A New Job

After several years of consulting, I have finally taken a job with a new company which happens to be based in Los Angeles. This means I am spending most of my time in sunny California. I have to say the weather is a lot warmer than back in Utah. The downside is that it is really cutting into my skiing.

My new job is as the database expert and administrator for a development team. We are using PostgreSQL and so I was a natural fit for the position. With any new project, there is some low-hanging fruit that is easy to implement and this job is no different.

PostgreSQL is a great open-source database and there are a lot of tools to make it better. One thing you can do to help increase performance is connection pooling with the help of pgbouncer or pgpool. Connection pooling is like keeping a phone line open to your best friend and never hanging up. If you have something to say, just talk. There is no delay while you wait for your friend to answer the ringing phone.

We decided to try pgbouncer because it has slightly better performance than pgpool (but doesn't do nearly as much). It took only fifteen minutes to install and we are already seeing huge performance improvements with our application. I like it when you can spend a few minutes and do something that has such a huge impact. The only problem is keeping it up.