TL;DR

In the latest Backend Engineering Show, Hussein unpacks Postgres 18’s biggest upgrades—UUIDv7, the new “over explain” module, composite index skip scans and, most notably, asynchronous I/O. He compares old-school synchronous calls to the new worker-based and io_uring modes, highlighting how async I/O can supercharge database performance.

He then walks through Postgres 17’s synchronous I/O, the challenges of going async in v18, and demos three io_method settings—worker, io_uring and sync. Spoiler: async I/O is still evolving, with future wins like direct I/O support and improved backend writer workflows on the horizon.

Watch on YouTube