Nikolay and Michael discuss heavyweight locks in Postgres — how to think about them, why you can't avoid them, and some tips for minimising issues.

Here are some links to things they mentioned:

• Locking (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/explicit-locking.html
• Postgres rocks, except when it blocks (blog post by Marco Slot) https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2018/02/15/when-postgresql-blocks/
• Lock Conflicts (tool by Hussein Nasser) https://pglocks.org/
• log_lock_waits (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-logging.html#GUC-LOG-LOCK-WAITS
• How to analyze heavyweight lock trees (guide by Nikolay) https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/postgresql-consulting/postgres-howtos/-/blob/main/0042_how_to_analyze_heavyweight_locks_part_2.md
• Lock management (docs) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-locks.html
• Our episode on zero-downtime migrations https://postgres.fm/episodes/zero-downtime-migrations

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What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

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Postgres FM is produced by:

• Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
• Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

• Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork