Asynchronous IO in Postgres 18 | The Backend Engineering Show

Hussein Nasser dives into Postgres 18’s biggest hitters—UUIDv7, the Over explain module, composite index skip scans—and, most excitingly, its new asynchronous IO options. After a quick primer on sync vs. async IO, he unpacks the tricky bits of bringing async to Postgres, demos the three io_method modes (worker, io_uring, sync) and teases what’s next: backend writer support and direct IO.

Timestamps make it easy to skip to the fun parts, and if you want to dig deeper you’ll find links to his courses on databases, operating systems, networking, backend engineering and more—plus his podcast, YouTube membership perks, and even a coffee link if you’re feeling generous. Stay awesome!

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