As part of the countdown to PostgresConf Silicon Valley 2023, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.
Bryn Llewellyn is a Technical Product Manager at Yugabyte, Inc., which offers an open source, cloud native distributed SQL database that looks like PostgreSQL to the developer. Bryn’s speciality is SQL and stored procedures in the context of distributed SQL.
Bryn has worked in the software field for more than forty years. He started working with SQL when he joined Oracle UK in 1990. He relocated to Oracle HQ (Redwood Shores, CA) in 1996 and his last role, before leaving, was as the Product Manager for PL/SQL. He left Oracle in April 2019 to join YugaByte, Inc.
Bryn started off doing image analysis and pattern recognition at Oxford University (programming in FORTRAN) and then worked in Oslo, first at the Norwegian Computing Center and then in a startup. In Norway, Bryn programmed in Simula—recognized as the first object-oriented programming language and as the inspiration for C++.
Bryn will be presenting a mini-tutorial on Friday, April 21st at 9:30am Pacific Time on "How to configure a PostgreSQL cluster for multitenancy." Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:
Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.
I work for Yugabyte, Inc. (Learn more about Bryn's background). YugabyteDB uses the PostgreSQL query processing code “as is” on top of its own open source Spanner-like distributed storage system. I started at Yugabyte four years ago. And that’s when I first started to learn and to use PostgreSQL. My job is to document YugabyteDB’s SQL and PL/pgSQL functionality. This, by construction, has the same syntax and semantics as does vanilla PostgreSQL. I therefore ask lots of questions on the “pgsql-general” mailing list and, very occasionally, discover bugs in vanilla PostgreSQL.
What new features of PostgreSQL 15 are you most excited about?
Actually it’s a feature that’s new in Version 14: the new syntax for “language sql” functions that lets you define the body without making it a text literal so that it’s parsed at “create” time—allowing proper dependency tracking (and other benefits).
What features do you believe should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?
I would dearly like to see new functionality for "language plpgsql" subprograms that’s comparable to PL/SQL’s “package” construct (in Oracle Database).
Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2023? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
I describe a practical solution to a genuine problem. And I make all the code easily available for download from the GitHub repo.
What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
Meeting real PostgreSQL practitioners and talking with them about their real-world use cases.
What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres?
Get a job where you use the technology on a daily basis.
What's your top suggested readings for 2023? Books, blogs -- from fiction to non-fiction to technical, anything you enjoy?
Our Yugabyte blog!
What do you believe are the major achievements of open source and Postgres over the last decade?
How YugabyteDB has made the familiar PostgreSQL functionality available as an open source, cloud native, massively scalable and fault tolerant, distributed SQL database system. (Of course, I would say this!)
Anything else to add?
I’m excited to be attending (again), and speaking (again) at the Postgres Conference Silicon Valley.
Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023, and buy your tickets soon!