Databases on The Coders Blog

Microsoft Dev: Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2026 Recap: Lessons from Production

Wed, 06 May 2026 22:26:38 +0000

You provisioned Azure Cosmos DB with ample Request Units (RUs), your application’s P99 latency is creeping up, and throttling errors are becoming more frequent. Sound familiar? This isn’t a capacity problem; it’s a design problem. The Azure Cosmos DB Conference 2026 made one thing brutally clear: the platform exposes your data modeling and partition key choices like a harsh spotlight.

The Unseen Bottleneck: Partition Keys and Skewed Distribution

The single most impactful decision you make for Cosmos DB is the partition key. Forget throwing more RUs at the problem; if your partition key leads to skewed distribution, you’re battling hot partitions. This results in 100% RU utilization on some physical partitions while others languish, leading to relentless throttling and unacceptable latency spikes, even if your aggregate RU usage appears low.

PHP-fts: Building a Full-Text Search Engine in Pure PHP

Wed, 06 May 2026 22:01:09 +0000

Ever found yourself wrestling with database LIKE queries, desperately trying to simulate fuzzy matching or relevance scoring, only to end up with sluggish performance and brittle code? The dream of a truly powerful search integrated seamlessly into your PHP application without external infrastructure often feels just that: a dream. Until now.

The Core Problem: Native Search vs. External Dependencies

For many PHP developers, adding robust full-text search capabilities to a project presents a dilemma. On one hand, you have the well-established, high-performance solutions like Elasticsearch and Solr. These are formidable search engines, offering scalability, advanced relevance tuning, and a wealth of features. However, they demand dedicated infrastructure, complex setup, and ongoing maintenance—a significant overhead for many projects.

Beyond Filesystems: Why Your Private GitHub Should Run on Postgres [2026]

Fri, 01 May 2026 21:09:51 +0000

For too long, the bedrock of our version control—Git itself—has been inextricably linked to the filesystem. But what if we told you that for your private GitHub instance, this isn’t just an outdated constraint, but a fundamental barrier to the control and insight your sophisticated workflows demand?

The Filesystem’s Shackles: Why Git Needs a New Home

Git, in its conventional design, treats content-addressable data as files on disk. These files reference each other via SHA-1 hashes, forming a directed acyclic graph that represents your project’s history. This model has served us incredibly well for decades, providing robust, distributed version control.

Postgres: The Unsung Scaling Hero? Benchmarking Workflow Execution in 2026

Fri, 01 May 2026 07:55:24 +0000

You’re building complex workflow execution systems, pushing millions of tasks daily, and your first thought for a database probably wasn’t Postgres. Let’s talk about why it should have been, and how to prove it.

The Elephant in the Room: Dispelling the ‘Postgres Doesn’t Scale’ Myth

The developer community often falls prey to an oversimplified, binary narrative: a database either scales or it doesn’t. This rigid thinking stifles nuanced architectural discussions and leads to premature dismissal of robust technologies. It’s a dangerous trap for senior engineers aiming to build durable, high-performance systems.

Linux 7.0: How a Kernel Preemption Bug Crippled PostgreSQL Performance in 2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:57:18 +0000

In April 2026, the Linux Kernel 7.0 release promised evolutionary advancements, but for PostgreSQL users, it delivered a brutal, silent performance regression, abruptly halving throughput on critical production workloads without a single error message.

The Silent Killer: How Linux 7.0 Blindfolded PostgreSQL

The eagerly awaited release of Linux Kernel 7.0 in early 2026 was met with the usual anticipation within the open-source community. Touted for its efficiency improvements and new hardware support, it was expected to be a solid, if not revolutionary, upgrade. Yet, for database administrators and cloud engineers managing high-performance PostgreSQL instances, it brought an unforeseen and devastating impact.

Rocky: Rust SQL Engine with Data Versioning 2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:02:14 +0000

The landscape of data management is perpetually evolving, demanding more robust, auditable, and flexible systems. Today, we introduce Rocky, a novel SQL engine engineered in Rust, fundamentally reshaping how developers interact with data through advanced versioning capabilities. Rocky integrates Git-like data branching, comprehensive replay functionality, and granular column lineage, addressing critical challenges in data integrity, collaboration, and debugging for modern data-intensive applications.

Data Branching: Git-Native Version Control for Your Database

Rocky’s core innovation lies in its native support for data branching. This mechanism mirrors the workflow familiar to every software developer using Git, allowing for the creation of isolated, mutable copies of a database’s state. Instead of managing schema changes or data transformations through cumbersome migrations or staging environments, developers can now BRANCH their entire database.