I attended to PostgreSQL Conference Europe 2014. It was held October 21-24 at Madrid. I do not know the exact number of attendees but there were some sessions that you can not find seat and have to listen while standing up on a corner. As an Oracle DBA, PostgreSQL is a different world to me. I tried to follow the DBA track and gather as much information as I can. Unfortunately the level of DBA tracks are not deep enough for me. The most topics are designed for developer or system admins who also manage PostgreSQL Databases as a side-mission. I feel like most attendees are developers and see that a database management system should manage itself with almost zero-maintenance. This is the same approach of Microsoft SQL Server users/developers. They see the database as a part of their development environment, and expect it to behave like a answering machine. Anyway there were still interesting sessions and watching the presentations of PostgreSQL Developers was a unique opportunity.
If you’re an Oracle DBA, you probably heard that PostgreSQL is called as “Oracle killer“. As I see, that bold claim is already forgotten. I only witnessed some cheap jokes about MySQL. It seems, after Oracle purchased Sun, MySQL is the new target of free software community.
Here are the imprtant things I learned from PostgreSQL Conference:
- Always use the latest release, because old release usually contain trash/buggy code and it’s a living software, being developed day by day.
- It’s designed to be a part of the OS, so instead of tweaking/tuning the PostgreSQL, focus on tweaking/tuning host.
- PostgreSQL is cheap (even you get paid software), so invest to quality hardware.
- Take database dumps periodically to detect block corruptions.
- Vacuum is a must, because it cleans Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) data.
This was my first time in Madrid (in Spain actually) and I really liked the city. Spanish people are similar to Turkish people (but they are surely more calm and relaxed).I didn’t feel strange while walking on the streets although I don’t know Spanish at all. I’ll look forward to visit Spain again.