apps: Patterns and Tradeoffs (TT622, 45 min, in-person only) Bring your questions and ideas to this collaborative discussion. In this open round-table session with community and Microsoft experts, you’ll explore architecture patterns for scaling PostgreSQL to meet the demands of agent-based and AI-driven applications. Discuss real-world strategies for handling vector embeddings in Postgres, unifying relational and document data, integrating with AI models, and more. Compare the trade-offs between different scaling approaches – from monolithic to microservices, sharding strategies, and new technologies like HorizonDB – and learn where each design shines or struggles in production. Come ready to share your experiences and learn from others in the room. ▶️ On-Demand: Smarter PostgreSQL Migrations to Power Modern, Intelligent Apps (OD822, 30 min, digital only) Planning to migrate to Postgres or move your databases to Azure? Start here. This on-demand session focuses on new tools and proven strategies to migrate large-scale databases to Azure Database for PostgreSQL quickly and safely. You’ll see AI-assisted migration tools in action that minimize downtime and risk when moving terabytes of data. Just as importantly, you’ll learn how migrating to Azure unlocks advanced capabilities – from boosted performance and enhanced security to AI-ready features – helping you turn your newly migrated data into intelligent apps and services. On-demand session will be available to stream on the first day of Build. Meet the team: PostgreSQL expert meetups If you’re attending Build in person, stop by the Expert Meetup (EMU) area and head to the relational cloud databases booth. This is your chance to talk directly with the engineers and product teams behind PostgreSQL on Azure. Bring your questions about architecture decisions, scaling patterns, migrations, AI workloads, or anything else on your mind. Whether you want to sanity-check a design, dig deeper into something you saw in a session, or give direct feedback, the EMU space is designed for exactly that convo. How to get the most out of Build (and what to do next) With so much great content lined up, how do you decide where to start? It really depends on what you’re most excited about: Curious about AI and agentic apps: Start with From Rows to Reasoning, then go deeper with the Simplify App Dev with HorizonDB demo or get hands-on at the Azure HorizonDB labs to see how these ideas work in practice. Performance and scale are your focus: The short Lightning Talk on HorizonDB’s cloud-native architecture and the Table Talk on scaling Postgres will both provide unique insights and pro tips for running Postgres at massive scale. Planning a migration to PostgreSQL on Azure: Watch the Smarter PostgreSQL Migrations on-demand session to learn how to migrate large workloads with minimal downtime, and the benefits you can unlock after moving to Azure. Looking for real answers to your specific questions: Make time for the PostgreSQL Expert Meetup area to connect directly with the team. No matter which sessions you choose, Build 2026 promises to be an exciting event for the PostgreSQL developer community. Browse the session catalog, save the sessions that match your interests, and we’ll see you at Build.Real-World Success Stories with PostgreSQL on Azure
Organizations rarely leap into cloud migrations or AI-powered systems overnight. They progress in deliberate stages, establishing a reliable data foundation, optimizing for performance, and then accelerating innovation. Across healthcare, financial services, and AI startups, companies are navigating this journey on Azure Database for PostgreSQL: a fully managed, enterprise-ready PostgreSQL environment with 58% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to on-premises deployments. This post walks through real customer stories that span the full arc, from lift-and-shift migration to production-grade AI agent development, illustrating how Azure Database for PostgreSQL supports scalability, performance, security, and AI-readiness at every stage. Migrating with Confidence: Apollo Hospitals & August AI Apollo Hospitals operates a network of more than 74 hospitals and needed to move beyond a legacy on-premises Oracle system that had become difficult to manage and couldn't keep pace with growing data volumes. IT teams were spending their time on maintenance rather than innovation. Apollo migrated its core hospital information system backend to Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Working with partner Quadrant Technologies, the team lifted and shifted critical applications while using Azure DevOps to orchestrate CI/CD pipelines and Azure Application Insights for telemetry and observability. The results: 99.95% availability across hospital systems Database transactions executing within 5 seconds 40% reduction in deployment times via modern CI/CD pipelines Decreased operational overhead, freeing IT staff for higher-value work With a stable, scalable PostgreSQL backend in place, Apollo is now exploring real-time analytics and AI-enabled tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to advance patient care. "We saw Azure Database for PostgreSQL as the right foundation for the future. It's open, cost-effective, and capable of supporting the hospital information system we built in-house." — Shankar Krishna A., General Manager of IT, Apollo Hospitals Apollo's experience is not unique. August AI, a healthcare-tech startup offering an AI-driven medical companion, migrated its entire stack to Azure—with Azure Database for PostgreSQL storing mission-critical patient data while meeting strict compliance requirements such as HIPAA. The result: scaling from roughly 500,000 users to 3.5 million+ users worldwide, with zero downtime during the cutover, completed in just three months. As Founder and CEO Anuruddh Mishra noted: "We receive a log of queries that are not performing optimally, and within a couple of minutes we can optimize that query with PostgreSQL on Azure and move on". Modernizing at Scale: Nasdaq Migration is often the first step. Nasdaq demonstrates what becomes possible when organizations modernize their architecture on a scalable data foundation. To improve its Nasdaq Boardvantage platform—used by corporate boards to collaborate on governance documents—Nasdaq re-architected on Azure. The team containerized services with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and adopted Azure Database for PostgreSQL alongside Azure Database for MySQL as persistent data stores for governance workloads. This architecture provided the flexibility, performance, and security required for a multitenant platform handling sensitive board materials. With the data layer in place, Nasdaq integrated Microsoft Foundry and Azure OpenAI to deliver AI-powered summarization and workflow automation. The measurable outcomes: 60% reduction in reading time through AI-powered document summarization 25% decrease in administrative preparation time across board workflows Up to 97% accuracy in AI-generated summaries and meeting minutes A reusable AI framework established for future extensibility "Both Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL gave us the right balance of performance, security, and control. The governance workloads we handle are unique, so we needed something that could meet those isolation and encryption requirements." — Scott Ellison, Vice President of Technology, Nasdaq Building Intelligent Applications: SubgenAI and OpenAI Azure Database for PostgreSQL now supports native vector search via pgvector, high-performance DiskANN indexing, semantic operators and AI model management, and integrated graph capabilities for relationship reasoning—making it a production-ready foundation for intelligent applications. SubgenAI, a European generative AI company, built its flagship platform Serenity Star on Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Microsoft Foundry to transform AI agent development from a code-heavy, fragmented process into a streamlined, no-code experience. A core technical requirement: the platform's retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system needs efficient vector search against embedded content while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability. After evaluating several database options, SubgenAI chose Azure Database for PostgreSQL with pgvector for its accurate and scalable vector similarity search. Serenity Star customers can now: Launch AI agents in as little as 15 minutes Cut coding and development time by 50% Resolve most AI agent queries in under 60 seconds [ "With Microsoft and Azure Database for PostgreSQL we have total control and an environment that is truly dynamic and can adapt to the evolution we're looking for." — Julia Schröder Langhaeuser, VP of Product Serenity Star, SubgenAI At the extreme end of scale, OpenAI runs PostgreSQL on Azure to support production systems behind ChatGPT. As write scalability limits emerged on an initially unsharded single primary instance, OpenAI offloaded write-heavy operations to other systems and optimized read workloads using PgBouncer for connection pooling. The Azure Database for PostgreSQL team responded by developing the elastic clusters feature, enabling horizontal scaling through row-based and schema-based sharding. The team reduced connection latency from approximately 50 ms to under 5 ms, scaled reads horizontally with multiple replicas, and improved reliability by prioritizing critical requests—all achieved by a small team making systematic optimizations on open-source PostgreSQL. "After all the optimization we did, we are super happy with Postgres right now for our read-heavy workloads. It's really scalable and reliable." — Bohan Zhang, Member of the Technical Staff, OpenAI Meeting You Where You Are Beyond these stories, organizations like BMW Group (cloud-native applications at global scale), Ahold Delhaize (highly available retail applications), Mott MacDonald (an AI agent accelerating onboarding and spreading best practices across 220,000 employees), and Multitude (scaling responsibly in regulated environments) all run on Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The service offers 99.99% availability with automatic failover and SLA, independent compute and storage scaling, and intelligent performance recommendations, available across 60+ Azure regions. Developer tooling including the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot further accelerates productivity. Whether you are planning your first migration or building production AI agents, these stories share a clear signal: Azure Database for PostgreSQL delivers a scalable, secure, AI-ready data foundation at every stage of growth. Explore full customer stories in depth in the eBook: Customer Success Stories with Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
Native Database/Query Monitoring with Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Monitoring PostgreSQL Database Engine The PostgreSQL database engine provides multiple administrative views, which can be leveraged to capture metrics of activities inside of the database engine including, but not limited to, database activities, query activities, execution time, database resource locks etc for initial and deep analysis on database & query performance. Database Administrators should use these views and their corresponding metrics to perform initial level analysis. Critical insights can be gathered around database activity, performance and system activity for reactive and proactive analysis. In this blog, I am going to show the important administrative views and their corresponding SQL statements for capturing database and query details. The following section provides details about the statistics views and their usage. It contains the most important and mostly used statistics views, there are other views available that can be used to get into further details. NOTE: The queries and flows provided below are a few of the ways for each scenario. Eventually, the final approach will depend on and be dictated by the issue at hand or its symptoms. Pre-requisites The following parameters should be enabled in Azure Database for PostgreSQL “Server parameters” before using the statistics views: track_activities track_counts track_io_timing pg_stat_statements.track = ALL The following extensions should be installed before using the stats: create extension pg_stat_statements; create extension pgstattuple; NOTE: All SQL queries mentioned below are as per PostgreSQL version 18. Schema & Data for Analysis All the "Example Scenario" mentioned in the analysis queries are based on the following schema and corresponding volumetrics: Table Name No. of rows customer 993,814 invoice 20,229,119 orders 4,497,292 product 2,818,000 Statistics Views and SQL Queries for Analysis The following SQL statements can be used to perform 1 st level monitoring on the database, tables and queries. Note that the output counters and metrics from the SQL statements represent cumulative data since the last server restart. The statistics should be reset to zero before performing troubleshooting or performance tuning exercises. Use the below mentioned SQL statements to reset statistics at database, table and IO level. Database level stats reset SELECT pg_stat_reset(); IO level stats reset. SELECT pg_stat_reset_shared('io'); Reset pg_stat_statements metrics per user, query and database id or for the entire database - pg_stat_statements contain query level metrics for a database, user or a single query. We can reset the statistics at these individual levels. If any of the parameters are not specified, the default value 0 is used for each of them and the statistics that match with other parameters will be reset. "userid", "dbid" (Database ID), "queryid" can be fetched from pg_roles (column - oid), pg_stat_database (column - datid) and pg_stat_activity (column - query_id) respectively. SELECT pg_stat_statements_reset(userid, dbid, queryid); SELECT pg_stat_statements_reset(); SQL Activity Monitoring: This query uses pg_stat_activity statistics view, which contains details of current activities in the database server. It can be used to track queries in transactions, transaction execution time, wait event details if any etc. The WHERE clause can be used to filter activities based on client IP address (client_addr), application name (application_name), user (usename) who has submitted the query and text of the SQL statement. SELECT datname AS dbname, pid, usename as username, application_name, client_addr as client_ip_addr, xact_start AS transaction_start_time, query_start AS query_start_time, wait_event_type AS db_waitign_on, wait_event AS waiting_activity, CAST(query AS varchar(100)) AS sql_query, backend_type AS db_operation FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE <conditions>; Interpreting output: This output should be used to find overall activity in your database. username, application_name, client_ip_addr - The user, application and client IP address from where the query is being executed. transaction_start_time - When transaction started (using BEGIN keyword or corresponding API). query_start_time - Start time of currently active query in the transaction. wait_event and wait_event_type columns output the events on which the query is waiting, if applicable. Refer to the official links for details on wait events and wait event types. db_operation - Type of database operation that is being performed by the application. E.g. autovacuum, parallel worker, client backend, etc. Example Scenario: Application team is complaining about higher load in "retail_db" database and it is causing multiple SQL statements to run slow, team wants to know whether ad-hoc SQL statements are being run using "psql" client by application developers. As a DBA, you want to look at the entire database activity - no. of SQL statements, who are running to SQLs and which client are they coming from. Above mentioned SQL can be used with filters on "application_name" (value = "psql") and "dbname" (value = "retail_db"). It generates the following output: Analysis: From the above output, it can be seen that "psql" client is indeed getting used from a few IP addresses. Next Step: pg_terminate_backend(<pid>) can be used to kill the applications with pid 22210, 22209 and 21993. Similarly, the same SQL statement can be used to look at overall SQL activities in individual database. SQL Statement Level monitoring This is one of the most important SQL statements that describes operations at query level. It provides execution time detail of queries, read time, write time, disk read and disk write. Output of this query should serve as one of the starting point of query troubleshooting and query optimization. SELECT queryid , CAST(query AS varchar(100)) AS sql_stmt, calls AS no_of_executions, total_exec_time, min_exec_time, max_exec_time, mean_exec_time AS avg_exec_time, rows AS rows_fetched, shared_blks_hit AS blocks_read_from_buffer, shared_blks_read AS blocks_read_from_disk, shared_blks_written AS blks_written_to_disk, shared_blk_read_time, shared_blk_write_time FROM pg_stat_statements WHERE query LIKE '%<sql-stmt>%'; Interpreting output: Output of this query can be used to dive deeper into SQL performance issues. sql_stmt - Provides the SQL statement that is being run. This is the query that is being analyzed for tuning. no_of_executions - How many times this SQL statement has been executed so far (since the reset of pg_stat_statements). total_exec_time - This is the execution time for the query combining all runs. e.g. if the query was run 10 times and each time took 1.5s, then total_exec_time would be 15s. min_exec_time - Min. time the query took to execute. This can be considered as the benchmark execution time for this query. max_exec_time - Max. time the query took to execute. avg_exec_time - Avg. execution time of the query. This time should fall within the query SLA. rows_fetched - No. of rows needed by application (SQL query) blocks_read_from_buffer & blocks_read_from_disk - Data blocks (8KB size) read from PostgreSQL shared memory and from disk respectively. shared_blk_read_time & shared_blk_write_time - Total time spent in reading from and writing to disk. This time is included in total_exec_time. If ratio of shared_blk_read_time or shared_blk_write_time or both with total_exec_time is higher, then IO is causing high execution time in this query. If the ratio is less then other complex SQL operations like join, order by, group by, functions etc. are taking longer to execute. Example Scenario: We will be using the same SQL statement that was used in the example scenario of "3. Application-wise IO Activities". But in this case, using "SQL Statement Level monitoring" we will look at the execution details of the query rather than IO usage. Following is the output of first execution (after server restart - shared memory was empty) of the SQL statement Analysis: Here is the observation, execution time of the query was 154.81 seconds. Total rows needed by application was 4,497,292 out of which 341 8KB blocks were read from shared memory (PostgreSQL bufferpool) and 58504 8KB blocks were read from disk. Following is the output after 2nd execution (after resetting pg_stat_statements): Analysis: The query was executed 4 times. Execution time got reduced to 95 seconds, but it is still high. Even though all rows (4497292 x 4) were read from shared memory (buffer pool) as blocks_read_from_disk was zero, execution time is very high. Next Step: Even if the execution time is found to be within SLA, the query needs to be analyzed for its execution plan. Use EXPLAIN ANALYZE command to analyze the access plan or execution path of the query. Query optimization must be done for this SQL statement. Table-level Bloat Statistics PostgreSQL uses MVCC (Multi Version Concurrency Control) to avoid read and write conflicts, which means one application can read rows while they are being modified by another application. This is done by storing multiple versions of the same row. But over time older versions, which are not needed by applications, become overhead as they occupy space. This is known as "Bloating". It can cause both storage and performance issue. The query mentioned below provides bloating percentage on a table, which should be monitored on a regular basis and DBAs should decide on the autovaccuum settings. SELECT (table_len/1024/1024) AS table_size_mb, tuple_count AS no_of_live_rows, (tuple_len/1024/1024) AS live_row_size_mb, dead_tuple_count AS no_of_dead_rows, (dead_tuple_len/1024/1024) AS dead_row_size_mb, tuple_percent AS live_rows_percent, dead_tuple_percent AS dead_rows_percent, free_percent AS free_space_percent, (((table_len – tuple_len)/table_len)*100) AS bloat_percent FROM pgstattuple('<table-name>'); Interpreting output: table_size_mb - This is the total table size, including bloating. no_of_live_rows - No. of actual usable rows in the table. live_row_size_mb - This is the actual size of the table. This is the amount of data in this table that can be used by applications. no_of_dead_rows - No. of irrelevant rows in the table. dead_row_size_mb - Size of irrelevant rows in the table. This is the amount of data that is not needed by any application, but is still there in the table and occupying storage. This is the data that has to be removed from the table. bloat_percent - Percentage of dead rows occupying the table. If it goes beyond 25-30%, manual VACUUM should be used to remove bloating. Example Scenario: invoice_history table contains more than 20 M rows and has a size of 1630 MB. Deleting records from a table does not reduce the size in PostgreSQL because of MVCC support to keep multiple versions of the same row. The deleted rows still occupy storage space, it is known as bloating as shown below. "Table level Bloat Statistics" can be used to find the bloat percentage of a table. Next Step: Aggressive AUTOVACUUM has to be configured to remove bloating on time. As AUTOVACUUM does not free up storage space, manual FULL VACUUM has to be executed to reclaim storage space. Note that full vacuum takes exclusive lock on tables. Bloat percentage changed after executing full vacuum. Table Bloat using Stat table Table bloating information using statistics table. SELECT schemaname, relname AS tblname, n_live_tup AS live_rows, n_dead_tup AS dead_rows, ((n_dead_tup - n_live_tup)/100) AS tbl_bloat_percent, last_vacuum AS last_manual_vacuum, last_autovacuum FROM pg_stat_all_tables WHERE relname = '<tblname>'; Interpreting output: Same as "Table-level Bloat Statistics". Database Activity Monitoring This SQL statement provides row level counters of DML statements for a database. SELECT datname AS dbname, blks_read AS total_no_of_read_ops, blks_hit AS no_of_blks_read_from_bufferpool, tup_returned AS no_of_rows_scanned, tup_fetched AS no_of_rows_fetched, tup_inserted AS no_of_rows_inserted, tup_updated AS no_of_rows_updated, tup_deleted AS no_of_rows_deteled, deadlocks AS no_of_deadlocks, (blk_read_time/1000) AS blk_read_time_s, (blk_write_time/1000) AS blk_write_time_s FROM pg_stat_database; Interpreting output: Output shows the impact of DML operations in a database. total_no_of_read_ops - This is the total block read request executed by the database engine. no_of_blks_read_from_bufferpool - Out of total read requests, how many blocks were already there in memory or shared_mem. no_of_rows_scanned & no_of_rows_fetched - Total no. of rows read from the database and the total no. of rows actually needed by application. Higher difference in the two metrics should call for query tuning using better indexes, join strategies etc. blk_read_time_s & blk_read_write_s - Time taken in seconds, to perform read and write operations. no_of_deadlocks - Higher no. of deadlocks should be investigated. Execution of application SQL queries might have to be re-looked if higher deadlocks create performance or application issues. Index-level Bloat Statistics – Live rows, dead rows, bloat This is similar to query no. 8, but it provides bloating information at index level. SELECT (index_size/1024/1024) AS idx_size_mb, (index_size/8192) AS index_pages, empty_pages, deleted_pages, ((index_pages - deleted_pages)/index_pages) * 100 AS idx_bloat_percent FROM pgstatindex('<idx-name>'); Interpreting output: The output is similar to table-level bloat statistics, but it is for indexes. Monitor IO activities Output of the following SQL statement shows the overall IO (Input/Output) activities for a database. It can be used to infer whether database workload is read heavy or write heavy. For read workloads, database level bufferpool_hit_ratio metrics can be used to increase or decrease shared memory configuration parameter. SELECT backend_type , object, context AS reason_for_io, reads AS no_of_reads, (read_bytes/1024) AS read_data_kb, read_time AS read_time_ms, writes AS no_of_writes, (write_bytes/1024) AS write_data_kb, write_time AS write_time_ms, writebacks AS no_of_blocks_to_storage, writeback_time AS block_to_storge_write_time_ms , hits AS no_of_reads_from_bufferpool, 100 * (hits / (hits + reads)) AS bufferpool_hit_ratio FROM pg_stat_io; Interpreting output: The output showcases database level IO metrics. backend_type - Type of database operation that is being performed by the application. E.g. autovacuum, parallel worker, client backend, etc. reason_for_io - corresponding IO operation. Following are the possible output values to look out for. normal - Read from or write to shared buffers. vacuum - IO used by VACUUM operation. bulkread & bulkwrite - Disk read and write operations. no_of_reads - Total read operations. read_data_kb - Amount of data read (in KB) across all operations. no_of_writes - Total write operations. write_data_kb - Amount of data written (in KB) across all operations. read_time_ms & write_time_ms - Duration of all read & write operations. Example Scenario: Extending the previous example, application team is complaining about overall performance of the database. As a DBA you want to find out the overall read and write operations to confirm whether it is causing slowness in the database. It will give an idea about how busy the database has been. "Monitor IO Activities" SQL can be used to find out the trigger of higher IO activities in the database. Following is the output: Analysis: Output above shows that most of the read and write operations are emanating from applications ("backend_type" = "client backend"). This gives an idea of database usage by the applications. Next Step: If resource utilization of this database is high, we can create read replica to offload the reads and increase server memory and CPU to handle the load. Or else, if possible, application throttling can be infused by reducing the no. of max connections or using application level throttling. Application-wise IO Activities Query no. 2 above provides database level IO, the following SQL statement can be used to track application level IO summary. As there is to one-to-one mapping between application id in pg_stat_activity and pg_stat_io, backend_type is the only way to relate these two admin views. SELECT psa.datname AS dbname, pid, psa.usename AS username, psa.application_name, psa.client_addr as client_ip_addr, psa.xact_start AS transaction_start_time, psa.query_start AS query_start_time, psa.wait_event_type AS db_waitign_on, psa.wait_event AS waiting_activity, CAST(psa.query AS varchar(100)) AS sql_query, state as current_state, psa.backend_type AS db_operation, psi.context AS reason_for_io, psi.reads AS no_of_reads, psi.writes AS no_of_writes FROM pg_stat_activity psa JOIN pg_stat_io psi ON psa.backend_type = psi.backend_type WHERE psa.query LIKE '%<sql-stmt>%'; Interpreting output: username, application_name and client_ip_addr column output can be used to track user who submitted the query, application from where the query was submitted and IP address of the application server from where query was executed. transaction_start_time & query_start_time show the execution start time of transaction and currently active query inside of the transaction. These metrics should be used to find the execution time of transaction and queries inside of the transaction. wait_event and wait_event_type columns output the events on which the query is waiting, if applicable. Refer to the official links for details on wait events and wait event types. reason_for_io column outputs corresponding IO operation. Following are the possible output values to look out for. normal - Read from or write to shared buffers. vacuum - IO used by VACUUM operation. bulkread & bulkwrite - Disk read and write operations. no_of_reads & no_of_writes - Total no. of read and write operations by the query. Example Scenario: So far we have been looking at database-level activities. In most of the cases, we need to track application level activities like read, write operations, application elapsed time (how long the query is getting executed for). These are some of the critical information that DBA should use while troubleshooting query performance or application slowness issue. Whereas pg_stat_statements should be the go to place to look at SQL or application-level statistics, above SQL statement can be used to monitor application level IO operations. Executed SQL statement : SELECT c.cust_id, c.cust_email, c.cust_type, o.order_no, o.order_date FROM customer c, orders o WHERE c.cust_id = o.cust_id ORDER BY o.order_date DESC; Output of the query can be filtered using partial SQL statement in the WHERE clause or using PID of the SQL statement as shown below. Following is the output of the query above (showing only relevant columns): Analysis: Highlighted output above shows 3 types of IO operations - normal, bulkwrite and bulkread. "normal" means that client is reading from buffer, but "bulkread" and "bulwrite" indicates read from disk and write to disk (temporary file write for sorting!). Next Step: SQL statement should to be analysed further for index usage, high disk read and write IO. EXPLAIN (with ANALYZE) statement can be used to understand query behaviour. Other monitoring SQL statements should be used to dig deeper into the execution details. Table & Index Operations The following SQL statement can be used to capture table-level DML operations and its corresponding index read operations. Output of this query can be used to create index if sequential scans on a table is high, also, how an application is impacting the table rows using INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE statements. SELECT t.schemaname AS tabschema, t.relname AS tabname, t.seq_scan AS no_of_seq_scan, t.seq_tup_read AS seq_scan_rows_read, t.n_tup_ins AS rows_inserted, t.n_tup_upd AS rows_updated, t.n_tup_del AS rows_deleted, t.n_live_tup AS total_active_rows, t.n_dead_tup AS total_dead_rows, i.schemaname AS idxschema, i.indexrelname AS idxname, i.idx_tup_read AS idx_rows_read, i.idx_tup_fetch AS idx_rows_fetched FROM pg_stat_all_tables t JOIN pg_stat_all_indexes i ON t.relid = i.relid AND t.relname = i.relname ; Interpreting output: It is almost similar to database activity monitoring except for the following columns. total_dead_rows - Total no. of rows that are not relevant for any transaction in PostgreSQL. total_active_rows - Total no. of actual rows in the table. If the ratio of dead rows vs active rows is higher, it shows VACUUM is not working properly. It can be fixed by running manual vacuum or changing the configuration of AUTOVACUUM. Table level Read IO This SQL statement provides critical metrics on read operations for all or individual tables. heap_blks_read and heap_blks_hit should be used to find out the disk read vs memory read in tables. Higher disk read indicates memory crunch and can be a factor in deciding whether to increase shared memory size. SELECT schemaname AS tabschema, relname AS tabname, heap_blks_read AS no_of_tab_blks_read, heap_blks_hit AS no_of_buffer_blks_read, idx_blks_read AS no_of_idx_blks_read, idx_blks_hit AS no_of_buffer_idx_blks_read FROM pg_statio_all_tables WHERE relname = '<table-name>'; Lock Information Data modification by applications or system commands locks rows and tables. Other application trying to modify the same row will get into waiting state thereby increasing the response time. Following SQL statement can be used to find out what type of locks is being held by applications on all or specific tables. SELECT db.datname AS dbname, tbl.relname AS tblname, lck.pid, lck.locktype , mode AS lock_mode, CASE lck.granted WHEN True THEN 'lock_held' WHEN False THEN 'lock_waiting' ELSE 'not_known' END AS lock_status, lck.waitstart AS lock_wait_start_time FROM pg_database db JOIN pg_locks lck ON lck.database = db.oid JOIN pg_class tbl ON lck.relation = tbl.oid WHERE tbl.relname NOT LIKE '%pg_%' AND tbl.relname = '<tablename>'; Interpreting output: Output rows contain database name, table name, process id of the query and the following fields. locktype - Object of the lock. E.g. table, page, row (tuple) etc. lock_status - Whether the lock has been granted to this application or application is waiting for lock. lock_wait_start_time - If lock waiting state, then when the wait was started. Example Scenario: Following SQL statement takes a lock on "orders" table as it is getting executed inside of a transaction which has not been either committed or rolled back. "Lock Information" SQL can be used to find out who is holding lock on a table as shown below: Next Step: If lock needs to be released then the application with pid 15505 must be terminated using pg_terminate_backend(15505). Who is Holding and who is Waiting for Locks If locks are being held long enough to block a critical application, it becomes imperative to terminate the application holding the lock. Following SQL statement provides information about applications waiting for locks and applications holding those locks so that necessary actions can be taken by DBA. WITH lock_holder AS (SELECT db.datname AS dbname, tbl.relname AS tblname, pid, locktype , mode AS lock_mode FROM pg_database db JOIN pg_locks lck ON lck.database = db.oid JOIN pg_class tbl ON lck.relation = tbl.oid WHERE granted = true), lock_waiter AS (SELECT db.datname AS dbname, tbl.relname AS tblname, pid, locktype , mode AS lock_mode FROM pg_database db JOIN pg_locks lck ON lck.database = db.oid JOIN pg_class tbl ON lck.relation = tbl.oid) SELECT lh.pid AS pid_holding, lh.locktype AS holding_lock_type, lh.lock_mode AS holding_lock_mode, lh.tblname AS holding_lock_table, lw.pid AS pid_waiting, lw.locktype AS waiting_lock_type, lw.lock_mode AS waiting_lock_mode, lw.tblname AS waiting_lock_table FROM lock_holder lh JOIN lock_waiter lw ON lh.tblname = lw.tblname WHERE lw.tblname='<tbl-name>'; Interpreting output: This is an extension of query 11 above. Following are the output columns: pid_holding - Application that is holding lock. holding_lock_type - Object (table, page, row) that has been locked. holding_lock_mode - Lock mode that is being held. holding_lock_table - Table that is being locked. pid_waiting - Application that is waiting for lock. waiting_lock_type - Object (table, page, row) that is waiting for lock. waiting_lock_mode - Lock mode that is needed. waiting_lock_table - Lock on table that is waiting. Example Scenario: There can be scenarios where multiple applications can take write lock on the same rows at the same time. Depending on lock_timeout, one of the applications has to wait for that duration. Criticality of an application might dictate the terms of waiting on locks and DBAs have to terminate application holding the lock. Following is an application that is updating rows in a transaction, but has not released the lock. And following application has timed out because of lock wait. Next Step: Using above query we can find out which application is waiting and who is holding lock on a table as shown below. Depending on priority one of the applications can be terminated by DBA. Diagnostic Flow: The following chart can be used to decide which admin view to use and when. It also shows how Azure Monitor and PostgreSQL admin views work in tandem at any analysis scenarios. Summary: PostgreSQL provides helpful administrative views that can be used by DBAs (Database Administrators) to perform initial level of analysis at engine side before looking at any infrastructure level issues. The initial analysis can be useful in relating infrastructure issues with database performance as well, if there is any.Ultimate Guide to POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, 2026 edition
POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 is back for its 5th year: free, virtual, and unapologetically all about Postgres. No travel budget required and no jet lag involved. Just your laptop, a decent internet connection, and curiosity. This year the POSETTE 2026 schedule has 4 livestreams (16-18 June) with 44 talks at ~25 minutes each—covering everything from query performance and partitioning to Postgres 19 features, extensions, and use cases. Which is awesome but also a bit of work to figure out which talks are for you. Hence this ultimate guide post. Every talk will land on YouTube afterward (un-gated, of course) so if you miss anything you care about, you can watch it later. But if you can catch a livestream in June, do it. That’s when the “virtual hallway track” happens on Discord—where you can ask the POSETTE speakers questions and compare notes with other attendees. Meeting other attendees who have the same weird Postgres problems you do can be reassuring somehow. And yes, there will be swag. This guide is your cheat sheet: I’ve categorized and tagged all 44 talks so you don’t have to read 44 abstracts back-to-back. In this post you'll get: “By the numbers” summary Map of the 44 talks 2 Keynote sessions 23 Postgres core talks 11 Postgres ecosystem talks 8 Azure Database talks Why participate on the virtual hallway track on Discord A big thank you to our amazing speakers Join us for POSETTE 2026 & mark your calendars Official POSETTE 2026 Trailer “By the numbers” summary for POSETTE 2026 Here’s a quick snapshot of what you need to know about POSETTE this year: 3 days 16-18 June 2026 4 livestreams In Americas & EMEA time zones but of course you can watch from anywhere 44 talks All free, all virtual 2 invited keynotes Driving Postgres forward at Microsoft (Livestream 1), and Postgres 19 Hackers Panel: What’s In, What’s Out, & What’s Next (Livestream 2) 25 minutes Average length per talk ~1100 minutes Total minutes in POSETTE 2026 talks 50 speakers POSETTE 2026 speakers include PostgreSQL hackers and contributors, users, application developers, PG community members, Azure engineers, & Azure customers 6 keynote speakers Affan Dar & Charles Feddersen (Livestream 1); and Álvaro Herrera, Heikki Linnakangas, Melanie Plageman, & Thomas Munro (Livestream 2) 19 countries Speakers reside in 19 different countries 23 companies Speakers hail from 23 different companies 17.6% CFP acceptance rate 42 talks selected from 238 submisssions 75% general Postgres talks 33 talks are not cloud-specific at all, they’re about the Postgres technology & ecosystem 25% Azure-related talks 11 of 44 talks feature Azure Database for PostgreSQL or Azure HorizonDB 1 organizing company Organized by the Postgres team at Microsoft, in partnership with AMD 17 languages Published talk videos will have captions available in 17 languages, including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Chinese Simplified & Chinese Traditional Map of the 44 talks To help you quickly navigate all 44 talks, here’s a map of the high-level categories and detailed topics. : A map of the POSETTE 2026 talks—high-level categories and detailed tags to help you find what you care about 2 Keynote sessions Affan Dar and Charles Feddersen lead the PostgreSQL engineering and product teams at Microsoft, In this keynote, they’ll walk through how Microsoft is contributing to Postgres, both upstream in the open source project and in the cloud database service they build on top of it. Driving Postgres forward at Microsoft, by Affan Dar & Charles Feddersen (Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure HorizonDB, VS Code, Dev tools, community, Postgres hacking, open source, PosetteConf, livestream-1) Want to understand how Postgres features get decided? This keynote panel with 4 PostgreSQL committers & hackers will peel back the curtain. You’ll hear what made it into Postgres 19, what didn’t (and why), and get a sneak peek into a few of the things in the oven for Postgres 20. Postgres 19 Hackers Panel: What’s In, What’s Out, & What’s Next, by Álvaro Herrera, Heikki Linnakangas, Melanie Plageman, & Thomas Munro (Postgres 19, Postgres hacking, panel, open source, collaboration, multithreading, livestream-2) 23 Postgres core talks Data Modeling JSON in PostgreSQL - evil data type or just needs to be tamed?, by Boriss Mejias (JSON, performance, data modeling, livestream-1) PostgreSQL Design Patterns, by Chris Ellis (data modeling, SQL, PG use cases, livestream-1) Graph Data Exploring property graphs with SQL/PGQ in PostgreSQL, by Ashutosh Bapat (SQL/PGQ, graph data, data modeling, Postgres 19, livestream-4) LISTEN/NOTIFY LISTEN Carefully: How NOTIFY Can Trip Up Your Database, by Jimmy Angelakos (LISTEN/NOTIFY, PG use cases, triggers, livestream-4) Performance Maintaining Large Tables in PostgreSQL, by Sarat Balijepalli (WAL, performance, scaling Postgres, vacuum, autovacuum, statistics, partitioning, monitoring, livestream-3) My Postgres partitioning cookbook, by Derk van Veen (partitioning, PG use cases, data modeling, performance, livestream-4) PostgreSQL 17 vs 18: Side‑by‑Side Performance Wins in Real‑World Queries, by Divya Bhargov (performance, PG use cases, livestream-3) Vacuuming Enhancements in PostgreSQL 18: Faster, Smarter, More Predictable, by Shashikant Shakya (vacuum, async IO, monitoring, performance, livestream-4) PG Internals Linux and PostgreSQL in the Multiverse of Connections, by Josef Machytka (Linux, PG internals, connection pooling, livestream-2) pg_stats: How Postgres Internal Stats Work, by Richard Yen (statistics, pg_stats, PG internals, query planner, livestream-2) Postgres isn’t slow, your storage is, by Sai Srirampur (storage, IO, performance, livestream-3) PostgreSQL queues done right with PgQ, by Alexander Kukushkin (queues, PG internals, extensions, livestream-2) random_page_cost in Postgres - why the default is 4.0 and should you lower it?, by Tomas Vondra (PG internals, IO, performance, livestream-1) The Wonderful World of WAL, by Bruce Momjian (WAL, PG internals, replication, livestream-3) What's new with constraints in Postgres 18, by Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek (constraints, data modeling, livestream-2) Postgres Hacking Fuzzing PostgreSQL, by Adam Wolk (PG internals, testing, Dev tools, libpq, security, livestream-1) Journey of developing a performance optimization feature in PostgreSQL, by Rahila Syed (Postgres hacking, PG internals, performance, WAL, replication, livestream-4) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to PostgreSQL Hacking: Don’t Panic, Just Start Small, by Xuneng Zhou (Postgres hacking, PG internals, community, livestream-2) Replication Past, Present, and Future: Logical Decoding and Replication in PostgreSQL, by Hari Kiran (replication, logical decoding, PG internals, livestream-4) Where Does My INSERT Go? A Logical Replication Story, by Hamid Akhtar (replication, PG internals, WAL, livestream-4) Security From Dev to Prod: Securing Postgres the Right Way, by Sakshi Nasha (security, roles, PG use cases, extensions, monitoring, livestream-4) From trust to Tokens: A Short History of PostgreSQL Authentication, by Murat Tuncer (authentication, security, livestream-2) PostgreSQL vs. SQL Server: Security Model Differences, by Taiob Ali (security, authentication, SQL Server, roles, livestream-1) 11 Postgres ecosystem talks Analytics pg_lake: Postgres as a lakehouse, by Marco Slot (pg_lake, extensions, OLAP, data warehouse, Iceberg, DuckDB, analytics, livestream-2) Apache AGE Querying & Visualizing Graphs in Postgres with Apache AGE, by Christian Miles (Apache AGE, graph data, data visualization, SQL/PGQ, Azure HorizonDB, livestream-1) Autotuning Building safety tooling for risk-free AI tuning of Postgres: Fast cars need fast brakes, by Mohsin Ejaz (autotuning, AI, performance, monitoring, livestream-2) Change Data Capture Building Event-Driven Systems with PostgreSQL Logical Replication and Drasi, by Diaa Radwan (Drasi, replication, WAL, CDC, livestream-3) Citus Move Less, Move Faster: Speeding Up Citus Cluster Scaling, by Muhammad Usama (Citus, extensions, performance, scaling Postgres, livestream-4) Dev Tools An MCP for your Postgres DB, by Pamela Fox (MCP, AI, Python, Dev tools, livestream-1) pgcov: Bringing Real Test Coverage to PostgreSQL Code, by Pavlo Golub (testing, Postgres hacking, Dev tools, extensions, CI/CD, livestream-3) PostgreSQL Tooling Across AI Editors and Agents, by Matt McFarland (Dev tools, VS Code, Cursor, AI, data visualization, Apache AGE, graph data, Azure, MCP, Copilot, livestream-1) Django PostgreSQL Generated Columns by Example, by Paolo Melchiorre (app dev, Django, generated columns, livestream-2) Kubernetes Quorum-Based Consistency for Cluster Changes with CloudNativePG Operator, by Jeremy Schneider & Leonardo Cecchi (CloudNativePG, Kubernetes, PG use cases, livestream-3) Performance Modelling Postgres Performance Degradation on Burstable Cloud Instances, by Chun Lin Goh (performance, burstable, compute, QA, livestream-4) 8 Azure Database for PostgreSQL & Azure HorizonDB talks AI-related talks From Queries to Agents: The Next Era of Data Retrieval on PostgreSQL, by Abe Omorogbe (AI, MCP, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, graph data, Apache AGE, Azure HorizonDB, livestream-3) Production RAG at Scale with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, by Julia Schröder Langhaeuser & Paula Santamaría (Azure Database for PostgreSQL, AI, RAG, PG use cases, livestream-3) AMD Choose the Right Azure Infrastructure to Improve Postgres Performance by Over 60%, by Andrew Ruffin (AMD, performance, Azure, compute, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, livestream-1) Azure HorizonDB Why we built Azure HorizonDB for PostgreSQL, by Dingding Lu (Azure HorizonDB, scaling Postgres, livestream-3) Flexible Server pg_duckdb in Action: Accelerating Analytics on Azure Database for PostgreSQL, by Nitin Jadhav (DuckDB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, extensions, OLAP, analytics, performance, livestream-4) The Rise of PostgreSQL as the Everything Database, by Varun Dhawan (Postgres history, extensions, graph data, Apache AGE, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, DuckDB, Citus, livestream-3) What I’ve Learned Teaching Postgres to 200+ field engineers at Microsoft, by Paula Berenguel (training, Azure, Postgres skilling, livestream-1) Oracle to Postgres Migrating VLDBs from Oracle to Azure Database for PostgreSQL, by Adithya Kumaranchath (migration, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Oracle to Postgres, livestream-2) Why participate in the virtual hallway track on Discord If you’ve checked out the schedule and plan to watch some of the talks, you might still be wondering: why join live—and why bother with the virtual hallway track on Discord? Here’s how a few of last year’s attendees described the experience: “Very impressed by all the speakers and content I am absolutely shattered as there was so much great content in all the talks over the past 3 days but I have probably learnt more in these sessions than I could have in months of reading up.” “Want to let y’all know how much I got from this onine conference, the speakers were excellent, well-prepared and well-presented. The hosts were informative, engaging, & amusing. The discord hallway channel made me feel connected. I learned a lot and found some new inspiration. I’ll be back next year!” “I have no idea how I’m going to summarise all the interesting stuff for coworkers.” The common thread: the live, shared experience—being able to ask questions, compare notes, and learn alongside other people in real time. How to join the virtual hallway track Head to the #posetteconf channel on Discord (on the Microsoft Open Source Discord) That’s where speakers and attendees hang out during the livestreams—it’s where you can ask questions, share reactions, and just say hi Big thank you to our amazing speakers Every great event starts with great talks—and great talks start with great speakers. Want to learn more about the people behind these talks? Visit the POSETTE 2026 Speaker page Click a speaker’s bio to see their written interview (if available) If a speaker has been a guest on the Talking Postgres podcast in the past, then you’ll find a link to their episode there, too Join us for POSETTE 2026! Mark your calendars I hope you join us for POSETTE 2026. Consider yourself officially invited. As part of the talk selection team, I’m definitely biased—but I truly believe these speakers and talks are worth your time. I’ll be hosting Livestream 1 and you’ll find me in the #posetteconf Discord chat. I hope to see you there. And please: tell your Postgres friends, so they don’t miss out! 🗓️ Add the livestreams to your calendar Livestream 1: Tue 16 June, 8am–2pm PDT (UTC-7) [ register for updates ] and/or [ add to calendar ] Livestream 2: Wed 17 June, 8am–2pm CEST (UTC+2) [ register for updates ] and/or [ add to calendar ] Livestream 3: Wed 17 June, 8am–2pm PDT (UTC-7) [ register for updates ] and/or [ add to calendar ] Livestream 4: Thu 18 June, 8am–2pm CEST (UTC+2) [ register for updates ] and/or [ add to calendar ] Watch last year’s POSETTE 2025 talks in advance: And if you want to get ready, you can watch talks from the POSETTE 2025 playlist on YouTube anytime, anywhere. Lots of solid, useful, and evergreen Postgres talks in there. “Official Trailer” for POSETTE 2026 is on YouTube To help more developers, community members, and Postgres users discover POSETTE 2026, our team created this short video trailer. Take a peek and share it with friends as an invitation of sorts. We’re trying to make sure that people don’t miss their opportunity to be part of the livestreams and ask questions on the discord during the conference (as well as watch the talks on YouTube after the event is over.) Watch and share the trailer: Official Trailer for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 Acknowledgements & Gratitude I’ve already thanked the 50 amazing speakers above. In addition, thanks go to Silvano Coriani, Cornelia Biacsics, Aaron Wislang, and My Nguyen for reviewing parts of this post before publication. I also want to thank the team at AMD for their partnership and support of POSETTE this year! And of course, big thank you to the POSETTE 2026 organizing team and POSETTE talk selection team—without you, there would be no POSETTE! Figure 3: Visual invitation to join the virtual hallway track for POSETTE 2026 on the Microsoft Open Source Discord, so you can chat with the speakers & others in the Postgres communityApril 2026 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
April brought several updates for Azure Database for PostgreSQL, focused on improving developer productivity, strengthening security and connectivity, and helping customers scale and optimize their PostgreSQL workloads. From new Entra ID token refresh libraries across .NET, JavaScript, and Python to simplify authentication, to guidance on migrating from VNet to Private Endpoint capable configurations, we continue to make it easier to build and manage secure applications. We also introduced enhancements to the PostgreSQL VS Code extension and published deep dives on query performance, data modeling, and real-world scaling patterns. We also published a blog on how PostgreSQL enters its AI era, which explores ways with which developers can adapt PostgreSQL to meet the needs of AI-driven and rapidly growing applications, with practical guidance on running and scaling PostgreSQL more effectively in these evolving workloads. POSETTE 2026 Before we dive deeper into the feature updates, POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 is just around the corner, PostgreSQL’s free, virtual conference bringing together the global community. Taking place from June 16–18, the event will feature four livestream tracks with a strong lineup of content, including 44 sessions, 2 keynotes, and 50 speakers. It’s a great opportunity to hear from PostgreSQL experts, learn about the latest trends, and discover real-world best practices across a wide range of topics. Register today for updates and be part of three days of learning, insights, and community-driven discussions across a wide range of PostgreSQL topics. Features Entra-ID token refresh libraries for .NET, JavaScript, and Python: Preview Migrating from VNet to Private Endpoint: Preview New enhancements in the PostgreSQL VS Code Extension Improving Query Performance and Modeling in PostgreSQL Scaling PostgreSQL for Real-World Application Workloads Learning Bytes: Preventing accidental server deletion Entra-ID Token refresh libraries: .NET, JavaScript and Python We’ve introduced Entra ID token refresh libraries for .NET, JavaScript, and Python to simplify how applications authenticate with Azure Database for PostgreSQL using Entra ID. When using Entra ID–based authentication, access tokens are short-lived and need to be refreshed periodically. This often requires additional logic in the application to handle expiration, retries, and reconnection scenarios. These new libraries take care of that complexity by automatically refreshing tokens behind the scenes, so applications can maintain uninterrupted database connections without custom token management. With built-in support for token renewal, these libraries help: Reduce the need for manual token refresh logic in your application code Improve reliability for long-running or connection-pooled workloads Simplify adoption of Entra ID authentication across different language stacks Whether you're building new applications or migrating existing ones to use Entra ID, these libraries make it easier to integrate secure, passwordless authentication while keeping connection handling straightforward. Migrating from VNet to Private Endpoint Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server can now be migrated from a VNet‑integrated deployment to a network configuration that supports Private Endpoint connectivity. Servers originally deployed inside a VNet may require greater flexibility in networking management. Private Endpoints provide a simpler and more scalable model. Following migration, private access to the server continues over Azure’s backbone network, dependency on delegated subnets is reduced, and database networking can be better aligned with evolving architectural or organizational standards. The migration can be initiated through Azure CLI, API, or SDK and is designed to be straightforward. Although the operation involves a period of downtime, it enables adoption of Private Endpoint connectivity without recreating the server or manually moving data. After migration, Private Endpoints or firewall rules can be configured based on the desired access model, and infrastructure-as-code templates can be updated accordingly. Read more here: Migrate from VNet to a Private Endpoint Capable Network Configuration | Microsoft Learn New enhancements in the PostgreSQL VS Code Extension The latest release (v1.21) of the PostgreSQL VS Code extension delivers enhancements to query authoring and analysis workflows, improved cross-extension interoperability, reliability improvements across Object Explorer and connection management, and a set of targeted bug fixes. Schema-Aware Query Creation: You can now open a new query directly from a schema in Object Explorer, automatically setting the appropriate search_path so unqualified object names resolve correctly without additional setup. Query Plan Visualization Enhancements: The query plan visualizer now uses PostgreSQL-specific node icons across all views, making it easier to identify scan, join, and aggregate operations during performance analysis. Improved Multi-Extension Compatibility: The extension now coordinates editor ownership with the MSSQL extension when both are installed, reducing duplicate UI actions and avoiding conflicts in query execution workflows. Object Explorer Reliability Improvements: The Object Explorer has been refactored for more consistent refresh, expansion, and reconnection behavior, especially in long-running sessions and databases with many schemas. Enhanced IntelliSense Behavior: IntelliSense now respects the configured search_path, improving the relevance of suggestions and helping you work more efficiently across schemas. Bug Fixes: This release includes fixes across object scripting (including partitioned tables), connection profile handling, Docker container creation, and initial extension setup for improved reliability and stability. Improving Query Performance and Modeling in PostgreSQL This month, we also shared a set of technical blogs highlighting advanced PostgreSQL scenarios and practical guidance for real-world workloads: Guide on workload observability with Query store: This blog dives into how Query Store can be used to gain end-to-end visibility into query performance across both primary and replica nodes. It highlights the importance of understanding query behavior in distributed setups and how bottlenecks can surface differently across nodes. The post also shares practical guidance on using these insights to troubleshoot issues and optimize workload performance effectively. Guide on Common Table Expressions(CTEs) with Data Skew: This deep dive unpacks a complex query planning scenario in PostgreSQL v17, where data skew can lead to unexpected and suboptimal execution plans involving CTEs. It explains why the optimizer may choose inefficient plans and how this impacts real-world workloads. The blog also outlines strategies to diagnose and mitigate these issues, helping users better predict and tune query performance. Guide on PostgreSQL as a Graph Database: This blog explains how PostgreSQL can be leveraged to model and query graph-like relationships, making it highly relevant for AI-driven applications. It demonstrates how relational capabilities can be extended to support graph workloads without introducing additional systems. The post also highlights practical patterns and use cases that enable developers to build more connected, intelligent applications using PostgreSQL as a unified data platform. Scaling PostgreSQL for Real-World Application Workloads Alongside performance tuning and data modeling topics, we also explored how PostgreSQL behaves under real-world application patterns especially in scenarios involving high concurrency, background job processing, and connection-heavy workloads. These blogs focus on common architectural choices developers make and the trade-offs to consider when scaling reliably. Guide on using Postgres as a Job Queue: Thisblog takes a deeper look at the implications of using PostgreSQL as a job queue, a pattern commonly adopted for simplicity and tighter integration. It walks through how queue-like workloads can introduce contention due to frequent updates, row locking, and long-running transactions. The post highlights how these patterns can impact throughput, vacuum efficiency, and overall database health as scale increases. It also discusses when this approach is appropriate, and when teams should consider dedicated queuing systems to avoid performance bottlenecks. Guide on Connection Scaling with Elastic Clusters: This blog dives into the challenges of handling large volumes of concurrent connections, which is a common bottleneck for modern, microservices-based applications. It explains how Elastic Clusters help distribute connections and workload across multiple nodes, improving scalability and resilience under heavy load. The post also touches on connection management patterns, including pooling strategies, and how they work in conjunction with Elastic Clusters to prevent resource exhaustion and ensure consistent performance at scale. Azure Postgres Learning Bytes 🎓 Preventing accidental server deletion In production environments, accidental deletions can lead to significant downtime and data loss. To safeguard critical resources like Azure Database for PostgreSQL servers, Azure provides resource locks that add an extra layer of protection beyond standard role-based access control (RBAC). A commonly used option is the CanNotDelete (Delete Lock), which ensures that a resource cannot be deleted even by users with elevated permissions until the lock is explicitly removed. You can apply a delete lock easily using the Azure CLI by targeting the specific resource: az lock create --name PreventDelete --lock-type CanNotDelete --resource-group <rg-name> --resource-type Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/flexibleServers --resource-name <resource-name></resource-name></rg-name> Once applied, any delete operation on the resource will be blocked, helping prevent accidental or unintended deletions during maintenance, deployments, or testing. Locks can be applied at different levels subscription, resource group, or individual resources allowing flexibility based on your protection needs. For more details and step-by-step guidance, read our blog on Preventing accidental deletion of an Azure PostgreSQL Instance.
End-to-end workload observability with Query Store for primary and replicas
Query performance doesn’t stop at the primary Most PostgreSQL architectures don’t run on a single node anymore. Reads get offloaded. Replica chains grow. And when performance issues hit, the hardest part is often simple: where did the queries actually run? With the latest query store capabilities in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server, you can now capture workload executed not just on the primary, but also on read replicas—including cascading read replicas—and export the captured runtime stats, wait stats, and query text into Azure Monitor Logs (Log Analytics workspace / LAWS). See the real hotspot: isolate which node (primary vs replica) is slow. Know why: break down time by waits (CPU, I/O, locks) per query. Connect the dots: correlate query IDs to query text, and inspect sampled parameters locally in azure_sys on the primary when you need input context (parameters aren’t exported to LAWS). Centralize analysis: query everything with KQL in LAWS, across servers. What you’ll build This post walks through a reproducible demo that provisions a primary server, a read replica, and a cascading read replica, then runs a TPC-H–based workload across all three to generate query store data you can analyze locally and in Log Analytics. Enable query store capture (including query text) and parameter sampling for parameterized queries. Enable wait sampling so query store can record wait statistics. Export runtime stats, wait stats, and SQL text to LAWS using resource-specific tables. Validate capture on read replicas and cascading read replicas (not just the primary). Prerequisites Azure CLI logged in (az login) and permission to create a resource group, Log Analytics workspace, and PostgreSQL flexible servers. psql and curl available on your machine. PostgreSQL flexible server on General Purpose or Memory Optimized tier (query store and replicas aren’t supported on Burstable). PostgreSQL 14+ to test out cascading replicas. Networking: the script opens firewall access broadly for demos—tighten for production. Architecture (primary + replica chain + LAWS) You’ll deploy four resources: Primary server: read/write node. Read replica (level 1): read-only node created from the primary. Cascading read replica (level 2): read-only node created from replica level 1. Log Analytics workspace (LAWS): central place to query Query Store telemetry across all nodes. If Diagnostic Settings is properly configured, each server streams query store telemetry to LAWS—but how it’s kept locally differs by role. On the primary, query store data is recorded in-memory, then persisted locally in the azure_sys database, and then exported to LAWS. On read replicas (including cascading replicas), query store data is recorded in-memory only and then exported to LAWS. Bottom line: use LAWS for fleet-wide visibility, and use the primary’s azure_sys when you need deep local inspection (like parameter samples). Deploy the demo environment The fastest way to reproduce the scenario is to run the end-to-end bash script which you can download from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/azure-postgresql-query-store/refs/heads/main/may2026/script/query_store_demo.sh Save the file to a local directory in your Linux shell, and name the file query_store_demo.sh. To invoke the script, at minimum, you must assign a string password for the administrator login of the instances of the flexible servers it creates, and invoke the script like this: ADMIN_PASSWORD=<Your_Strong_Password> ./query_store_demo.sh Optionally, you can also override default values for other environment variables used by the script: Variable Purpose Default SUBSCRIPTION_ID Azure subscription ID to use (current default subscription) BASE_NAME Base name for all resources (used in naming servers, resource groups, etc.) pgqswait{YYYYMMDDHHMMSS} RESOURCE_GROUP Azure resource group name rg-{BASE_NAME} LOCATION Azure region for resources southeastasia PRIMARY_SERVER Name of primary PostgreSQL server {BASE_NAME}-primary REPLICA_1 Name of first-level read replica {BASE_NAME}-readreplica REPLICA_2 Name of second-level cascading read replica {BASE_NAME}-cascadereadreplica LOG_ANALYTICS_WORKSPACE Log Analytics workspace name law-{BASE_NAME} LOG_ANALYTICS_LOCATION Azure region for Log Analytics workspace southeastasia ADMIN_USER PostgreSQL admin username pgadmin ADMIN_PASSWORD PostgreSQL admin password (REQUIRED) SKU_NAME PostgreSQL server SKU (compute tier) Standard_D4ds_v5 TIER PostgreSQL pricing tier GeneralPurpose STORAGE_SIZE Storage size in GB 64 VERSION PostgreSQL version (minimum 14 for cascading replicas) 17 PRIMARY_DATABASE Initial database name postgres SQL_BASE_URL Base URL for downloading SQL scripts https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/azure-postgresql-query-store/refs/heads/main/may2026/script/query_store_demo.sh TPCH_DDL_URL URL for TPC-H schema DDL file {SQL_BASE_URL}/schema/tpch_ddl.sql WORKLOAD_REPETITIONS Number of times to execute each workload query (minimum 5) 10 AUTO_APPROVE Skip confirmation prompt and proceed automatically false If, for example, you want to not only pass the ADMIN_PASSWORD but also override the LOCATION, you could do it like this: ADMIN_PASSWORD=<Your_Strong_Password> LOCATION=canadacentral ./query_store_demo.sh In a bit over 1 hour, the script will do the following steps: Step 1 — Provision first part of the infrastructure The infrastructure provisioned in this phase consists of: A resource group in which all resources are deployed. An instance of Log Analytics workspace, where all flexible server instances will send their query store related logs. A primary (read-write) flexible server. Step 2 — Configure primary server Now it's time to configure one new server parameters on your primary server so that query store emits query text to LAWS, so that we can correlate quey IDs to something recognizable. Query IDs are great for aggregation—but you still need the SQL. Turn on query text emission so you can correlate runtime and waits back to the actual statement text. Do this by setting pg_qs.emit_query_text to on. Refer to our documentation to learn how to set the value of a server parameter. Step 3 — Provision second part of the infrastructure The infrastructure provisioned in this phase consists of: A read replica (read-only) whose source is the primary server. A cascade read replica (read-only), whose source is the previously created read replica. Notice that when read replicas are created, they inherit the server parameter values from their source server. Because we have configured query store related settings on the primary server already, the intermediate read replica inherits its server parameters from that primary, and the cascade read replica inherits them from the intermediate replica. Step 4 — Export query store to Log Analytics (LAWS) Now for the payoff, we want to stream the data to Log Analytics so you can query across nodes, build dashboards, and alert. The script configures diagnostic settings on the primary and both replicas to send logs to a Log Analytics workspace using resource-specific tables. This is the key to cross-node visibility: each server exports its own captured telemetry, and you can slice by resource in a single KQL query. Query store runtime stats: execution counts, elapsed time, and other performance counters. Query store wait stats: wait breakdown attributed to queries. Query store SQL text: query text to decode query IDs. Note: Query store parameter samples are not included in the Log Analytics export. Parameters are stored locally per server in azure_sys, and on read replicas azure_sys is read-only—so don’t depend on replicas for parameter inspection. LAWS receives runtime stats, wait stats, and query text. Diagnostics settings for an instance of flexible server can be configured via portal. In the resource menu, under Monitoring, select Diagnostic settings. Add a new diagnostic setting, select a destination Log Analytics workspace, and the individual log catergories which you want to stream to that LAWS, and save the changes. For Destination table it's highly recommended to use Resource specific (one table per signal with proper schema) over Azure diagnostics (legacy one table for everything). With Azure diagnostics, all logs from all resource types land into a single table (AzureDiagnostics). It's a wide table with many columns. New columns get added as services emit new fields. If the 500 column limit is hit, extra fields go into the AdditionalFields column (a dynamic JSON). Querying on attributes stored in that column might have huge performance and query cost impact. The schema is inconsistent and difficult to discover. You must always filter events in that table by ResourceType and Category. On the other hand, with Resource specific, logs are written to separate tables per resource type and category. Therefore, each table has a well-defined schema and columns are strongly typed. Tables are smaller and faster to query. Queries on these tables are simpler don't need filtering by ResourceType and Category. Performance-wise, they also support faster ingestion and faster querying. They also support selecting different table plans and retention settings for each table. And, more importantly, role-based access control (RBAC) permissions can be applied at table level, allowing you to control access to telemetry in a more granular way. Note: If you want to see any of the images in this article in better quality, click on them to see them in their original size. This can also be configured using Azure CLI command az monitor diagnostic-settings create. Make sure that the --export-to-resource-specific parameter is set to true, which is the equivalent of selecting Resource specific for Destination table in portal UI. Setting this parameter to false, would mean that you want to use AzureDiagnostics as the destination table, which we don't recommend using. Step 5 — Run some workload In this phase the script loads a TPC-H schema and executes workload SQL across different nodes so that you can prove replica capture. Query it in Log Analytics Once the workload completed and data was streamed to Log Analytics, you can open your Log Analytics workspace, and start querying the relevant tables. If you don't know how to start issuing queries in a Log Analytics workspace, refer to Get started with log queries in Azure Monitor Logs. In your Log Analytics workspace, when you select Logs in the resource menu, you can access the Queries hub. By default, it should open automatically unless you have configured it to not show, in which case you can open by selecting Queries hub on the top right corner of the Logs home screen. If you add a filter in the queries hub for Resource type equals Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, you'll be able to access multiple examples of queries which might help you get started querying the log categories we support for our service. You can run any of them by selecting Run on the summarization card that describes the query or, if you hover the mouse over the card, you can select Load to editor so that the query is copied over to the active query window, and you can run it or modified it further. Following, there are a few more query examples which can be useful to analyze the workload executed in this experiment. Top queries by total time (across all nodes) To get the list of 10 queries with higher duration from the ones that ran on any of the three nodes. KQL PGSQLQueryStoreRuntime | summarize total_time_ms = sum(TotalExecDurationMs) by QueryId, LogicalServerName | top 10 by total_time_ms desc Results Important: Results might be slightly different on each execution of the experiment. Where queries wait on each node List the most frequent wait events observed on user initiated queries across all nodes. KQL PGSQLQueryStoreWaits | join kind=inner (PGSQLQueryStoreRuntime) on QueryId | summarize total_waits_sampled = sum(Calls) by Event, EventType, LogicalServerName | order by total_waits_sampled desc Results Important: Results might be slightly different on each execution of the experiment. Decode query IDs (join runtime stats with SQL text) Top 20 queries the most frequent wait events observed on user initiated queries across all nodes. KQL PGSQLQueryStoreRuntime | join kind=inner (PGSQLQueryStoreQueryText) on QueryId | where QueryType == 'select' | project LogicalServerName, QueryId, TotalExecDurationMs, QueryText | top 20 by TotalExecDurationMs desc Results Important: Results might be slightly different on each execution of the experiment. Compare primary vs replicas (workload distribution) Find total number of query executions and accumulated duration of all those executions for each node. KQL PGSQLQueryStoreRuntime | summarize execs = sum(Calls), total_time_ms = sum(TotalExecDurationMs) by LogicalServerName | order by total_time_ms desc Results Important: Results might be slightly different on each execution of the experiment. Replica-only hotspots (find what’s slow off the primary) Find top 10 queries executed by their aggregated duration, focusing on what was executed on read replicas only. KQL let Replicas = dynamic(["pgqswait20260505220501-readreplica", "pgqswait20260505220501-cascadereadreplica"]); PGSQLQueryStoreRuntime | where LogicalServerName in (Replicas) | summarize total_time_ms = sum(TotalExecDurationMs) by QueryId, LogicalServerName | top 10 by total_time_ms desc Results Important: Results might be slightly different on each execution of the experiment. QPI now supports query store stats collected on replicas You can now use Query Performance Insight workbooks to analyze query store information not only on your primary server, as you were used to, but you can also get that valuable information on your read replicas. Why replica workload capture is a big deal This is the unlock: you can now answer performance questions in replica-heavy architectures without stitching together partial signals. Per-node truth: see the slow queries on the node where they actually ran (primary vs replica vs cascading replica). Faster root cause: runtime + waits gives you “slow” and “why” in one place. Replica tuning that sticks: identify replica-specific bottlenecks (I/O saturation, lock waits, CPU pressure) and tune with evidence. Centralized observability: export to LAWS so you can build dashboards, alerts, and cross-server comparisons with KQL. Unlock query visibility: Access query text without database permissions. Fine grain control on who can view query text: Using resource specific tables in LAWS, you can decide which users can access the table in which text of the queries is kept. Parameter-aware debugging: sampled parameters can help reproduce issues and explain plan changes, but they’re stored locally in azure_sys and not exported to LAWS. In practice, rely on the primary for parameter inspection (replicas have read-only azure_sys). Operational notes (quick but important) Expect a delay: Query store stats and LAWS ingestion aren’t instant. Give it a few minutes after running workload. Mind retention: Query store retention and Log Analytics retention are separate knobs. Tune them to balance troubleshooting value and cost. Production hygiene: don’t use wide-open firewall rules outside of a demo. Clean up When you’re done, delete the resource group: az group delete --name <RESOURCE_GROUP> --yes --no-wait Bottom line Query store in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server now matches how modern architectures run—across primary, read replicas, and cascading replicas—and LAWS gives you a single place to query, compare, and act.
PostgreSQL as your Graph Database in the AI era
Enterprise data is full of hidden relationships: citation chains in legal docs, service dependencies, approval hierarchies, and drug interactions. These connections often hold the most valuable insight, but SQL-only and vector search can miss them. With Apache AGE now generally available, AI Functions in ai_extension in public preview, and graph visualization shipped in the PostgreSQL VS Code extension, Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server gives you everything you need to unlock this structural knowledge without adding a separate graph database to your stack. Why Graphs? Because Relationships Are the Blind Spot Vector search is great at finding similar content, but it’s weaker when the answer depends on relationships. For example, “does this new vendor contract conflict with existing obligations?” may return a relevant clause, but it won’t follow links across regions, obligation types, and counterparties to prove a real conflict. Graph queries fill that gap by following connections across your data to surface paths and patterns that flat retrieval can’t see. Combine graph traversal with AI-based extraction and you get knowledge graph powered retrieval: LLM answers grounded in both the text and the structure of your data. Enable Graph Queries Inside PostgreSQL Apache AGE adds graph capabilities to PostgreSQL. You can write graph queries in openCypher and run them right alongside your SQL. That means no separate graph database to provision, no cross-database data movement, and no external synchronization pipeline is required. If you materialize a graph from relational tables, that graph representation still needs to be maintained as the source data changes, but it can be managed inside PostgreSQL with the same enterprise security, transactions, and operational model. AGE is now generally available on Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server on PostgreSQL 16, PostgreSQL 17 and with support now extending to PostgreSQL 18. Key capabilities include: openCypher query language for expressive graph traversals ACID transactions - graph operations share PostgreSQL's full transactional guarantees BTREE and GIN indexes on graph properties for efficient querying at scale Mixed SQL + Cypher - JOIN graph results with relational tables in a single statement Here's what it looks like in practice: -- Load AGE extension LOAD 'age'; SET search_path = ag_catalog, "$user", public; -- Create a knowledge graph SELECT ag_catalog.create_graph('company_graph'); -- Query: Who should I talk to about the payment service? SELECT * FROM ag_catalog.cypher( 'company_graph', $$ MATCH (s:Service {name: 'PaymentService'}) <-[:OWNS]-(t:Team) <-[:MEMBER_OF]-(p:Person) WHERE p.active = true RETURN p.name, t.name, p.role $$ ) AS (person agtype, team agtype, role agtype); That single query traverses from a service to its owning team to its active members, a three-hop relationship that would require nested subqueries or recursive CTEs in pure SQL. 📘 Apache AGE Extension — Documentation | GA Announcement Blog Build Knowledge Graphs from Your Data The hardest part of working with graphs is building the graph in the first place. AI Functions in ai_extension (now in Public Preview) solve this by bringing LLM-powered intelligence directly into SQL. extract() is the standout for graph workflows. It discovers hidden relationships and entities from unstructured text, right inside a SQL query. Feed it contracts, support tickets, research papers, or any text-heavy data, and it pulls out the structured relationships you need to populate your knowledge graph. The other operators complement the graph pipeline: rank() re-ranks retrieval results with state-of-the-art models from Microsoft Foundry, is_true() evaluates natural-language filter conditions, and generate() produces LLM responses which are all callable from SQL. Together, they enable a powerful pattern: extract relationships, store them as a graph in AGE, query the graph, then rank and return results all within PostgreSQL. -- Extract relationships from a support ticket SELECT azure_ai.extract( description, ARRAY['relationships: object[] - {source, edge, target} triples'] ) FROM support_tickets; -- Returns: -- { -- "relationships": [ -- {"source": "API gateway", "edge": "CAUSED_FAILURE_IN", "target": "auth service"}, -- ... -- ] -- } 📘 AI Functions — Documentation | Deep Dive Blog Visualize Your Graph as You Build It The PostgreSQL extension for VS Code now renders graph visualizations automatically from Cypher queries. Run a query, see the nodes and edges. This makes exploring, debugging, and presenting your graph data dramatically easier requiring no separate visualization tool. 📘 PostgreSQL Extension for VS Code Build Graph-Augmented AI Applications and Agents with PostgreSQL Graph doesn’t work alone. Azure Database for PostgreSQL also includes pgvector + DiskANN for fast vector search, the Azure AI Extension to call LLMs from SQL, and MCP Server support to connect your database to AI agents. Together, they let you build end-to-end Graph-augmented RAG pipelines in one database right from extraction and embeddings to graph storage, retrieval, ranking, and generation. Use the PostgreSQL MCP Server to connect AI agents to your database, giving them the ability to traverse graphs, run vector searches, and answer questions grounded in your enterprise data. 📘 DiskANN How-To | Azure AI Extension | MCP Server Blog | Build AI Agents with PostgreSQL Why Build Your Graph on PostgreSQL? You already have the data. AGE adds graph features next to your existing tables. There’s no migration or separate graph store needed. You can use SQL and Cypher together in one query and transaction. One database instead of many. Keep relational data, graphs, json data, vectors, and LLM calls in one managed service. Simplify backups, security, and billing. Enterprise-grade from day one. Zone-redundant HA, automated geo-backups, Microsoft Entra ID auth, encryption at rest and in transit, all inherited automatically. Use Cases: Where Graph + AI Unlock What Tables and Vectors Alone Can’t Legal research — Extract citations and holdings, traverse precedent paths, and ground answers with the full citation chain (not just similar text) Fraud detection & AML — Build entity graphs from transactions and customer data, then use multi-hop traversals and AI summarization to explain suspicious rings, layering, and circular flows Enterprise knowledge & expertise routing — Construct a living knowledge graph from docs/tickets/repos; answer “who owns this?” and “who knows this?” with graph reasoning and ranked, source-backed responses IT incident triage & root cause analysis — Correlate incidents, services dependencies, deployments/config changes; traverse blast radius and generate an RCA narrative with supporting evidence Supply chain risk & resiliency — Extract supplier relationships from contracts and POs, model tier-N dependencies, and let copilots flag sole-source bottlenecks and propose mitigations Regulatory compliance automation — Link regulations, obligations, controls and systems/vendors; run impact analysis on new rules and auto-generate control mapping and gap assessment Life sciences knowledge discovery — Connect drugs, targets, pathways, indications, and adverse events; traverse causal chains and generate explainable interaction/contraindication summaries Customer support & case deflection — Turn tickets, product telemetry, and KB articles into a graph; retrieve via graph paths and generate step-by-step resolutions Get Started: Try It Now We've built solution accelerators so you can see graph in action on Azure Database for PostgreSQL today: Resource Link Contract Intelligence Platform https://github.com/james-tn/graph/tree/main/contract_intelligence Agentic Shop aka.ms/agentic-shop GraphRAG Legal Research Copilot github.com/Azure-Samples/graphrag-legalcases-postgres Build Your Own Advanced AI Copilot github.com/Azure-Samples/postgres-sa-byoac GraphRAG + Docker + AI Agents github.com/Azure-Samples/postgreSQL-graphRAG-docker Microsoft Learn — Implement GraphRAG Lab aka.ms/mslearn-graphrag AGE MCP Server (Claude Desktop / VS Code) github.com/rioriost/age_mcp_server Enabling Apache AGE takes minutes : navigate to Server Parameters in the Azure Portal, enable AGE under azure.extensions and shared_preload_libraries, save, and run CREATE EXTENSION age CASCADE;. That's it, your PostgreSQL database is now a graph database. Don't Miss the Edges The most valuable knowledge in your data isn't sitting in rows, it's hiding in the connections between them. These relationships are the structural context that makes AI applications genuinely intelligent. Enable graph on your Azure Database for PostgreSQL today, and start surfacing the relationships your data has been hiding all along.
