Pathways
Structured tracks from symptom to systems thinking
This surface now prioritizes calm reading and clear sequencing. The modules are draft curriculum structure, not yet full produced lessons.
Verification pending
These pathways are curriculum outlines. Lesson-by-lesson labs and source walkthroughs are still pending creation and verification.
PostgreSQL Foundations
Developers moving from app-level SQL to database engineering fundamentals.
Outcomes
- • Explain MVCC, locking, and isolation levels without hand-waving.
- • Recognize the difference between a planner issue and a transaction issue.
- • Diagnose common concurrency errors with a repeatable workflow.
Module 1
How PostgreSQL sees a row
- • Tuple versions
- • Visibility rules
- • Why VACUUM matters
You can reason about row visibility and reader/writer behavior from first principles.
Module 2
Transactions under pressure
- • READ COMMITTED
- • REPEATABLE READ
- • Deadlocks vs serialization failures
You can choose isolation levels and implement safe retry behavior.
Module 3
From symptoms to root cause
- • Reading errors
- • Tracing locks
- • Linking incidents to internals
You can move from a runtime failure to a reliable remediation plan quickly.
Performance and Planning
Mid-level engineers responsible for slow query diagnosis and tuning.
Outcomes
- • Interpret planner choices instead of cargo-culting indexes.
- • Tune memory and executor settings with workload context.
- • Validate changes using before/after measurements that hold up in review.
Module 1
Planner mental model
- • Statistics
- • Join strategies
- • Cost estimation
You can predict why the planner picked a bad path and what evidence to gather.
Module 2
Executor and memory
- • work_mem
- • Sort/hash pressure
- • Spill detection
You can connect resource settings to observed execution behavior.
Module 3
Operational tuning workflow
- • Baseline
- • Intervention
- • Verification
You can ship tuning changes with confidence and rollback criteria.