TL;DR

Postgres 18 just dropped and brings a bunch of goodies—think native UUIDv7, an “Over explain” module for deeper query insights, composite index skip scans, and (the big one) true asynchronous I/O support. In this Backend Engineering Show episode, Hussein walks through why async I/O matters, revisits Postgres 17’s sync-only world, then breaks down the new io_method options: worker threads, io_uring, and a fallback sync mode.

Along the way you’ll catch time-stamped deep dives on challenges faced, backend writer support, future improvements (direct I/O, more robust worker mode) and a quick recap of what’s next to make your Postgres deployments even faster.

Watch on YouTube