Why did you attend PgConf US?

Our company is exploring the use of PostgreSQL as an additional DBMS choice to support Vertex Enterprise, our tax technology platform. Attending the conference offered me an opportunity to immerse myself into a variety of topics around PostgreSQL, as well as the chance to interact with other users to tap into their experiences.


Tell us a little bit about your project or how you use PostgreSQL:

Vertex Enterprise is a global tax management end-to-end solution that integrates all tax processes with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) systems on a single platform using a tax performance engine.   The solution is a blend of technologies that surround a Java based processing and calculation engine. This includes rich UI's, import, export, business intelligence / reporting, and big data integration. The foundation of our database leverages a multi-dimensional database structure, as well as other structures whose design varies based upon the needs of a particular function so that we can optimize performance. (ie. import/export/reporting).

The official brochure provides a high level overview of the capabilities and interfaces that our DBMS must support.  

Why did you chose PostgreSQL for your project?

PostgreSQL checks many of the boxes that we are looking for in our consideration of an additional DBMS option.


Some of these include:

* Performance
* Lower cost
* Multi-tenancy support 
* Suitable for deployment on premise, in a hosted environment, and in the cloud
* Industry acceptance
* Ease of administration on locally administered instances
* Features characteristic of an enterprise strength database (auditing, partitioning, replication, procedural language support)


This was your first PGConf US, was it a last minute decision? Do you think it was worth it? If so, why?

The conference was on our radar since the beginning of the year, and it exceeded expectations. Listening to and interacting with actual contributors to the product is not something you have the opportunity to do at many conferences. The sessions covered a variety of topics around PostgreSQL that were of interest (performance, tuning, feature discussion, lessons learned, cloud deployment options, optimization, etc).


Would you attend PgConf US again?

Yes, definitely. 


Are you interested in contributing to the community and if so, in what fashion?

My "day job" keeps me pretty busy, but as far as sharing our experience with PostgreSQL, I am willing to contribute in that way :) .

March 18th and 19th will have immersive training. Instructors are encouraged to submit half and full day material for consideration. The preferred topics are centered around Postgres but anything People, Postgres, or Data related will be considered.

Monday, March 18th through Friday, March 22nd will host several partner summits, including popular and upcoming topics within the Postgres community and the annually hosted Regulated Industry Summit. Break out sessions will be held from Wednesday - Friday.

In addition to the partner summits, PostgresConf 2019 will offer multiple program tracks with Postgres related topics including (but not limited to): 

• Postgres Internals
• Postgres Administration
• Operations and Development
• Data
• Cloud
• Database Security and Compliance
• Use Cases
• Regulated Industries
• Telecommunications
• Healthcare and life sciences
• Railroad, airline and pipeline transportation
• Oil and gas
• Electric power and transmission
• Financial services and trading 

PostgresConf is a global nonprofit conference series with a focus on growing community through increased awareness and education of Postgres and related technologies. PostgresConf is known for its highly attended national conference with the mission of:

PGConf US and Austin PUG organized a PGConf Mini last night. It was three presentations over the evening. We had good attendance and excellent community participation. The highlight of the evening was PGConf US Co-Chair Jim Molgendski's presentation, "Top 10 Mistakes When Migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL".

We tried something new this time around. We utilized Twitter's Periscope capability to live stream his presentation. It wasn't perfect but it was our first time and we are looking forward to utilizing the platform more in the future.

Click here to watch "To Mistakes When Migrating From Oracle to PostgreSQL", and then submit a presentation to one of our upcoming conferences:

• PGConf US Local: Philly
• PGConf US Local: Seattle

We’ve had a great response to our PostgresConf US 2019 call for proposals with over 170 potential presentations -- thank you to everyone who has submitted so far! As with what has become a tradition among Postgres Conferences, we are extending our deadline by one week to allow those final opportunities to trickle in!


We accept all topics that relate to People, Postgres, Data including any Postgres related topic, such as open source technologies (Linux, Python, Ruby, Golang, PostGIS).

Talks especially in high demand are sessions related to Regulated Industries including healthtech, fintech, govtech, etc., especially use case and case studies.

Interested in attending this year’s conference?

We’ve expanded our offerings, with trainings and tutorials open to everyone who purchases a Platinum registration. No separate fees for Mondays trainings (but it will be first come, first serve for seating).

Don’t forget that Early Bird registration ends this Friday, January 18. Tickets are substantially discounted when purchased early.

• Amazon
• Pivotal
• 2ndQuadrant
• Microsoft
• Timescale
• HighGo
• Data Dog
• Fivetran
• BlueTalon
• Goldman Sachs
• forhims
• Immuta

Join the fantastic and growing Postgres community in Cape Town, South Africa for a single day event on October 3rd, 2017! The event is being hosted by fellow Postgres advocates who travel from South Africa each year to attend our National Event in order to increase their knowledge of Postgres and be a part of the community. This year they are joining us and making a commitment to build out our International community and conferences!

• The CFP is open is open from now until August 25th. We will notify speakers by September 1st! Talks are subject to our presentation guidelines.

Local events are designed to bring comprehensive educational content and networking opportunities to the "local" Postgres community where the event is being held. They are perfect opportunities to show support for Postgres, find leads, and build relationships with other professionals and companies using and supporting Postgres.

Congratulations

Henrietta Dombrovskaya, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion member for PostgresConf as well as Chicago Postgresql organizer nominated for Technologist of the Year!

 

Career Opportunity

A large, well known media company is seeking a Senior Level PostgreSQL Engineer and Architect. This is an on-site engagement, however the company is known to be lifestyle friendly with reasonable working hours, good pay, and benefits. Specific talents requested are the ability to mentor. The location is Seattle, WA. If you are interested in this position please contact randy@neuringerco.com with your resume.

Great content

• Doubling the Sorting Speed of Postgres Network Types with Abbreviated Keys

• Automatically updating Materialized Views

• OrderedAppend: An optimization for range partitioning

Extension Highlight

We wanted to highlight some of the fantastic work that is being done by the ecosystem with Postgres Extensions. Although the base of Postgres is the amazing and extensible PostgreSQL, a lot of users don’t realize that Postgres has the feature they are looking for, if only they were to look to the ecosystem.

Notable Extensions:

• pgaudit : The goal of pgAudit is to provide PostgreSQL users with the capability to produce audit logs often required to comply with government, financial, or ISO certifications.

• pg_credereum : pg_credereum is a PostgreSQL extension that provides a cryptographically verifiable audit capability for a PostgreSQL database, bringing some properties of blockchain to relational DBMS.

• H3-pg : PostgreSQL bindings for H3, a hierarchical hexagonal geospatial indexing system.

Postgres can do what?

There are a ton of Postgres compatible features out there. Some of them are overlooked core features and some of them require installing a different version of Postgres. Here are a few examples:

 

• TimescaleDB: Time series data management with Postgres

• YugabyteDB: Globally Distributed database with PostgreSQL compatibility

• Postgres-XL: Horizontally partitioned PostgreSQL

• Agensgraph: Graph capabilities with Postgres

• PG-Strom: GPU accelerated extension for Postgres 

 

Upcoming Education and Networking opportunities:

• PostgresConf Silicon Valley

• PostgresConf South Africa

 

With the pending GA release of Star Link, more cities adopting municipal WIFI, and the growth of remote work due to the pandemic, one would assume that cell phone providers would be falling hand over fist to provide quality services at a quality price. Unfortunately this is not the case and it is hurting the future of our workforce.

Carriers currently think that 30GB of Hotspot data is enough for the average digital nomad. While that may have been the case previously, it isn’t any longer. There is a hundreds-of-thousands-strong workforce specializing in Information Technology, Digital Design, Web Development, and other creative industries. They are living, working and adventuring in RVs, Sprinters, Skooolies (pictured), and other vehicle dwelling options. This community is nomadic by design and should not be artificially limited by technology. 

 

Why is it that we are being charged so much money for so little? Outside of two providers announcing rural initiatives, we are still acting like data needs are small and that they come at a quality price. Data is ubiquitous; it is the new water (for getting work done). In the new economy workers need faster, higher quality, and unlimited amounts of data to get their job done.

 

Where could you go and what could you experience if you weren’t tethered by the faux limitations of bandwidth?

Resources

• Community Chat 
• Upcoming Free Webinars
• Community Blogs

Featured Content

• Using PostgreSQL, PostGIS, and pgRouting for street sweeping
• Zheap dropped by EnterpriseDB: Cybertec takes lead
• Professionalism Matters

Join the PostgreSQL community in Philadelphia on July 13th and 14th 2017 for two days of fantastic PostgreSQL content. July 13th will contain trainings and July 14th will be breakout sessions. The call for papers and sponsors is also open! When submitting papers to PGConf US events, please review the presentation guidelines.



PGConf US Local events are designed to bring comprehensive educational content and networking opportunities to the "local" PostgreSQL community where the event is being held. They are perfect opportunities to show support for PostgreSQL, find leads and build relationships with other professionals and companies using and support PostgreSQL.










d at Huntsman Hall at The Wharton School