{"type":"post","id":"til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7","slug":"til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7","title":"TIL: Drop Columns a Release Later","description":"A PostgreSQL column removal caused seconds of downtime because the migration waited for an exclusive table lock, while new queries queued behind it.","retrieval_nugget":"A PostgreSQL column removal caused seconds of downtime because the migration waited for an exclusive table lock, while new queries queued behind it. The author’s lesson is to separate stopping use of old columns from dropping them, and to bound lock waits. For teams shipping database changes, release sequencing is part of application availability.","published_at":"2026-11-14","updated_at":"2026-11-14","record_date":"2026-11-14","date_kind":"published_at","topics":[],"entities":["Hacdias","PostgreSQL","Prisma"],"related_patterns":[],"novelty_label":"new_angle","what_changed":"It emphasizes splitting column removal across releases and using a lock timeout to prevent PostgreSQL lock waits from stalling table queries.","prior_refs":[],"source_url":"https://hacdias.com/2026/11/12/dropping-columns","source_urls":["https://hacdias.com/2026/11/12/dropping-columns"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7","status":"published","visuals":[],"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7.json"},"markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/til-drop-columns-a-release-later-6e1ee7.md","next_reads":[{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/sources/","url":"https://newruntime.com/sources/","title":"Sources","reason":"See the original sources this archive cites.","media_type":"text/html"}]}