The hottest Substack posts of Database Engineering by Sort

And their main takeaways

Sort Feature Overview: Better Data Through Collaboration

15 implied HN points • 01 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Data Quality Collaboration Database Management Workflow Transparency
  1. Data quality is crucial for businesses as it influences customer experience, decision-making, and AI outcomes.
  2. Collaboration is key for improving data quality, as automated tools can only address a portion of data issues.
  3. Sort provides a platform for transparent collaboration on databases, allowing for public and private database sharing, issue tracking, proposing and reviewing database changes.

Open data is dead

34 HN points • 01 Nov 23
  1. Open data must create value to remain viable
  2. Platforms face pressure to monetize and limit open data access
  3. Open data needs to create value for groups or businesses to survive

I don't need your API, just give me database access

15 implied HN points • 10 Oct 23
  1. Extreme database collaboration allows more people in your organization to access and work with databases, leading to faster issue resolution and query writing.
  2. Having direct database access raises concerns about security and reliability, as APIs are often used to manage database interactions.
  3. Increased database access leads to more ideas, fixes, and improvements, as seen in platforms like Dune where public SQL access fostered community collaboration.

Database changes are hard

4 HN points • 29 Sep 23
  1. Database changes are hard.
  2. Database changes become exponentially harder with a larger team.
  3. Even schema-less databases require central data management for application changes.

Simple Postgres Query Optimization: Avoid the Sequential Scan

3 HN points • 18 Oct 23
  1. Optimizing PostgreSQL queries includes avoiding sequential scans and using indexes.
  2. A sequential scan looks through all rows in a table, while an index allows for quicker access to specific data.
  3. Consider when sequential scans may be faster than using indexes, such as with large portions of data or with regular expressions.
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Coming soon

0 implied HN points • 29 Sep 23
  1. Upcoming content on database engineering is being teased.
  2. The link leads to a Substack profile for Jason Zucchetto.
  3. Readers are encouraged to subscribe for updates.

Essential steps for optimizing a product catalog database

0 implied HN points • 14 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Database Management Data Analysis Collaboration Change Management
  1. Managing a product catalog database is challenging due to constantly changing data and unique attributes for each product
  2. Description tools like Sort enable database teams to provide important details like table names, hints for querying, and change logs
  3. Collaborate effectively on database improvements using features like inviting contributors, using data explorer to pinpoint errors, creating issues for fixes, and utilizing change requests in Sort