Queues in PostgreSQL

Can elephants queue?

Many projects involve something resembling job or message queuing. In this talk we will look at:

• the pros and cons of using a plain old relational database for this type of workload rather than specialized technology

• approaches and designs

• special considerations for PostgreSQL

• performance and tuning

• potential improvements

Using your existing PostgreSQL cluster to queue jobs and messages can be a reasonable choice in some cases. However, it's not without complications. This talk looks at queue-like workloads in detail. The topics covered will include:

• defining and categorizing queue-like structures and access patterns

• reasons to consider building queues inside your relational database

• reasons to avoid building queues inside your relational database

• example use cases

• locking strategies and concurrency

• higher transactions isolation levels

• vacuuming considerations and workarounds

• statistics and indexes

• benchmarking

• comparing PostgreSQL to some other RDBMSs

• some relevant potential future features for PostgreSQL

About the speaker: Thomas Munro joined the Database Server team at EnterpriseDB about a year ago, where he works on Postgres Plus Advanced Server and PostgreSQL. Previously he worked on mission critical software in the finance and software industries in the UK, New Zealand and France over the past two decades.