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Preventing downtime during deployments is crucial for maintaining service availability and ensuring a positive user experience. Blue-green deployments have emerged as a popular strategy to achieve this goal. However, they introduce challenges, especially when dealing with database changes. This article delves into what blue-green deployments are, why database changes can be tricky in this context, and how to navigate common change scenarios effectively in Django. Blue-Green Deployments A blue-green deployment is a release management strategy that utilizes two separate production environments called “blue” and “green”. At any given time, only one environment is live, serving all production traffic. Changes are deployed to green, and after thorough testing, traffic is switched over from the blue to green. This approach minimizes downtime and provides a quick rollback option by reverting traffic to blue if issues occur. ...

Background As software engineers, one of the most crucial skills we develop is the ability to search through code efficiently. Whether it’s finding a specific function, understanding how a certain feature is implemented, or tracing a bug, being able to quickly navigate a codebase is essential for productivity. However, many codebases can be complex and sprawling, leading to noisy search results that hinder rather than aid our progress. JetBrains provides a few tools to help you refine your code search and focus on what’s important. ...

Optimizing Django query performance is critical for building performant web applications. Django provides many tools and methods for optimizing database queries in its Database access optimization documentation. In this blog post, we will explore a collection of additional and essential tips I’ve compiled over the years to help you pinpoint and resolve your inefficient Django queries. Kill Long-Running Queries with a Statement Timeout PostgreSQL supports a statement_timeout parameter that allows you to set a maximum time limit per query. This is useful for preventing long-running queries from tying up precious resources and slowing down your application. My team at PixieBrix experienced an incident where a few long-running queries resulted in a full database outage. Setting a statement timeout in your Django settings can help prevent this from happening. ...

Introduction When building a Django application, one of the key challenges developers face is optimizing database query performance. Django provides two tools,select_related and prefetch_related, that reduce the number of database queries, and increase the performance of your application. This blog post explores the power of these two methods and how to combine them to maximize your application’s query performance. My team at PixieBrix implemented these techniques and have seen a significant improvement in query performance and customer satisfaction. ...

Docker is a platform for developing, shipping and running applications in isolated, lightweight and portable containers. It is a critical part of a developer’s toolbelt and one I use just about everyday. Docker can consume a large amount of disk space. Per the Docker documentation: Docker takes a conservative approach to cleaning up unused objects (often referred to as “garbage collection”), such as images, containers, volumes, and networks: these objects are generally not removed unless you explicitly ask Docker to do so. This can cause Docker to use extra disk space. ...