Joshua D. Drake Blog Posts

• Mastering PostgreSQL Administration

• Securing Data in a Multi-Platform Data Lake

• Personal Time Management

• Contributing to PostgreSQL

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

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 :) .

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.

PGConf US in partnership with SeaPug is pleased to announce that the call for papers for PostgreSQL Conference US Local: Seattle is now open. 

National Diamond Sponsor

The call for papers will be open from May 16, 2017 until July 2, 2017. Speakers will be notified of acceptance/decline no later than July 8.

The two track, two day conference is a perfect opportunity for the Vancouver, B.C., west coast, and Rocky Mountain regions to join the PostgreSQL community and increase their knowledge.

National Platinum Sponsor

Breakdown of the Conference Layout: 

• August 11th: Training
• August 12th: Breakout Sessions 

All selected presenters will receive free entry to the breakout sessions (trainings are extra). There are no grants for travel and accommodations. We encourage everyone to submit a talk or training to one of our very first PostgreSQL Conference US Local events and be a part of growing the PostgreSQL community.

The inaugural PGConf US Local: Ohio Conference (PGConf Ohio) will be held September 29th - 30th at the Hyatt Regency Columbus Ohio (350 North High Street Columbus, Ohio, USA, 43215).

• Friday, September 29, 2017: Training. Registration for the PGConf Ohio trainings is open now.

Mastering Postgres Administration: Bruce Momjian

We caught up with Alex Tatiyants after finding out about his Pev project. This is an awesome web based visual explain analyzer that is similar to the awesome explain.depesz . 

Tell us a little bit (one or two paragraphs) about your project or how you use Postgres: 

I created Pev (Postgres EXPLAIN Visualizer) to scratch my own itch. EXPLAIN generates a wealth of information, but isn’t easy to make sense of. I wanted to create a tool that helps me quickly diagnose problems with queries. Apparently, other people found it useful as well.

Why did you chose Postgres for your project? 

As Postgres Conference pushes forward in the brave new world, we evolve and increase the ability for the People, Postgres, Data community to succeed. As a part of our positive adaptation we have a new website that features upcoming events, professional content (written and video), and the best in our written community via “Community Content”.

Discord

In an effort to provide a modern, friendly, and inclusive community platform, we have launched a Discord server for all things Postgres. We are providing a helpful experience with rule #1 being: Be Nice. Our discussions will branch out beyond the core of PostgreSQL and provide a forum for success with Postgres and related technologies. Join us for what is guaranteed to be a refreshing experience for the community: https://discord.gg/tjxNBCz

2021

We are seeking feedback from our community on 2021 in-person events. We are currently considering the East Coast event for October 2021 and the West Coast event for December 2021. Please help us in determining the type of event you would like to participate in!

Upcoming live events

We currently have the following webinars scheduled through October:

• September 9th, 10AM PST: PostgreSQL Parallelism Do’s and Don’ts
• September 15th, 10AM PT: Monitoring Strategy Considerations
• September 29th, 10AM PST: Introduction to PostgreSQL ColumnStore Indexes

• September 16, 10AM PT: How To Query Against Multiple Postgres Instances As If They're One Server Using Starburst Presto
• September 29, 10AM PST:Introduction to PostgreSQL ColumnStore Indexes
• September 30, 10AM PT: Live Demo: Creating A Single Point Of Access To Multiple Postgres Servers Using Starburst Presto
• October 14, 10AM PT: Live Demo: Live Demo: Unlock Data In Postgres Servers To Query It With Other Data Sources LIke Hive, Kafka, Other DBMSs, And More.

The following table contains a summary profit and loss statement for PostgresConf US 2018.

Oh my goodness, Data Days!

CFP Dates:

• Open until: 10/15/2017
• Notification:  10/18/2017
• CFP Link