Debra Cerda Blog Posts

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2018, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Malcolm McLean of Apace Systems is a PostgreSQL DBA, Linux admin, Java/PHP developer and according to his bio "a bit of a pedantic perfectionist", with over 12 years of experience with PostgreSQL and somewhat more than that with Linux and development.

Malcolm is presenting "PostgreSQL in a Geographically Distributed Realtime Transactional System" on Thursday, April 19, at 11:20 am. Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session: 

Why PostgreSQL?

My very first job over 13 years ago introduced me to Postgres after having only worked with MySQL at university. Since then, I've been happier with its performance compared to other DB's I've benchmarked as well as with the features that are continuously introduced to keep the database on the forefront. Across 3 companies I have never looked back and never regretted my decision to always use Postgres.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

I spoke at the first PgConf South Africa last year and I'm now one of the organisers of PostgresConf South Africa 2018.

What new features of PostgreSQL 10 are you most excited about?

Definitely the integrated logical replication without the need of an extension.

What features should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

It perhaps won't make Postgres 11, but at least by Postgres 12 we should have BDR integrated with the current logical replication capabilities rounded off.

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2018? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

We had an interesting replication problem to solve. Multi-master replication where data needed to be replicated betweens servers in multiple countries, some with data restrictions, but without replicating data where it didn't need to go. So a sort of conditional sharding with redundancy in each data center.

What sessions are you most excited about attending at PostgresConf US 2018?

 The talks on replication (anything to make our lives easier) and security. 

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

Meeting like-minded people from different backgrounds. And of course, the trip itself. I've done quite a bit of travelling over the years, but I haven't yet been to the US.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres?

Push yourself to learn. Sitting back doesn't get you very far. 

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2018, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2018, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Tim Gorman is a technical consultant for Delphix who enable data virtualization and data masking to increase the agility of IT development and testing securely. Tim is co-author of six books about Oracle data warehousing and performance optimization, and has performed technical review for eight other published books. 

Tim will be presenting a breakout session on Wednesday, April 18 on "Reducing The Surface Area Of Risk In Data Security." Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

Why PostgreSQL? What got you into it, and made you stick with it?

30+ years in IT and databases, and PostgreSQL is the obvious heir apparent as every organization's default choice of data store.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. 

Just becoming involved.  I have been heavily involved in the Oracle user community for almost 25 years, and I have been getting involved in the Microsoft user community for the past 3 years.

What features should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

pgPL/SQL

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2018? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Creating environments for software development on PostgreSQL must include data masking to prevent confidential data from "bleeding" over from production to non-production environments.

What sessions are you most excited about attending at PostgresConf US 2018?

Mastering PostgreSQL Administration

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

Networking with my new technical community

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres?

What is learned when optimizing PostgreSQL is also applicable to other databases

Bonus Question: You can invite any three living people from anywhere in the world to dinner. Who do you invite and why?

Vladimir Putin, Michelle Obama, and Justin Trudeau.  Differing people with different accomplishments on the current world stage, and I would be fascinated to listen to how they react to one another (and to me) once the barriers and inhibitions are dropped.

 Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2018, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2018, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Hubert Zhang will co-present with Jack Wu at PostgresConf US 2018 on "Customize and Secure the Runtime and Dependencies of Your Procedural Languages using PL/Container." Hubert is a staff software engineer at Pivotal. He received his Master Degree at Peking University, with a major in artificial intelligence. He is most interested in database systems and distributed computing platform.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. (How long have you been involved? How have you contributed? How else would you want to contribute?)

I've been working on Postgres based MPP database Greenplum and HAWQ since 2014. I contributed on PLContainer in Greenplum, data locality, and Ranger module of HAWQ (a SQL-On-Hadoop system).

What features should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

Vectorize execution for OLAP queries.

Who should attend your talk at PostgresConf US 2018? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Data scientists and anyone who want to use Python and R in database to do data analysis and machine learning. You'll learn how to use PLContainer as well as how to build a customized docker image to setup your specialized Python or R environment.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2018, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2018, learn more about about featured Platinum Sponsor 2ndQuadrant, including their commitment to partnering with and contributing to the Postgres community, from Simon Riggs, Chief Technology Officer, of 2ndQuadrant and PostgreSQL Major Developer/Committer:

Tell us about your commitment to the PostgreSQL Community.

The 2ndQuadrant vision is to be the bridge between the database needs of enterprise users and open source contributions to PostgreSQL. We have pursued a joint strategy of providing both working code (available now) and later submitting the features into core PostgreSQL. Over the past 15+ years, our team has widely contributed to the growth and development of the PostgreSQL project; partnering with customers to identify bottlenecks and then contribute towards enterprise features that address them in PostgreSQL, benefiting everyone that uses it. Besides contributing code, all members of the 2ndQuadrant team are very active in the community on an individual and local level, often helping to organize PUG events, conferences, and meetups.

Are there any rising stars in the community you’d like to give props to? 

Marco Nenciarini - located in Prato, Italy - has been a long time supporter and contributor of PostgreSQL. He is an active maintainer of PGDG’s APT repository, maintaining builds and binaries for PostgreSQL and associated tools & extensions, while contributing towards process improvement for sane builds. Marco is the lead developer for Barman, a backup manager and disaster recovery tool for enterprises with high business continuity requirements.  He is the current president of IT.PUG in Italy and a part of the organizing committee for PGDay.IT.

What features would you like to see in v11 and v12?

As PostgreSQL matures, so do the features that come with each release. In the next two release we’re most looking forward to improved Partitioning performance, the implementation of the MERGE SQL command, and procedures that allow server-side transactions.

Are there any features in development from 2ndQuadrant that the community should be looking forward to?

2ndQuadrant is working hard on the development of Bi-Directional Replication (BDR3), containing new architectural features and a wide and deep set of features.

In addition, we continuously work on features for scalability, performance, security and robustness.

What is the number one barrier you see to contributing to the Postgres community?

The Postgres community is one of the easiest communities to become a part of. With an open mindset all around and a common goal of growing open source PostgreSQL, the community is very accepting to anyone looking to learn, contribute, and better the Postgres ecosystem as a whole. Between the helpful tools on postgresql.org and the growing community, comprised of seasoned veterans and fresh faces, there is always helpful information to guide you.

What is the best thing about working with the Postgres community?

PostgreSQL is the most popular database when it comes to new adoption. Even existing users of other databases are flocking towards PostgreSQL - and it’s not just to save money. PostgreSQL has been growing year on year and we’re attracting interest from the largest enterprises, as it is fully capable of securely supporting enterprise database systems. 

There is still competition out there, especially with the current fad of developer-focused NoSQL databases. But the community is big enough and strong enough to quickly adapt to changing times and push forwards. The members of the PostgreSQL community are passionate about their work and the growth of the project.

Tell us why you believe people should attend PostgresConf 2018 in April.

Community conferences expand your knowledge in different areas of the technology, describe practical use cases as well as give sneak previews into cutting edge technologies for future versions of PostgreSQL. 

Simon along with Tom Kincaid, General Manager of 2ndQuadrant, presents "Internet of Things with PostgreSQL - Performance & Security" on Friday, April 20, at 8:50 am. Tom also presents "Postgres -- Past, Present and Future" and will discuss the challenges that may be faced by Postgres in the next 5 years on Thursday, April 19, at 3:20 pm. 

Visit the 2ndQuadrant team in the Exhibit Hall in the Newport Grand Ballroom on Wednesday, April 18, and Thursday, April 19.  

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2018, and buy your tickets soon!