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PostgreSQL Engineering Standard

Version: 1.0.0

Status: official

Author: Enterprise AI Standards

Description

Official engineering standard for designing, implementing and maintaining PostgreSQL databases for enterprise applications.

Objective

Define mandatory engineering practices to ensure PostgreSQL databases are secure, scalable, maintainable, observable and optimized for production.

Philosophy

A database is a critical business asset. Schema design, indexing, migrations and query optimization must be treated as engineering disciplines rather than implementation details.

Principles

  • Normalize first.
  • Denormalize only when justified.
  • Explicit schema design.
  • Every change through migrations.
  • Measure before optimizing.
  • Security by default.
  • Immutable migration history.
  • Performance is designed, not fixed.

Project Structure

Language Features

Virtual Threads

Structured Concurrency

Records

Sealed Classes

Pattern Matching

Collections

Streams

Optional

Exceptions

Logging

Performance

  • Analyze execution plans.
  • EXPLAIN ANALYZE before optimization.
  • Avoid sequential scans on large tables.
  • Optimize slow queries.

Security

  • Least privilege.
  • Separate application user.
  • No superuser in production.
  • SSL enabled.

Testing

  • Testcontainers.
  • Integration tests.
  • Migration validation.

Observability

Documentation

  • ER diagram.
  • Schema documentation.
  • Migration history.

Best Practices

  • UUID Keys.
  • Flyway.
  • Parameterized Queries.
  • Proper Indexes.
  • Explicit Constraints.
  • JSONB only when justified.
  • Small Transactions.
  • Connection Pooling.
  • Monitoring Enabled.

Anti Patterns

  • SELECT *.
  • Missing indexes.
  • SERIAL everywhere.
  • Long transactions.
  • Dynamic SQL.
  • Missing constraints.
  • Huge JSON documents.
  • Manual schema changes.
  • No backups.
  • Disabled foreign keys.

Review Checklist

  • [ ] UUID keys.
  • [ ] Flyway configured.
  • [ ] Indexes reviewed.
  • [ ] Constraints implemented.
  • [ ] Backups configured.
  • [ ] Monitoring enabled.
  • [ ] Testcontainers configured.
  • [ ] ER Diagram updated.
  • [ ] Migration validated.

Examples

References

  • https://www.postgresql.org/docs/
  • https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-explain.html
  • https://flywaydb.org/
  • https://testcontainers.com/
  • https://www.pgadmin.org/