Set-Based Updates in Rails: 4 Hours to 8 Seconds
Stop writing N+1 update loops. Learn how `update_all`, `update_columns`, and safe, batched SQL can drastically improve your Rails app's performance.
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Postgres Full-Text Search vs. Embeddings: A Practical Guide
Most teams reach for embeddings before they need them, wiring up pgvector when Postgres’s full-text search would have done the job. If your users are just looking for “caching” and expect to find “Rails caching strategies,” full-text search is fast, precise, and already built in. Where embeddings shine is when meaning matters more than exact words, like an e-commerce query for “summer outfit” that should return linen shirts and beach dresses. The key isn’t choosing one tool over the other, but knowing when Postgres alone is enough and when a hybrid approach gives you the semantic nuance users actually need.
Read article →How I approach a slow SQL query
SQL query optimization requires diagnostic thinking rather than checklist application. Effective performance tuning involves distinguishing between design issues and scaling problems through EXPLAIN analysis, indexing evaluation, filtering optimization, and concurrency assessment.
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