One of my fellow Manning authors, Jimmy Angelakos, recently published an excellent book on Postgres, PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. What I loved about Jimmy’s approach was that he didn’t spend time fluffing around the topic. You run PostgreSQL? You probably already know a ton, so let’s cut to the chase and give you the stuff you really need to know. I loved it.

The book presumes you already know all about the PostgreSQL database, so we don’t need to spend time on the basics. When a book delves into partitions, I know it is not messing around. You now have my attention.

There has always been a friendly rivalry between MySQL and PostgreSQL, and I will confess starting out life in the MySQL world. This was my default go-to database for all my database architectures. As I write this, I am trying to remember the moment I switched (kind of like forgetting that first sip that got you into a lifelong obsession with whisky – Talisker incase you are wondering Glasgow circa 1990), but I am blanking. I have a funny feeling it was around the time AWS introduced it as an option with Aurora. Anyway.

PostgreSQL comes with a lot of great features that enables it to perform blindingly fast at extreme scale. Though like all great things, you do need to follow some best practices to make it sing.

What I loved about the book was not only the confirmation that many of the design patterns I have been practicing over the years are indeed the right ones, but it lifted the lid on why that is the case with a technical authority that made you feel you were learning a secret, known only to a precious few.

I did learn a lot and as I was finding each nugget, I was firing off Teams messages, like I had found the promised the land.

It is arranged in a way that lets you jump all over the place, honing in on the areas that matter to you. I did jump to a couple of chapters that were relevant, and then, it got my undivided attention, so went from the front to the back, giving it the attention it deserves.

Would highly recommend grabbing this book if you are running Postgres in production under any sort of load. You may think you know it all, but I bet you will find something in here that will make you go “haha”.

PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
https://www.manning.com/books/postgresql-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them

AI Disclaimer: Gemini Nano Banana Pro was used to generate the photo – from the ’92 My Cousin Vinny.