I spent the early part of my career working on developer tools, operating systems, high-speed file systems, and scale-out storage. Not databases. Frankly, I always thought that databases were a bit boring. So one year in to my new job at a Postgres company, I continue to be amazed at the enthusiasm of the PostgreSQL developer community and users. I mean, people’s eyes light up when you ask them why they love Postgres. Sure, a lot of us get animated when talking about our newest iPhone, or Ronaldo’s phenomenal free-kick goal in the World Cup, or mint chip gelato from La Strega Nociola—but most platform software simply doesn’t trigger this kind of passion. So why does Postgres? Why is this open source database having such a “moment”? Why now? Well, I’ve been trying to find out, looking at this “Postgres moment” from a few different angles. In this talk I’ll share what I’ve observed to be the top 10 business, technology, and community reasons so many of you have so much affection for PostgreSQL.

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Why PostgreSQL
Why This Database
Why Now
Claire Giordano / Citus Data / Microsoft
@clairegiordano / @citusdata / @microsoft
19 Mar 2019 | Copenhagen

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Engineering > Product > Marketing
Lycee d’etat Jules Verne
Papagos, Athens, Greece
Citus Data > Microsoft
@clairegiordano / @citusdata
Preferred programming language

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4. NORDIC PGDay 2019 | Copenhagen4 @clairegiordano

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Peop
le’s
eyes
ligh
t up
@clairegiordano

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Peter Eisentraut

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Dimitri Fontaine at PGConfEU 2018.
Photo by Claire Giordano.
Peter Eisentraut at PGConfEU 2018.
Photo by Claire Giordano.
Lætitia Avrot at PGConfEU 2018.
Photo by Claire Giordano.
Stephen Frost at PGConfEU 2018.
Photo by Claire Giordano.

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Why PostgreSQL?
Why This Database?
Why Now?
?@clairegiordano

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people have so much affection for PostgreSQL
10 reasons
@clairegiordano

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Open Source
1@clairegiordano
0Octocat icon courtesy of GitHub

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ECOSYSTEM

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Come for the code. Stay for the community.

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Community9 @clairegiordano Photo courtesy of @pgconfeu, Oct 2018 Lisbon

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Source: https://www.pgcon.org/2016/schedule/events/890.en.html

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Not Oracle
8

24. NORDIC PGDay 2019 | CopenhagenSource: Manu Cornet. Bonkers World. http://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts

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7 @clairegiordano
Permissive
license

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https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_derived_databases

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Forks make the community
strong.”
—Peter van Hardenberg,
Illustrated History of Postgres
“

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6Trust
Hardened
Data Integrity
Maintainability
@clairegiordano

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5
Trend
away
from
NoSQL
@clairegiordano

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Postgres is heating up
Source: Hacker News Hiring Trends through Jan 2019 | hntrends.com
Postgres
MySQL
MongoDB

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4
Heroku helped
to popularize
Postgres
@clairegiordano

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3
Timing of JSON &
JSONB
support

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2@clairegiordano
CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
PostGIS
is industry
standard
way to model
spatial data
in a database
Photo by Claire Giordano

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Source: Paul Ramsey PGConfEU 2018 Keynote: Put some “where” in your WHERE clause; https://bit.ly/2NM3zqB

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Everything is related to
everything else, but near things
are more related than distant
things.”
—Waldo Tobler, American-Swiss geographer
& cartographer
“

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And now……….. #1 reason

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1
Extension APIs
@clairegiordano

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We are still dining out on the
radical design decision by Michael
Stonebraker in the Design of
Postgres—to have
run-time extensions.”
—Paul Ramsey, Lisbon, PGConfEU 2018
“

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Michael
Stonebraker
Source: Wikipedia

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Not everyone has to agree, up-front

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PostGIS
Citus
postgresql-HLL
pg_partman
pg_cron
postgresql-topn
postgresql-unit
pguri
postgis.net/
citusdata/citus
citusdata/postgresql-hll
pgpartman/pg_partman
petere/pguri
citusdata/pg_cron
ChristophBerg/postgresql-unit
citusdata/postgresql-topn

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PostGIS
Citus
postgresql-HLL
pg_partman
pg_cron
postgresql-topn
postgresql-unit
pguri
postgis.net/
citusdata/citus
citusdata/postgresql-hll
pgpartman/pg_partman
petere/pguri
citusdata/pg_cron
ChristophBerg/postgresql-unit
citusdata/postgresql-topn
AND SO MANY MORE
POSTGRES EXTENSIONS
AND MORE THAT WE HAVEN’T YET IMAGINED

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Thank You!
Matt Asay
Lætitia Avrot
Dave Cramer
Herb Cunitz
Nils Dijk
Peter Eisentraut
Vik Fearing
Dimitri Fontaine
Stephen Frost
Önder Kalaci
Amit Kapila
Günce Kaya
Craig Kerstiens
Paul Ramsey
Marco Slot
Sai Srirampur
My Nguyen
Peter van Hardenberg
Tom Lane
Jonathan Katz
PGConfEU audience
Isaac Alves
Danese Cooper

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Working on Postgres and
Citus, I’ve found bliss—it’s
deeply satisfying to work
on a technology that not
only delights developers,
but makes their lives light
years better.”
“
—Claire Giordano,
Nordic PGDay 2019
@clairegiordano

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Thank you!
@citusdata@clairegiordano
github.com/citusdata/citus
@microsoft
p.s. Socks & stickers