Postgres on the wire

Описание: by Jan Urbański

A look at the PostgreSQL wire protocol


While it usually Just Works, sometimes it's useful to know exactly what happens between hitting return in psql and seeing results appear on the screen.

This talk will explain how the PostgreSQL frontend/backend protocol works. We will look at the low-level blocks from which the protocol is built and try to give the audience a solid understanding of how bytes are transferred back and forth between their applications and the Postgres server.

Even if you never directly deal with the PostgreSQL protocol, every application you're writing or maintaining uses it and it's still useful to know the basics of how it works. Sometimes, knowing the fundamentals can also help you understand some behaviour that otherwise would seems mysterious or quirky.

The talk is aimed at users, DBAs and system administrators interested in learning a bit about how the sausage gets sent.

We'll go through:

protocol versions and how they differ
differences between simple and extended protocol
text and binary query formats
authentication and encryption
asynchronous features: async queries and NOTICE
the COPY protocol
query cancellation and how does it work
future development of the protocol