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.

Baron Schwartz is the founder and CEO of VividCortex, the best way to see what your production database servers are doing. Baron has written a lot of open source software, and several books. He’s focused his career on learning and teaching about performance and observability of systems generally (including the view that teams are systems and culture influences their performance), and databases specifically.

Baron will be presenting a breakout session "How To Index Your Database" on Friday, April 20th at 12:50 pm. 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?

The community has always been what’s drawn me to Postgres. From the very first I could immediately sense the deep commitment people had to the database and other people involved with the database. Each database community is special in its own way and has its own culture, and after being involved in many of them you sense it in a way you can’t explain. Postgres’s is loyal to freedom, independence, quality, and principles. All are dear to me as well.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

I’ve participated since 2008 in various ways. I’ve blogged, written open source, written books, reviewed and tech-edited other people’s books, spoken, and attended. I hope to continue doing so!

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

Partitioning! Improved streaming replication! Parallel query execution! There are so many improvements. The pace of development is really impressive.

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

The database of the microservices-oriented future is only quasi-stateful. By this I mean that it acts almost like a read-through cache in front of “cold storage” like S3. Support for creating an empty database cluster, and having it fetch its data from cold storage on first query, would be game-changing for cloud-native apps. I realize that’s a lot of buzzwords, but it’s going to happen soon!

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

Indexing is at once the most important, simplest, and most complicated topic in designing a database; I hope to make it simpler and leave people with three big things they will never struggle to remember.

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

I'm really interested in hearing how others are using Postgres, both for creative purposes that showcase its flexibility and extensibility, as well as "use as designed." In my opinion, the best conference talks aren't "you should do this"; types of talks: they are "I did this and here's what happened"; I love stories!

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

That’s an easy one to answer: seeing all my old friends again!

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

Computer Science seems to feel that algorithms, data structures, and so on are fundamental. Data persistence, especially relational, is equally important. Don’t neglect.

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

I invite the three hungriest people in the world and eat mindfully with them, so I learn to appreciate what I have.

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

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Silas Marvin is a founding software engineer at PostgresML, writes software for fun and a better future.

Silas will present "RAG Masterclass: Simplify your data infrastructure with in-database NLP using pgml and pgvector for Retrieval Augmented Generation." Read what Silas has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
Postgres developers should attend my talk to learn how to simplify their data infrastructure and build fast, powerful RAG applications using pgml and pgvector. Attendees will gain a solid understanding of RAG and its applications in Postgres, along with practical knowledge of pgml and pgvector to create efficient, scalable NLP solutions.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
My favorite aspect of Postgres Conference is the opportunity to connect with an incredible open-source community of like-minded developers who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of what Postgres can achieve. It's an awesome experience being surrounded by individuals who are committed to ensuring that Postgres remains the database powering the future.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
As a recent graduate myself, I recommend diving into the Postgres community and exploring open-source technology. Open-source projects provide an incredible opportunity for new developers to learn and grow as the development process is transparent and collaborative. In particular, I have found the Postgres community to be an exceptional group of intelligent, experienced developers who are not only building amazing projects but are also willing to guide and support newcomers on their journey.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
Over the next 5 years, open source technologies are only going to keep growing and playing a bigger part in the software world. As software engineering grows, open source will grow right along with it. Solid, proven projects like Postgres will be the foundation that many new open source tools are built on top of.

What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
answered above ^

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Robert Bernier is senior PostgreSQL consultant at Percona.

Robert will present Working With The Citus Extension. Read what Robert has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
For people who have heard about Citus but know nothing about it.
What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
Meeting my peers
What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
Data eats the world. Focus on learning about your data and how it's used.
How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
PostgreSQL is a General Purpose Management System. It will come to dominate the DBMS world.
What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
Three talents:
- know your SQL
- know your OS (linux)
- know a programming language

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here 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 the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Tom Limoncelli is the SRE Manager at StackOverflow.com and author of Time Management for System Administrators (O'Reilly). He is co-author of The Practice of System and Network Administration (3rd edition just released) and The Practice of Cloud System Administration.  

Tom will be presenting a half-day training on Monday, April 16 on "Personal Time Management: The Basics for Overloaded People." 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?

The startup I was at in 2003 needed a database. Since we did a lot of work with IP and network addresses, we picked PostgreSQL because it supports those as native types.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. 

I'm new to the greater Postgres community. I've been a system administrator since 1988 and often speak on related topics.

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

Anything that makes replication and failovers easier and more reliable. 

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

Time management: you will gain an additional day out of every week. Radical ideas: you'll learn how modern software ("distributed computing") is radically changing how we build systems and do operations. I'd like to give them hope for the future.

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

That it's in my back yard!  I live 10 miles from here!

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

Give yourself projects. Try to break things and then see if you can repair them.  You'll learn more from recovering a failed system than anything else.

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

Obama (because I'd like to thank him), Steve Martin (because he has an amazing life story and is super smart), and Jennifer Lawrence (she also has an interesting life story).  I also think that these three people would get along well.

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!

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.

Elizabeth Zalman is the Co-founder & CEO of strongDM, the definitive data security product. Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of the cross-device profile company Media Armor.

Liz will be presenting a breakout session "Do You Know Your Vendor Dependencies" on Wednesday, April 18, at 4 pm. Read what she has to say about Postgres and why to attend her session: 

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

Featureful performance & proven reliability. Over the years I've found fewer and fewer reasons to consider alternatives beyond Postgres (two notable exceptions being redis-style KV and queues).

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

strongDM hears a lot about how its customers use PG and its derivatives (Greenplum, the latest on Aurora, etc.) and we love sharing tips when appropriate.

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

As a security product, we're always happy to see security-related upgrades: SASL/SCRAM authentication is a popular option in several of database systems, and is a significant upgrade over the previous salted hashes. We also rely heavily on partitioning, so all related enhancements are welcome.Finally: although we generally wouldn't choose to run parallel queries in a primarily OLTP system, the promise of running analytic queries on a replica (rather than ETL'ing into an analytic database) is very appealing.

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

Dynamic optimization for queries on partitioned tables. Right now if you run select * from date_partitioned_table where event_timestamp between NOW() and NOW() - interval '7 days'; It scans every partition because the result of NOW() is not knowable ahead of time. But it could optimize that query when it was asked to execute it. Instead of creating a static query plan it could say, I know I'm going to have to compute a list of partitions. So, let's just remember that. Then right before the query runs, it could calculate the list and run the query as though it had been planned with a static date range, and thus only query the affected tables. 

 Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2018?

In this talk, I'll share practical examples of breaches I've personally experienced along with advice on how to hold your vendors accountable, and hopefully make the topic of security a little less intimidating in the process.

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

I am looking forward to attending “Reducing the Surface Area of Risk in Data Security” by Tim Gorman and “General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with Azure Database for PostgreSQL” by Mark Bolz.

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

Being able to network with and learn from a unique community! I’ve found practice to really be one of the best ways to learn about databases.

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

 I’ve found practice to really be one of the best ways to learn about databases. Get your hands dirty: try breaking things and then fixing them! 

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.

Abbas Butt is a Software Architect at EnterpriseDB, and he will present a half-day training "Deep dive into PostgreSQL Authentication Methods" on Monday, April 16, at 1 pm. Learn more about Abbas and his involvement in the Postgres community:

Why PostgreSQL?

My company's business revolves around PostgreSQL.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

I have been involved with PostgreSQL for about 10 years. Over the years I have contributed by reporting bugs and developing various FDWs. I have also worked to make PostgreSQL an XA complaint database by using a modified version of pgBouncer. My next plans are to come up with small programming exercises with solutions to accompany this book http://www.interdb.jp/pg/ ("The Internals of PostgreSQL for database administrators and system developers"  by Hironobu Suzuki). This will give the readers hands on experience.

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

Declarative table partitioning & query parallelism

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

Write Scalability and High Availability

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

Attendees should come to have great time learning about PostgreSQL authentication methods. After attending the session the attendees will be better placed to decide which authentication scheme should they use and why.

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

"Aurora PostgreSQL Tutorial and Extended Deep Dive" and "Know your meme: Develop a webapp using Google Cloud Kubernetes and Cloud SQL"

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

Being able to listen and exchange point of views with other community members.

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

Read this book : "The Internals of PostgreSQL for database administrators and system developers"  by Hironobu Suzuki.

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