Blog Columns
Six thematic columns, each with its own dedicated RSS feed.
Database Guru
75posts
Database news, industry surveys, architecture, and best practices.
Cloud-Exiter
66posts
Cloud economics, repatriation, and building sovereign infrastructure.
Postgres Mage
126posts
PostgreSQL ecosystem, internals, extensions, and production tuning.
AI Agent Explorer
97posts
Practical engineering with coding agents, LLMs, AI4DB, and DB4AI.
Travel Notes
12posts
Trips, hikes, landscapes, and field notes across mountains and seas.
Miscellaneous
40posts
Essays, reflections, and personal writing inside and outside of tech.
PostgreSQL 17 Beta1 Released!
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces PostgreSQL 17's first Beta version is now available. This time, PostgreSQL has truly burst the toothpaste tube!
How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud
After Alibaba-Cloud's epic global outage on Double 11, setting industry records, how should we evaluate this incident and what lessons can we learn from it?
Pigsty v2.7: The Extension Superpack
Pigsty v2.7 bundles 255 PostgreSQL extensions, plus Docker templates for Odoo, Supabase, PolarDB, and Jupyter, with new PITR dashboards.
Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account
Due to an "unprecedented configuration error," Google Cloud mistakenly deleted trillion-RMB fund giant UniSuper's entire cloud account, cloud environment and all off-site backups, setting a new record …
Cloud Dark Forest: Exploding Cloud Bills with Just S3 Bucket Names
The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill.
The $20 Brother PolarDB: What Should Databases Actually Cost?
Today we discuss the fair pricing of commercial databases, open-source databases, cloud databases, and domestic Chinese databases.
Can Chinese Domestic Databases Really Compete?
Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it's a question that offends people. So let's try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can …
Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record
As a roundtable guest, I was invited to participate in Cloudflare's Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare's APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?
Tencent Cloud's epic global outage after Double 11 set industry records. How should we evaluate and view this failure, and what lessons can we learn from it?
Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud
While I've always advocated for cloud exit, if it's about adopting a cyber bodhisattva cloud like Cloudflare, I'm all in with both hands raised.
Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?
Luo Yonghao's livestream first spent half an hour selling robot vacuums, then Luo himself belatedly appeared to read scripts selling "cloud computing" for forty minutes — before seamlessly …
Redis Going Non-Open-Source is a Disgrace to "Open-Source" and Public Cloud
Redis "going non-open source" is not a disgrace to Redis, but a disgrace to "open source/OSI" and even more so to public cloud. What truly matters has always been software freedom, while open source …
Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost
Alibaba-Cloud claimed major price cuts, but a detailed analysis of cloud server costs reveals that cloud computing and storage remain outrageously expensive.
Postgres is eating the database world
PostgreSQL isn't just a simple relational database; it's a data management framework with the potential to engulf the entire database realm.
Pigsty v2.6: PostgreSQL Crashes the OLAP Party
Pigsty v2.6 makes PostgreSQL 16.2 the default, introduces ParadeDB and DuckDB support, and brings epic-level OLAP improvements.
Technical Minimalism: Just Use PostgreSQL for Everything
Whether production databases should be containerized remains a controversial topic. From a DBA's perspective, I believe that currently, putting production databases in Docker is still a bad idea.
New PostgreSQL Ecosystem Player: ParadeDB
ParadeDB aims to be an Elasticsearch alternative: "Modern Elasticsearch Alternative built on Postgres" — PostgreSQL for search and analytics.
Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?
Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme "Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?" As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I'm writing this …
PostgreSQL's Impressive Scalability
This article describes how Cloudflare scaled to support 55 million requests per second using 15 PostgreSQL clusters, and PostgreSQL's scalability performance.
Cloud-Exit High Availability Secret: Rejecting Complexity Masturbation
Programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Steadfast resistance to this behavior is a …
PostgreSQL Wins 2024 Database of the Year Award! (Fifth Time)
DB-Engines officially announced today that PostgreSQL has once again been crowned "Database of the Year." This is the fifth time PG has received this honor in the past seven years. If not for …
2023 Year-End Summary: Thirty and Established
In 2023, I turned thirty. As Confucius said, "At thirty, one establishes oneself." I've managed to accomplish something - started a family, built a career, gained some technical reputation. A year-end …
MySQL's ACID is a real mess
MySQL's transaction ACID has flaws and doesn't match documentation promises. This may lead to serious correctness issues - use with caution.
S3: Elite to Mediocre
S3 is no longer "cheap" with the evolution of hardware, and other challengers such as cloudflare R2.
PostgreSQL 17 Beta1 Released!
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces PostgreSQL 17's first Beta version is now available. This time, PostgreSQL has truly burst the toothpaste tube!
How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud
After Alibaba-Cloud's epic global outage on Double 11, setting industry records, how should we evaluate this incident and what lessons can we learn from it?
Pigsty v2.7: The Extension Superpack
Pigsty v2.7 bundles 255 PostgreSQL extensions, plus Docker templates for Odoo, Supabase, PolarDB, and Jupyter, with new PITR dashboards.
Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account
Due to an "unprecedented configuration error," Google Cloud mistakenly deleted trillion-RMB fund giant UniSuper's entire cloud account, cloud environment and all off-site backups, setting a new record …
Cloud Dark Forest: Exploding Cloud Bills with Just S3 Bucket Names
The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill.
The $20 Brother PolarDB: What Should Databases Actually Cost?
Today we discuss the fair pricing of commercial databases, open-source databases, cloud databases, and domestic Chinese databases.
Can Chinese Domestic Databases Really Compete?
Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it's a question that offends people. So let's try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can …
Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record
As a roundtable guest, I was invited to participate in Cloudflare's Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare's APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?
Tencent Cloud's epic global outage after Double 11 set industry records. How should we evaluate and view this failure, and what lessons can we learn from it?
Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud
While I've always advocated for cloud exit, if it's about adopting a cyber bodhisattva cloud like Cloudflare, I'm all in with both hands raised.
Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?
Luo Yonghao's livestream first spent half an hour selling robot vacuums, then Luo himself belatedly appeared to read scripts selling "cloud computing" for forty minutes — before seamlessly …
Redis Going Non-Open-Source is a Disgrace to "Open-Source" and Public Cloud
Redis "going non-open source" is not a disgrace to Redis, but a disgrace to "open source/OSI" and even more so to public cloud. What truly matters has always been software freedom, while open source …
Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost
Alibaba-Cloud claimed major price cuts, but a detailed analysis of cloud server costs reveals that cloud computing and storage remain outrageously expensive.
Postgres is eating the database world
PostgreSQL isn't just a simple relational database; it's a data management framework with the potential to engulf the entire database realm.
Pigsty v2.6: PostgreSQL Crashes the OLAP Party
Pigsty v2.6 makes PostgreSQL 16.2 the default, introduces ParadeDB and DuckDB support, and brings epic-level OLAP improvements.
Technical Minimalism: Just Use PostgreSQL for Everything
Whether production databases should be containerized remains a controversial topic. From a DBA's perspective, I believe that currently, putting production databases in Docker is still a bad idea.
New PostgreSQL Ecosystem Player: ParadeDB
ParadeDB aims to be an Elasticsearch alternative: "Modern Elasticsearch Alternative built on Postgres" — PostgreSQL for search and analytics.
Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?
Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme "Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?" As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I'm writing this …
PostgreSQL's Impressive Scalability
This article describes how Cloudflare scaled to support 55 million requests per second using 15 PostgreSQL clusters, and PostgreSQL's scalability performance.
Cloud-Exit High Availability Secret: Rejecting Complexity Masturbation
Programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Steadfast resistance to this behavior is a …
PostgreSQL Wins 2024 Database of the Year Award! (Fifth Time)
DB-Engines officially announced today that PostgreSQL has once again been crowned "Database of the Year." This is the fifth time PG has received this honor in the past seven years. If not for …
2023 Year-End Summary: Thirty and Established
In 2023, I turned thirty. As Confucius said, "At thirty, one establishes oneself." I've managed to accomplish something - started a family, built a career, gained some technical reputation. A year-end …
MySQL's ACID is a real mess
MySQL's transaction ACID has flaws and doesn't match documentation promises. This may lead to serious correctness issues - use with caution.
S3: Elite to Mediocre
S3 is no longer "cheap" with the evolution of hardware, and other challengers such as cloudflare R2.
PostgreSQL 17 Beta1 Released!
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that PostgreSQL 17’s first Beta version is now available for download. This version includes a preview of all features that will be available when PostgreSQL 17 is officially released, though some …
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that PostgreSQL 17’s first Beta version is now available for download. This version includes a preview of all features that will be available when PostgreSQL 17 is officially released, though some …
How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud
Original: How Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by NOT Going to the Cloud Cloud computing has been very popular in the IT infrastructure space recently, with going to the cloud becoming a trend. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds do have many …
Original: How Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by NOT Going to the Cloud Cloud computing has been very popular in the IT infrastructure space recently, with going to the cloud becoming a trend. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds do have many …
Pigsty v2.7: The Extension Superpack
GitHub Release | Release Note On 2024-05-20, Pigsty v2.7 is released. The number of available extensions in this version reaches an astonishing 255, successfully elevating PostgreSQL’s versatility to a new height! Additionally, we provide some new …
GitHub Release | Release Note On 2024-05-20, Pigsty v2.7 is released. The number of available extensions in this version reaches an astonishing 255, successfully elevating PostgreSQL’s versatility to a new height! Additionally, we provide some new …
Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account
Due to an “unprecedented configuration error”, Google Cloud mistakenly deleted UniSuper’s cloud account. The Australian pension fund executive and Google Cloud’s global CEO issued a joint statement apologizing for this “extremely frustrating and …
Due to an “unprecedented configuration error”, Google Cloud mistakenly deleted UniSuper’s cloud account. The Australian pension fund executive and Google Cloud’s global CEO issued a joint statement apologizing for this “extremely frustrating and …
Cloud Dark Forest: Exploding Cloud Bills with Just S3 Bucket Names
The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill. Imagine this: you create an empty, private AWS S3 storage bucket in your favorite region. What would your AWS bill look …
The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill. Imagine this: you create an empty, private AWS S3 storage bucket in your favorite region. What would your AWS bill look …
The $20 Brother PolarDB: What Should Databases Actually Cost?
WeChat Public Account Yesterday, a bidding news attracted attention and heated discussion: “The IT industry is broken… 16.1 million dollar contract… 2.9 million (won)… maintenance fee 0.01 yuan… PolarDB unit price 130 yuan”. When I first saw this …
WeChat Public Account Yesterday, a bidding news attracted attention and heated discussion: “The IT industry is broken… 16.1 million dollar contract… 2.9 million (won)… maintenance fee 0.01 yuan… PolarDB unit price 130 yuan”. When I first saw this …
Can Chinese Domestic Databases Really Compete?
WeChat Public Account Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it’s a question that offends people. So let’s try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can help readers understand …
WeChat Public Account Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it’s a question that offends people. So let’s try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can help readers understand …
Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record
Last week, I was invited as a roundtable guest to participate in Cloudflare’s Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the Cloudflare Immerse cocktail party and dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare’s APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
Last week, I was invited as a roundtable guest to participate in Cloudflare’s Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the Cloudflare Immerse cocktail party and dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare’s APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?
Eight days after the outage, Tencent Cloud published a postmortem report for the April 8th major outage. I think this is a good thing, because Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 major outage official postmortem is still overdue. If public cloud vendors want …
Eight days after the outage, Tencent Cloud published a postmortem report for the April 8th major outage. I think this is a good thing, because Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 major outage official postmortem is still overdue. If public cloud vendors want …
Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud
At today’s 2024 Developer Week, Cloudflare released a series of exciting new features, such as Python Workers and Workers AI, elevating the convenience of application development and delivery to an entirely new level. Compared to Cloudflare’s …
At today’s 2024 Developer Week, Cloudflare released a series of exciting new features, such as Python Workers and Workers AI, elevating the convenience of application development and delivery to an entirely new level. Compared to Cloudflare’s …
Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?
Luo Yonghao was once a brilliant digital product manager with decent IT industry credentials. But as they say, there’s a world of difference between industries. Luo selling cloud is like a street vendor simultaneously hawking meat, vegetables, eggs, …
Luo Yonghao was once a brilliant digital product manager with decent IT industry credentials. But as they say, there’s a world of difference between industries. Luo selling cloud is like a street vendor simultaneously hawking meat, vegetables, eggs, …
Redis Going Non-Open-Source is a Disgrace to "Open-Source" and Public Cloud
Recently, Redis changed its license, causing controversy: starting from version 7.4, it uses RSALv2 and SSPLv1, no longer meeting OSI’s definition of “open source software.” But don’t get it wrong: Redis “going non-open source” is not a disgrace to …
Recently, Redis changed its license, causing controversy: starting from version 7.4, it uses RSALv2 and SSPLv1, no longer meeting OSI’s definition of “open source software.” But don’t get it wrong: Redis “going non-open source” is not a disgrace to …
Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost
On Crazy Thursday, February 29, 2024, Alibaba-Cloud staged a major price cut, with promotional content flying everywhere. As the cloud computing mudslide, many followers asked me to comment. The flashy 20%, 50% off banners look impressive, but …
On Crazy Thursday, February 29, 2024, Alibaba-Cloud staged a major price cut, with promotional content flying everywhere. As the cloud computing mudslide, many followers asked me to comment. The flashy 20%, 50% off banners look impressive, but …
Postgres is eating the database world
PostgreSQL isn’t just a simple relational database; it’s a data management framework with the potential to engulf the entire database realm. The trend of “Using Postgres for Everything” is no longer limited to a few elite teams but is becoming a …
PostgreSQL isn’t just a simple relational database; it’s a data management framework with the potential to engulf the entire database realm. The trend of “Using Postgres for Everything” is no longer limited to a few elite teams but is becoming a …
Pigsty v2.6: PostgreSQL Crashes the OLAP Party
GitHub Release | Release Note On the last day of February, Pigsty v2.6 is officially released! This version makes PostgreSQL 16 the default major version and introduces a series of new extensions, including ParadeDB and DuckDB, elevating …
GitHub Release | Release Note On the last day of February, Pigsty v2.6 is officially released! This version makes PostgreSQL 16 the default major version and introduces a series of new extensions, including ParadeDB and DuckDB, elevating …
Technical Minimalism: Just Use PostgreSQL for Everything
This article was published by Stephan Schmidt @ KingOfCoders on Hacker News and sparked heated discussion: Using PostgreSQL to replace Kafka, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, MongoDB, and Redis is a viable approach that can dramatically reduce system …
This article was published by Stephan Schmidt @ KingOfCoders on Hacker News and sparked heated discussion: Using PostgreSQL to replace Kafka, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, MongoDB, and Redis is a viable approach that can dramatically reduce system …
New PostgreSQL Ecosystem Player: ParadeDB
Original WeChat Article Link New PostgreSQL Ecosystem Player: ParadeDB YC S23 invested in a new project called ParadeDB, which is extremely interesting. Their slogan is “Postgres for Search & Analytics — Modern Elasticsearch Alternative built on …
Original WeChat Article Link New PostgreSQL Ecosystem Player: ParadeDB YC S23 invested in a new project called ParadeDB, which is extremely interesting. Their slogan is “Postgres for Search & Analytics — Modern Elasticsearch Alternative built on …
Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?
Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme “Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?” As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I’m writing this article to discuss this question: Will DBAs be …
Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme “Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?” As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I’m writing this article to discuss this question: Will DBAs be …
PostgreSQL's Impressive Scalability
Source: How Cloudflare Supports 55M QPS with 15 PostgreSQL Clusters In July 2009, in California, USA, a startup team created a Content Delivery Network (CDN) called Cloudflare to accelerate internet requests, making network access more stable and …
Source: How Cloudflare Supports 55M QPS with 15 PostgreSQL Clusters In July 2009, in California, USA, a startup team created a Content Delivery Network (CDN) called Cloudflare to accelerate internet requests, making network access more stable and …
Cloud-Exit High Availability Secret: Rejecting Complexity Masturbation
We don’t need Kubernetes masters or fancy new databases — programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Our steadfast resistance to this …
We don’t need Kubernetes masters or fancy new databases — programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Our steadfast resistance to this …
PostgreSQL Wins 2024 Database of the Year Award! (Fifth Time)
Today, the famous database popularity ranking DB-Engine announced the 2024 Database of the Year. PostgreSQL has won this honor for the fifth time. Of course, PostgreSQL was also the Database of the Year in 2023, 2019, 2018, and 2017. If Snowflake …
Today, the famous database popularity ranking DB-Engine announced the 2024 Database of the Year. PostgreSQL has won this honor for the fifth time. Of course, PostgreSQL was also the Database of the Year in 2023, 2019, 2018, and 2017. If Snowflake …
2023 Year-End Summary: Thirty and Established
Thirty and Established In 2023, I turned thirty. As Confucius said, “At thirty, one establishes oneself.” I’ve managed to accomplish something - started a family, built a career, gained some technical reputation. On the last day of 2023, let me take …
Thirty and Established In 2023, I turned thirty. As Confucius said, “At thirty, one establishes oneself.” I’ve managed to accomplish something - started a family, built a career, gained some technical reputation. On the last day of 2023, let me take …
MySQL's ACID is a real mess
MySQL was once the world’s most popular open-source relational database. However, popularity doesn’t mean advanced, and popular things can have big problems. JEPSEN’s evaluation of MySQL’s isolation levels pierced through this veneer — in …
MySQL was once the world’s most popular open-source relational database. However, popularity doesn’t mean advanced, and popular things can have big problems. JEPSEN’s evaluation of MySQL’s isolation levels pierced through this veneer — in …
S3: Elite to Mediocre
WeChat Object storage (S3) has been a defining service of cloud computing, once hailed as a paragon of cost reduction in the cloud era. Unfortunately, with the evolution of hardware and the emergence of resources cloud (Cloudflare R2) and …
WeChat Object storage (S3) has been a defining service of cloud computing, once hailed as a paragon of cost reduction in the cloud era. Unfortunately, with the evolution of hardware and the emergence of resources cloud (Cloudflare R2) and …