Melih Mutlu

POSETTE 2024 Talk

PostgreSQL physical replication - internals, latest development and opportunities

local PDT (Livestream 3)

In this talk you will get to learn about the internals of Physical replication in PostgreSQL. We will start with architectural overview of how physical replication works and go through details of various components involved such as WAL records, WAL receiver, WAL sender etc. Further we dig into details of how the recovery and WAL apply interacts to ensure that standby and read replicas maintains a consistent view. We will also delve into the role buffer pool plays in these interactions and look deeper into features such as hot standby feedback. We will also look at the protocol used in physical replication.

PostgreSQL 16 & 17 has some exciting improvements been made in the physical replication space. This session will go through the overview of those improvements.

Finally, we will conclude the talk with a brief overview of potential improvement opportunities in the physical replication space.