Postgres
More Workloads, Fewer Systems.
Coming soon
PostgreSQL writes every change to the write-ahead log before it touches the data files, and that one decision drives replication, backups, and crash recovery alike. This book will cover the operational side of running PostgreSQL: how streaming replication keeps standbys current, how base backups and WAL archiving make point-in-time recovery work, why vacuum exists and what happens when it falls behind, and how to monitor a cluster so problems surface before users notice.
Status: all 48 chapters and 7 appendices are drafted and fact-checked (about 110,000 words). Verification and production are underway.
The first edition will ship DRM-free as PDF and EPUB, with free updates.
The operational surface, end to end.
48 chapters and 7 appendices across seven parts, drafted against a pinned PostgreSQL 18 source build. Chapter titles may still shift during verification and production.
Part 1 Foundations 6 chapters
- 1 Why Postgres
- 2 The Exact Build and Lab
- 3 Architecture
- 4 Storage and Catalogs
- 5 MVCC and Transactions
- 6 WAL and Recovery
Part 2 PostgreSQL SQL 7 chapters
- 7 Data Modeling and Types
- 8 Relational Querying
- 9 Advanced Queries
- 10 Writing Good PostgreSQL SQL
- 11 Indexes and Access Paths
- 12 Concurrency
- 13 Server-Side Logic
Part 3 One Postgres, many workloads 10 chapters
- 14 Document database
- 15 Key-value and semi-structured data
- 16 Search
- 17 Time-series and temporal systems
- 18 Graphs
- 19 Queues and schedulers
- 20 Events and change data capture
- 21 Analytics
- 22 Multitenancy
- 23 Federation and foreign data wrappers
Part 4 Application engineering 5 chapters
- 24 Connections and protocol
- 25 Transaction design
- 26 Schema change without surprises
- 27 Extensions as governed software
- 28 Bulk movement and binary data
Part 5 Production operations 8 chapters
- 29 Installation and Configuration
- 30 Security Boundaries
- 31 Vacuum, Freezing, and Bloat
- 32 Backup, Incremental Backup, and PITR
- 33 PostgreSQL-Aware rsync Troubleshooting
- 34 Observability and Evidence
- 35 Query Performance and Planner Control
- 36 Data Lifecycle and Storage Migration
Part 6 Reliability and incident response 6 chapters
- 37 Physical replication
- 38 Logical replication
- 39 Failover and recovery
- 40 Upgrades
- 41 Incidents and corruption
- 42 Capacity and SLOs
Part 7 Internals and extension engineering 6 chapters
- 43 Source tour and tests
- 44 Processes, memory, and IPC
- 45 Heap and buffer internals
- 46 Access methods and WAL internals
- 47 Parser to executor
- 48 Extending the server
Appendices Appendices 7 appendices
- A psql field manual
- B Configuration, SQLSTATE, and wait-event discovery
- C Catalog and diagnostic query library
- D Lab and example verification matrix
- E Sources, reproducibility, and evidence model
- F Glossary and subject index
- G Production readiness and incident checklists
For engineers who run the database everything depends on.
This book is for people who operate PostgreSQL or are about to take a cluster over. It assumes comfort with SQL and the command line, and it explains how PostgreSQL behaves in production rather than teaching query writing.
- Backend and platform engineers who inherited a PostgreSQL cluster and want to understand what keeps it healthy.
- Database operators who want a working model of WAL, replication, and vacuum rather than a collection of commands.
- SRE and backup teams who need restores, failover, and upgrades to be rehearsed parts of their runbook.
Coming soon.
The manuscript is drafted and the book is moving through verification and production. Join the shared Sysinit Press book list and you'll get one message when it ships, with a sample chapter as soon as one is public. The first edition will include DRM-free PDF and EPUB files with free updates.
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