1. Driving the Future of
PostgreSQL Adoption
Peter Zaitsev
CEO Percona

2. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Have You Heard about Percona ?
© 2021 Percona 2

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May Be…
© 2021 Percona 3
PERCONA – MYSQL
EXPERTS
PERCONA – RADICAL
OPEN SOURCE PEOPLE

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Percona Loves PostgreSQL
© 2021 Percona 4

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Reasons to Love PostgreSQL
© 2021 Percona 5
POSTGRESQL IS THE MOST OPEN
SOURCE DATABASE
POSTGRESQL ADVANCED OPEN
SOURCE DATABASE
POSTGRESQL IS OPEN SOURCE
DATABASE WITH MOST TRACTION

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PostgreSQL can
be more than
PostgreSQL
© 2021 Percona
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https://babelfishpg.org/
https://www.ferretdb.io/

7. Driving the Future of
PostgreSQL Adoption
Umair Shahid
Head of PostgreSQL at Percona

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The journey from
“PostgreSQL is cheaper”
to
“PostgreSQL is better”

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PostgreSQL: The World's Most Advanced
Open Source Relational Database
PostgreSQL: The Most Advanced Database

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Where do we go from here?
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11. #1
Databases are evolving

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Databases are
evolving
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Over the past decade …
● Growing popularity of specialized databases
○ Examples include MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis,
Neo4J, …
● Evolving needs of rapid application development
○ Inability of relational databases to offer effective
solutions to modern problems
● Going beyond the bounds of SQL
○ Breaking free of the restrictions imposed by the
relational model

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But then …
● Limitations of non-relational data
○ Converting data into information
○ From “No SQL” to “Not Only SQL”
● General purpose ‘relational’ features in
specialized databases
○ ACID guarantees in MongoDB
○ Graph, JSON, & time series in Redis
○ Streaming capabilities in Cassandra
○ Relational data in SingleStore (MemSQL)
Databases are
evolving
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In the meanwhile …
● PostgreSQL fights back
○ Disciplined annual release cycle
○ Averaging 150+ new features
● Specialized features in PostgreSQL
○ GIS data and computations
○ Unstructured data, especially JSON
○ Time series and IoT data
○ Distributed workloads
Databases are
evolving
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PostgreSQL’s future adoption will be
driven by how well it balances its
relational capabilities with the need to
scale modern applications.
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Conclusion #1

16. #2
Decision-making is
evolving

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Decision-making
is evolving
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Decision making of the past …
● 80s & 90s - Sales Led Growth
○ Top-down decisions
○ Handshake deals on golf courses and yachts
● 2000s & 10s - Marketing Led Growth
○ Still mostly top-down, though more distributed
○ Focus on inbound instead of sales-led
○ Reliance on brand development, advertising, &
content

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Decision-making
is evolving
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Open Source Data Management Software Survey 2020
… and almost 50% respondents were DBAs!
Take part in the 2021 survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/perconasurvey

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Decision-making
is evolving
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Today’s decision making …
● Product Led Growth
○ Bottom-up decisions
○ End users get to decide what tech to use
○ The only way to succeed is to delight the end user
● Application developers - The end users of databases
○ Application developers are not database experts
○ Focus on efficient development and ease-of-use for
higher productivity
○ The drive behind cloud-native application development
For far too long, database vendors have been able to get away
with complicated UIs and poor UX

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PostgreSQL’s future adoption will be
driven by how easy it is for application
developers to deploy, use, and
maintain their database.
Conclusion #2
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21. #3
The spirit of open
source

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Why is open source so popular?
● The Community
○ Passion brings like-minded people together
○ Globally dispersed contributors bring diversity
○ Roadmaps based on what’s good for the project
● The Quality
○ Passion drives perfection
○ Obsession with quality drives reliability
○ Rapid development cycles lead to rapid project evolution
Most of all, open source is popular because it is free
The spirit of
open source
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But wait - what does ‘free’ mean?
The power of open source comes from freedom
The spirit of
open source
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The freedom of choice
The freedom of usage
The freedom to scale
The freedom to deploy - whenever & wherever
The freedom to modify
The freedom to distribute
The freedom against vendor lock-in

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Conclusion #3
PostgreSQL’s future adoption will be
driven by maintaining and promoting
the spirit of open source software
FREEDOM
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25. What does that mean
in today’s world?

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The rush towards
cloud-native
application
development

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Kubernetes & Databases
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Interesting
relationship …
Initially designed for
stateless applications
… and databases are
the exact opposite of
stateless
Improved in recent
years for stateful
applications

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Promise of
Kubernetes
Operator for your Application Stack -
Management of all processes
Self Healing - Robust mechanics to deal
with node failure
Framework - Automating complex
database operations

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Our approach to
Kubernetes
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Operator for
PostgreSQL
Install
directly or
through
Helm Chart
Hardened
with
Enterprise
Features
Open Source
Always!

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Unsolved
Problems
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Running Business Critical Stateful
applications on Kubernetes is
“Black Belt” level skill
Not an easy task for non
Kubernetes expert

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“State of Art”
simplicity for
databases
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Managing High
Availability
Database Patching Backups (Some)
Performance
Tuning
Easy to Scale
DBaaS Removes a lot of “Toil”

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“Don’t worry - DBaaS is open source compatible”
‘Hotel California’ compatibility

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Our Vision
Provide DBaaS Experience in Public and Private Cloud with Open
Source Software and No Vendor Lock-in

35. 7-Dec-2021, Mark your calendar!
Percona Platform: Tech Preview
Percona stands for evolution
Percona stands for ease-of-use
Percona stands for freedom
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