Asynchronous IO in Postgres 18

Postgres 18 just dropped with goodies like UUIDv7, a beefed-up EXPLAIN module, composite index skip scans—and the long-awaited asynchronous IO support (hello, worker and io_uring modes!). This episode kicks off with a quick primer on sync vs async IO, revisits how PG 17 handled IO, then dives into PG 18’s async IO challenges and solutions, from the new worker method to the slick io_uring path, plus fallback to sync and future tweaks like direct IO and backend writer support.

You’ll get timestamped stops for each deep-dive (intro at 0:00, async IO fundamentals at 6:30, io_uring at 23:00, summary at 37:00), plus handy links to Hussein’s courses and resources if you want to level up your database, OS, backend engineering or networking game. Enjoy!

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