Notes on databases, data, and AI — views and customer problems from the field.https://venkinotes.com/https://venkinotes.com/posts/online-alter-big-table/https://venkinotes.com/posts/online-alter-big-table/A practical, cloud-agnostic look at adding columns to large tables without downtime — what MySQL 8+ and Postgres 14+ actually let you do, the expand-contract pattern that beats native DDL alone, the OSS tools, and the managed-service caveats.Thu, 21 May 2026 10:00:00 GMThttps://venkinotes.com/posts/aurora-redshift-zero-etl/https://venkinotes.com/posts/aurora-redshift-zero-etl/A practical look at Aurora PostgreSQL Zero-ETL into Redshift — how NOT NULL really behaves, why your PostgreSQL indexes don't translate, and how retries stay idempotent without enforced uniqueness.Sat, 16 May 2026 10:00:00 GMThttps://venkinotes.com/posts/postgresql-major-version-upgrade-slow/https://venkinotes.com/posts/postgresql-major-version-upgrade-slow/A deep dive into why PostgreSQL major version upgrades take longer than expected — what actually happens under the hood, why parallelism won't save you, and how to diagnose the bottleneck. Applies to Aurora PostgreSQL, RDS PostgreSQL, and self-hosted.Sat, 27 Sep 2025 10:00:00 GMThttps://venkinotes.com/posts/troubleshooting-data-dictionary-issues-mysql-aurora/https://venkinotes.com/posts/troubleshooting-data-dictionary-issues-mysql-aurora/A practical guide to understanding, diagnosing, and resolving MySQL Data Dictionary inconsistencies on RDS MySQL and Aurora MySQL — before they become emergencies.Wed, 26 Mar 2025 10:00:00 GMThttps://venkinotes.com/posts/hello-from-venki/https://venkinotes.com/posts/hello-from-venki/A short introduction to who I am and what this blog is going to be about — a mix of tech, travel, cooking, cricket, DIY, and gardening.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMT