Keynote for PostgreSQL Conference West 08

1. PostgreSQL – Since East 08
Joshua D. Drake
PostgreSQL.Org
PgUS
Command Prompt, Inc.

2. Could we do any more in 6 months?
 New development model
 Non profit structure continuing
 Better tertiary project interactions
 Certification making milestones
 PostgreSQL with Replication
 What about the next 6 months?

3. New Development Model
 Don't worry, we are still meritocracy based.
 However we have increased distributed
efficiency
• Commit Fest
• 2 months of development
• 1 month of review and commit
• Increased transparency

4. More Reviewers!
 Increase in development transparency
• Increased number of patch reviewers
• Not all are hard core developers
• If you can develop in Python (or ahem Perl), you
can likely read (and understand) many patches.
• Participating in feature proposals allows for better
perspective for the developers

5. Release schedule shift
 Historically releases come out around
December
• Creates a dry spell of development and testing in
July and August
 8.4 has a slightly longer development timeline
to push release until March 2009
• Creates a larger beta cycle allowing for better
testing and higher quality release

6. Non profit infrastructures continuing
 PgEU – Europe as a whole
 PgUS – United States
 PgBR - Brazil
 PgIT - Italian
 PgFR – French Speaking
 PgJP – Japan (longer than anyone)
 SPI – For general International support
 Did I miss any?

7. PgEU
 PgEU
• Moving forward nicely
• Has own conference in conjunction with pg.it in a
week
• Has begun process of committees and
appropriately organizing
• Here, now – Wave Magnus!

8. PgUS
 PgUS
• Moving forward nicely
• Elections, NOW!
• Four additional board members to be seated after
election
• Platforms :
https://www.postgresql.us/elections/2008
• Is speaking at Northern Arizona State in a week
(hopefully the first of many engagements)

9. Tertiary project interactions
 The community is starting to have more
proactive interactions with developers who
support PostgreSQL outside of the core
software
• SQL Alchemy (Wave Jek)
• Catalyst, DBIx:Class (Wave MST)
• Drupal
• Not here but has set up a list specifically for
ensuring postgresql (and others) have a
communication channel:
database@drupal.org

10. Certification!
 The PostgreSQL Certification Project
• A project by the community, for professionals
who need certification
 Isn't certification overrated?
• Yes
 Then Why?
• Because it is a base level requirement for many
positions as well as entry into government.

11. Certification Milestones
 Determine delivery method
• Done: Paper (for now, it's cheap)
 Proctored or not
• Proctored (let's keep it honest)
• Ideas include working with Professors from
Higher Education
 International Effort
• Europe, South America and North America are all
well represented

12. Certification Status
 JTA – Job Task Analysis is open
• We need to know what to certify on before we
can certify
• http://www.postgresqlcertification.org/jta
 Many thanks to the BSD Certification Project
who has helped us tremendously.

13. PostgreSQL with Replication?
 In the beginning there was Er-Server and we
were afraid
 Then there was Replicator but it was closed
 Then there was Slony-I but it was
complicated
 Then there was log shipping but it was limited
 Then there was an announcement... and we
waited, and waited, and waited... Was it a
joke?

14. PostgreSQL Replicator
 A PostgreSQL distribution with integrated
replication.
 BSD licensed
 Open Development
 Works with 8.1 and 8.3
• Replication between versions also supported
 http://www.commandprompt.com/projects
• /public/replicator

15. Replication for 8.4
 Possibly....
• 2ndQuandrant is working on a patch that would
allow synchronous/hot standby functionality
• Read-only slave is still up in the air
• Partial replication is out
• Great for directly connected fail over capable
machines.

16. What about the next 6 months?
 More work with Higher Education
 Continue to court developers
 Further Advocacy to tertiary groups
 Release 8.4!

17. More work with higher education
 Develop .edu contacts
 Determine .edu needs
 Identify .edu conferences and workshops
 Interact with students

18. Develop .edu contacts
 Start a dialog
• Find out what technology they teach
• Provide information to them
• Don't “sell” them, they are busy
• Get information about their programs from their
perspective

19. Determine .edu needs
 Talks with Staff, Professors and students
 What bugs them the most?
 What problems can PostgreSQL solve for
them?
• Remember, it isn't just using PostgreSQL in
curriculum it is using PostgreSQL to solve
technological (and budgetary) problems for the
school

20. Major conferences and workshops
 The professional world is easy
• OSCON
• OpenSource World (prev. Linuxworld)
• WEST/EAST (*flex*)
• PgCon (Ottawa)
• Ohio Linux Fest
• Southern California Expo

21. Major Conferences part two
 Education is different
• PostgreSQL does not currently present at:
• Educause
• SIGCSE
etc...
 Convincing the future is proactive and helps
build our base, growing from the ground up.

22. Interact with Students
 Host workshops at schools
 Conferences where students get in free
 Provide resources that are directly applicable
• Best practices for relational design are not
necessarily best practices for PostgreSQL design
 Free Curriculum
 Internships at PostgreSQL Companies

23. Continue to court developers!
 We can never have enough developers
• We want more C hackers
• We want more Perl hackers
• We want more PHP hackers
• We want more Python hackers
• We do not need more LOLCode hackers
• Hi Josh!

24. Court developers part two
 Reach out!
• We want every utility, application, framework,
and language driver
 Educate developers, with use cases why
PostgreSQL is the best FOSS database.
 Insuring we are the most versatile and
developed for platform benefits everyone in
this community.

25. Further education of tertiary groups
 Convicing users of Drupal to use PostgreSQL
is a good thing
 Finding more active developers to participate
with pdo_pgsql is a good thing
 Participating in the DB API 3.0 (Python)
specification is a good thing

26. Release 8.4
 Hopefully with in place upgrades!
(and then go to EAST)