PostgreSQL 18 Finally Makes BUFFERS the Default. Here Is Why That Matters

You run EXPLAIN ANALYZE on a slow query, stare at the plan, and something still feels off. The estimated rows look reasonable, the node timings add up, but you...

AI and Data Engineering on the Edge: The Good, the Bad, and the Overhyped

Running AI and data pipelines on the edge instead of the cloud has gone from a niche embedded concern to a default option on a lot of architecture diagrams....

Data Skew in Data Engineering: What It Is and How to Fix It

You kick off a distributed job expecting it to finish in minutes — but one task keeps running while all others have long since completed. The culprit is almost...

5 SQL Tricks Worth Remembering Before You Close the Laptop

Disclosure: this post may contain links to books as an affiliate link. If you purchase through it, this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to...

PostgreSQL: Diagnosing and Fixing a Sequential Scan with No Filter Predicate

A sequential scan is not always a problem — PostgreSQL's planner often chooses one correctly for small tables or queries that return most of a table's rows. The dangerous...

Stop Using Pandas for Aggregations — Try DuckDB Instead

If you've ever loaded a 2 GB CSV into pandas just to run a few aggregations — and watched your machine struggle — there's a better tool for the...

Optimizing Redshift Performance by Configuring WLM Queues

Efficient query performance in Amazon Redshift often comes down to how well you manage workload concurrency. Redshift's Workload Management (WLM) queues enable you to control how queries share resources,...

Data Engineering Books Worth Having on Your Shelf (or your tablet)

Good documentation gets you started. Good books get you deep. After years of working with cloud data platforms, SQL engines, and machine learning pipelines, a handful of titles keep...

Quick Tip: Check Most DTU Expensive Queries in Azure SQL Database

Optimizing Azure SQL Database performance often begins with identifying the most resource-intensive queries. Understanding which queries consume the most DTU (Database Transaction Unit) helps prioritize tuning efforts and improve...

PlanTrace Now Supports PostgreSQL

PlanTrace Now Supports PostgreSQL

The same plan analysis you know from Redshift, now for PostgreSQL — including EXPLAIN ANALYZE, buffer stats, and JSON format.

When...