We have been working with PostgreSQL and other databases for a while. In the realm of database management, PostgreSQL stands out for its robustness an

Features I wish PostgreSQL had to make developer's life easier

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2024-03-29 10:00:05

We have been working with PostgreSQL and other databases for a while. In the realm of database management, PostgreSQL stands out for its robustness and flexibility. However, as developers navigate the complexities of modern application development, there are additional functionalities that could streamline their workflows. Here are the features I wish PostgreSQL had to make developers' lives easier:

The PG catalog only stores the current schema. Schema migration tools usually need to create an external table to store the schema migration history. A built-in versioned schema will be beneficial:

PostgreSQL has been improving this area over the years, but there are still cases where altering the schema would block the database. pg-osc, reshape are built to tackle this. Ideally, PostgreSQL can encapsulate the long schema migration process:

The typical way to do schema migration is to compose a list of ALTER TABLE statements. This becomes hard to track the latest schema state as the migration accumulates. It's more intuitive for the developers to specify the desired state. Ideally, PostgreSQL could allow developers to specify the desired CREATE TABLE schema, the engine then reconcile it with the latest schema, figure out the diff, and plan the migration path internally.