The Impact of Small Changes

A year ago, I started a monthly blogging event for the PostgreSQL community, inspired by T-SQL Tuesdays. I decided to call it PGSQL Phriday. (Time will tell if my insistence on trying to use a literation was a good idea or not.) Like the event for the SQL Server community, we ask someone to be a host each month, reveal a topic one week ahead of time, and then on the first Friday of each month, we look to see who contributed blog posts from within the community. It's been a blast to see this little project reach more people each month.

For September, I asked people to write about the features they're most excited about for the upcoming release of PostgreSQL 16. While I didn't put any constraints on the features people could write about, I suggested that they try to identify some features that hadn't gotten a lot of attention yet. Although there were only a few submissions this month (September and October are busy in the PostgreSQL community), one thing stuck out to me from everything that people wrote about.

Some of the smallest, and seemingly insignificant changes, are the most exciting to a lot of people.

At Redgate, we talk often about the concept of "shifting left", working to bring database development automation as early in pipeline as possible. And for many of these little features that people got excited about, it's often because it solves a small, but consistently annoying need for many people. It's almost as if the tasks that took just a little bit longer in previous versions of PostgreSQL are now more easily accessible and developers can "shift left" and be more productive directly within the database.

What does that look like in your world right now?

• Are there tasks at work that you can automate in a new way to free up more of your time for something more productive?
• Is there a feature of the database platform you use that has always been a little bit confusing to you, but may result in large productivity gains if you spent a little extra time figuring it out?
• Can you call a lunch-and-learn meeting at work sometime this month and pass on that cool trick you just learned at the conference you went to?

What I continually see, much like in the responses to PostgreSQL 16 features, is that the mundane improvements often have the largest impact. Take a look around you and see what small change you can make this week that might have an outsized impact in the future.

Ryan Booz

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