How to Break Your PostgreSQL IIoT Database and Learn Something in the Process

As engineers, we're taught to design for reliability. We do design calculations, run simulations, build and test prototypes, and even then we recognize that these are imperfect, so we include safety factors. When it comes to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) though, we rarely give the same level of scrutiny to the components that we rely on. What if we treated our IIoT database the same way we treated the physical things we produce? We build and design a prototype database, and then put it through some serious testing, even to failure. The Value (and Perils) of Stress Testing Think of database stress testing as a destructive materials test for your data storage. You wouldn't trust a bridge made of untested steel, so don’t trust your database until you know its limits. The Value: Identify Bottlenecks: Stress testing reveals the weak links—what is likely to fail first? Will you run out of storage? Will your queries get bogged down? Or will you hit the dreaded ingest wall (when dat