PostgreSQL Internals: 3 Things to Know About UPDATE Statements
I recently finished reading PostgreSQL 14 Internals by Egor Rogov. It is one of the great books that teach applied computer science without watering down the difficult parts. One particularly interesting topic is PostgreSQL’s execution of UPDATE statements. Updates in relational databases are inherently complex. They can be affected by conflicts, anomalies, and deadlocks. However, some behavior is specific to PostgreSQL. This can lead to surprises. 1. Write Amplification PostgreSQL generally does not update rows in-place.
Source: patrick.engineering
