Debra Cerda Blog Posts

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.

Silas Marvin is a founding software engineer at PostgresML, writes software for fun and a better future.

Silas will present "RAG Masterclass: Simplify your data infrastructure with in-database NLP using pgml and pgvector for Retrieval Augmented Generation." Read what Silas 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?
Postgres developers should attend my talk to learn how to simplify their data infrastructure and build fast, powerful RAG applications using pgml and pgvector. Attendees will gain a solid understanding of RAG and its applications in Postgres, along with practical knowledge of pgml and pgvector to create efficient, scalable NLP solutions.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
My favorite aspect of Postgres Conference is the opportunity to connect with an incredible open-source community of like-minded developers who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of what Postgres can achieve. It's an awesome experience being surrounded by individuals who are committed to ensuring that Postgres remains the database powering the future.

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?
As a recent graduate myself, I recommend diving into the Postgres community and exploring open-source technology. Open-source projects provide an incredible opportunity for new developers to learn and grow as the development process is transparent and collaborative. In particular, I have found the Postgres community to be an exceptional group of intelligent, experienced developers who are not only building amazing projects but are also willing to guide and support newcomers on their journey.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
Over the next 5 years, open source technologies are only going to keep growing and playing a bigger part in the software world. As software engineering grows, open source will grow right along with it. Solid, proven projects like Postgres will be the foundation that many new open source tools are built on top of.

What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
answered above ^

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

 

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

Tim Gorman is a technical consultant for Delphix who enable data virtualization and data masking to increase the agility of IT development and testing securely. Tim is co-author of six books about Oracle data warehousing and performance optimization, and has performed technical review for eight other published books. 

Tim will be presenting a breakout session on Wednesday, April 18 on "Reducing The Surface Area Of Risk In Data Security." Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

 

Why PostgreSQL? What got you into it, and made you stick with it?

30+ years in IT and databases, and PostgreSQL is the obvious heir apparent as every organization's default choice of data store.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. 

Just becoming involved.  I have been heavily involved in the Oracle user community for almost 25 years, and I have been getting involved in the Microsoft user community for the past 3 years.

What features should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

pgPL/SQL

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2018? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Creating environments for software development on PostgreSQL must include data masking to prevent confidential data from "bleeding" over from production to non-production environments.

What sessions are you most excited about attending at PostgresConf US 2018?

Mastering PostgreSQL Administration

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

Networking with my new technical community

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

What is learned when optimizing PostgreSQL is also applicable to other databases

Bonus Question: You can invite any three living people from anywhere in the world to dinner. Who do you invite and why?

Vladimir Putin, Michelle Obama, and Justin Trudeau.  Differing people with different accomplishments on the current world stage, and I would be fascinated to listen to how they react to one another (and to me) once the barriers and inhibitions are dropped.

 

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

 

 

 

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2019, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

 

Henrietta "Hettie" Dombrovskaya is a database researcher and developer with over 30 years of academic and industrial experience. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Saint Petersburg, Russia, where she taugh Database and Transaction Theory, as well as multiple database tuning classes for both beginners and advanced professionals.

 

Her professional experience includes consulting for a number of government projects, and providing Data services in the financial sector, manufacturing, and distribution. She is a co-author, with B. Novikov, of the book “System Tuning." As Associate Director of DB at Braviant Holdings, she is happy to have an opportunity to implement the results of her research in practice.

 

Hettie will be presenting a breakout session on Wednesday, March 20, on "Using FDW Like Never Before." Read what she has to say about Postgres and why to attend her session:

 

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

I started to use Postgres by pure accident. I used to be a hard-core Oracle person, with 20 years of Oracle experience, and then I was offered a job at a company that was using Postgres. The year was 2010. I hadn't use Postgres since my student years and Stonebraker's version, so I reluctantly agreed -- thinking that it would be a very temporal job. But after a couple of months I found myself completely enchanted with Postgres, and decided to stay -- with Postgres as well as with the company.

 

 

For the past  several years I've being more active in promoting Postgres in different communities. My goal is to show the variety of ways Postgres can be used virtually anywhere, to promote Postgres among industries, developers and in academia. Since Dec 2016 I have led a Chicago PostgreSQL User Group, and I always make sure I have interesting speakers every month. Also, I am actively participating in the development and promotion of bitemporal framework in Postgres.

 

What features do you believe should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

 

I hope that bitemporal framework will be eventually implemented as a real extension. 

 

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2019? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

 

I have two sessions at this conference. The first one, "Using FDW Like Never Before" is literally about "where there is a will, there is a way"! I am just showing a cool technique everyone can use, and hope somebody will build a Postgres feature on this idea.

 

The subject of the second session, ""Connecting Galaxies: Information Exchange Techniques for Java/PostgreSQL Applications" -- which I am co-presenting with Alyssa Ritchie -- is something I have been working on throughout my entire professional life. Most of the time when database people talk about optimization, they mean the SQL queries optimization. When we are talking about the real-life application -- not the abstract query -- the most performance gains can be achieved when optimizing the way an application interacts with a database.

 

This is one of the topics which "does not belong", and neither DB people, nor the application people want to claim it. So, once again, I am trying to profess and spread the word.

 

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

 

Revisit your freshman year math, calculus and algebra. You can't write good SQL without it.

 

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2019, and buy your tickets soon!