2025.pgconf.dev needs your submissions!

The call for proposals for 2025.pgconf.dev has been extended to January 6, 2025, otherwise known as "very soon". I'm writing this post to encourage you to submit, if you haven't done so yet, regardless of whether you have submitted to 2024.pgconf.dev or its predecessor, PGCon, in the past. The event will only be as good as the content you (collectively) submit, and having found much value in these events over the years that I've been participating, I very much want our future events to be as good as those in the past, or, hopefully, even better. But what makes a good event, and what kind of talk should you submit?

PostgreSQL Hacking Workshop - January 2025

Next month, I'l be hosting 2 or 3 discussions of Andres Freund's talk, NUMA vs PostgreSQL, given at PGConf.EU 2024. You can sign up using this form. I anticipate that both Andres and I will be present for the discussions, and I'd like to thank Andres and all of the other presenters who have made time to join the discussions and answer questions for their time (so far: Melanie Plageman, Thomas Munro, Andrey Borodin). It has been absolutely great having them join the workshops.

PostgreSQL Hacking Workshop - December 2024

Next month, I'll be hosting a discussion of Melanie Plageman's talk, Intro to Postgres Planner, given at PGCon 2019. You can sign up using this form. To be clear, the talk is not an introduction to how the planner works from a user perspective, but rather how to hack on it and try to make it better and perhaps get your improvements committed to PostgreSQL. If you're interested, please join us. I anticipate that both Melanie and I will be present for the discussions.

Why pg_dump Is Amazing

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago entitled Is pg_dump a Backup Tool?. In that post, I argued in the affirmative, but also said that it's probably shouldn't be your primary backup mechanism. For that, you probably shouldn't directly use anything that is included in PostgreSQL itself, but rather a well-maintained third-party backup tool such as barman or pgbackrest. But today, I want to talk a little more about why I believe that pg_dump is both amazingly useful for solving all kinds of PostgreSQL-related problems and also just a great piece of technology.

PostgreSQL Hacking Workshop - November 2024

Next month, I'll be hosting a discussion of a talk by Andy Pavlo, given for his Intro to Database Systems course at CMU. The title of the talk is "Memory & Disk I/O Management and the video link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoewwZwVmv4. As usual, we have will have three sessions, and you can sign up to participate in one of them using this form.

Is pg_dump a Backup Tool?

Recently, I've been hearing a lot of experienced PostgreSQL users reiterate this line: "pg_dump is not a backup tool." In fact, the documentation has recently been updated to avoid saying that it is a backup tool, to widespread relief. Experienced PostgreSQL users and developers have been publicly called out for having the temerity to assert that pg_dump is, in fact, a backup tool. I find this narrative deeply frustrating, for two reasons.

PostgreSQL Hacking Workshop - October 2024

This month, I'll be hosting a discussion of Thomas Munro's 2024.pgconf.dev talk, Streaming I/O and vectored I/O. As usual, there will be three sessions, and you can use this form to sign up for the session you prefer. However, if you do want to attend, please sign up right away, because our first session is scheduled for this Thursday.