Database Normalization: From 1NF to BCNF
Learn database normalization from 1NF through BCNF. Understand how normalization eliminates redundancy, prevents update anomalies, and when denormalization makes sense for performance.
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Primary and Foreign Keys: A Practical Guide
Learn the difference between natural and surrogate keys, how foreign keys enforce referential integrity, cascade rules, and best practices for constraint naming.
Query Execution Plans: Reading EXPLAIN Output Like a Pro
Learn to decode PostgreSQL EXPLAIN output, understand sequential vs index scans, optimize join orders, and compare bitmap heap scans with index-only scans.
Query Rewriting: Subqueries, CTEs, Joins, Window Functions
Learn when to use subqueries vs joins vs CTEs, effective CTE patterns, IN vs EXISTS, OR to UNION rewrites, and avoiding SELECT *.
Read/Write Splitting
Master-slave replication for read scaling. Routing strategies, consistency lag considerations, and when this pattern helps vs hurts your architecture.
Schema Design: Building the Foundation of Your Database
Learn how to design effective database schemas with proper data types, constraints, and relationships that scale with your application.
Isolation Levels: READ COMMITTED Through SERIALIZABLE
Understand READ COMMITTED, REPEATABLE READ, and SERIALIZABLE isolation levels, read vs write anomalies, and SET TRANSACTION syntax.
Vacuuming and Reindexing in PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL's MVCC requires regular maintenance. This guide explains dead tuples, VACUUM vs VACUUM FULL, autovacuum tuning, REINDEX strategies, and how to monitor bloat with pg_stat_user_tables.
Alerting in Production: Paging, Runbooks, and On-Call
Build effective alerting systems that wake people up for real emergencies: alert fatigue prevention, runbook automation, and healthy on-call practices.
Artifact Management: Build Caching, Provenance, and Retention
Manage CI/CD artifacts effectively—build caching for speed, provenance tracking for security, and retention policies for cost control.