A Decade of Innovation: The Evolution of PostgreSQL's Query Optimizer (2015–2025)
Presented by:
Nikhil Bayawat
👋 Hey there,
If you’ve landed here, maybe it’s because you’re curious about technology, transformation, or simply how people and data can achieve more together. If that’s true, we already have something in common.
Here’s my story.
For me, technology has never just been about systems. Systems are important—but they’re only part of the picture. What excites me is how technology becomes meaningful when it empowers people: teams solving tough problems, organisations navigating complexity, communities thriving on trusted intelligence.
Over the past 22 years, I’ve had the privilege to work across banks, consulting firms, and global enterprises—TCS, IBM, Cognizant, UBS, RBS, NatWest, and now Fujitsu Australia. Each chapter brought its own challenges: massive migrations, agile transformations, cloud adoption at scale. And yet, the most rewarding part was never just the delivery—it was seeing people adapt, align, and grow.
At NatWest, that meant embedding Agile and DevOps into one of the most complex banking environments. At Fujitsu, it’s been about building Centre of Excellence for PostgreSQL and leading the Professional Services portfolio for Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres—designing and scaling a service ecosystem that supports customers globally, shaped by Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, and Shuhari principles.
Along the way, I’ve mentored teams, authored an IBM Redbook, and shared insights on data, AI, cloud, and transformation—because I believe knowledge only grows when it’s shared.
Yes, my technical foundation runs deep—databases, architecture, cloud, security, AI-driven data solutions. But my focus is bigger: creating environments where people can solve the right problems, deliver with confidence, and grow as leaders themselves.
Awards and certifications are milestones I’m grateful for. But what defines my journey is simpler:
✨ Helping organisations navigate complexity ✨ Turning data into trusted intelligence ✨ Building teams that don’t just deliver, but adapt and thrive
If this resonates with you, let’s connect. Because technology is powerful—but people make it meaningful.
No video of the event yet, sorry!
In this talk, I explore the technical evolution of the PostgreSQL query optimizer over the past decade—from version 9.4 in 2015 to the upcoming PostgreSQL 18 in 2025. I examine how continuous improvements in planning, cost estimation, indexing strategies, and parallelism have helped PostgreSQL become a highly performant and trustworthy database engine for modern workloads.
I walk through key milestones: the introduction of parallel query execution in 9.6; partition-wise joins and incremental sorting in versions 11–13; workload-aware planning and JIT integration in versions 14–17; and now the beta features of PostgreSQL 18. These include asynchronous I/O for faster scans, self-join elimination, more intelligent GROUP BY handling, skip scans, and significant enhancements to EXPLAIN diagnostics.
To illustrate the optimizer’s journey, I present a comparative table of its evolution over ten years and highlight real-world use cases that demonstrate performance gains, reduced infrastructure costs, and better handling of complex analytical workloads.
I also share insights into PostgreSQL’s transparent, community-driven development model, which has allowed the optimizer to not only match but often exceed the capabilities of many commercial alternatives.
The session concludes with a look ahead into AI assisted plan selection, learned cost models, and more adaptive query processing—setting the stage for PostgreSQL’s next decade of innovation.
- Date:
- 2025 October 17 14:10 +11
- Duration:
- 40 min
- Room:
- Taylor
- Conference:
- PG Down Under 2025
- Language:
- Track:
- Essentials
- Difficulty:
- Medium