Schedule
Recovering lost timestamps with Forbidden Knowledge
Date: 2023-10-04
Time: 14:00–14:50
Room: Club Parlor
Level: Intermediate
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- Upon joining a new company, I discovered they rarely tracked when records were inserted or updated. Most tables didn't have a created_at, or updated_at column. Those that did often were missing data. Five years the company ran like this.
- Could this data be recovered? Maybe there was some hidden way Postgresql was storing timestamps, or perhaps in a forgotten log file.
- It turns out, each row in Postgresql has a secret column. From this, you can build a model of when rows were updated and created.
- Every Postgresql expert I spoke with told me this was the worst idea they ever heard, and they are correct.
- In this talk, I will go over system columns, MVCC, transaction ids, and how I was able to recover timestamps.
Slides
The following slides have been made available for this session:
Speaker
Evan