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PostgreSQL table mats

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:56:48 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

My wife lives for tinkering. A while ago she came to me and asked for the PostgreSQL elephant printed in several different sizes. Some days later I got a nice table mat for the desk in our working room ;-)
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Schedule for PostgreSQL devroom at FOSDEM 2012

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:23:37 +0100

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

The schedule for the PostgreSQL devroom at FOSDEM 2012 is now available:

http://www.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/track/postgresql_devroom

We will have 8 talks on Saturday, February 4th.

See you there ...

FOSDEM 2012 - PostgreSQL Devroom: Call for Speakers

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:47:26 +0100

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

The PostgreSQL project will have a Devroom at FOSDEM 2012, which takes place on February 4-5 in Brussels, Belgium. The Devroom will mainly cover topics for PostgreSQL users, developers and contributors. For more information about the event itself, please see the website at http://www.fosdem.org/2012/.

We are now accepting proposals for talks. Please note that we only accept talks in English.

Each session will last 45 minutes (including discussion), and may be on any topic related to PostgreSQL. Suggested topic areas include:

Developing applications for PostgreSQL
Administering large scale PostgreSQL installations
Case studies and/or success stories of PostgreSQL deployments
PostgreSQL tools and utilities
PostgreSQL hacking
Community & user groups
Tuning the server
Migrating from other systems
Scaling/replication
Benchmarking & hardware
PostgreSQL related products

Of course, we're happy to receive proposals for talks on other PostgreSQL related topics as well.

Please use our conference website to submit your proposal:

https://www.postgresql.eu/events/callforpapers/fosdem2012/

The deadline for submissions is December 20th, 2011. The schedule will be published and speakers will be informed by the end of the year.

Please also note my email about hotel reservation:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgeu-general/2011-11/msg00000.php

German-Speaking PostgreSQL Conference 2011 - A résumé

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:47:38 +0100

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

The German-Speaking PostgreSQL Conference 2011 is over!

It was a very good event and the response was much greater than expected. Thanks to all who have come to Oberhausen - despite the start of the carnival at the same day. Honestly, I had 50 visitors set as the limit to declare the event a success for myself. Two days before the conference we had to close the registry because the planned capacity at that time were already almost fully utilized. At this time, we had almost 90 registrations - including walk-ins we certainly topped the 100.

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German-speaking PostgreSQL Conference - Last chance for registration

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:46:23 +0100

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

The German-Speaking PostgreSQL Conference takes place on November 11th in Oberhausen, Germany. Last chance for your registration!

We are happy to announce Astrid Emde as Keynote Speaker, she will talk about the PostGIS project, one of the main influences to PostgreSQL.

Please note, that your ticket is also valid for the OpenRheinRuhr which takes place at the same location over the weekend.

See you next week in Oberhausen.

GSoC 2011 - phpPgAdmin

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:57:10 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Google Summer of Code 2011 is in the second term. Leonardo Sápiras passed the midterm evaluation and continues his work on the phpPgAdmin plugin infrastructure.

His work is already in an advanced stage, time to take a look and show you, what's possible.

Continue reading "GSoC 2011 - phpPgAdmin"

PostgreSQL@FrOSCon 2011

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:10:09 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

FrOSCon is the annual Free and Open Source Conference, which takes place at the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in St. Augustin, Germany.

As usual, PostgreSQL has a devroom and we will host a number of talks, most of them in German, but also one in English.

The list of talks is available at the FrOSCon website: http://programm.froscon.org/2011/schedule/2011-08-20.html You have to scroll right to the second page.

Honestly: I don't know, why the FrOSCon folks chooses pink for our devroom in the schedule. I mean, hey, pink. Not blue, not black, PINK! Ridiculous!

Anyway, looking forward to meet you in St. Augustin in a not so far future.

CHAR(11)

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:50:19 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Was the first time that I actually had the chance to attend CHAR(11). For various reasons (speak: my wife had tickets for a musical) I could not attend last year.

After arriving in Cambridge and a decent dinner on Sunday, I went early to the venue on Monday (*wow*). Registration: check, breakfast: check, EMC booth: check, tea: check - maybe not in this particular order. Let's start the day.

Most of the talks were very interesting and it's good to see, how others attempt to solve the same problems we have in Greenplum. Because of many questions, Simon organized a podium discussion with Yeb Havinga, Willem Dijkstra (both MGRID), Koichi Suzuki (Postgres-XC) and Rob Klopp (Greenplum) just before lunch. It's also interesting that people would like to see some of the technology in PostgreSQL - we have to talk with our product management, if we can make this happen.

Monday ended in a very good dinner in a near college, it looked a bit like the big hall in Harry Potter - just the candles were missing ;-) Tuesday ended in a barbeque outside the venue. Both gave the chance for the usual conversations which I enjoyed a lot.

Hopefully I can attend again next year.

Go to CHAR(11)

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:19:00 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

CHAR(11), the conference about Clustering, High Availability and Replication takes place in Cambridge, UK. As usual, it is also one of these conferences where you can meet a fair share of the PostgreSQL folks.

Had to rent a car, because I have another appointment right after the conference. Boy, I tell you: driving on the left side of the street is ok. At least that's what I usually do on German motorways. But having the wheel of the right side of the car is just insane. Anyway, I made my way to Cambridge - without any accidents.

Met Dave, Harald, Jan and Magnus at the venue and a beer later we went out for dinner. Dave and Magnus made a reservation in the Browns restaurant only some minutes away. Some more people joined us over the evening. The food was nice, and Dave actually tried to order better drinks than I did. Well, he tried ;-)

Looks like we will see another interesting database conference.

PostgreSQL@FrOSCon 2011 - Call for Papers

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:13:11 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Like in the last years, the German-Speaking PostgreSQL User Group again has a Devroom at the FrOSCon 2011, taking place on August 20/21in St. Augustin, Germany.

Now we are looking for all kind of PostgreSQL related talks. All slots are 45 minutes.

Please submit your talk to froscon@pgug.de. Deadline is Juli 20th.

We also have a booth. If you visit FrOSCon, please step by and have a chat with us.

GSoC 2011 - Big changes in phpPgAdmin

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:29:42 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

After many years in the PostgreSQL community, I applied as a co-mentor for the phpPgAdmin project and was accepted. More specifically, the project is about a plugin architecture to extend phpPgAdmin, Leonardo Sápiras has submitted this proposal and was accepted. Jehan-Guillaume (ioguix) de Rorthais is the main mentor for this project.
If we had known beforehand how many questions a simple objection can raise - who knows if I would have been accepted as co-mentor;-)

One of the key issues in the new architecture is how plugins are implemented. Without describing all the gory details, here are the two discussed options:

On one hand this is possible if each plugin make's his own output, stays in his own subdirectory and is called directly from the browser. Otherwise there is very little interaction with the rest of the code.

Another option is to register all plugins in the phpPgAdmin core and make use of hooks to call certain functions of the plugins whenever necessary.

This question was only raised because the first approach requires including lib.inc.php from files which are not in the root directory of phpPgAdmin - this is not possible right now. At this point I provocatively raised the question of what a plugin is. And why a completely separate file in a subdirectory may call himself a "plugin".

The current consent is to implement the second option. This approach offers much greater possibilities. However, this approach may require refactoring of parts of the code in the future to make use of the new plugin architecture. Possibly even as part of another GSoC project.

PGCon 2011 - Stop following the Greg

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Sun, 22 May 2011 06:06:56 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Another day in Ottawa. Parts of the crowd attended the PL Developer Summit. Another part ventured the city. Personally I took the chance and got some sleep - only woken up by the room service, calling me and asking me when they can cleanup my room. H***, what is the reason of the "Do not disturb" sign on my door?

In the afternoon I went with Devrim to yesterday's place and we found most of the folks there. I'm not sure if they went again to the pub, or stayed all night ;-)

After a long search for a dinner restaurant, we finally decided to follow Greg oh je and ended up in the Hard Rock Cafe - this was actually Devrim's recommendation. We should really stop following Greg!

The dinner was decent, and guess where we went next? Right: the Royal Oak ;-)

During some drinks we found out, that we still have one or two months without PostgreSQL conferences. But I already heard Selena muttering about a "Query Planner Summit". This will be an interesting summer!

PGCon 2011 - Second day

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Sat, 21 May 2011 05:39:31 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Second - and last day - of PGCon 2011 is over. It was a very good conference, I got new ideas and learned a lot.

My conference day started with Jeff Davis' talk about "Range Types". This is imho a very useful new feature.

Had to skip the second slot because of some work and several phone conferences.

Afternoon started with Tom Lane's "Hacking the Query Planner - Part II". This was the continuation of yesterday's talk.

Greg Smith presented some insights of performance tuning under heavy load in his "The Write Stuff" talk. Very interesting. I finally have to buy his book.

The last was given by Dan Ports and Kevin Grittner about the new "Serializable Snapshot Isolation in Postgres". At first sight it sounds strange, but after a second thought it makes sense. It also includes some very advanced research stuff ;-)

PGCon ended with the "Closing sessions". Dan auctioned off some cool items, like several books, shirts, one of our plush elephants and posters. This collected 1705 Canadian Dollar and will be spent to a charity organization. Congratulations!

In the evening we went for a little party, sponsored by PGExperts. I also brought myself a cup of ice cream. This is a good day ;-)

PGCon 2011 - First day

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:15:29 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

PGCon started today with a bunch of interesting talks. The weather in the morning was unsurprisingly bad, it was heavily raining. Also there was an announcement about a new PostgreSQL Conference (Postgres Open Conference), taking place in September in Chicago.

Paul Ramsey gave the keynote and talked about PostGIS. It's quite clear, why PostGIS is one of the "most pushing" extensions, in terms of new features in PostgreSQL.

The next talk on my list was Robert Treat, talking about "Database Scalability Patterns: Sharding for Unlimited Growth". Honestly, I found this talk not very interesting, because Robert was just talking about his view and his implementation of sharding, whereas the talk description spoke about a more general overview.

After that I moved to Gurjeet Singt and his talk about "Best practices with Ora2Pg". This talk was quite interesting and gave a broad overview about the existing problems and how Ora2PG is (trying to) solve them.

Selena Marie spoke next about "Maintaining Terabytes" and earned 8 beer later the day for the big number of tables in here database ;-)

I skipped the next talk and went to a nearby copy shop and printed a bunch of PGConf.EU flyers. We spread them all over the place and hopefully now everyone knows about our major conference in Amsterdam later this year.

Tom Lane is desperately looking for new query planner hackers and explained the different planner steps in detail. Looks like he has to continue his talk tomorrow, because there are too many details involved ;-)

Last talk(s) for today where the Lightning Talks. Jan Wieck and myself submitted a talk about our two IRC bots and explained shortly the upcoming new versions and included features. There were some more Lightning Talks, some very serious, and some very funny. Bruce earned 9 beers for making people using pg_upgrade ;-)

After the official part, it was time for the social event. Sponsored by EnterpriseDB, we met in a restaurant about 10 minutes away from the venue. Because of the warm dinner food it was quite hot in the room, but luckily there were free drinks for everyone. I also went to the nearby ice cream shop to make this a perfect day. During the evening I had the chance to talk with many people and had a fair amount of interesting discussions.

Waiting for the second day of the conference.

PGCon 2011 - Postgre NoSQL

nospam@example.com (Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum) — Thu, 19 May 2011 06:17:49 +0200

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Postgre NoSQL - that's what Devrim was talking about in the Royal Oak pub. But more about his big failure later.

Yesterday in the evening I finally arrived in Ottawa. After some years trying to go to PGCon and somehow managed every year to be fully booked during the conference time. So it's my first PGCon, but hopefully not the last one. Obviously there are like a dozen "Royal Oak" pubs in the city, but after some rough directions from David Fetter ("it's the nearest one") I finally found the PostgreSQL crowd and got some breakfast.

Today started with some shopping and lunch together with Stefan - mastermind - Kaltenbrunner and Thom - dark_ixion - Brown. Afternoon we "checked in" for the conference, again in the Royal Oak pub ;-) and again we met more PostgreSQL folks. Dinner was with EnterpriseDB, thanks for the invitation!

Finally after dinner we headed back to ... the Royal Oak, where else? ;-)

Somehow we managed to loose most of the EDB folks on the way to the pub, but Tom Lane and Robert Haas joined us later. That's where Devrim, after some beer, talked himself into an early Postgre grave ;-)

Good night, see you tomorrow at the conference (finally a conference which I can attend without being involved into the planning ;-) )