Wait Event Description

A wait event in PostgreSQL is a fundamental concept used in performance monitoring and tuning.

It represents a situation where a process is pausing its operation, waiting for a certain condition to be met or a resource to become available.

Wait Events

By analyzing these wait events, users can identify what resources or conditions are causing delays.

In the Session History dashboard, located in the bottom left, you'll find an option that allows you to group the workload by wait events.

Accompanying each wait event is a question mark icon, which, when hovered over, reveals a description of the event.

Given the extensive variety of wait events in PostgreSQL, as detailed in the PostgreSQL documentation, merely knowing the event's name may not suffice for a comprehensive understanding of what happened.

This is where the tooltip feature, offering a full description of each event, becomes immensely beneficial.

Wait Event Types

PostgreSQL categorizes wait events into various types, such as I/O waits, lock waits, network waits, and more.

A wait event type refers to a specific category under which various wait events are classified. These types represent different kinds of operations or resources that a database process may need to wait for during its execution.

Session History Dashboard Displaying Workload Grouped by Wait Event Types

In the Session History dashboard, you have the flexibility to organize the workload either by wait event types or specific wait events.

This grouping can be applied both within the timeline chart and/or in the bottom left section of the dashboard, offering a comprehensive view of your database's performance dynamics.