Multigres Supports Listen/Notify Across Pooled Connections
Multigres now supports PostgreSQL's LISTEN/NOTIFY feature across pooled database connections. This allows applications using connection pooling to receive real-time notifications without losing events, solving a longstanding compatibility issue between pooling and asynchronous notifications.
Background
- **Multigres** is an open-source Go connection pooler for PostgreSQL, compatible with PgBouncer's protocol but built for Go's `database/sql` interface.
- **PgBouncer**, the standard PostgreSQL pooler, breaks **LISTEN/NOTIFY** — a built-in pub/sub feature where clients subscribe to channels and receive real-time messages. PgBouncer assigns clients to arbitrary backend connections, so a LISTEN subscription gets lost on reassignment.
- LISTEN/NOTIFY is commonly used in Go apps for cache invalidation, live updates, and inter-process signaling. Developers who wanted both pooling and real-time notifications had to avoid PgBouncer.
- This post announces that Multigres now supports LISTEN/NOTIFY across pooled connections — a capability PgBouncer lacks — letting Go developers use connection pooling without giving up database-driven pub/sub.
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