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Jan 14, 2025 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
If I had to summarize 2024 for Timescale, I’d call it the year of Postgres for AI. From game-changing open-source launches like pgvectorscale (a performance booster for large production vector workloads with PostgreSQL + pgvector) to pgai (which integrates Postgres with LLMs for AI app development), we pushed the boundaries of what developers can achieve with Postgres. But AI wasn’t the only story.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
In a previous article in this series, I explored the magic of INSERT...UNNEST for improving PostgreSQL batch INSERT performance. While it’s a fantastic technique, I know it’s not the fastest option available (although it is very flexible). Originally, I hadn't intended to loop back and benchmark all the batch ingest methods, but I saw a lot of confusion out there, so I'm back, and this time I'm looking at COPY too.
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
If you Google Postgres INSERT performance for long enough, you’ll find some hushed mentions of using an arcane UNNEST function (if you squint, it looks like a columnar insert) over a series of arrays to increase performance. Any performance gains sound good to me, but what's actually going on here?
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
The Introduction: DISTINCT Queries in PostgreSQLLet’s say you’re working with sensor data in PostgreSQL, with each reading containing a sensor ID, timestamp, and value. You want to power an application dashboard that needs to know the last known state of each sensor in your fleet.
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Jun 7, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
For those that don't know PGSQL Phriday is a monthly blogging event that’s hosted by members of the PostgreSQL community. The idea was partly inspired by the State of PostgreSQL Survey, which is hosted by Timescale each year. In the 2022 survey results, “long-form” and “short-form” blog posts were the second and third most popular source of information for all respondents.
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May 16, 2024 | 
timescale.com | Aleksander Alekseev |Ana Tavares |James Blackwood-Sewell |Mats Kindahl
The next major PostgreSQL release (PostgreSQL 17) is scheduled for September. In 2023, PostgreSQL regained the attention it deserves as a rock-solid relational database. It was voted the and named database management system of the year by DB-Engines. Here at Timescale, we also consolidated our status as fierce PostgreSQL fans: besides having built Timescale on PostgreSQL, we believe PostgreSQL is evolving as a platform and becoming the bedrock for the future of data.
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May 14, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
The idea of using PostgreSQL for Everything isn't new, but it's steadily gaining attention, especially as Postgres keeps . As someone who’s spent most of their career deploying all sorts of databases, here’s what it means to me and how you can apply it to get some simplicity back into your world. How Technical Sprawl Creeps InImagine you're starting on a new product or feature. Early on, your team lists out technical problems you need to tackle.
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Apr 25, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
So you’ve got a PostgreSQL instance (maybe locally, maybe in Kubernetes, or it could be a cloud service like RDS or Timescale), and you’re ready to go. You fire up psql to start running queries… but your connection doesn’t work. This post examines the five most common connection errors in PostgreSQL and how you can solve them.
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
There are a lot of ways to run interactive SQL queries on PostgreSQL, but I still find myself heavily relying on the built-in command line tool psql when I need to hack on some SQL. And apparently, I’m not alone. In the last State of PostgreSQL survey, psql was voted the most popular tool to connect to PostgreSQL. But psql isn’t a walk in the park. It comes with many built-in meta-commands that can make your life easier, but only if you know about them.
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Mar 28, 2024 | 
timescale.com | James Blackwood-Sewell
Five years ago, while working at a consulting company in Australia, I posted a question to the Timescale Slack. The question went unanswered (I think I actually talked to a Timescaler about this in a DM); I implemented a solution in my application, and time quickly moved on. Fast forward five years.
