PostgreSQL Advisory Locks for Distributed Job Scheduling

Short summary

PostgreSQL advisory locks enable distributed job scheduling without Redis or SQS, handling 10K jobs/minute with sub-millisecond latency on a single db.r6g.xlarge instance. Use pg_try_advisory_xact_lock with FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED for job claiming; transactional locks are PgBouncer-safe but scale lower than Redis past 10K jobs/min. Key gotcha: avoid session-level locks with PgBouncer transaction mode, and isolate worker connection pools from web traffic.

• •Use pg_try_advisory_xact_lock + SKIP LOCKED for job claiming without Redis or SQS infrastructure
• •Handles 10K jobs/minute with sub-millisecond lock acquisition latency on standard AWS instances
• •PgBouncer transaction mode requires isolated worker pools; session locks silently orphan otherwise

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