Author: Shawn McCoy

August 2025: This post was reviewed and updated for accuracy. PostgreSQL’s ability to handle concurrent access while maintaining data consistency relies heavily on its locking mechanisms, particularly at the row level. When multiple transactions attempt to lock the same row simultaneously, PostgreSQL turns to a specialized structure called MultiXact IDs. While MultiXacts provide an efficient […]

Shawn McCoy is a database engineer in Amazon Web Services. As a PostgreSQL database owner, you know that critical maintenance operations are handled by the autovacuum process. The effectiveness of this background process is constantly being improved with each release. For most PostgreSQL users, the default settings will work just fine. However, some workloads and […]