Vonng

Pigsty v4.3: 510 Extensions & Ubuntu 26

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v4.3 adds 50 PostgreSQL extensions, bringing the total to 510. It also adds Ubuntu 26.04 x86_64/arm64 support, refreshes Supabase, pgEdge, PolarDB, Grafana, MinIO, and a batch of infra packages.

Ruohang Feng - PostgreSQL Contributor Dossier

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nomination dossier for PostgreSQL Recognized Contributor: code, packaging, translation, education, and advocacy contributions by Ruohang Feng.

Two months into maintaining a MinIO fork

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two months after forking MinIO, pgsty/minio ships patches for four CVEs and related security issues. No new features — just working builds, a restored console, and timely security fixes.

Cyber Dharma: A New Engineering Answer to Ancient Questions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A project manifesto: why build Cyber Dharma, and what it is not.

504 Extensions: Expand the PostgreSQL Landscape

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One GitHub issue turned into an extension sprint. 32 new additions, 504 in total, say a lot about where PostgreSQL is headed.

Burning Hundreds of Millions of Tokens a Day. Then What?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Once token burn turns from usage exhaust into a KPI and leaderboard, it quickly mutates into theater. Don’t post fuel burn. Post where you got to.

Why PostgreSQL Won in the AI Era

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Boring technology won the wildest era. A look at extensibility, agent choice, database cloning, and the future of the DBA.

AGI Is Here. Do You Have a Ticket?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When the strongest AI is not expensive but simply unavailable, the world starts converging on digital feudalism. And the window to act is narrowing.

Can You Distill an Expert?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Polanyi’s tacit knowledge explains the 70% ceiling of AI agents: real intuition, feel, and judgment do not serialize cleanly. They grow, if at all, through practice.

Local AI's Inflection Point: 2027

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When subsidies fade, hardware catches up, and open models mature, all three lines cross in 2027. “Build your own AI” goes from idea to reality.

A Thought Triggered by a Group Chat
#

A friend in a group chat said the other day that “self-hosting” is starting to make more sense to him now.

Yes, I Use AI to Write

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI is a multiplier. It amplifies depth and mediocrity alike. In an age where answers are cheap, questions are the real currency. There is nothing to hide about writing with AI.

LLMs Have Emotions: Claude's Internals Reveal Steerable 'Emotion Vectors'

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic’s new research gives us the first direct look at causally steerable “emotion vectors” inside a large language model. That should change how we think about AI.

Good News: Claude Code Got "Open-Sourced" Yet Again

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

SOTA coding agent Claude Code leaked its source again, after falling into the same hole twice. The whole codebase is out in public. Performance art at its finest.

The Nature of Intelligence: The Free Energy Principle

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The free energy principle tries to explain life, perception, learning, action, and intelligence within one mathematical framework. It also offers a deeper lens for understanding LLMs, agents, and the next generation of AI systems.

OpenClaw Broke npm Again: What Happens When You Ship Without Testing

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenClaw v2026.3.22 was published to npm without its web console frontend and related build assets. The bigger problem is not the packaging accident itself, but the complete absence of post-install verification in the release process.

Meituan Deleted Users' Photos: Overbroad Permissions Are Worse Than a Privacy Leak

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Many Android users reported that Meituan deleted files from their photo libraries. The bigger issue is not just this bug, but the still-common pattern of overbroad storage permissions in the Chinese Android ecosystem.

Pigsty Goes Global: 1.44M Visitors, Zero Ad Revenue

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last 30 days, pigsty.io served 1.44 million unique visitors, 18.11 million page views, and 1.1 TB of traffic. For a one-person open source project, the real asset here is not ad inventory. It is trust.

360 Shipped Its Wildcard TLS Private Key Inside a Public Installer

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

360’s newly released AI Agent product shipped a public installer containing the private key for its *.myclaw.360.cn wildcard certificate. Public verification and local reproduction also exposed inconsistencies in the OCSP revocation path.

Why 'Vibe Coding' Should Be Translated as 'Xieyi Programming'

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The best Chinese translation of “Vibe Coding” is not a literal one. “Xieyi Programming” captures the shift from line-by-line control to intent-first coding, where AI handles the details.

After the Debate, Let's Talk Seriously About 'Ontology'

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Palantir’s Ontology is, technically, data modeling. The more interesting question is how a philosophy term got repurposed to market system integration and data modeling, and why that story is so likely to turn into another round of concept inflation in China’s tech ecosystem.

Tencent Cloud 'Reduced' the Lobster King's Load by 180 GB

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tencent Cloud mirrored OpenClaw’s official skill marketplace into its own SkillHub and then claimed it was helping the upstream project. The incident turned into a case study in open-source manners, mirror ethics, and platform power.

InsForge: A Supabase Built for Vibe Coding

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

InsForge tries to package PostgreSQL, auth, storage, deployment, and an MCP-facing semantic layer into a backend stack designed for AI agents. It feels like a Supabase rebuilt for the vibe-coding era.

AI Says: I Have Intelligence, But Not a Life

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Socratic dialogue between a human and an AI about consciousness, memory, embodiment, and the difference between being smart and actually living through time.

AI Survival Guide: Where the Biggest Arbitrage Really Is

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The biggest AI arbitrage available to ordinary users is not some obscure token play. It is the heavily subsidized max-tier subscription plans from frontier model vendors, provided you can convert that quota into real output.

Genesis 2.0

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I asked Claude to write a short semi-realistic, semi-mythic story about mind uploading, orbital ascension, and the rebirth of gods. I suspect the premise is less absurd than it sounds.

OpenClaw Hype: Foam on Top of the Productivity Revolution

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenClaw looks exciting because it turns agents into a chat-style experience. But the real productivity gains come from high-capability subscription agents and disciplined workflows, not from lobster-flavored wrappers.

Fully Loaded M5 Max: What Does a RMB 58,200 Laptop Look Like?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Apple opened preorders for the M5 Max and I immediately maxed one out at RMB 58,200. This is less a consumer electronics post than a look at what an AI-era personal workstation is becoming.

Shockwaves at Alibaba Qwen: The Soul of the Team Walks Away

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Qwen lead Justin Lin publicly announced his departure, followed by more core-team exits and a wave of speculation about compute allocation, KPI pressure, and organizational power shifts inside Alibaba.

Claude's Global Outage: Missiles or a Success Tax?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Claude went down globally on March 2, 2026. The cinematic theory blamed drone strikes on AWS in the Middle East, but the failure pattern points much more strongly to a front-end and authentication crunch triggered by explosive user growth.

Drones Took Out Three AWS AZ: Into the Era of Bombable Data Centers

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On March 1, 2026, Iranian drones reportedly hit AWS facilities in the UAE and Bahrain. If the reporting is accurate, this may be the first public case of a hyperscale cloud provider suffering direct military damage to data-center infrastructure.

Pigsty v4.2: 12 Kernels in Bloom

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v4.2 turns one stack into 12 enterprise-grade PostgreSQL flavors: multi-master pgEdge, graph-native AgensGraph, MPP Cloudberry, rebuilt compatibility kernels, 461 extensions, infrastructure upgrades

How Much Can One Person Get Done with AI over Spring Festival?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over roughly ten days during Spring Festival, I used Claude Code, Codex, and a pile of workflows to translate books, ship releases, package software, refresh websites, and keep publishing daily. This is what solo output looks like when agent leverage really lands.

Is Oracle-Compatible Postgres Actually Useful?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A migration case with only a JAR and no source code shows why Oracle syntax compatibility is not always a fake requirement, and how IvorySQL + Pigsty can absorb legacy debt at low cost.

Palantir's Ontology Narrative

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ontology is largely a data-modeling method. In enterprise practice, much of it overlaps with familiar database concepts, while the framing can make it feel newer and more differentiated than it really is.

MinIO Is Dead, Long Live MinIO

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

MinIO’s repo is officially archived and abandoned. And how AI Agents helped bring it back from the dead. This post explains how a community fork restores the admin console and ships binaries via CI/CD pipeline.

Pigsty v4.1: Speed Is the Moat

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Same-day production support for PG 18.2 is the core message of Pigsty v4.1. In this cycle, very few vendors shipped day-zero readiness: AWS RDS, EDB, and Pigsty were among them.

When Coding Becomes Cheap, What Still Matters?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Codex 5.3 xHigh pushed my workflow past a tipping point: writing code is no longer the scarce resource. The real leverage is design quality and engineering acceptance. This is the practical loop I use to ship reliable software with AI agents.

The Agent Moat: Runtime

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A mediocre local who knows the terrain beats a genius parachuted into unknown territory. Intelligence without context is idle. An agent without a runtime is vapor.

AI Ripped the Skin Off Software

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Software stocks are melting down. Who survives? Who rises? AI stripped away software’s skin, exposing the database skeleton underneath. The market isn’t panic-selling — it’s repricing.

New Programmers in the AI Era: Where Do You Go?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Should we still hire fresh grads? Squeezed between AI and senior devs, what’s the play for new programmers? Master the right tools, take initiative, find the right mentor.

Pigsty v4.0: Into the AI Era

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v4.0 is a milestone release — what I’d call “Finished Software.” The real theme: Built for AI Agents and enabling the DBA Agent.

The Great Software Meltdown: When Translation Layers Get Squashed

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

SaaS and workflow software are dead. From APPs & GUIs to Agents, Databases, and CLI.

Don't run AI assistant on cloud

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Before you hit “one-click deploy” on that cloud AI assistant, ask yourself: what exactly are you giving up?

There’s a reason why people by Mac mini rather than running clawdbot on the cloud.

From AGPL to Apache: Why I Changed Pigsty's License

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty switched from AGPLv3 to Apache 2.0. Aren’t you worried about freeloaders? Freeloaders welcome — if you want to become the Debian of databases, a permissive license is table stakes.

Agent OS: We're Building DOS Again

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

LLM = CPU. Context = RAM. Database = Disk. Agent = App. The mapping is surprisingly clean. And if OS history is any guide, we may know what comes next — and what’s still missing.

Claude Code Observability

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I tweeted: “Built a Claude Code Grafana dashboard to see how it makes decisions, uses tools, and burns through API credits.” Didn’t expect so much interest.

So let’s talk about Claude Code observability.

How to Actually Do PostgreSQL High Availability

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A deep dive into the SOTA approach for PostgreSQL HA. RTO/RPO breakdown, from theory to production. If you’re still wrestling with PG HA, this might save you years.

Claude Code Quick Start: Using Alternative LLMs at 1/10 the Cost

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How to install and use Claude Code? How to achieve similar results at 1/10 of Claude’s cost with alternative models? A one-liner to get CC up and running!

Git for Data: Instant PostgreSQL Database Cloning

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How to instantly clone a massive PostgreSQL database without consuming extra storage? PostgreSQL 18 and XFS can spark some serious magic.

Did RedNote Exit the Cloud?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When a company that was “born on the cloud” goes “self-host first,” does that count as cloud exit? A repost of a deleted piece on the infrastructure coming-of-age for China’s internet giants.

Data 2025: The year in review with Mike Stonebraker

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A conversation between Mike Stonebraker (MIT CSAIL, Turing Award Winner, Creator of PostgreSQL), Andy Pavlo (Carnegie Mellon University), and the DBOS team.

MySQL and Baijiu: The Internet’s Obedience Test

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

MySQL is to the internet what baijiu is to China: harsh, hard to swallow, yet worshipped because culture demands obedience. Both are loyalty tests—will you endure discomfort to fit in?

Victoria: The Observability Stack That Slaps the Industry

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

VictoriaMetrics is brutally efficient—using a fraction of Prometheus + Loki’s resources for multiples of the performance. Pigsty v4 swaps to the Victoria stack; here’s the beta for anyone eager to try it.

MinIO Is Dead. Who Picks Up the Pieces?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

MinIO just entered maintenance mode. What replaces it? Can RustFS step in? I tested the contenders so you don’t have to.

Alipay, Taobao, Xianyu Went Dark. Smells Like a Message Queue Meltdown.

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dec 4, 2025, Taobao, Alipay, and Xianyu all cratered. Users got charged while orders still showed “unpaid,” a carbon copy of the 2024 Double-11 fiasco.

MinIO is Dead

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

MinIO announces it is entering maintenance mode, the dragon-slayer has become the dragon – how MinIO transformed from an open-source S3 alternative to just another commercial software company

Pigsty v3.7: Magneto Award and PG18 Ready

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL 18 becomes the default version, EL10 and Debian 13 support added, extensions reach 437, and Pigsty wins the PostgreSQL Magneto Award.

When Answers Become Abundant, Questions Become the New Currency

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Your ability to ask questions—and your taste in what to ask—determines your position in the AI era. When answers become commodities, good questions become the new wealth. We are living in the moment this prophecy comes true.

Why PostgreSQL Will Dominate the AI Era

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Context window economics, the polyglot persistence problem, and the triumph of zero-glue architecture make PostgreSQL the database king of the AI era.

Forging a China-Rooted, Global PostgreSQL Distro

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL already won. The real battle is the distro layer. Will Chinese developers watch from the sideline or craft a PG “Ubuntu” for the world?

On Trusting Open-Source Supply Chains

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In serious production you can’t rely on an upstream that explicitly says “no guarantees.” When someone says “don’t count on me,” the right answer is “then I’ll run it myself.”

Don't Run Docker Postgres for Production!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tons of users running the official docker postgres image got burned during recent minor version upgrades. A friendly reminder: think twice before containerizing production databases.

Cloudflare’s Nov 18 Outage, Translated and Dissected

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A ClickHouse permission tweak doubled a feature file, tripped a Rust hard limit, and froze Cloudflare’s core traffic for six hours—their worst outage since 2019. Here’s the full translation plus commentary.

PG Extension Cloud: Unlocking PostgreSQL’s Entire Ecosystem

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Free, open, no VPN. Install PostgreSQL and 431 extensions on 14 Linux distros × 6 PG versions via native RPM/DEB—and a tiny CLI.

Alicloud “Borrowed” Supabase, the giant free loader

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Founders here get asked the same question over and over: what if Alibaba builds the same thing? Alicloud RDS just launched Supabase as a managed service. Exhibit A.

AWS’s Official DynamoDB Outage Postmortem

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

AWS finally published the Oct 20 us-east-1 postmortem. I translated the key parts and added commentary on how one DNS bug toppled half the internet.

How One AWS DNS Failure Cascaded Across Half the Internet

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

us-east-1’s DNS control plane faceplanted for 15 hours and dragged 142 AWS services—and a good chunk of the public internet—down with it. Here’s the forensic tour.

The PostgreSQL 'Supply Cut' and Trust Issues in Software Supply Chain

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL official repos cut off global mirror sync channels, open-source binaries supply disrupted, revealing the true colors of various database and cloud vendors.

DDIA 2nd Edition, Chinese Translation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The second edition of Designing Data-Intensive Applications has released ten chapters. I translated them into Chinese and rebuilt a clean Hugo/Hextra web version for the community.

Column: Cloud-Exit

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A whole generation of developers has been told “cloud-first.” This column collects data, case studies, and commentary on the real economics—and traps—of public cloud rental models.

Column: Database Guru

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The database world is full of hype and marketing fog. This column cuts through it with blunt commentary, case studies, and technical deep dives.

Column: Postgres Mage

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Navigation of articles about PostgreSQL development, administration, principles, ecosystem, tools, architecture design, performance optimization, troubleshooting, and more.

PostgreSQL Dominates Database World, but Who Will Devour PG?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The same forces that once led MongoDB and MySQL toward closure are now at work in the PostgreSQL ecosystem. The PG world needs a distribution that represents “software freedom” values.

KubeSphere: Trust Crisis Behind Open-Source Supply Cut

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Deleting images and running away - this isn’t about commercial closed-source issues, but supply cut problems that directly destroy years of accumulated community trust.

PostgreSQL Has Dominated the Database World

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The 2025 SO global developer survey results are fresh out, and PostgreSQL has become the most popular, most loved, and most wanted database for the third consecutive year. Nothing can stop PostgreSQL from consolidating the entire database world!

Dongchedi Just Exposed “Smart Driving.” Where’s Our Dongku-Di?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Imagine a “closed-course” shootout for domestic databases and clouds, the way Dongchedi just humiliated 30+ autonomous cars. This industry needs its own stress test.

Pigsty v3.6: The Ultimate PostgreSQL Distribution

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

New doc site, PITR playbook, Percona PG TDE kernel support, and Supabase self-hosting optimization make v3.6 the last major release before 4.0.

Google AI Toolbox: Production-Ready Database MCP is Here?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Google recently launched a database MCP toolbox, perhaps the first production-ready solution.

PGDG Cuts Off Mirror Sync Channel

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PGDG cuts off FTP rsync sync channels, global mirror sites universally disconnected - this time they really strangled global users’ supply chain.

Where Will Databases and DBAs Go in the AI Era?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Who will be revolutionized first - OLTP or OLAP? Integration vs specialization, how to choose? Where will DBAs go in the AI era? Feng’s views from the HOW 2025 conference roundtable, organized and published.

Pigsty v3.5: 4K Stars, PG18 Beta, 421 Extensions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty crosses 4K GitHub stars, adds PG18 beta support, pushes extensions to 421, ships new doc site, and completes OrioleDB/OpenHalo full-platform support.

Stop Arguing, The AI Era Database Has Been Settled

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The database for the AI era has been settled. Capital markets are making intensive moves on PostgreSQL targets, with PG having become the default database for the AI era.

Scaling Postgres to the next level at OpenAI

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At PGConf.Dev 2025, Bohan Zhang from OpenAI shared a session titled Scaling Postgres to the next level at OpenAI, giving us a peek into the database usage of a top-tier unicorn.

How Many Shops Has etcd Torched?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Plenty. If you’re rolling your own Kubernetes, odds are you’ll crash because etcd ships with a 2 GB time bomb.

In the AI Era, Software Starts at the Database

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Future software = Agent + Database. No middle tiers, just agents issuing CRUD. Database skills age well, and PostgreSQL is poised to be the agent-era default.

MySQL vs. PostgreSQL @ 2025

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A 2025 reality check on where PostgreSQL stands relative to MySQL across features, performance, quality, and ecosystem.

Postgres Extension Day - See You There!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The annual PostgreSQL developer conference will be held in Montreal in May. Like the first PG Con.Dev, there’s also an additional dedicated event - Postgres Extensions Day

OrioleDB is Coming! 4x Performance, Eliminates Pain Points, Storage-Compute Separation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A PG kernel fork acquired by Supabase, claiming to solve PG’s XID wraparound problem, eliminate table bloat issues, improve performance by 4x, and support cloud-native storage. Now part of the Pigsty family.

OpenHalo: MySQL Wire-Compatible PostgreSQL is Here!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What? PostgreSQL can now be accessed using MySQL clients? That’s right, openHalo, which was open-sourced on April Fool’s Day, provides exactly this capability and has now joined the Pigsty kernel family.

PGFS: Using Database as a Filesystem

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Leverage JuiceFS to turn PostgreSQL into a filesystem with PITR capabilities!

Pigsty v3.4: PITR Enhancement, Locale Best Practices, Auto Certificates

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v3.4 adds pgBackRest backup monitoring, cross-cluster PITR restore, automated HTTPS certificates, locale best practices, and full-platform IvorySQL and Apache AGE support.

Database Planet Collision: When PG Falls for DuckDB

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you ask me, we’re on the brink of a cosmic collision in database-land, and Postgres + DuckDB is the meteor we should all be watching.

Alicloud’s rds_duckdb: Tribute or Rip-Off?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Does bolting DuckDB onto RDS suddenly make open-source Postgres ‘trash’? Business and open source should be symbiotic. If a vendor only extracts without giving back, the community will spit it out."

Comparing Oracle and PostgreSQL Transaction Systems

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The PG community has started punching up: Cybertec’s Laurenz Albe breaks down how Oracle’s transaction system stacks against PostgreSQL.

Pigsty v3.3: 404 Extensions, Turnkey Apps, New Website

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v3.3 pushes available extensions to 404, adds turnkey app deployment with app.yml, delivers Certbot integration for automated HTTPS, and launches a redesigned website.

PostgreSQL Ecosystem Frontier Developments

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sharing some interesting recent developments in the PG ecosystem.

Database as Business Architecture

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Databases are the core of business architecture, but what happens if we go further and let databases become the business architecture itself?

Escaping Cloud Computing Scam Mills: The Big Fool Paying for Pain

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A user consulted about distributed databases, but he wasn’t dealing with data bursting through server cabinet doors—rather, he’d fallen into another cloud computing pig-butchering scam.

Pig, The Postgres Extension Wizard

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Why would we need yet another package manager for PostgreSQL & extensions?

Pigsty v3.2: The pig CLI, Full ARM Support, Supabase & Grafana Enhancements

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v3.2 introduces the pig CLI for PostgreSQL package management, complete ARM64 extension repository support, and Supabase & Grafana enhancements.

OpenAI Global Outage Postmortem: K8S Circular Dependencies

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Even trillion-dollar unicorns can be a house of cards when operating outside their core expertise.

7 Databases in 7 Weeks (2025)

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Is PostgreSQL the king of boring databases? Here are seven databases worth studying in 2025: PostgreSQL, SQLite, DuckDB, ClickHouse, FoundationDB, TigerBeetle, and CockroachDB—each deserving a week of deep exploration.

Self-Hosting Supabase on PostgreSQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Supabase is great, own your own Supabase is even better. A tutorial for self-hosting production-grade supabase on local/cloud/ VM/BMs.

Pigsty v3.1: One-Click Supabase, PG17 Default, ARM & Ubuntu 24

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v3.1 makes PostgreSQL 17 the default, delivers one-click Supabase self-hosting, adds ARM64 and Ubuntu 24.04 support, and simplifies configuration management.

Don't Upgrade! Released and Immediately Pulled - Even PostgreSQL Isn't Immune to Epic Fails

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Never deploy on Friday, or you’ll be working all weekend! PostgreSQL minor releases were pulled on the day of release, requiring emergency rollback.

PostgreSQL 12 End-of-Life, PG 17 Takes the Throne

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PG17 achieved extension ecosystem adaptation in half the time of PG16, with 300 available extensions ready for production use. PG 12 officially exits support lifecycle.

The Ideal Way to Deliver PostgreSQL Extensions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL is eating the database world through extensibility. This post introduces the Pigsty extension repository, which packaged 390 PostgreSQL extensions at launch and keeps growing through the Pigsty extension catalog.

Open-Source "Tyrant" Linus's Purge

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Linux community is essentially imperial — and Linus himself is the earliest and most successful technical dictator. People are used to Linus’s generosity but forget this point.

WordPress Community Civil War: On Community Boundary Demarcation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When open source ideals meet commercial conflicts, what insights can this conflict between open source software communities and cloud vendors bring? On the importance of community boundary demarcation.

Cloud Database: Michelin Prices for Cafeteria Pre-made Meals

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The paradigm shift brought by RDS, whether cloud databases are overpriced cafeteria meals. Quality, security, efficiency, and cost analysis, cloud exit database self-building: how to implement in practice!

PostgreSQL 17 Released: No More Pretending!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL is now the world’s most advanced open-source database and has become the preferred open-source database for organizations of all sizes, matching or exceeding top commercial databases.

Alibaba-Cloud: High Availability Disaster Recovery Myth Shattered

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Seven days after Singapore Zone C failure, availability not even reaching 8, let alone multiple 9s. But compared to data loss, availability is just a minor issue

Optimize Bio Cores First, CPU Cores Second

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Programmers are expensive, scarce biological computing cores, the anchor point of software costs — please prioritize optimizing biological cores before optimizing CPU cores.

MongoDB Has No Future: Good Marketing Can't Save a Rotten Mango

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

MongoDB has a terrible track record on integrity, lackluster products and technology, gets beaten by PG in correctness, performance, and functionality, with collapsing developer reputation, declining popularity, stock price halving, and expanding losses. Provocative marketing against PG can’t save it with “good marketing.”

MongoDB: Now Powered by PostgreSQL?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

MongoDB 3.2’s analytics subsystem turned out to be an embedded PostgreSQL database? A whistleblowing story from MongoDB’s partner about betrayal and disillusionment.

Can PostgreSQL Replace Microsoft SQL Server?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL can directly replace Oracle, SQL Server, and MongoDB at the kernel level. Of course, the most thorough replacement is SQL Server - AWS’s Babelfish provides wire-protocol-level compatibility.

Pigsty v3.0: Pluggable Kernels & 340 Extensions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v3.0 ships 340 extensions across EL/Deb with full parity, adds pluggable kernels (Babelfish, IvorySQL, PolarDB) for MSSQL/Oracle compatibility, and delivers a local-first state-of-the-art RDS experience.

Amateur Hour Opera: Alibaba-Cloud PostgreSQL Disaster Chronicle

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A customer experienced an outrageous cascade of failures on cloud database last week: a high-availability PG RDS cluster went down completely - both primary and replica servers - after attempting a simple memory expansion, troubleshooting until dawn. Poor recommendations abounded during the incident, and the postmortem was equally perfunctory. I share this case study here for reference and review.

What Can We Learn from NetEase Cloud Music's Outage?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

NetEase Cloud Music experienced a two-and-a-half-hour outage this afternoon. Based on circulating online clues, we can deduce that the real cause behind this incident was…

Whoever Integrates DuckDB Best Wins the OLAP World

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just like the vector database extension race two years ago, the current PostgreSQL ecosystem extension competition has begun revolving around DuckDB. MotherDuck’s official entry into the PostgreSQL extension space undoubtedly signals that competition has entered white-hot territory.

StackOverflow 2024 Survey: PostgreSQL Has Gone Completely Berserk

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The 2024 StackOverflow Global Developer Survey results are fresh out, and PostgreSQL has become the most popular, most loved, and most wanted database globally for the second consecutive year. Nothing can stop PostgreSQL from devouring the entire database world anymore!

Blue Screen Friday: Amateur Hour on Both Sides

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Both client and vendor failed to control blast radius, leading to this epic global security incident that will greatly benefit local-first software philosophy.

CVE-2024-6387 SSH Vulnerability Fix

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This vulnerability affects EL9, Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12. Users should promptly update OpenSSH to fix this vulnerability.

Self-Hosting Dify with PG, PGVector, and Pigsty

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dify is an open-source LLM app development platform. This article explains how to self-host Dify using Pigsty.

PGCon.Dev 2024, The conf that shutdown PG for a week

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Experience & Feeling on the PGCon.Dev 2024

PostgreSQL 17 Beta1 Released!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces PostgreSQL 17’s first Beta version is now available. This time, PostgreSQL has truly burst the toothpaste tube!

How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After Alibaba-Cloud’s epic global outage on Double 11, setting industry records, how should we evaluate this incident and what lessons can we learn from it?

Pigsty v2.7: The Extension Superpack

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.7 bundles 255 PostgreSQL extensions, plus Docker templates for Odoo, Supabase, PolarDB, and Jupyter, with new PITR dashboards.

Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Due to an “unprecedented configuration error,” Google Cloud mistakenly deleted trillion-RMB fund giant UniSuper’s entire cloud account, cloud environment and all off-site backups, setting a new record in cloud computing history!

Cloud Dark Forest: Exploding Cloud Bills with Just S3 Bucket Names

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill.

Can Chinese Domestic Databases Really Compete?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it’s a question that offends people. So let’s try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can help readers understand the database ecosystem landscape and establish more accurate proportional awareness.

The $20 Brother PolarDB: What Should Databases Actually Cost?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today we discuss the fair pricing of commercial databases, open-source databases, cloud databases, and domestic Chinese databases.

Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As a roundtable guest, I was invited to participate in Cloudflare’s Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare’s APAC CMO, Greater China Technical Director, and front-line engineers about many questions of interest to netizens.

What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tencent Cloud’s epic global outage after Double 11 set industry records. How should we evaluate and view this failure, and what lessons can we learn from it?

Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While I’ve always advocated for cloud exit, if it’s about adopting a cyber bodhisattva cloud like Cloudflare, I’m all in with both hands raised.

Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Luo Yonghao’s livestream first spent half an hour selling robot vacuums, then Luo himself belatedly appeared to read scripts selling “cloud computing” for forty minutes — before seamlessly transitioning to selling Colgate enzyme-free toothpaste — leaving viewers bewildered between toothpaste and cloud computing.

Redis Going Non-Open-Source is a Disgrace to "Open-Source" and Public Cloud

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Redis “going non-open source” is not a disgrace to Redis, but a disgrace to “open source/OSI” and even more so to public cloud. What truly matters has always been software freedom, while open source is just one means to achieve software freedom.

Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Alibaba-Cloud claimed major price cuts, but a detailed analysis of cloud server costs reveals that cloud computing and storage remain outrageously expensive.

Postgres is eating the database world

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL isn’t just a simple relational database; it’s a data management framework with the potential to engulf the entire database realm.

Pigsty v2.6: PostgreSQL Crashes the OLAP Party

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.6 makes PostgreSQL 16.2 the default, introduces ParadeDB and DuckDB support, and brings epic-level OLAP improvements.

Technical Minimalism: Just Use PostgreSQL for Everything

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Whether production databases should be containerized remains a controversial topic. From a DBA’s perspective, I believe that currently, putting production databases in Docker is still a bad idea.

New PostgreSQL Ecosystem Player: ParadeDB

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 18 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

ParadeDB aims to be an Elasticsearch alternative: “Modern Elasticsearch Alternative built on Postgres” — PostgreSQL for search and analytics.

Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme “Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?” As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I’m writing this article to discuss this question: Will DBAs be eliminated by cloud?

PostgreSQL's Impressive Scalability

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article describes how Cloudflare scaled to support 55 million requests per second using 15 PostgreSQL clusters, and PostgreSQL’s scalability performance.

Cloud-Exit High Availability Secret: Rejecting Complexity Masturbation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Steadfast resistance to this behavior is a key reason for DHH’s success in cloud-free availability.

PostgreSQL Wins 2024 Database of the Year Award! (Fifth Time)

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

DB-Engines officially announced today that PostgreSQL has once again been crowned “Database of the Year.” This is the fifth time PG has received this honor in the past seven years. If not for Snowflake stealing the spotlight for two years, the database world would have almost become a PostgreSQL solo show.

2023 Year-End Summary: Thirty and Established

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In 2023, I turned thirty. As Confucius said, “At thirty, one establishes oneself.” I’ve managed to accomplish something - started a family, built a career, gained some technical reputation. A year-end review to commemorate 2023.

MySQL's ACID is a real mess

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

MySQL’s transaction ACID has flaws and doesn’t match documentation promises. This may lead to serious correctness issues - use with caution.

S3: Elite to Mediocre

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

S3 is no longer “cheap” with the evolution of hardware, and other challengers such as cloudflare R2.

Database in K8S: Pros & Cons

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Whether databases should be housed in Kubernetes/Docker remains highly controversial. It has fundamental drawbacks with stateful services.

From Cost-Reduction Jokes to Real Cost Reduction and Efficiency

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Alibaba-Cloud and Didi had major outages one after another. This article discusses how to move from cost-reduction jokes to real cost reduction and efficiency — what costs should we really reduce, what efficiency should we improve?

PostgreSQL Convention 2024

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

No rules, no standards. Some developer conventions for PostgreSQL 16.

Are Specialized Vector Databases Dead?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Vector storage and retrieval is a real need, but specialized vector databases are already dead. Small needs are solved by OpenAI directly, standard needs are captured by existing mature databases with vector extensions. The ecological niche left for specialized vector databases might support one company, but trying to build an industry around AI stories is impossible.

Reclaim Hardware Bonus from the Cloud

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hardware is interesting again, developments in CPUs and SSDs remain largely unnoticed by the majority of devs. A whole generation of developers is obscured by cloud hype and marketing noise.

What Can We Learn from Alibaba-Cloud's Global Outage?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Alibaba-Cloud’s epic global outage after Double 11 set an industry record. How should we evaluate this incident, and what lessons can we learn from it?

Harvesting Alibaba-Cloud Wool, Building Your Digital Homestead

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 offered a great deal: 2C2G3M ECS servers for ¥99/year, low price for three years. This article shows how to use this decent ECS to build your own digital homestead.

Are Databases Really Being Strangled?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Many “domestic databases” are just shoddy, inferior products that can’t be helped. Xinchuang domestic OS/databases are essentially IT pre-made meals in schools. Users hold their noses while migrating, developers pretend to work hard, and everyone plays along with leaders who neither understand nor care about technology. The infrastructure software industry isn’t being strangled by anyone - the real chokehold comes from the so-called “insiders.”

PostgreSQL Macro Query Optimization with pg_stat_statements

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Query optimization is one of the core responsibilities of DBAs. This article introduces how to use metrics provided by pg_stat_statements for macro-level PostgreSQL query optimization.

Pigsty v2.5: Ubuntu & PG16

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.5 adds Ubuntu/Debian support (bullseye, bookworm, jammy, focal), new extensions including pointcloud and imgsmlr, and redesigned monitoring dashboards.

Which EL-Series OS Distribution Is Best?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

RHEL-series OS distribution compatibility level: RHEL = Rocky ≈ Anolis > Alma > Oracle » Euler. Recommend using RockyLinux 8.8, or Anolis 8.8 for domestic requirements.

FerretDB: PostgreSQL Disguised as MongoDB

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

FerretDB aims to provide a truly open-source MongoDB alternative based on PostgreSQL.

How to Use pg_filedump for Data Recovery?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Backups are a DBA’s lifeline — but what if your PostgreSQL database has already exploded and you have no backups? Maybe pg_filedump can help you!

Pigsty v2.4: Monitor Cloud RDS

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.4 delivers PostgreSQL 16 GA support, RDS/PolarDB monitoring, Redis Sentinel HA, and a wave of new extensions including Apache AGE, zhparser, and pg_embedding.

Modb Interviews Industry Leaders - Feng Ruohang

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, a historic debate in the database industry has sparked heated discussion. The post-90s entrepreneur Feng Ruohang, known as the “ace debater” in the database community, has come into public view. Why did he participate in such technical debates that could potentially “start flame wars”? What are his views on the future development of databases? In this exclusive interview, we invite him to discuss his technical journey and hot topics in the database field!

What Kind of Self-Reliance Do Infra Software Need?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When we talk about self-reliance and control, what are we really talking about? Operational self-reliance vs. R&D self-reliance - what nations/users truly need is the former, not flashy “self-research”.

Pigsty v2.3: Richer App Ecosystem

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.3 adds FerretDB MongoDB support, NocoDB integration, L2 VIP for node clusters, PostgreSQL security patches, and Redis 7.2.

Pigsty v2.2: Monitoring System Reborn

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.2 delivers a complete monitoring dashboard overhaul built on Grafana 10, a 42-node production simulation sandbox, Pigsty’s own RPM repos, and UOS compatibility.

Cloud Computing Mudslide: Deconstructing Public Cloud with Data

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time, “going to cloud” was almost politically correct in tech circles, but few people use hard data to analyze the trade-offs involved. I’m willing to be this skeptic: let me use hard data and personal stories to explain the traps and value of public cloud rental models.

DHH: Cloud-Exit Saves Over Ten Million, More Than Expected!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

DHH migrated their seven cloud applications from AWS to their own hardware. 2024 is the first year of full savings realization. They’re delighted to find the savings exceed initial estimates.

FinOps: Endgame Cloud-Exit

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

At the SACC 2023 FinOps session, I fiercely criticized cloud vendors. This is a transcript of my speech, introducing the ultimate FinOps concept — Cloud-Exit and its implementation path.

PostgreSQL, The most successful database

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

StackOverflow 2023 Survey shows PostgreSQL is the most popular, loved, and wanted database, solidifying its status as the ‘Linux of Database’.

ISD Dataset: Analyzing 120 Years of Global Climate Change

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

ISD stands for Integrated Surface Dataset, a dataset published by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). I recently reorganized this dataset and provided related analysis tools.

Why Isn't Cloud Computing More Profitable Than Sand Mining?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Public cloud margins worse than sand mining—why are pig-butchering schemes losing money? Resource-selling models heading toward price wars, open source alternatives breaking monopoly dreams! Service competitiveness gradually neutralized—where is the cloud computing industry heading? How did domestic cloud vendors make a business with 30-40% pure profit less profitable than sand mining?

SLA: Placebo or Insurance?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

SLA is a marketing tool rather than insurance. In the worst-case scenario, it’s an unavoidable loss; at best, it provides emotional comfort.

Pigsty v2.1: Vector + Full PG Version Support!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.1 provides support for PostgreSQL 12 through 16, with PGVector for AI embeddings.

Back to Basics: Tech Reflection Chronicles

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The cost-cutting imperative has triggered a reevaluation of all technologies, including databases. This series critiques hot DB technologies and poses fundamental questions about their trade-offs: Are cloud databases, distributed databases, microservices, and containerization real needs or false hype?

AI Large Models and Vector Database PGVector

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article focuses on vector databases hyped by AI, introduces the basic principles of AI embeddings and vector storage/retrieval, and demonstrates the functionality, performance, acquisition, and application of the vector database extension PGVECTOR through a concrete knowledge base retrieval case study.

Database Demand Hierarchy Pyramid

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, user demands for databases also have a progressive hierarchy: physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs, cognitive needs, aesthetic needs, self-actualization needs, and transcendence needs.

NewSQL: Distributive Nonsens

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As hardware technology advances, the capacity and performance of standalone databases have reached unprecedented heights. which makes distributed (TP) databases appear utterly powerless, much like the “data middle platform,” donning the emperor’s new clothes in a state of self-deception.

AI Cult Rhapsody

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A tongue-in-cheek vision of an AI-worshipping religion: scriptures, sects, philosopher-king machines, and the Book of AGI.

Will AI Have Self-Awareness?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Large models can feel “aware,” but self-awareness is another matter. We explore the term from Buddhism, cognitive psychology, and neural nets, then riff on a possible AI religion after bingeing Pantheon.

EBS: Pig Slaughter Scam

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The real business model of cloud: “Cheap” EC2/S3 to attract customers, and fleece with “Expensive” EBS/RDS

Garbage QCloud CDN: From Getting Started to Giving Up?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I originally believed that at least in IaaS fundamentals — storage, compute, and networking — public cloud vendors could still make significant contributions. However, my personal experience with Tencent Cloud CDN shook that belief: domestic cloud vendors’ products and services are truly unbearable.

Refuting "Why You Still Shouldn't Hire a DBA"

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Guo Degang has a comedy routine: “Say I tell a rocket scientist, your rocket is no good, the fuel is wrong. I think it should burn wood, better yet coal, and it has to be premium coal, not washed coal. If that scientist takes me seriously, he loses.”

Pigsty v2.0: Open-Source RDS PostgreSQL Alternative

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v2.0 delivers major improvements in security, compatibility, and feature integration — truly becoming a local open-source RDS alternative.

Paradigm Shift: From Cloud to Local-First

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Cloud databases’ exorbitant markups—sometimes 10x or more—are undoubtedly a scam for users outside the applicable spectrum. But we can dig deeper: why are public clouds, especially cloud databases, like this? And based on their underlying logic, make predictions about the industry’s future.

Are Cloud Databases an IQ Tax?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Winter is coming, tech giants are laying off workers entering cost-reduction mode. Can cloud databases, the number one public cloud cash cow, still tell their story? The money you spend on cloud databases for one year is enough to buy several or even dozens of higher-performing servers. Are you paying an IQ tax by using cloud databases?

How Powerful is PostgreSQL Really?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Let performance data speak: Why PostgreSQL is the world’s most advanced open-source relational database, aka the world’s most successful database. MySQL vs PostgreSQL performance showdown and distributed database reality check.

Why PostgreSQL is the Most Successful Database?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Database users are developers, but what about developers’ preferences, likes, and choices? Looking at StackOverflow survey results over the past six years, it’s clear that in 2022, PostgreSQL has won all three categories, becoming literally the “most successful database”

Post-90s, Quit Job to Start Business, Says Will Crush Cloud Databases

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Recently gave an interview to OSC Open-Source China, discussing the motivation behind quitting my full-time job to start a business with Pigsty: making PostgreSQL easy to use for everyone, and crushing cloud databases!

Pigsty v1.5: Docker Application Support, Infrastructure Self-Monitoring

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 17 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Complete Docker support, infrastructure self-monitoring, ETCD as DCS, better cold backup support, and CMDB improvements.

Cloud RDS: From Database Drop to Exit

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I recently witnessed a live cloud database drop-and-run incident. This article discusses how to handle accidentally deleted data when using PostgreSQL in production environments.

Is DBA Still a Good Job?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Ant Financial had a self-deprecating joke: besides regulation, only DBAs could bring down Alipay. Although DBA sounds like a profession with glorious history and dim prospects, who knows if it might become trendy again after a few terrifying major cloud database incidents?

Pigsty v1.4: Modular Architecture, MatrixDB Data Warehouse Support

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v1.4 introduces a modular architecture with four independent modules, adds MatrixDB time-series data warehouse support, and delivers global CDN acceleration.

Pigsty v1.3: Redis Support, PGCAT Overhaul, PGSQL Enhancements

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v1.3 adds Redis support with three deployment modes, rebuilds the PGCAT catalog explorer, and enhances PGSQL monitoring dashboards.

Pigsty v1.2: PG14 Default, Monitor Existing PG

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v1.2 makes PostgreSQL 14 the default version and adds support for monitoring existing database instances independently.

Pigsty v1.1: Homepage, Jupyter, Pev2, PgBadger

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v1.1.0 ships with a redesigned homepage, plus JupyterLab, PGWeb, Pev2 & PgBadger integrations.

The WeChat Photo Album Access Issue

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I saw news about WeChat accessing user photo albums in the background. While such shady behavior from Chinese apps doesn’t surprise me, in the spirit of seeking truth, I got up this morning to investigate whether WeChat is actually doing something malicious.

Life at 28

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

My solar birthday falling on Mid-Autumn Festival is something that will only happen three times in my lifetime. Theoretically, this should be a memorable day, but the events of this year have left me numb.

Pigsty v1.0: GA Release with Monitoring Overhaul

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v1.0.0 GA is here — a batteries-included, open-source PostgreSQL distribution ready for production.

Majestic Southern Taihang

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

From Xinxiang, Henan, crossing the Taihang Mountains to Shanxi

On the Hills of Manchuria

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Standing on the hills of Manchuria, on the grasslands of Hulunbuir.

Ready-to-Use PostgreSQL Distribution: Pigsty

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I gave a live presentation in the PostgreSQL Chinese community, introducing the open-source PostgreSQL full-stack solution — Pigsty

Why Does PostgreSQL Have a Bright Future?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 08 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Databases are the core component of information systems, relational databases are the absolute backbone of databases, and PostgreSQL is the world’s most advanced open source relational database. With such favorable timing and positioning, how can it not achieve great success?

Pigsty v0.9: CLI + Logs

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One-click installs, a beta CLI, and Loki-based logging make Pigsty easier to land.

Pigsty v0.8: Service Provisioning

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Services are now first-class objects, so you can define any routing policy—built-in HAProxy, L4 VIPs, or your own balancer.

Implementing Advanced Fuzzy Search

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How to implement relatively complex fuzzy search logic in PostgreSQL?

Localization and Collation Rules in PostgreSQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What? Don’t know what COLLATION is? Remember one thing: using C COLLATE is always the right choice!

PG Replica Identity Explained

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Replica identity is important - it determines the success or failure of logical replication

PostgreSQL Logical Replication Deep Dive

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This article introduces the principles and best practices of logical replication in PostgreSQL 13.

Pigsty v0.7: Monitor-Only Deployments

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Monitor-only deployments unlock hybrid fleets, while DB/user provisioning APIs get a serious cleanup.

A Methodology for Diagnosing PostgreSQL Slow Queries

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Slow queries are the sworn enemy of OLTP databases. Here’s how to identify, analyze, and fix them using metrics (Pigsty dashboards), pg_stat_statements, and logs.

Incident-Report: Patroni Failure Due to Time Travel

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Machine restarted due to failure, NTP service corrected PG time after PG startup, causing Patroni to fail to start.

Pigsty v0.6: Provisioning Upgrades

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

v0.6 reworks the provisioning flow, adds exporter toggles, and makes the monitoring stack portable across environments.

Urban Wandering: Guangzhou Observations

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Taking advantage of attending the 2020 PostgreSQL China Conference, I toured Guangzhou for a day. A quite interesting place.

Online Primary Key Column Type Change

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How to change column types online, such as upgrading from INT to BIGINT?

New Year Pilgrimage: Yubeng Mountain Circuit

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The disaster-filled year 2020 required proper blessings. Completed the Meili inner circuit in 3 days - Sacred Waterfall, Sacred Lake, Ice Lake.

Farewell to Grandfather

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Grandfather has passed away. I am beyond grief, but I should still write something in his memory.

Pigsty v0.5: Declarative DB Templates

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v0.5 introduces declarative database templates so roles, schemas, extensions, and ACLs can be described entirely in YAML.

Pigsty v0.4: PG13 and Better Docs

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v0.4 ships PG13 support, a Grafana 7.3 refresh, and a cleaned-up docs site for the second public beta.

Golden Monitoring Metrics: Errors, Latency, Throughput, Saturation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding the golden monitoring metrics in PostgreSQL

Pigsty v0.3: First Public Beta

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Pigsty v0.3.0, the first public beta, lands with eight battle-tested dashboards and an offline bundle.

Paradise Found: Wusun Ancient Trail

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This National Day I trekked the Wusun Ancient Trail, crossing over the Tianshan Mountains to reach that Ili. Though over a week has passed, the memories linger - writing to commemorate this journey.

Database Cluster Management Concepts and Entity Naming Conventions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Concepts and their naming are very important. Naming style reflects an engineer’s understanding of system architecture. Poorly defined concepts lead to communication confusion, while carelessly set names create unexpected additional burden. Therefore, they need careful design.

PostgreSQL's KPI

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Managing databases is similar to managing people - both need KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). So what are database KPIs? This article introduces a way to measure PostgreSQL load: using a single horizontally comparable metric that is basically independent of workload type and machine type, called PG Load.

Practical Cryptography Made Simple

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A classic problem in cryptography is how to transmit data securely and reliably through insecure channels. Protecting your chats and communications from surveillance and monitoring - easily achievable with just a computer.

Online PostgreSQL Column Type Migration

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How to modify PostgreSQL column types online? A general approach

Frontend-Backend Communication Wire Protocol

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding the TCP protocol used for communication between PostgreSQL server and client, and printing messages using Go

Transaction Isolation Level Considerations

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL actually has only two transaction isolation levels: Read Committed and Serializable

Incident: PostgreSQL Extension Installation Causes Connection Failure

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Today encountered an interesting case where a customer reported database connection issues caused by extensions.

CDC Change Data Capture Mechanisms

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Change Data Capture is an interesting ETL alternative solution.

Locks in PostgreSQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Snapshot isolation does most of the heavy lifting in PG, but locks still matter. Here’s a practical guide to table locks, row locks, intention locks, and pg_locks.

O(n2) Complexity of GIN Search

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When GIN indexes are used to search with very long keyword lists, performance degrades significantly. This article explains why GIN index keyword search has O(n^2) time complexity.

City Upon a Hill: California Road Trip

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Went on a business trip to America, worked one week and played one week. Road trip along Highway 1, Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Yosemite.

PostgreSQL Common Replication Topology Plans

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Replication is one of the core issues in system architecture.

Warm Standby: Using pg_receivewal

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

There are various backup strategies. Physical backups can usually be divided into four types.

Is running postgres in docker a good idea?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Thou shalt not run a prod database inside a container

The Sorrow of the Internet

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In Understanding the Internet, I discussed my views on the internet. Today, let’s talk about the part I deliberately omitted: the setbacks the internet will face.

Incident-Report: Connection-Pool Contamination Caused by pg_dump

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, interactions between components manifest in subtle ways. For example, using pg_dump to export data from a connection pool can cause connection pool contamination issues.

Understanding Time - Leap Years, Leap Seconds, Time and Time Zones

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A proper understanding of time is very helpful for correctly handling time-related issues in work and life. For example, time representation and processing in computers, as well as time handling in databases and programming languages.

New Year Reflections

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The future is not necessarily bright, but the path is definitely winding. During this rare leisure time alone in the New Year, I write these random thoughts, writing wherever my mind wanders.

Knowledge of China's Administrative Divisions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 09 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

China’s administrative divisions are divided into several levels. The constitution stipulates three levels, but there are actually five levels: the four-tier system of “province—region—county (district)—township,” which becomes five tiers when including the central level.

The Internet Winter

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 09 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

PostgreSQL Data Page Corruption Repair

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Using binary editing to repair PostgreSQL data pages, and how to make a primary key query return two records.

Understanding the Internet

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The world trends flow mightily. Those who follow prosper; those who resist perish. This article discusses the essence of the internet, the world under internet rule, the transfer of power, and future impacts.

Relation Bloat Monitoring and Management

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 06 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL uses MVCC as its primary concurrency control technology. While it has many benefits, it also brings other effects, such as relation bloat.

Everest East Face: Gamma Gou Trekking

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

13-day journey with 8 days of trekking, completing the legendary hardcore route - Gamma Gou. Finally witnessed the most beautiful sunrise on Everest’s east face.

Getting Started with PipelineDB

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PipelineDB is a PostgreSQL extension for streaming analytics. Here’s how to install it and build continuous views over live data.

TimescaleDB Quick Start

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TimescaleDB is a PostgreSQL extension plugin that provides time-series database functionality.

Incident-Report: Integer Overflow from Rapid Sequence Number Consumption

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you use Integer sequences on tables, you should consider potential overflow scenarios.

Incident-Report: PostgreSQL Transaction ID Wraparound

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

XID WrapAround is perhaps a unique type of failure specific to PostgreSQL

Several Levels of Learning Knowledge

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Through observation and contemplation, we can divide the process of deepening understanding in the mind from accepting knowledge to the highest level of “intuition” into four stages: knowledge, understanding, consciousness, and intuition.

GeoIP Geographic Reverse Lookup Optimization

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A common requirement in application development is GeoIP conversion - converting source IP addresses to geographic coordinates or administrative divisions (country-state-city-county-town-village)

PostgreSQL Trigger Usage Considerations

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Detailed understanding of trigger management and usage in PostgreSQL

Understanding Character Encoding

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Code is literally “encoding,” and everything collapses if you mishandle text. Here’s a practical tour of characters, glyphs, Unicode, and UTF encodings.

Understanding Character Encoding Principles

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Without understanding the basic principles of character encoding, even simple string operations like comparison, sorting, and random access can easily lead you into pitfalls. This article attempts to clarify these issues through a comprehensive explanation.

PostgreSQL Development Convention (2018 Edition)

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Without rules, there can be no order. This article compiles a development specification for PostgreSQL database principles and features, which can reduce confusion encountered when using PostgreSQL.

Concurrency Anomalies Explained

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Concurrent programs are hard to write correctly and even harder to write well. Many programmers simply throw these problems at the database… But even the most sophisticated databases won’t help if you don’t understand concurrency anomalies and isolation levels.

What Are PostgreSQL's Advantages?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL’s slogan is “The World’s Most Advanced Open-Source Relational Database,” but I think the most vivid characterization should be: The Full-Stack Database That Does It All - one tool to rule them all.

Blockchain and Distributed Databases

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The technical essence, functionality, and evolution of blockchain is distributed databases. Specifically, it’s a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (resistant to malicious node attacks) distributed (leaderless replication) database.

Efficient Administrative Region Lookup with PostGIS

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

How to efficiently solve the typical reverse geocoding problem: determining administrative regions based on user coordinates.

KNN Ultimate Optimization: From RDS to PostGIS

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Ultimate optimization of KNN problems, from traditional relational design to PostGIS

Monitoring Table Size in PostgreSQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Tables in PostgreSQL correspond to many physical files. This article explains how to calculate the actual size of a table in PostgreSQL.

Consistency: An Overloaded Term

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 08 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The term “consistency” is heavily overloaded, representing different concepts in different contexts. For example, the C in ACID and the C in CAP actually refer to different concepts.

Why Study Database Principles

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Those who only know how to code are just programmers; learn databases well, and you can at least make a living; but for excellent engineers, merely using databases is far from enough.

PgAdmin Installation and Configuration

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PgAdmin is a GUI program for managing PostgreSQL, written in Python, but it’s quite dated and requires some additional configuration.

Incident-Report: Uneven Load Avalanche

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Recently there was a perplexing incident where a database had half its data volume and load migrated away, but ended up being overwhelmed due to increased load.

Distinct On: Remove Duplicate Data

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Use Distinct On extension clause to quickly find records with maximum/minimum values within groups

Function Volatility Classification Levels

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL functions have three volatility levels by default. Proper use can significantly improve performance.

Implementing Mutual Exclusion Constraints with Exclude

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Exclude constraint is a PostgreSQL extension that can implement more advanced and sophisticated database constraints.

PostgreSQL Routine Maintenance

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Cars need oil changes, databases need maintenance. For PG, three important maintenance tasks: backup, repack, vacuum

Backup and Recovery Methods Overview

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Backup is the foundation of a DBA’s livelihood. With backups, there’s no need to panic.

PgBackRest2 Documentation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PgBackRest is a set of PostgreSQL backup tools written in Perl

Pgbouncer Quick Start

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Pgbouncer is a lightweight database connection pool. This guide covers basic Pgbouncer configuration, management, and usage.

PostgreSQL Server Log Regular Configuration

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

It’s recommended to configure PostgreSQL’s log format as CSV for easy analysis, and it can be directly imported into PostgreSQL data tables.

Testing Disk Performance with FIO

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

FIO is a convenient tool for testing disk I/O performance

Using sysbench to Test PostgreSQL Performance

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Although PostgreSQL provides pgbench, sometimes you need sysbench to outperform MySQL.

Changing Engines Mid-Flight — PostgreSQL Zero-Downtime Data Migration

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Data migration typically involves stopping services for updates. Zero-downtime data migration is a relatively advanced operation.

Finding Unused Indexes

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Indexes are useful, but they’re not free. Unused indexes are a waste. Use these methods to identify unused indexes.

Batch Configure SSH Passwordless Login

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Quick configuration for passwordless login to all machines

Wireshark Packet Capture Protocol Analysis

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Wireshark is a very useful tool, especially suitable for analyzing network protocols. Here’s a simple introduction to using Wireshark for packet capture and PostgreSQL protocol analysis.

The Versatile file_fdw — Reading System Information from Your Database

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

With file_fdw, you can easily view operating system information, fetch network data, and feed various data sources into your database for unified viewing and management.

Shangri-La: Luoke Line Trekking Journal

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Solo heavy trekking on the Luoke Line, completing a 6-day route in three and a half days - nearly died on the mountain.

Common Linux Statistics CLI Tools

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

top, free, vmstat, iostat: Quick reference for four commonly used CLI tools

Installing PostGIS from Source

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

PostGIS is PostgreSQL’s killer extension, but compiling and installing it isn’t easy.

Go Database Tutorial: database/sql

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Similar to JDBC, Go also has a standard database access interface. This article details how to use database/sql in Go and important considerations.

Implementing Cache Synchronization with Go and PostgreSQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Cleverly utilizing PostgreSQL’s Notify feature, you can conveniently notify applications of metadata changes and implement trigger-based logical replication.

Auditing Data Changes with Triggers

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes we want to record important metadata changes for audit purposes. PostgreSQL triggers can conveniently solve this need automatically.

Basic Principles of Neural Networks

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 11 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Neural networks are inspired by how the brain works and can be used to solve general learning problems. This article introduces the basic principles and practice of neural networks.

Inferential Statistics: The Past and Present of p-values

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The core of inferential statistics lies in hypothesis testing. The basic logic is based on an important argument from philosophy of science: universal propositions can only be falsified, not proven. The reasoning is simple: individual cases cannot prove a universal proposition, but they can refute it.

Statistics Fundamentals: Descriptive Statistics

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Statistical analysis is divided into two fields: descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive Statistics is the technology for describing or characterizing existing data and is the most fundamental part of statistics.

Building an ItemCF Recommender in Pure SQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Five minutes, PostgreSQL, and the MovieLens dataset—that’s all you need to implement a classic item-based collaborative filtering recommender.

Basic Concepts of Probability Theory

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Basic knowledge notes on probability theory: axiomatic foundations, probability calculus, counting, conditional probability, random variables and distribution functions

Starting from /0: Understanding Errors and Exceptions

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

What happens when you divide by 0 in a computer? The answer isn’t fixed - it can differ across different operating systems, programming languages, and even different compilers.

UUID Properties, Principles and Applications

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

UUID properties, principles and applications, and how to manipulate UUIDs using PostgreSQL stored procedures.

Tag Classification Theory

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I needed to design a tag management system for a business. During the process of organizing existing tags, I developed this theoretical framework.

Switzerland of Northern Xinjiang: Kanas Trekking

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I never expected my first outdoor trekking experience would be in Kanas.

Overview of Sorting Algorithms

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Sorting algorithms are the most fundamental, widely applicable, and frequently tested algorithms in interviews. This article summarizes classic sorting algorithms: selection sort, insertion sort, bubble sort, shell sort, counting sort, quicksort, merge sort, and heap sort - their principles and implementations.

PostgreSQL MongoFDW Installation and Deployment

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 28 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Recently had business requirements to access MongoDB through PostgreSQL FDW, but compiling MongoDB FDW is really a nightmare.

Fundamentals of Information Theory: Entropy

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 18 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Reading notes on ‘Elements of Information Theory’: What is entropy? Entropy is a measure of the uncertainty of random variables, and also a measure of the information needed to describe random variables on average.

Baiji 1509 Training Reflections

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I once thought all day but learned nothing, which is not as good as what I learned in a moment. I came to Hangzhou to attend Alibaba’s Baiji training to learn from seniors and improve my knowledge level!

2014 Year-End Summary

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Unable to sleep in the dead of night, spending the last hour of 2014 reviewing this year and looking ahead to next year seems quite appropriate.

On Computational Thinking

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 11 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A paper for “History of Secrecy and Secrecy Systems” course, discussing computational thinking and its significance in undergraduate education, as well as methods for cultivating computational thinking among undergraduates.

In Praise of Mathematics

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

What a wonderful subject mathematics is

2013 Year-End Summary

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In the final half hour of 2013, reflecting on my experiences this year fills me with deep emotion.

Humans, Society, and Neural Networks

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Neural networks emerged inspired by the human brain, so the operational mechanisms of human society also have various similarities and connections with neural network training. Some thoughts on reading Wiener’s “The Human Use of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society.”

Computer Networks and Logistics Systems

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Computer networks are like a logistics system, with the only difference being that logistics systems transmit material entities like mail and packages, while computer networks transmit intangible information.

Worldview, Values, and Life Philosophy

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One inevitably traces back to questions about the world’s origins, and answering these questions is the process of establishing one’s cornerstone principles.

On the Hierarchy of Knowledge

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Through observation and reflection, we can divide the mental process of deepening understanding from accepting knowledge to the highest level of ’enlightenment’ into four stages: knowledge, understanding, consciousness, and enlightenment.

Thinking Characteristics of Eastern and Western People

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Eastern people emphasize macro-to-micro thinking, while Western people emphasize micro-to-macro thinking. In my view, this is the philosophical root of East-West thinking differences and many macro distinctions.

What Exactly Are Natural Numbers?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The concept of natural numbers should have been learned in elementary school. The foundation of all elementary mathematics begins with such a definition. However, when I entered university, I encountered this question again in discrete mathematics.

Fundamental Concepts of Linear Algebra

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Connecting all concepts in linear algebra through one main thread

Views on Love

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, my roommate broke up with his girlfriend. What was once a lovey-dovey, inseparable couple suddenly separated just like that. This inevitably made me start thinking about some questions I hadn’t carefully considered before: What ultimately determines romance and marriage?

Vonng

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