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.

Community,

The inaugural PGConf US Local: Ohio Conference (PGConf Ohio) will be held September 29th - 30th at the Hyatt Regency Columbus Ohio (350 North High Street Columbus, Ohio, USA, 43215).

• Friday, September 29, 2017: Training. Registration for the PGConf Ohio trainings is open now.

Mastering Postgres Administration: Bruce Momjian

After National 2017, the PGConf US team decided to take a long hard road to bring the best in educational content and advocacy to the entire Postgres ecosystem. Today, we welcome 2ndQuadrant as a Platinum sponsor and thank them for helping us with our year over year projects.

Other PGConf US news:

Join the fantastic and growing Postgres community in Cape Town, South Africa for a single day event on October 3rd, 2017! The event is being hosted by fellow Postgres advocates who travel from South Africa each year to attend our National Event in order to increase their knowledge of Postgres and be a part of the community. This year they are joining us and making a commitment to build out our International community and conferences!

• The CFP is open is open from now until August 25th. We will notify speakers by September 1st! Talks are subject to our presentation guidelines.

Local events are designed to bring comprehensive educational content and networking opportunities to the "local" Postgres community where the event is being held. They are perfect opportunities to show support for Postgres, find leads, and build relationships with other professionals and companies using and supporting Postgres.

Why did you attend PgConf US?

We have been looking for high quality, experienced, professional support for our application’s database for some time. We have found it difficult to find help online… seemingly every phone number we called was just an answering service. When we heard that the companies offering the level of service we were looking for were all available in the same place, we couldn’t resist.

Tell us a little bit (one or two paragraphs) about your project:

Our project (VX and VO collectively named Victor) is a SaaS solution for 911 emergency response systems. Victor provides analytics and quality assurance tools and services, enabling agencies to assess performance, measure resource & deployment activity, model demand, optimize workload, and even generate financial estimates. For more information see our website.

Why did you chose PostgreSQL for your project?

Victor requires both time and spacial awareness, along with all the other things that are expected from an RDBMS. PostgreSQL is stable, secure, mature, well documented, open source, actively developed, community supported, and generally bad ass. The choice was easy.

As I understand it, attending PgConf US was a last minute decision. Do you think it was worth it? If so, why?

Absolutely! Our objective was to meet with vendors who were able to provide high quality support and we were successful. Additionally, we met a ton of super geniuses (Paragon, TimescaleDB, I’m talking about you) and learned more then expected. For example, we had no idea we could put raster images in PostgreSQL and process them with PostGIS… amazing!

Would you attend PgConf US again?

Yes… see above. Unrelated, but unbelievably cool, we met a guy named Solar… a PhD (from MIT!) passionate about carbon nanotubes.

Are you interested in contributing to the community and if so, in what fashion?

Yes! …and here is our biggest piece of feedback.

It would be great if there was a clear point of entry for people like us… we have been using PostgreSQL for several years, have been through several upgrade cycles (we started on 9.0) and have no idea how our skills could be of use. We make SaaS applications, but make nothing in C. What else does the community need? How can we help?

Seattle Postgres and People, Postgres, Data were present at the 20th Anniversary Event of LinuxFest Northwest this weekend! The “Fest” is a conference built around Free and Open Source Software, taking place in Bellingham, Washington. It is a true gathering of over 2000 Open Source practitioners. There was also a well attended Postgres Track and an “Ask the experts” panel.

Highlighted Find

Also at LinuxFest Northwest was YottaDB. YottaDB uses the PostgreSQL wire protocol to allow universal driver access to their in-memory transactional database. This has become a popular way to utilize the maturity of the PostgreSQL code base and reduce overhead in having to maintain a protocol and drivers.

Ecosystem Content

• What is high cardinality, and how do time-series databases like InfluxDB and TimescaleDB compare?

• 11 Things to Know about Databases and Postgres in Containers

• PostgreSQL security: a quick look at authentication best practices [Tutorial]

• Distributed PostgreSQL on a Google Spanner Like Architecture - Storage Layer

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 areaa including dates, venues, or a desire to join the amazing People, Postgres, Data team, let us know at organizers@postgresconf.org.

 

Noteworthy Commits & Releases

The PostgreSQL git repo was largely bug fixes and updates the past couple of weeks but we have some great releases including migration tools and Distributed SQL:

 

• Outflux (Outflux -> TimescaleDB migration tool)

• Yugabyte v1.2.4 (Apr 02, 2019), Distributed SQL

• Postgres Checkup 1.0, Automate checking on Postgres health

• PgCLI v2.1.0, A feature-full command line client for Postgres

Join our community

• News and Announcements

Upcoming Events

• Postgres Ibiza

• PostgresConf Beijing

• PostgresConf Silicon Valley

• Silicon Valley Postgres Meetup

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.