Postgres since 2003 · Founder of PostgresAI · San Diego, CA
Key interests:
- Database health in all its aspects
- Zero-downtime operations, experiments, benchmarks, making DB testing fast and affordable (e.g., zero-downtime Postgres upgrades at GitLab)
- Scaling not only Postgres but also the operations and teams around it
- RCAs
Currently building tools to make Postgres self-driving.
Current open-source projects
- pg_ash — Active Session History for PostgreSQL — wait event sampling with zero bloat (pg_cron + PGQ-style partition rotation)
- rpg — Modern Postgres terminal written in Rust. psql-compatible, with built-in DBA diagnostics and AI assistant
- sqlever — Sqitch-compatible PostgreSQL migration tool with static analysis and zero-downtime migrations
- postgres_dba — The missing set of useful tools for Postgres DBAs and all engineers
- gitzette — weekly engineering newspaper auto-generated from any GitHub user's activity (live)
PostgresAI
- PostgresAI Monitoring and Checkup — Postgres observability built for humans and AI agents
- DBLab Engine — Database branching & thin cloning for any Postgres database
- Postgres Hacking sessions — live deep-dives on Postgres internals on PostgresTV
- gaps.wait.events — tracking uninstrumented Postgres wait events; now a GSoC 2026 project where I'm mentoring
- Recognized contributor to Postgres core — patches and reviews across multiple releases
- GSoC 2006: SQL/XML 2003 support (mentored by Peter Eisentraut) — my first deep dive into Postgres internals
- GitLab contributor since 2018* — patches and reviews to GitLab itself (GitLab runs Postgres, and they are PostgresAI's customer)
- NikolayS on GitLab
- #PostgresMarathon — deep-dive series on Postgres internals
- PostgresFM — podcast
- PostgresTV — YouTube
- @samokhvalov on X