Postgres QueuesTHE FIELD GUIDESource
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Job frameworkAdapter in this repo

pg-boss

Node.js job queues with explicit queue policies and transaction adapters.

Canonical upstream ↗
API / SDK surfaceNode.js · TypeScript
Inspected snapshot12.38.0 · source snapshot
Sources checked2026-10-23
License at snapshotMIT

View pinned source / version d4400859eed2 · Features reviewed against pinned default-branch source; release label is separately verified, not assumed to be the benchmark adapter version.

What this system is built around

PostgreSQL job queues with configurable duplicate policies, retries, scheduling and transaction adapters.

A useful starting point

Consider when a Node application needs database transaction adapters plus queue policy controls. Choose heartbeat, expiration and worker transaction settings explicitly for your workload.

Editorial fit, based on the cited design. Verify against your workload.

Semantics & operating model

Concise claims with their scope intact. “Not verified” means this review did not establish the answer.

Claiming & concurrency

Documented

localConcurrency is per process. Group concurrency options and queue policies have separate scopes; do not treat a per-process number as a fleet-wide limit.

Worker concurrency and transactional handlers Queue policies, retry and recovery

Transactional enqueue

Documented

send, insert, fetch and complete accept a db transaction adapter. transactional workers can commit same-database handler SQL with completion. External API calls are outside that transaction.

ORM transaction adapters Worker concurrency and transactional handlers

Crash recovery & retries

Documented

Heartbeat detection is disabled by default; expiration defaults to 15 minutes. Both route to retry/failure policy. Late settlement is guarded by the claimed retryCount.

Queue policies, retry and recovery

Delayed & recurring work

Documented

Schedules need a running instance; evaluation has minute-level filing precision. Catch-up is skip by default, with a once policy for missed occurrences.

Cron and RRULE scheduling

Uniqueness / deduplication

Documented

standard, short, singleton, stately, exclusive and key_strict_fifo policies have different queued/active constraints and can use singletonKey. These are not permanent external-effect deduplication.

Queue policies, retry and recovery

Postgres extension required

Not required

Stock PostgreSQL is the primary backend; installation creates pg-boss schema objects. Current package requires Node >=22.12; overview lists PostgreSQL >=13.

Database install Database requirements Package version and Node requirement

Operator interface

Documented

@pg-boss/dashboard is documented for queues, jobs and schedules; this is a separate package, not a claim about older benchmark versions.

First-party dashboard

Tradeoffs to carry into a test