Contents

Change history
Examples
References
Categories
See also

Background worker

A user-defined process which runs as part of the main postgres server process

A background worker (commonly abbreviated to BGW) is a user-defined process which runs as part of the main postgres server process.

Background worker functionality was introduced in PostgreSQL 9.3 (initial commit da07a1e8).

Change history

PostgreSQL 11
- bgw_type field added; the value set here will be visible in pg_stat_activity's backend_type column instead of the generic value "background worker", and also shown as the ps process display label (commit 5373bc2a)
- background workers can attach to databases which normally disallow connections (datallowconn = false) (commit eed1ce72)
PostgreSQL 10
- background workers visible in pg_stat_activity (commit fc70a4b0)
PostgreSQL 9.4
- background workers can be started dynamically (commit 7f7485a0)
- GUC max_worker_processes added (commit 6bc8ef0b)
PostgreSQL 9.3
- initial support added (commit da07a1e8)

Examples

Some sample code can be found in the test module "worker_spi" (src/test/modules/worker_spi).

References

PostgreSQL documentation: Background Worker Processes

Categories

See also

max_worker_processes, worker_spi