Huy Nguyen, cofounder of Holistics.io, discusses the advantages of using PostgreSQL for analytics infrastructure, highlighting its ease of use, rich analytics features, and scalability. The presentation addresses typical data-related business challenges, data pipelines, and managing data complexity through techniques like table partitioning and unlogged tables for improved performance. It also compares PostgreSQL with other databases, emphasizing its strengths while acknowledging potential downsides and outlining the path for scaling to data warehouses.

1. Huy Nguyen
CTO, Cofounder - Holistics.io
Why PostgreSQL for Analytics
Infrastructure (DW)?
Grokking TechTalk - Database Systems
Ho Chi Minh City - Aug 2016

2. ● Cofounder
○ Data Reporting (BI) and Infrastructure SaaS
● Cofounder of Grokking Vietnam
○ Building community of world-class engineers in Vietnam
● Previous
○ Growth Team at Facebook (US)
○ Built Data Pipeline at Viki (Singapore)
About Me

3. Background: What is Analytics/DW?

4. - A Typical Web Application
Data-related Business Problems:
• Daily/weekly registered users by different platforms, countries?
• How many video uploads do we have everyday?

5. - A Typical Web Application
• Daily/weekly registered users by different platforms, countries?
• How many video uploads do we have everyday?

7. A Typical Data Pipeline

8. Analytics
Database
CSVs / Excels /
Google Sheets
Operational Data Data Warehouse
Reporting /
Analysis
Data Science / ML
Reporting / BI
Event Logs
(behavioural
data)
Live
Databases
Live
Databases
Production
DBs
Daily Snapshot
Import
Pre-aggregate
Modify / Transform

9. Analytics
Database
CSVs / Excels /
Google Sheets
Operational Data Data Warehouse
Reporting /
Analysis
Data Science / ML
Reporting / BI
Event Logs
(behavioural
data)
Live
Databases
Live
Databases
Production
DBs
Daily Snapshot
Import
Pre-aggregate
Modify / Transform
What database should we pick?

10. Transactional Applications vs Analytics Applications
Ref: http://www.slideshare.net/PGExperts/really-big-elephants-postgresql-dw-15833438 (slide 5)
Data:
● Many single-row writes
● Current, single data
Queries:
● Generated by user activities; 10
to 1000 users
● < 1s response time
● Short queries
Data:
● Few large batch imports
● Years of data, many sources
Queries:
● Generated by large reports; 1 to
10 users
● Queries run for hours
● Long queries

11. Ref: http://www.slideshare.net/PGExperts/really-big-elephants-postgresql-dw-15833438 (slide 8)
Complex Query...

12. Why start with Postgres?
1. Simple to Get Started
2. Rich Features for Analytics
– Data Pipeline (ETL)
– Data Analysis
3. Scale Up
(3) Scale(1) Start (2) Grow
Data Growth

13. 1. Simple to Get Started
2. Rich Features for Analytics
– Data Pipeline (ETL)
– Data Analysis
3. Scale Up
Why start with Postgres?
(3) Scale(1) Start (2) Grow
Data Growth

14. 1 Simple to Get Started
● Data requests grow gradually as your company grows
● Business users care about results (not backend)
Postgres:
● Free (open-source)
● Easy to setup
→ Need something quick to start, easy to fine-tune along the way
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

15. 1. Simple to Get Started
2. Rich Features for Analytics
– Data Pipeline (ETL)
– Data Analysis
3. Scale Up
Why start with Postgres?
(3) Scale(1) Start (2) Grow
Data Growth

16. Analytics
Database
CSVs / Excels /
Google Sheets
Operational Data Data Warehouse
Reporting /
Analysis
Data Science / ML
Reporting / BI
Event Logs
(behavioural
data)
Live
Databases
Live
Databases
Production
DBs
Daily Snapshot
Import
Pre-aggregate
Modify / Transform
Data Pipeline (ETL) Data Analysis
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

17. Analytics
Database
CSVs / Excels /
Google Sheets
Data Warehouse
Event Logs
(behavioural
data)
Live
Databases
Live
Databases
Production
DBs
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

18. ● Managing Table Data: table partitioning
● Managing Disk Space: tablespace
● Write Performance: unlogged table
● Others: foreign data wrapper, point-in-time recovery
2 a- Data Pipeline (ETL) & Performance
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

19. ● Managing Table Data: table partitioning
● Managing Disk Space: tablespace
● Write Performance: unlogged table
● Others: foreign data wrapper, point-in-time recovery
2 a- Data Pipeline (ETL) & Performance
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

20. Analytics tables hold lots of data
Managing Data Tables
pageviews_2015_06
pageviews_2015_07
pageviews_2015_08
pageviews_2015_09
Solution: Split (partition) to multiple tables
Problem:
Difficult to query data across multiple months
⇒ Table grows big quickly, difficult to manage !
pageviews
(+ 100k records a day)
date_d | country | user_id | browser | page_name | views
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

21. Managing Data Tables: parent table
pageviews_2015_06
pageviews_2015_07
pageviews_2015_08
pageviews_2015_09
…
ALTER TABLE pageviews_2015_09 INHERIT video_plays;
ALTER TABLE pageviews_2015_09 ADD CONSTRAINT
CHECK date_d >= '2015-09-01'
AND date_d < '2015-10-01';
pageviews_parent (parent table)
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

22. ● Managing Table Data: table partitioning
● Managing Disk Space: tablespace
● Write Performance: unlogged table
● Others: foreign data wrapper, point-in-time recovery
2 a- Data Pipeline (ETL) & Performance
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

23. Analytics DB holds lots of data; hardware spaces are limited
● SSD: fast, expensive
● SATA: cheap, slow
Data have different access
frequency
● Hot Data
● Warm Data
● Cold Data
Managing Disk-spaces
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

24. Tablespace: Define where your tables are stored on disks
Managing Disk-spaces: tablespace
CREATE TABLESPACE hot_data LOCATION /disk0/ssd/
CREATE TABLESPACE warm_data LOCATION /disk1/sata2/
# beginning of the month
CREATE TABLE pageviews_2016_08 TABLESPACE hot_data;
ALTER TABLE pageviews_2016_07 TABLESPACE warm_data;
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

25. Combining TABLESPACE and PARENT TABLE
pageviews_2015_06
pageviews_2015_07
pageviews_2015_08
pageviews_2015_09
…
pageviews_parent (parent table)
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

26. ● Managing Table Data: table partitioning
● Managing Disk Space: tablespace
● Write Performance: unlogged table
● Others: foreign data wrapper, point-in-time recovery
2 a- Data Pipeline (ETL) & Performance
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

27. Analytics
Database
CSVs / Excels /
Google Sheets
Data Warehouse
Event Logs
(behavioural
data)
Live
Databases
Live
Databases
Production
DBs
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table
Analytics tables can be rebuilt from source
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

28. CREATE TABLE daily_summary(...) UNLOGGED;
INSERT INTO daily_summary …;
Write Performance: unlogged table
● Transactional Safety: Every update is 2 writes:
○ Update data inside table
○ Write WAL (Write Ahead Log)
● UNLOGGED TABLE
○ Skip WAL log
○ Improved Write Performance
http://pgsnaga.blogspot.com/2011/10/data-loading-into-unlogged-tables-and.html
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

29. ● Managing Table Data: table partitioning
● Managing Disk Space: tablespace
● Write Performance: unlogged table
● Others: foreign data wrapper, point-in-time recovery
2 a- Data Pipeline (ETL) & Performance
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

30. ● Extract / transform
● Aggregate / summarize
● Statistical analysis
2- b- Data Analysis (writing SQLs)
Analytics
Database
Data Warehouse
Reporting /
Analysis
Data Science / ML
Reporting / BI
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

31. ● SQL features
○ WITH clause
○ Window functions
○ Aggregation functions
○ Statistical functions
● Data structures
○ JSON / JSONB
○ Arrays
○ PostGIS (geo data)
○ Geometry (point, line, etc)
○ HyperLogLog (extension)
2- b - Data Analysis with Postgres
● PL/SQL
● Full-text search (n-gram)
● Performance:
○ Parallel queries (pg9.6)
○ Materialized views
○ BRIN index
● Others:
○ DISTINCT ON
○ VALUES
○ generate_series()
○ Support FULL OUTER JOIN
○ Better EXPLAIN
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

32. SELECT ...
FROM (SELECT ...
FROM t1
JOIN (SELECT ... FROM ...) a
ON (...)
) b
JOIN (SELECT ... FROM ...) c ON (...)
CTE - Problem with Nested Queries
Nested queries are
a) hard to read
b) cannot be reused
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

33. CTE - Common Table Expressions (WITH clause)
WITH a AS (
SELECT ... FROM ...
), b AS (
SELECT ...
FROM t1 JOIN a ON (...)
), c AS (
SELECT ... FROM ...
)
SELECT ... FROM b JOIN c ON ...
● SQL’s “private methods”
● WITH view can be referred
multiple times
● Allows chaining instead of
nesting
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

34. CTE (cont.)
● Recursive CTE
● Writeable CTE
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up
# move data from A to B
WITH deleted_rows AS (
DELETE FROM a WHERE ...
RETURNING *
)
INSERT INTO b
SELECT * FROM deleted_rows;

35. SELECT
gender,
COUNT(1) AS signups
FROM users
GROUP BY 1
● GROUP BY aggregate: reduce a
partition of data into 1 value
Limitation of GROUP BY aggregate
What if we want to work through each row of each partition?
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

36. ● Window functions: moving frame
of 1 partition data
● Examples:
○ Calculate moving average
○ Cumulative sum
○ Ranking by partition
○ …
Window functions
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

37. SELECT
created_at::date AS date_d,
COUNT(1) AS daily_signups,
SUM(COUNT(1)) OVER
(ORDER BY dated_d) AS cumulative_signups
FROM users U
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1
| date_d | daily_signups | cumulative_signups |
| 2016-08-01 | 100 | 100 |
| 2016-08-02 | 50 | 150 |
| 2016-08-03 | 80 | 230 |
Example: Cumulative Sum
CREATE TABLE users (
id INT,
gender VARCHAR(10),
created_at TIMESTAMP
);
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

38. SELECT
gender,
name,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY gender
ORDER BY created_at) AS signup_rnk
FROM users U ORDER BY 1, 3;
| gender | name | signup_rnk |
| male | Hung | 1 |
| male | Son | 2 |
| ... |
| female | Lan | 1 |
| female | Tuyet | 2 |
Example: Group by Gender and rank by signup time
CREATE TABLE users (
id INT,
name VARCHAR,
gender VARCHAR(10),
created_at TIMESTAMP
);
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

39. ● SQL features
○ WITH clause
○ Window functions
○ Aggregation functions
○ Statistical functions
● Data structures
○ JSON / JSONB
○ Arrays
○ PostGIS (geo data)
○ Geometry (point, line, etc)
○ HyperLogLog (extension)
2 b- Data Analysis with Postgres
● PL/SQL
● Full-text search (n-gram)
● Performance:
○ Parallel queries (pg9.6)
○ Materialized views
○ BRIN index
● Others:
○ DISTINCT ON
○ VALUES
○ generate_series()
○ Support FULL OUTER JOIN
○ Better EXPLAIN
PostgreSQL is well suited for data analysis!

40. Analytics
Database
CSVs / Excels /
Google Sheets
Operational Data Data Warehouse
Reporting /
Analysis
Data Science / ML
Reporting / BI
Event Logs
(behavioural
data)
Live
Databases
Live
Databases
Production
DBs
Daily Snapshot
Import
Pre-aggregate
Modify / Transform
Data Pipeline (ETL) Data Analysis
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up

41. Why start with Postgres?
1. Simple to Get Started
2. Rich Features for Analytics
– Data Pipeline (ETL)
– Data Analysis
3. Scale Up
(3) Scale(1) Start (2) Grow
Data Growth

42. ● PostgreSQL downsides:
○ Optimized for transactional applications
○ Single-core execution; row-based storage
● CitusDB Extension
○ Automated data sharding and parallelization
○ Columnar Storage Format (better storage and performance)
● Vertica (HP)
○ Columnar Storage, Parallel Execution
○ Started by Michael Stonebraker (Postgres original author)
● Amazon Redshift
○ Fork of PostgreSQL 8.2 -- ParAccel DB
○ Columnar Storage & Parallel Executions
3- Scaling Up

43. Other Proprietary DW Databases (Relational)
● Greenplum
● Teradata
● Infobright
● Google BigQuery
● Aster Data
● Paraccel (Postgres fork)
● Vertica (from Postgres author)
● CitusDB (Postgres extension)
● Amazon Redshift (from Paraccel)
1. Simple start 2. Rich features 3. Scale up
Related to Postgres

44. Compare: Popular SQL Databases
PostgreSQL MySQL Oracle SQL Server
License /
Cost
Free / Open-source Free / Open-source Expensive Expensive
DW features Strong Weak Strong Strong

45. ● SQL features
○ WITH clause
○ Window functions
○ Aggregation functions
○ Statistical functions
● Data structures
○ JSON / JSONB
○ Arrays
○ PostGIS (geo data)
○ Geometry (point, line, etc)
○ HyperLogLog (extension)
● PL/SQL
● Full-text search (n-gram)
● Performance:
○ Parallel queries (pg9.6)
○ Materialized views
○ BRIN index
● Others:
○ DISTINCT ON
○ VALUES
○ generate_series()
○ Support FULL OUTER JOIN
○ Better EXPLAIN

46. ● SQL features
○ WITH clause
○ Window functions
○ Aggregation functions
○ Statistical functions
● Data structures
○ JSON / JSONB
○ Arrays
○ PostGIS (geo data)
○ Geometry (point, line, etc)
○ HyperLogLog (extension)
● PL/SQL
● Full-text search
● Performance:
○ Parallel queries (pg9.6)
○ Materialized views
○ BRIN index
● Others:
○ DISTINCT ON
○ VALUES
○ generate_series()
○ Support FULL OUTER JOIN
○ Better EXPLAIN

48. Summary
1. Simple to Get Started
2. Rich Features for Analytics
– Data Pipeline (ETL)
– Data Analysis
3. Easy to Scale Up
(3) Scale(1) Start (2) Grow
Data Growth

49. Summary (cont)
● Why starting with Postgres
● Scaling up to DW databases
● Comparing with other transactional DBs
● Not Cover:
○ How to setup PostgreSQL for DW
○ Performance Optimizations
○ Behavioural Data: Hadoop, Spark, HDFS

50. Huy Nguyen
huy@holistics.io