Beginner tips

Nikolay and Michael discuss 10 beginner tips Nikolay recently shared — they go into a bit more detail on each, and even disagree a little on one or two! 
 
Here are some links to some things they mentioned:

• Nikolay’s tweet with all 10 tips: https://twitter.com/samokhvalov/status/1679953049899642880 
• Tip 1: tuples are physical versions of rows
• Related episodes: https://postgres.fm/episodes/how-to-become-a-dba and https://postgres.fm/episodes/hot-updates 
• Tip 2: always use EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS)
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/buffers-by-default 
• Tip 3: throw away pgAdmin
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/psql-vs-guis  
• Tip 4: enable as much logging as you can afford
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/default-configuration 
• Tip 5: install pg_stat_statements
• Related episodes: https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_stat_statements and https://postgres.fm/episodes/auto_explain, and https://postgres.fm/episodes/macro-query-analysis-intro
• Tip 6: run experiments on realistic data sets (use thin cloning and branching)
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/database-branching 
• Tip 7: make sure data checksums are enabled 
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/corruption  
• Tip 8: tune autovacuum to run frequently and move faster
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/vacuum
• Tip 9: query optimization will eventually be more important than configuration tuning
• Related episodes: https://postgres.fm/episodes/intro-to-query-optimization and https://postgres.fm/episodes/102-query-optimization
• Tip 10: indexes need to be rebuilt, unfortunately, since their health decline over time
• Related episode: https://postgres.fm/episodes/index-maintenance  
• Bonus tip: the official documentation, release notes, and source code comments/readmes are your friends! 

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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 brought to you by:

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

With special thanks to:

• Jessie Draws for the amazing artwork