About

I am currently an engineer at OpenAI infra team. Previously, I co-founded OtterTune, an AI-powered database optimization startup. Before that, I worked with Prof.Andy Pavlo at the Carnegie Mellon database group on the OtterTune research project. I have spent several years in optimizing Postgres for many customers with both domain knowledge and machine learning.

I spoke at PostgreSQL Conferences in the past including PGConf Asia 2020, PGConf Asia 2021, PGConf Silicon Valley 2023 and Postgres Conference 2024.


Bohan Zhang has presented the following presentations

    Bohan Zhang Does machine learning for database optimization work in the real world? at Seattle 2024
    Lessons learned from OtterTune, an AI-powered database tuning service

    presented by Bohan Zhang

    Database Management Systems (DBMSs) are complex software that require precise tuning to achieve optimal performance on specific hardware and workloads. However, manual tuning by experienced administrators becomes impractical for large-scale DBMS deployments. To address this challenge, there has been a growing trend in both academia and industry to employ machine learning (ML) for automatic data...

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    Wed 6 2024 Ops
    Bohan Zhang Everything you want to know about Postgres autovacuum at Postgres Conference 2024
    Best practices for monitoring and tuning autovacuum in Postgres

    presented by Bohan Zhang

    Because of the design and implementation of Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) in Postgres, the old data accumulates during updates. Hence, the indispensable role of Postgres autovacuum, responsible for garbage collection of dead tuples, becomes crucial for ensuring database performance. However, effectively monitoring and tuning autovacuum is a non-trivial task. In this presentation, I w...

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    Thu 18 2024 Essentials
    Bohan Zhang The Part of PostgreSQL I Hate the Most at Silicon Valley 2023
    what are the drawbacks of MVCC in Postgres and how to optimize it

    presented by Bohan Zhang

    Postgres is awesome. It is currently the fourth most popular database (source: DB-Engines), and its popularity continues to grow as strong as ever due to several factors: its rich set of features, mixing object storage and relational capabilities; its extensibility; and its status as an open source project. But as much as we love PostgreSQL, there are certain aspects about it that are not that ...

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    Fri 21 2023 Ops