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Category: Administration

Comparing Postgres Write-Ahead Logging to Oracle Redo Metrics

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Gorman makes a comparison:

For anyone who has spent years tuning Oracle redo, the first time you look at PostgreSQL’s pg_stat_wal view may feel a bit underwhelming. Everything works, but the instrumentation isn’t the same and you suddenly realize how much Oracle has spoiled you with it’s advanced and expensive features.

As I’ve been working deeper with PostgreSQL, I keep getting questions about how its WAL (Write-Ahead Logging) data compares to Oracle’s redo performance metrics. Let’s break it down in a way that makes sense for people who’ve been living in the Oracle world for years.

Click through to see what each competitor gets you.

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Exploring the Fabric Capacity Metrics App

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven wants to get the number:

If you find yourself checking the Metrics app and see a spike in usage you might want to analyze that. How many times did you have to click to get exactly the column you needed? Or before you were able to click any column at all?

Read on to see how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. As well as how to deal with a visual not based in log units.

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Accessing a Former Employee’s Power BI Workspace

Published 2025-11-21 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers says it’s MY workspace now:

One of the common challenges I’ve seen in organizations is when a team member leaves and their Power BI reports are stored in their personal My Workspace. These reports often contain valuable datasets and dashboards that are still in use or need to be maintained. So, how do you access and recover these reports?

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to access a former employee’s My Workspace, assign it to a supported capacity, and download the reports using Fabric Studio.

Read on for the instructions, and be sure to do the “Look at me. I am the captain now” meme when it works.

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An Overview of PostgreSQL Internals

Published 2025-11-10 by Kevin Feasel

Elizabeth Christensen shows some of the ways to view internal information in PostgreSQL:

Postgres has an awesome amount of data collected in its own internal tables. Postgres hackers know all about this  – but software developers and folks working with day to day Postgres tasks often miss out the good stuff.

The Postgres catalog is how Postgres keeps track of itself. Of course, Postgres would do this in a relational database with its own schema. Throughout the years several nice features have been added to the internal tables like psql tools and views that make navigating Postgres’ internal tables even easier.

Today I want to walk through some of the most important Postgres internal data catalog details. What they are, what is in them, and how they might help you understand more about what is happening inside your database.

Click through for an overview of catalog tables and catalog views (similar to SQL Server’s system tables and Dynamic Management Views, respectively).

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pg_statviz 0.8 Released

Published 2025-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Jimmy Angelakos announces a new version of the pg_statviz extension:

I’m happy to announce release 0.8 of pg_statviz, the minimalist extension and utility pair for time series analysis and visualization of PostgreSQL internal statistics.

This release adds support for PostgreSQL 18, adapting to significant catalog view changes introduced in this release:

Read on to see what’s new. pg_statviz is a lightweight extension for observing internal PostgreSQL performance data, such as wait stats and I/O time.

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Deleting Default Semantic Models in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2025-11-06 by Kevin Feasel

Pradeep Srikakolapu says good riddance:

In our earlier announcement, we shared that newly created data warehouses, lakehouses and other items in Microsoft Fabric would no longer automatically generate default semantic models. This change allows customers to have more control over their modeling experience and to explicitly choose when and how to create semantic models.

Starting November 20, 2025, Power BI *default* semantic models are disconnected from their item and become independent semantic models.

Click through for an overview of those changes and how you can get rid of the default models you may still have hanging around.

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Breaking Changes in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-10-24 by Kevin Feasel

Rebecca Lewis goes over the list:

Every new SQL Server release comes with shiny features — but SQL Server 2025 brings more than just enhancements. It’s important to know that there are several breaking changes under the hood that could futz your upgrade if you’re not paying attention.

On the whole, it’s a pretty small list but there are a few things on here that could affect any given environment.

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Linux Huge Pages and PostgreSQL

Published 2025-10-20 by Kevin Feasel

Umair Shahid explains the value of huge pages when running PostgreSQL:

Huge pages are a Linux kernel feature that allocates larger memory pages (typically 2 MB or 1 GB instead of the normal 4 KB). PostgreSQL’s shared buffer pool and dynamic shared memory segments are often tens of gigabytes, and using huge pages reduces the number of pages the processor must manage. Fewer page‑table entries mean fewer translation‑lookaside‑buffer (TLB) misses and fewer page table walks, which reduces CPU overhead and improves query throughput and parallel query performance. The PostgreSQL documentation notes that huge pages “reduce overhead … resulting in smaller page tables and less CPU time spent on memory management”

One thing I found interesting here was the advice for PostgreSQL is to disable Transparent Huge Pages whereas in SQL Server on Linux, Microsoft’s recommendation is to keep THP enabled.

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Diagnosing a Partition Job Failure after Migration to an AG

Published 2025-10-13 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Lynn describes a customer issue:

Quick Summary

A client noticed one of their reporting tables wasn’t logging any new information after the first of the new month.

Context

This environment ran on SQL Server 2019 in an Always On Availability Group configuration hosted on AWS EC2 servers. This is roughly 30-45 days after the servers were migrated from a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in AWS on EC2 to the new AG setup.

Read on for the problem, the discovery process, and the solution. I like reading this sort of report specifically to focus on the process. One of the best skills you can develop in any technical field is the practice of methodical behavior: review and understand the error message (perhaps with the assistance of a search engine or tool of choice), then work logically through possible issues until you discover the cause. It sounds obvious when I describe it that way, but far too often, people flail about and try a variety of arbitrary things because they don’t really understand the issue and hope that doing this one thing will fix whatever problem is happening.

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