Modelling versioning in Postgres

From: Laura Smith <n5d9xq3ti233xiyif2vp(at)protonmail(dot)ch>
To: postgre <pgsql-general(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Modelling versioning in Postgres
Date: 2021-05-28 10:20:30
Message-ID: SnkMvVFCIfgaohLICjYwKEwe1LsI3EUX1XzYACFL8gNyBiCqUqrOKi6xu2rrDirSesUBuC45sPxWgAaVx6z_nZuBCNx_pQUcpR1dvftab8s=@protonmail.ch
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general

Hi

I was wondering what the current thinking is on ways to model versioning in Postgres.

The overall premise is that the latest version is the current version unless a rollback has occurred, in which case versions get tracked from the rollback point (forking ?).

My initial naïve starting point is something along the lines of :

create table objects (
objectID uuid,
versionID uuid,
versionTS timestamp
objectData text
);

This obviously creates a fool-proof answer to "latest version is the current version" because its a simple case of an "where objectID=x order by versionTS desc limit 1" query. However it clearly doesn't cover the rollback to prior scenarios.

I then though about adding a simple "versionActive boolean".

But the problem with that is it needs hand-holding somewhere because there can only be one active version and so it would introduce the need for a "active switch" script somewhere that activated the desired version and deactivated the others. It also perhaps is not the right way to deal with tracking of changes post-rollback.

How have others approached the problem ?

N.B. If it makes any difference, I'm dealing with a 12.5 install here, but this could easily be pushed up to 13 if there are benefits.

Thanks for your time.

Laura

Responses

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Vijaykumar Jain 2021-05-28 11:04:28 Re: TRUNCATE memory leak with temporary tables?
Previous Message Francisco Olarte 2021-05-28 09:51:07 Re: Size on disk of INT and BIGINT - not sure I'm getting it?