Debra Cerda Blog Posts

 

Pavan Deolasse is a PostgreSQL consultant for 2ndQuadrant, one of our Platinum Sponsors for PostgresConf US 2018. Learn more about Pavan in this Community Profile:

Pavan Deolasee is a contributor to the development of PostgreSQL and related technologies. He holds a Masters of Technology in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and has several publications to his credit.

Pavan was introduced to PostgreSQL in the year 2006 when he started working for a PostgreSQL company. Hacking PostgreSQL was a completely new experience, but by accepting help from the community -- especially Simon Riggs, his mentor -- he began working through the code and was soon working on a very important project (Heap-Only-Tuple aka HOT). It was a very complicated piece of work, yet one of the landmark features in PostgreSQL and to this day remains one of his most important contributions to the project. Pavan has since contributed several patches to PostgreSQL. 

HOT was committed to PostgreSQL in 2008 and Pavan has continued to stay fully engaged with the project. In 2009/2010, alongside other colleagues, Pavan started work on Postgres-XC, a distributed, shared-nothing, clustering solution based on PostgreSQL. He was involved in designing the high-level architecture of the solution, and later wrote many important pieces of the code such as the GTM, the GTM Proxy, the 2PC transaction controller at the coordinator, changes required to guarantee global consistency of the data, and many distributed planner and executor pieces.

When Postgres-XL, a fork of Postgres-XC, was released to the public in 2014, Pavan once again became involved with the project and has been leading the development of Postgres-XL ever since. 

Pavan joined 2ndQuadrant not long after in April 2015, and once again started working with long time colleagues and friends; he and 2ndQuadrant have continued to actively work on the development of Postgres-XL. The focus area of development has been stability and performance of the product while keeping the fork as close to open source PostgreSQL as possible. The most recent release (Postgres-XL 10) supports intra-datanode query parallelism, thus taking distributed query processing to the next level.

In 2013, Pavan and two of his colleagues started the India PostgreSQL User Group. They started conducting small meet-ups, in order to promote the technology in India and bring the local community together. These small gatherings have now expanded with a membership of over 600 members, and into a full scale conference: PGConf India, Asia's largest PostgreSQL conference with more than 250 people in attendance each day in 2018. 

As part of the 2ndQuadrant team of PostgreSQL developers, Pavan continues to work on many interesting new features. He is an active part of the production support team and also has the opportunity to investigate interesting customer problems, often leading to important and critical bug fixes to the open source project.

Pavan had this to say about his involvement with the project:

“I love PostgreSQL and the PostgreSQL community, so you will continue to see me around.”

 

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.

Meet Ry Walker, Founder and CEO of CoreDB, which is currently in private beta. CoreDB "provides provides a fully-managed, secure, scalable Postgres cluster with access to an ecosystem of extensions, expanding the capabilities of a database." Ry is a long-time coder, founder investor and champion of open source. He enjoys nature, science, art, tennis, platform tennis, golf, basketball, fishing and indie game development.

Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his keynote session "The Growing Postgres Ecosystem" on Thursday, April 20th:

 

Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

I've been a user since the beginning, recently started CoreDB which will provide a managed Postgres SaaS.

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2023?  What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Learn about exciting Postgres extensions and what CoreDB is planning to contribute to the ecosystem

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?

I'm a first timer :)

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres?

Blog about your journey.

 What's your top suggested readings for 2023?  Books, blogs -- from fiction to non-fiction to technical, anything you enjoy?

The Hobbit :)

What do you believe are the major achievements of open source and Postgres over the last decade?

The rise of open source and open core companies is exciting!

 

Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023, and buy your tickets soon!

Debra Cerda     April 12, 2023     postgres speaker spotlight

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.

Meet Tatiana Krupenya, CEO of DBeaver. DBeaver provides a GUI interface that "connects to all data sources and stores, enables special extensions for big data databases, and includes supplemental features like a data viewer, an editor, mock data generator, metadata browsing and visual query builders, enabling users to dynamically access all of their databases while working within one environment."

Tatiana will present "Let robots help with queries" at this year's conference. Read more about Tatiana below:

 

Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. 

DBeaver is one of the most popular UI tools for Postgres administration and data management. We support not only PostgreSQL itself but all popular forks and Postgres-based data sources, like Greenplum, Yugabyte, Redshift and others.

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

We have gotten used to thinking that working with databases is for database administrators and developers. However, thanks to modern technologies, people from other professional areas can also do this. It's data engineers, data architects, financial analysts, machine learning specialists, and others. The only thing that we need is to provide them with a safe and convenient infrastructure. In my talk, I would like to show how OpenAI can help with that.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?

The best thing is the atmosphere. You can meet interesting people, learn about cutting-edge technologies, find new partners, and all of these in a friendly and positive environment.

Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023. Walk-up registration is still available. Learn more here!

Debra Cerda     April 20, 2023     speaker spotlight

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Peter Celentano is a Senior Specialist Solutions Architect, specializing in RDS PostgreSQL and Aurora PostgreSQL. Collaborating with AWS clients, he crafts scalable, secure, performant, and resilient cloud-based database architectures.

Peter will present "PostgreSQL Architecture Considerations for Application Developers". Read what Peter has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
So much content in the PostgreSQL sphere focuses on the DBA best practices and how-to's, but not much exists by comparison for the database developer. In my talk, we'll discuss key PostgreSQL concepts and database architecture (and why app developers should care). I hope folks that attend my talk take away lessons learned from the field and some best practices which they may not be aware of yet.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
Meeting community experts and customers whom I've met virtually (but not yet in person).

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry-level developer who is interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
The documentation for PostgreSQL is excellent (by comparison to many other open source projects). Spin up an ec2 instance, install PostgreSQL, and start figuring out how it works! You'll always learn more by breaking something and figuring out how to fix it then by reading about it in a book! Don't forget to vacuum!!

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
I see the development of better open source LLMs and hardware to back them. And eventually, deeper integration with GenAI in the Postgres core.

What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
Streamlining the patch review/approval process, allowing for faster innovation in Postgres core (without compromising on security and stability)

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here!

  

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Manish Shah is founder and CEO of Datasparc, and brings expertise in product development, database security, and scalable cloud systems. His thought leadership and patent ownership in sensitive data discovery and protection underscore his ability to influence and innovate in the field.

Manish will present "Zero Trust database access with DBHawk". Read what Manish has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Join the session exploring critical database security and access challenges. Manish will dissect current issues and provide solutions for achieving precise zero-trust database access.


What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
Meeting face-to-face Postgres users.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
Learn SQL and other programming language. Install Postgres and start playing with it.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
Businesses are recognizing the value of open source software, and its adoption in the enterprise is expected to grow.

What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
Strong security and reliable support are crucial for wider adoption of Postgres. After all, data is an organization's most valuable asset.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

 

 

Debra Cerda     April 17, 2024     speaker spotlight

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Shayon Sanyal is a Principal PostgreSQL Specialist at Amazon Aurora, with over 15 years experience, and crafts resilient applications, leveraging PostgreSQL's advanced features.

Shayon will present Enhancing OLTP Systems with pgvector: Best Practices in Database Design. Read what Shayon has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
The integration of pgvector into existing Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems represents a significant advancement in leveraging vector search capabilities within traditional database environments. This presentation is designed to educate database professionals on the thoughtful integration of pgvector into OLTP applications powered by PostgreSQL, ensuring enhanced functionalities without compromising the core transactional integrity and performance. Attendees will learn how to adopt pgvector to unlock new application features while maintaining reliability, performance and scalability of their PostgreSQL databases. The presentation provides a roadmap for practical pgvector integration regardless of the hosting environment.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
For me, the most amazing aspect of the Postgres Conference is the opportunity to learn from and engage with some of the most brilliant minds in the PostgreSQL ecosystem. The lineup of speakers and contributors is always exceptional, offering invaluable insights and perspectives that can shape the future of this powerful database management system. The depth and breadth of technical discussions from advanced database internals and performance optimizations to cutting-edge features and real-world use cases, the conference provides a platform for exploring the full potential of PostgreSQL. It's a true feast for those who crave technical excellence.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
My advice would be to dive in headfirst and immerse yourself in the open source community. Start by exploring the official documentation and resources provided by the PostgreSQL project. Don't be afraid to ask questions on forums, mailing lists, or community channels – you'll be amazed at how welcoming and supportive the community is, especially towards those eager to learn. Attend local meetups or online events focused on PostgreSQL and open source technologies. These are excellent platforms for networking, learning from experienced professionals, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
Increased adoption across industries: Open source technologies have already gained widespread acceptance in the tech industry, but I expect their adoption to accelerate across various other sectors, such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and government. As organizations recognize the benefits of open source, including cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and community-driven innovation, they will be more inclined to embrace these technologies in their mission-critical systems.
What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
If I had to pick 2 then - 1/ Community Support and Documentation: Evaluate the size and activity level of the community surrounding the open source project. A vibrant and engaged community is often a good indicator of the project's long-term sustainability and the availability of support resources, such as documentation, forums, and mailing lists. and 2/ Scalability and Performance: Thoroughly assess the scalability and performance capabilities of the open source technologies you intend to use, especially if you anticipate handling large volumes of data or high-traffic workloads. Conduct performance testing and benchmarking to ensure that the technologies meet your specific requirements. Then there are other considerations such as security and compliance, integration and interoperability etc.


Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

Debra Cerda     April 16, 2024     speaker spotlight

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.


Tatiana Krupenya is CEO of DBeaver Corp, an information technology company with many years of experience developing database management tools. DBeaver has created a full-featured data solution that easily adapts to users' needs, from open-source tools to all-in-one enterprise software. PostgreSQL is one of the most popular databases among DBeaver users.

Tatiana will present "Looking for the differences in your data". Read what Tatiana has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
If you have ever tried to compare the data between tables, you know that it's not so obvious. It's not difficult if your table has a few tens of rows. You can easily do this visually. But what if you have thousands or millions of rows? Let's review the possible ways to compare this amount of data together.
What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
The best at any Postgres Conference is the Postgres Community. An opportunity to talk to people who are inspired by technology and ready to share their own experiences is invaluable. The conference is a place where you can feel what is the open-source culture.
How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
There are no limits to open source. I am happy to see that big corporations invest more and more resources in open source. I believe that open source is not charity but a quality sign. Open source is always on the edge of technologies; it's flexible, and it's open to new. It's hard to predict how exactly these technologies will evolve over the next five years, but there are no doubts that open source will have an important place there.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your ticket! Walk-up registration is available onsite.

Debra Cerda     April 15, 2024     speaker spotlight dbeaver

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Tracy Jenkins is a Database Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services. She enjoys working with databases and helping customers architect performant, highly available, and scalable solutions while making recommendations on reliability, cost, and security.

Tracy Jenkins will present PostgreSQL Architecture Considerations for Application Developers. Read what Tracy has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

It's a session to present and discuss beginning your journey into PostgreSQL and discussing some of the database-specific terms.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
The community getting together to network and help others working with the engine.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry-level developer who is interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
If you have any questions, ask.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
I see its use increasing more and more because for PostgreSQL to be an open source engine, it's very powerful and the world is noticing.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

 

Debra Cerda     April 12, 2024     postgres speaker spotlight architecture

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Dave Stokes is author of "MySQL & JSON - A Practical Programming Guide," and serves as a Technology Evangelist for Percona, advocating for MySQL innovation and best practices.

Dave will present “MERGE() - A Quick Introduction”. Read what Dave has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
I like to show attendees new facets on old tools and help beginners master the very steep learning curves of today's world.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
The hallway track.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who is interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
You learn by breaking and repairing. After awhile you can learn to minimize the breakage but never the repairing.
And when you go to a show like Postgres Conference 2024 and have an open slot in the schedule, go attend a session on a subject you know absolutely nothing about. You will either learn that you do not like the subject and have only spent an hour of your life on something that does not interest you, or you will find another rabbit hole to explore.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
PostgreSQL will be the dominant database. Sadly license changes may push us back to a pre-open source era when you had minimal or no choices in software.
What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
It needs to be more robust. Better replication that is easier to set up, no XID wrap-around, and easy upgrades.

Additional comments?
This is a great show - make the most of your opportunities.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

Debra Cerda     April 17, 2024     speaker spotlight

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Chandra Pathivada is is a Senior Database Specialist Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services. He works with the AWS RDS team, focusing on Open Source database engines like RDS PostgreSQL, Aurora PostgreSQL, and Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL.

Chandra will present “Why PostgreSQL Isn't Utilizing Indexes: Diagnosing and Solving Performance Issues" and "Behind the Scenes: Demystifying Transaction Isolation in App Development". Read what Chandra has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
This talk dives into the core concepts, shedding light on the real-world implications of different isolation levels on performance and integrity. Through interactive examples and case studies, attendees will learn how to navigate common pitfalls and optimize application performance, balancing concurrency with isolation effectively. Gain the knowledge and best practices necessary to implement error-free database-backed applications, making it an invaluable opportunity for anyone looking to enhance their expertise in database management and application development.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
Engage with the PostgreSQL community. This conference offers a rich tapestry of learning, sharing, and networking. It's where boundaries of knowledge expand through collaboration and where every attendee, regardless of expertise, finds value and inspiration.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
Start with fundamentals through hands-on practice, engage with the community through forums and meetups, and contribute to projects. Expand your knowledge through tutorials and start building your own projects. Have a mentor and network with professionals specializing in areas of interest.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
In the next five years, open-source technologies are set to play a pivotal role in innovation, with a growing preference among developers and organizations to initiate their projects or migrate from commercial to open-source solutions. The community-driven nature of these technologies will fuel the addition of new features, enhancing their value and appeal.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

Debra Cerda     May 07, 2024     speaker spotlight