How to use PgBouncer for implementing connection pooling in PostgreSQL?

PgBouncer is a lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL. It is used to reduce the overhead of establishing a new connection to a PostgreSQL database for each client request. By pooling connections, PgBouncer can handle a large number of clients with a small number of connections to the database, which improves the performance and scalability of the application.

When a client wants to connect to a database, PgBouncer first checks if there is an available connection in the pool. If there is, PgBouncer returns the existing connection to the client, which saves the overhead of creating a new connection. If all the connections in the pool are in use, PgBouncer creates a new connection and returns it to the client.

Once the client has finished using the connection, it is returned to the pool where it can be reused by another client. In this way, PgBouncer helps to reduce the number of connections to the database and reduce the load on the database server.

Overall, PgBouncer is a useful tool for improving the performance and scalability of PostgreSQL applications by pooling database connections.

How to implement connection pooling in PostgreSQL using PgBouncer?

Here is a simple example on how to implement connection pooling in PostgreSQL using PgBouncer:

  1. Install PgBouncer:

2. Create a configuration file for PgBouncer:

3. Add the following content to the configuration file:

4. Create a user list file:

5. Add the following content to the user list file:

6. Start PgBouncer:

7. Connect to your database using the following connection parameters in your application:

  • host: localhost
  • port: 6432
  • database: yourdb
  • username: username
  • password: password

That’s it! PgBouncer will now manage the connection pooling for your PostgreSQL database.

Note: This is just a basic example and the configuration may need to be adjusted based on your specific requirements and use case.

About Shiv Iyer 446 Articles
Open Source Database Systems Engineer with a deep understanding of Optimizer Internals, Performance Engineering, Scalability and Data SRE. Shiv currently is the Founder, Investor, Board Member and CEO of multiple Database Systems Infrastructure Operations companies in the Transaction Processing Computing and ColumnStores ecosystem. He is also a frequent speaker in open source software conferences globally.