Joshua D. Drake Blog Posts

We are having yet another PGConf Mini in NYC. The event is scheduled for December 14th, 2017 and Work Bench is hosting:

Efficiently and Safely Propagate Data Changes Without Triggers!

Interested in attending this year’s conference?

Register for PostgresConf 2019

Interested in an AWESOME international Postgres Conference opportunity? Consider attending PgConf Russia

After National 2017, the PGConf US team decided to take a long hard road to bring the best in educational content and advocacy to the entire Postgres ecosystem. Today, we welcome 2ndQuadrant as a Platinum sponsor and thank them for helping us with our year over year projects.

Other PGConf US news:

• Mastering PostgreSQL Administration

• Securing Data in a Multi-Platform Data Lake

• Personal Time Management

• Contributing to PostgreSQL

On occasion, professional developers will drop into the Postgresql.org mailing lists, meetups, and conferences to ask the question, “Why isn’t PostgreSQL development on Github?” In an effort to see if the demand was really there and not just anecdotal we ran a poll/survey over several social media platforms that asked a simple question:

Should PostgreSQL development move to Github?

• Yes
• No
• No, but to something like Gitlab would be good

We received well over 300 responses and the majority (75%+) chose a move to Github or to something like Github. This was an unscientific poll but it does point out a few interesting topics for consideration:

1. We need to recognize that the current contribution model does work for existing contributors. We need to have an honest discussion about what that means for the project as contributors age, change employment, and mature in their skill set, etc..
2. Of the people that argued in comments against the move to a service, only one is a current contributor to PostgreSQL.org core code. The rest were former code contributors or those who contribute in other ways (Advocacy, System administration, etc.).
3. Would a move to Github or similar option produce a higher rate of contribution?

This poll does not answer point #3; it only provides a data point that people may desire a modern collaboration platform. The key takeaway from the conversation about migrating to Github or similar service is the future generation of developers use technology such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. They expect a bug/issue tracker. They demand simplicity in collaboration and most importantly they will run a cost->benefit analysis to determine if the effort to contribute is a net positive.

It should also be considered that this is not just individual potential contributors. There are many corporations big and small that rely on the success of PostgreSQL. Those corporations will not contribute as much directly to PostgreSQL if the cost to benefit analysis is a net negative. They will instead contribute through other more productive means that produce a net positive when the cost->benefit analysis is run. A good example of this analysis is the proliferation of external projects such as pg_auto_failover, patroni and lack of direct contribution from innovative extension based companies.

Do we need a culture shift within PostgreSQL?

There are those within the Postgresql.org community that would suggest that we do not need a culture shift within PostgreSQL but that does not take into account the very clear market dynamics that are driving the growth of PostgreSQL, Postgres, and the global ecosystem. It is true that 20 years of hard work by Postgresql.org started the growth and it is also true that the majority of growth in the ecosystem and community is from products such as Greenplum, Aurora, Azure, and Timescale. The growth in the ecosystem is from the professional community and that ecosystem will always perform a cost to benefit analysis before contributing.

It is not that we should create radical rifts or disrupt our culture. It is to say that we must evolve and shift our community thinking. We need to be able to consider the big picture. A discussion should never start as an opposition to change. The idea of change should be an open discussion about possibility and vision. It should always include whether the change is a good idea and it should always avoid visceral reactions of, "works for me,” “no,” or “we tried that 15 years ago." Those reactions are immature and lacking in the very thing the community needs to continue to grow: positivity, inclusion, vision, and inspiration.

Invisible Disease Awareness

“According to the Disabled World website, an estimated 10% of the U.S. population has what could be considered an ‘invisible’ disease, defined as a health condition that causes significant impairment and undermines the overall quality of life but does not outwardly manifest itself in ways that are apparent to others.” [1]

While normally our focus is Postgres, we wanted to take a moment to bring attention to the People side of People, Postgres, Data. May is mental health and Ehlers-Danlos awareness month. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) is a rare condition that affects the collagen throughout the entire body, resulting in dislocations, subluxations, lack of joint stability and support, tendinosis, and debilitating pain. There is no cure and the symptoms are life long.

In 2020, PostgresWarrior (AKA Amanda Nystrom) was diagnosed with Hypermobile EDS and Fibromyalgia. She is an instrumental and invaluable member of the People, Postgres, Data community. She has driven us forward in ways that so many of us never see and yet require to succeed. Many of our community are affected by invisible diseases - let's take a moment to appreciate what they accomplish and fight for in Postgres/Open Source.

Upcoming webinars | RSVP here

• May 25, 1pm ET: Creating a Resilient PostgreSQL Cluster with Kubegres

• June 15, 1pm ET: When it All Goes Wrong - Incident Response in Large Postgres Databases

• June 23, 1pm ET: Making Postgres Fly on Kubernetes

• June 29, 1pm ET: Implementing Cluster File Encryption in Postgres

Community Chat

Our Discord Channel has 2000 community members waiting to participate in your Postgres success. Join us today with a community that has rule #1 of: Be Nice.

Podcasts

• Building Your Data Warehouse On Top Of PostgreSQL - Episode 186
• More than a Refresh: Stephanie Kirmer, Data Scientist for Saturn Cloud

1. https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/072417p32.shtml

How do you use Postgres?

I work Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and within Fred Hutch, I work for the largest group called SCHARP, Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention. We use Postgres to monitor the AIDS drug trials real time to see if the trials are working or not. This means we collect the data from doctors and labs around the world, and analyzing the data. We also have servers where we receive data from other research institutes and share our randomized data, de-personalized, with other research institutes.

What community contributions have you provided?

In 2010 I started SeaPUG, Seattle Postgres Users Group, at the request of Josh Drake. I have at least have the presentations there every year. I have also discovered several PostgreSQL: bugs which have been fixed. Some of them affected every version of PostgreSQL. Bug numbers: 7553, 8173, 8257, 8291. I also found 8545, which has not been fixed but Core has acknowledge needs to be fixed but they are not sure where it should be fixed, pg_dump or pg_dumpall. I started the PostgreSQL track at LinuxFest Northwest in 2014 after my GIS presentation in 2013 was standing room only. This year I got a booth at the SeaGL, Seattle GNU Linux, conference with the idea of having a booth there next year along with also doing a PostgreSQL presentation next year at the conference.

You recently took a renewed interest in speaking at Postgres Conferences, why?

I have been giving presentations locally now for the last 7 years and so I am now ready to move on to the next step, doing presentations at the Local and National conferences around the United States.

What is the #1 barrier you see to Postgres adoption?

People not knowing about PostgreSQL, most people know about MYSQL, MSSQL and Oracle, but do not know about PostgreSQL. This is changing, some, with the Cloud providers now offering PostgreSQL, but I go to these conferences, LinuxFest Northwest and SeaGL, and people all the time are asking me, "What is Postgres and why should I use it over MYSQL, MSSQL or Oracle", because they have never heard of PostgreSQL.

What is something you feel the wider Postgres community could be better at?

We need to promote PostgreSQL so that new people starting personal projects and starting at companies, will think about PostgreSQL before other databases. This starts with getting the younger generation interested in PostgreSQL and that also means that we need to get the college professors willing to talk about PostgreSQL in their curriculums instead of ignoring PostgreSQL for all the other competing databases. Some of this means that at all the other conferences, we need to have a PostgreSQL presence, aka booth and presentations. We should also come up with a certification method for PostgreSQL DBA's, User's, Engineer's, etc so that prospective employers will have an idea of the prospective employees skill set.

PostgresConf US 2018 is in 9 days. Here is the obligatory "Buy your tickets" reminder! If you look around (a Google search of Gold sponsor Google Cloud is a good place to start) you will find a lot of discount codes.

In 2017 we launched a community wide effort to better recognize contributors for not only the conference but the wider Postgres Community. We continued this effort in 2018 and are pleased to have many speaker profiles available, with more being published every day:

• Les McMonagle
• Malcolm McLean
• Elizabeth Zalman
• Hubert Zhang of Pivotal
• Baron Schwartz
• Jignesh Shah
• Tim Gorman
• Tom Limoncelli

The Chairs (myself, Jim Mlodgenski, and Amanda Nystrom) have recently decided to bring some visibility to charities that are close to our hearts. They are listed below:

• Joshua Drake: Navajo Water Project. The Navajo nation is approximately the size of West Virginia and has a population of over 150,000 people (300k in the tribe). Anywhere from 15% - 40% of the residents do not have access to running water. The Navajo Water Project aims to bring clean water to each person and family through support from those that donate. 
• Jim Mlodgenski: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The hospital is one of the premier research hospitals for cancer and other life threatening illnesses for some of our most vulnerable people. Approximately one in 285 children in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday. Through donations, St. Jude’s provides treatment to those with cancer, and is actively dedicating resources to the research and cure for cancer. 
• Amanda Nystrom: ASPCA. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCS) was the first humane society to be established in North America, with the goal of providing kind and respectful treatment to animals under the law. Unlike humans, cases of animal abuse aren’t compiled but studies have shown a correlation between domestic violence and animal abuse. The ASPCA prevents animal homelessness and actively rescues animals from dangerous and/or cruel situations.

Upcoming Webinars

With the Coronavirus causing the conference market to dry up for 2020, we at Postgres Conference have pivoted to ensure that we continue to provide quality Postgres content to the world of People, Postgres, Data. We have been performing multiple webinars per month. Here is the current schedule and you can register (free) here:

• May 21, 11am PT: A Deep Dive into PostgreSQL Indexing
• June 2, 10AM PT: How to Move Data from Oracle to Postgres in Near-Real Time
• June 9, 11am PT: Community vs. Enterprise Open Source – Which is Right for Your Business?
• June 10, 11am PT: Bring Compression to Postgres at Zero Cost of Performance
• June 16, 11AM PT: Mostly mistaken and ignored PostgreSQL parameters while optimizing a PostgreSQL database
• June 30, 11am PT: Deeper Understanding of PostgreSQL Execution Plan: At plan time and run time
• July 15, 10AM PT: Working with JSON Data in PostgreSQL vs. MongoDB
• June 17, 11am PT: Postgres vs. MongoDB for real-time machine learning on wind turbine data

Articles from the community

• Why work for hire could be limiting your company and yourself
• Build PostgreSQL extensions on Windows
• Operationalizing your PostgreSQL database health checks using SQL Notebooks
• Building fast refresh capability in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Multi-tenant data isolation with PostgreSQL Row Level Security

Coronavirus Resources:

• Open-Access Data and Computational Resources to Address COVID-19