Database Insights

Five counterintuitive database performance truths every engineer gets wrong — over-indexing costs, N+1 queries, connection pool sizing, replica reads, and EXPLAIN limitations.

Explore PostgreSQL 18 revolutionary features including async I/O, improved parallelism, enhanced JSON support, and developer experience improvements coming in 2025.

PostgreSQL offers multiple index types for different access patterns — and choosing wrong means slow queries or wasted space. A comprehensive guide to indexing strategy, from type selection to monitoring and maintenance.

Master MySQL performance optimization with this comprehensive 2025 guide. Learn expert techniques for query tuning, indexing strategies, memory configuration, and InnoDB optimization to achieve 10x database performance improvements.

MySQL 8.4 LTS introduces production-optimized InnoDB defaults out of the box. Learn new default values, performance implications, and upgrade considerations.

PostgreSQL's pg_stat_activity view exposes every connection's state — but understanding what 'idle in transaction' means and why it's dangerous requires knowing the full lifecycle of a PostgreSQL backend process.

Leverage MySQL 8.4 InnoDB parallel DDL for faster schema changes. Learn parallel index creation, online DDL improvements, and reduced maintenance windows.

Understand MySQL query execution from parser to storage. Learn optimizer internals, execution plans, buffer management, and physical storage organization.

A detailed comparison of PgBouncer, Odyssey, and pgcat for PostgreSQL connection pooling — architecture differences, threading models, pool modes, TLS support, and decision criteria for each workload type.

How to size your database connection pool correctly — the HikariCP formula, the variables that determine optimal pool size, and the mistakes that cause connection exhaustion or underutilization.

MySQL 8.0 introduced EXPLAIN FORMAT=TREE — a hierarchical, human-readable query plan format that reveals join order, access methods, and cost estimates in a way that the traditional tabular EXPLAIN cannot.

How to use pg_stat_statements to identify slow queries, analyze execution stats, and optimize PostgreSQL performance