The Field Manual Series · 8 swaps · tested SQL

One database. Fewer invoices.

Recipes for replacing MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, Pinecone and friends with the Postgres instance you already run — every query tested against a live database before it ships.

Article 01 · Week 1Aug 2026 · 4 min read

I Replaced Redis and RabbitMQ With 15 Lines of Postgres

The FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED clause turns an ordinary table into a safe, concurrent job queue — and it was tested for duplicates, crashes and reclaims before this post was written.

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The full series

01Replace Redis & RabbitMQSKIP LOCKEDRead

02Replace ElasticsearchFull-text + pg_trgmNext

03Replace Pineconepgvector + HNSWComing

04Replace MongoDBJSONB + GINComing

05Replace InfluxDBPartitioning + BRINComing

06Replace Snowflake dashboardsMaterialized viewsComing

07Replace standalone GIS toolsPostGISComing

08Replace your hand-built API layerPostgREST + RLSComing

09Where this actually breaksThe honest limitsCapstone