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What is PMP4PG?

PMP4PG (Proactive Monitoring Platform for PostgreSQL) is an open monitoring platform designed to give database administrators, DevOps engineers and developers deep, actionable visibility into their PostgreSQL infrastructure.

PMP4PG is directly inspired by Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) and Oracle AWR (Automatic Workload Repository) — bringing the same level of analytical depth that Oracle DBAs rely on daily, natively to the PostgreSQL ecosystem.

The Problem It Solves​

PostgreSQL is a powerful, production-grade database engine. Yet when it comes to workload analysis and proactive performance monitoring, it lacks the built-in tooling that Oracle shops have had for decades.

Standard PostgreSQL monitoring tools typically offer:

  • Basic metrics collection (CPU, connections, query counts)
  • Real-time dashboards with limited historical depth
  • No workload report generation between arbitrary time intervals

PMP4PG fills that gap by introducing:

  • An Active Session History (ASH) mechanism — sampling pg_stat_activity every 2 seconds
  • AWR-style periodic snapshots — aggregating metrics into history tables every 30 minutes
  • Proactive workload reports — comparing any two snapshots to identify regressions
  • Long-term trend analysis — tracking how your instances evolve over weeks and months

Core Concepts​

Active Session History (ASH)​

Every 2 seconds, the PMP4PG agent captures the state of all active PostgreSQL sessions from pg_stat_activity. These samples are stored as-is in the platform repository, enabling near-real-time analysis of what your database is doing at any given moment.

AWR Snapshots​

Every 30 minutes, the PMP4PG backend automatically creates a snapshot — an aggregated, numbered checkpoint of key PostgreSQL statistics (pg_stat_statements deltas, pg_stat_database deltas, WAL stats, OS metrics...). These snapshots are the foundation for AWR-style reports.

AWR Reports​

By selecting two snapshots (a begin and an end), you generate a detailed workload report covering load profile, top SQL by various dimensions, wait events, lock contention, vacuum activity and more. Reports can be exported as standalone HTML files for sharing and archiving.

The *_history tables store aggregated metrics over time, enabling you to chart the evolution of key indicators — database size, throughput, WAL generation — over days, weeks or months.

What PMP4PG Is Not​

  • It is not a query execution planner or query rewriter
  • It is not a backup and recovery tool
  • It is not a replication manager
  • It is not a replacement for pg_activity or pgBadger — it complements them with a different analytical approach

Relationship to Oracle OEM / AWR​

Oracle ConceptPMP4PG Equivalent
V$SESSIONpg_stat_activity (sampled every 2s)
V$ACTIVE_SESSION_HISTORYASH samples table (live data)
DBA_HIST_ACTIVE_SESS_HISTORYHistory tables (snapshots every 30 min)
AWR SnapshotPMP4PG AWR Snapshot
AWR ReportPMP4PG AWR Report (HTML export)
OEM DashboardPMP4PG Global Dashboard

Next Steps​