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

 

• Mastering PostgreSQL Administration

• Securing Data in a Multi-Platform Data Lake

• Personal Time Management

• Contributing to PostgreSQL

With more than 200 events submitted and approximately 80 slots to be filled, this has been the most difficult schedule to arrange in the history of PostgresConf. By far, the majority of content received we wanted to include in the schedule. It is that level of community support that we work so hard to achieve and we are thankful to the community for supporting PostgresConf. There is no doubt that the number one hurdle the community must overcome is effective access to education on Postgres. The US 2018 event achieves this with two full days of training and three full days of breakout sessions, including the Regulated Industry Summit and Greenplum Summit.

See something you like? Then it is time to buy those tickets!

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.

Scale, already built

 

We had a call with an ecosystem partner recently about a user that has over 20TB residing in our most beloved database. The response from the partner? “They are going to fall over.” It was an interesting response and also shows a lack of understanding of the absolute power and flexibility of Postgres implementations. This production installation (in the manufacturing industry) does not fall over and it sails over the waves like the 20’ swells don’t exist. The World’s Database is already scale built!

Shoutouts

Postgres Conference Beijing CFP

CFP Closes June 3rd! Submit your presentation now!

Postgres Conference Silicon Valley

Early bird tickets now available! Get your tickets today as we expect this year to sell out!

Postgresql.org, Postgresql v12 Beta 1 released: Test now!

Developer Week New york

• A fantastic conference that believes in the same ideals as Postgres Conference and People, Postgres, Data. It takes place June 17th - 20th.

The “People” part of People, Postgres, Data

The International Postgres Conference Series known as PostgresConf has the mission of “People, Postgres, Data.” It is based on the belief that taking care of and providing opportunities for people is our core goal.

 

In the coming months Co-Chair Amanda Nystrom will be spearheading a professional development series focused on the People part of the “People, Postgres, Data” mission. It will include articles, workshops, and, if all works out, a track at the event in 2020 at Times Square, New York City. We are excited to be expanding our serving of People through this opportunity.  

Ecosystem Content

• OLTP workload performance improvement in Greenplum 6
• Parallel PostGIS and PgSQL 12
• YugaByte DB Engineering Update
• DASH: Four Properties of Kubernetes-Native Databases
• 2019 PostgreSQL Trends Report: Private vs. Public Cloud, Migrations, Database Combinations & Top Reasons Used

Requesting Feedback

We are looking for good dates to host PostgresConf Philly in July/August 2019 and we are actively reviewing new markets for other Postgres Conference events including Texas, Vancouver B.C., and Seattle. If you have feedback on opportunities in these areas including dates, venues, or a desire to join the amazing People, Postgres, Data team, let us know at organizers@postgresconf.org.

 

Join our community

• News and Announcements

Upcoming Events

• Postgres Ibiza
• Postgres Conference Beijing
• Postgres Conference Silicon Valley
• Postgres Conference South Africa

People, Postgres, Data and The World’s Database

 

The World’s Database celebrates all of Postgres, including whichever version, fork, or hybrid used to build yourself, your business, or your hobby. We have Open and Closed Source technologies. We have amazing extensions (TimescaleDB), unique implementations (Yugabyte), and respected forks to solve specific problems such as Greenplum, Azure, and Aurora. We have meetups where professionals can gather to collaborate and network in all major U.S. markets. Most importantly we are an inclusive community celebrating everything surrounding the maturity, extensibility, and growth of the Postgres ecosystem.

 

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

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

Brass tacks

• Silicon Valley is selling tickets briskly, get yours today and join us at the largest gathering of Postgres leaders on the West Coast.

• South Africa is set to release their schedule shortly. Watch the site for opportunities in October.

• We have hinted at digital events in the past and they are in the final planning stages. Digital events will encompass best in class content from our community in the format of Webinars, Q&A sessions and Professional electronic training opportunities. Watch for more news on these unique opportunities as we get closer to Fall 2019.

Seasons

It is the middle of summer, and as Glenn Frey would say, “The Heat is on!” Summer is the time when everyone is busy, yet nobody is busy. You have a contract to execute but the signer is on vacation. You have a project to complete but your digital nomad developer took off for the beach. Suddenly even checks may be delayed because of a long weekend up in the mountains. It is also a time to catch up on the things that may have been overlooked. When the person driving your priorities is on vacation it is easier to step back and observe your purpose.

 

Introduction

At PostgresConf 2019 in Manhattan we organized a Diversity and Inclusion panel with the help of Plato. The panel was well attended, but not as much as we had hoped. This fact outlined that we had more work to do on expanding our leadership position within Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Professional Postgres community.

We take this topic very seriously and we would consider PostgresConf and our focus on People, Postgres, Data a success if the only outcome was for all to feel welcome and supported within our community. Thankfully we have organizers and volunteers who are passionate about this very topic.

We would like to introduce the PostgresConf and PgCentral Foundation DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Work Group:

• Debra Cerda: DEI Organizer

• Henrietta Dombrovskaya: Contributor

• Ryan Lambert: Contributor

• Mara Lemagie: Contributor

• Vikki McCormick: Contributor

• Amanda Nystrom: Co-Chair Sponsor

Over the coming months we will be continuing to communicate our passion, our purpose, our action and our accomplishments in bringing true Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to our community.

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus” -- Martin Luther King

 

PostgresConf Philly which is organized in conjunction with Philly Postgres sold out in July! A packed room, great content and glorious collaboration was available to all for free due to the generous support of the Wharton School for Business!

As we continue to build our professional relationships, connections with academia are going to be vital. Academia is one of the few spaces that Postgres has not been able to make assertive gains in adoption and it crucial to the long term vision of our community that Academia recognize and adopt Postgres as the World’s Database and a viable option for teaching the next generation of data experts.

 

International communication

As our community grows Internationally with strong ties to Asia, and countries in the Southern Hemisphere it becomes difficult to connect with those cultures using our normal nomenclature. In our last newsletter we used a quote meant to be a compliment and challenge to the Western communities to try new things. The quote was about pigs ears and how they are delicious. The quote was interpreted by some in the Asia community as negative.

While writing this newsletter, we had used a spelling variation for the term “Wowzers” which in American pop culture is meant to be an exclamation of amazement. However in other cultures it maintains a negative connotation causing us to change the term to Kapow. These communication challenges show us that we must be open and without pride in our communication. We must show patience and understanding with cultures that are not like ours and that the communities that are able to achieve this will lead the future of Open Source and Postgres.

“Every human is like all other humans, some other humans, and no other human” — Clyde Kluckhon

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

Jacque Istok, is the Head of Data for Pivotal, one of our Diamond Sponsors for PostgresConf US 2018. Pivotal is hosting the first annual Greenplum Summit at PostgresConf US 2018, with lots of great Greenplum and Postgres-related content. Read what Jacque has to say bout Greenplum and Postgres, as well as why to attend the Greenplum Summit: 

Greenplum is an Open Source variant of Postgres; what benefits do you bring to the table over vanilla Postgres?

Postgres is a powerful ORDBMS, but as your data scales, the only way to keep up is to buy bigger and bigger machines to run on. It suffers from the same problems that all SMP databases do: you can only get as big as the machine you’re running on.

With Greenplum you can put a subset of your data on a Postgres database on one reasonably-sized machine, and another subset on a second machine, and so on. All of your users and applications can then query one of these Postgres databases as if all the data was in a single location - making your data scale limitless. Greenplum manages the distribution, data shuffling, and querying of all of your data across a magically sharded implementation of Postgres databases.

Greenplum has its own community; what do you hope to achieve by joining the Postgres community and PostgresConf?

The Postgres community represents some of the most passionate and knowledgeable creators, developers, and users of database technology of our time. We believe that the combination of Postgres and Greenplum becomes the software equivalent of what Oracle Exadata purported to be: an all-purpose database that can do both transactional and analytical workloads across multi-structured data. Simply put, the Greenplum community is looking to join with the Postgres community to further the understanding and adoption of these technologies.

Do you have plans for cross pollination of technologies with the two open source projects?

Greenplum forked from Postgres over 10 years, circa Postgres 8.2. Greenplum 5.0 is based off of Postgres 8.3, with our next major release slated for Postgres 9.4 (current open source Greenplum is compatible with 9.0 as of this writing).

Likewise, we have Postgres committers working at Pivotal looking for opportunities to improve the Postgres code specifically for analytics. We are also ensuring that other projects related to Greenplum, like Apache MADLib, continue to be compatible with Postgres.

What challenges do you see working with the Postgres community as an open source fork?

The Postgres community is a long-running and very passionate group, and we want to be both collaborative and respectful in how we continue to grow our participation. We see the products as having synergies which complement each other very well, with some use cases that best fit Postgres, and others that best fit Greenplum. The use of either benefits the other as they both further adoption.

What would you tell a user who has a choice between Postgres and Greenplum about when they should use which system?

Postgres is a great ORDBMS that will scale to the performance of a single server. For analytical needs, being restricted to a small number of terabytes does not allow for the type of exploration that most organizations need. Because Greenplum is a Postgres compatible database, you can start out using Postgres and either convert to Greenplum underneath or leverage Greenplum alongside your Postgres systems (making data ETL a ton easier). This then makes the choice of which product to use for your particular use case clearer and clearer.

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

The number one barrier we will have to contributing is not seeing the corresponding adoption of our technologies. We feel very strongly that both the transparency and removal of vendor lock-in make our open source commitment the only choice for users. I’m here to implore the community to embrace our technology with zeal and help us continue to drive more and more Postgres adoption in the world.

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

Because Greenplum is based on Postgres, we get to interact with this vast community of talent. We are also able to more seamlessly interact with ecosystem products that already work with Postgres, making the adoption of Greenplum that much easier.

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

PostgresConf is going to be awesome - with both Pivotal and Amazon headlining as Diamond sponsors - as well as the quality of speakers and their content. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.

We’re thrilled to organize the first annual Greenplum Summit at PostgresConf. Greenplum co-founder, Scott Yara, will give a keynote on April 18th relating to how data tells the story at the organizations that we help enable (#DataTellsTheStory), and his journey from SMP to MPP. Greenplum Summit on April 19th will be a full day packed with with great use case sessions and tech talks for novices and experts alike.

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

• Friday, September 29, 2017: Trainings

Mastering Postgres Administration: Bruce Momjian

Postgres Performance and Maintenance: Joshua D. Drake 

• Saturday, September 30, 2017: Breakout Sessions (To be announced)