This was my first time attending PGConf.India. That is a conference I wanted to visit for quite a while, heard good things about the it, but never had a chance before. During past years it overlapped with another conference I’m attending in Germany - but this year it worked out! Overall this is the 9th Indian PostgreSQL Conference, with no signs of slowing down.
The conference is well attended, and very vibrant. Good presentations, a lot of questions about WarehousePG (the talk I gave) and about PostgreSQL in general.
Talks I attended
I attended a few talks.
Keynote by Dr. Jayant Haritsa
Dr. Haritsa is a professor at the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore.
His presentation was about Rewriting SQL Queries using LLMs, with a special focus on making the queries faster. Obviously this is the main reason we all optimize queries: make the database run faster, and more efficient.
Sponsor Keynote by Tom Kincaid: Postgres and Artificial Intelligence
Tom discusses how Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) play an ever increasing role in today’s world, and how PostgreSQL is uniquely positioned to drive this development.
- Link to talk: Postgres and Artificial Intelligence
Sponsor Keynote by Joe Conway: The Community and Contribution
Joe has an interesting presentation in which he shows the development model around PostgreSQL and how many people can, and do contribute to it.
- Link to Talk: The Community and Contribution
Michael Zhilin: What could possibly go wrong if you try to load 1 Petabyte into PostgreSQL
Michael presented about a challenge he recently had to solve: load one Petabyte of data into PostgreSQL.
Well, I quickly learned that this is not PostgreSQL, but PgPro Shardman - a closed source fork (can’t find any license information or source code) of PostgreSQL, aiming to build a distributed database.
That makes the entire exercise useless, as no one can repeat it.
Also Michael mentioned that he stopped short of 1 PB, but I didn’t got the reason.
Claire Giordano: Ten Postgres Hacker Journeys—and what they teach us
Claire dives deep into the material from her Talking Postgres and selected “lessons learned” from a variety of people she interviewed at the podcast. It is an interesting insight into the people who make PostgreSQL what it is today.
- Link to talk: Ten Postgres Hacker Journeys—and what they teach us
Andreas Scherbaum: How we made WarehousePG Open Source (again)
Obviously I attended my own presentation ;-)
In this talk I explain the history of WarehousePG, the reasons why Greenplum was forked, how the product works and what our plans are. Unlike the other distributed database presented earlier, WarehousePG is Open Source, under the Apache 2.0 license.
And we did successfully load a PB of data into WarehousePG, but that is a blog posting I still need to write.
There have been too many questions around WarehousePG during and after my talk, so we moved the discussion to the EDB booth in the sponsor hallway.
- Slides: How we made WarehousePG Open Source (again)
- Link to talk: How we made WarehousePG Open Source (again)
Closing Session
At the end of the conference, Hari Kiran presented about all the various City Chapters. An interesting insight how the PostgreSQL Community in India is growing. One chapter was literally added this year.
Link to talk: PostgreSQL India City Chapters
After that, it was the closing, speaker picture and farewell for everyone.
Speaker present
Every speaker got a coin in a wooden box, which is a very lovely present.
Goes onto the shelf in my working room, where I keep the presents from other conferences.
City Chapters
India has a number of “City Chapters”, which organize local meetups. This is a growing community, and some of the chapters are relatively new. This website lists all City Chapters.
- Hyderabad: Hyderabad PostgreSQL User Group (PgHyd)
- Pune: Pune PostgreSQL User Group (PgPune)
- Mumbai: The Mumbai PostgreSQL User Group (PgMumbai)
- Visakhapatnam: The Vizag PostgreSQL User Group (PgVizag)
- Bangalore: PgBlr
- Delhi: PgDelhi
There is also Postgres Women India, the group organizes meetings and conferences and publishes interviews.
Recordings
The recordings for the talks are available in the conference schedule.
Visit the schedule and check each talk for a recording.
Other postings
Found a couple of other postings about the conference:
- Abhipsa Padhi: From Legal Briefs to Postgres Beats: My Whirlwind PGConf India Experience
- Welcome to the March 2026 edition of the OpenSource DB Bulletin!
- Chandini Kurada: Customers Speak: Aiven at PGConf India
- PGConf India 2026
Speaker reception
The speaker reception was on the day before the conference, in the High Ultra Lounge. This is near the WTC, and the terasse is overlooking a large part of Bangalore. Beautiful view from here, especially by night. The roof is open, but given the temperature of 20+°C, this was totally fine.
Conference reception
On the evening of the first conference day, the conference reception took place in a brewery right around the corner from the venue. The restaurant, District 6, is praised as “Best German Microbrewery in Bangalore”.
Matching the venue, I brought my “I’m German, I don’t drink beer” t-shirt ;-) This avoided a number of questions why I am not drinking a beer. Instead I opted for other cocktails.
Venue
The conference took place in the Sheraton Grand Bangalore Hotel at Brigade Gateway. It’s a nice hotel, large conference space, and next to a mall and the Bengaluru World Trade Center.
However like most of large Indian cities, going anywhere from there you need a car. We visited the ISKCON Bangalore temple on Saturday, about 500 meters down the street from Brigade Gateway. Going there on partly non-existent sidewalks and crossing streets with Indian traffic is … an adventure.
I also spotted one of the few Geocaches in the city, “only” about 5 km away from the venue. Usually that’s a light walk for me, nothing challenging. Here, after I couldn’t even cross two major roads on foot, I turned around after about a km and went back. In the end, I found a Geocache at the airport, and finally got that “India” souvenir!
India Geocaching Souvenir (Image by Geocaching.com)
Travel impacted
This trip got off to a rocky start, and it didn’t got any better, unfortunately.
Our plane from Berlin to Frankfurt was delayed, because it had some loose screws. Not something you want to hear on a sunny Monday morning, after waiting way too long in the bus in front of the plane. The flight to Bangalore was ok, and on time. But immigration took forever, averaging four long minutes per passenger in our lanes.
And then the Lufthansa pilot strike happened, and Lufthansa sent me a mail that my flight is cancelled. After waiting forever in the chat hotline, they offered me a return flight nine days later. And hang up even before I had a chance to communicate this to my family. Another round of waiting, and they found another flight, only seven days later. But no details about hotel.
I asked repeatedly about accomodation, but they couldn’t provide any details. Instead I was told that I have to go to the airport and will get something, “based on availability”. Asked if they can confirm that someone will be at the airport, they were not able to confirm that either.
Basically Lufthansa asking me to go to the airport, in the middle of the night, somehow pass through the entance security without a boarding pass, hope to find someone who then can give me a hotel for a week. That is not acceptable. Just booked the conference hotel for another week. That turned out to be ok, with the mall and the small pond nearby, and plenty of ice cream shops in the mall.
A week later I found out how right I was: the security at the entrance of the terminal asked for my flight and boarding pass, before even letting me into the terminal.
The flight a week later was without problems, and a week to late I finally made it home.
This entire flight was not impacted by the trouble in Middle East. This was entirely caused by the pilot strike, and Lufthansa’s inability to provide even a shred of information for passengers.
At least I made it home in time for the next conference …
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