Experts in Postgres and Open Source Infrastructure

I downloaded the latest check out of PostgreSQL 8.3 (not even beta yet) just to see how things are progressing. Of particular interest to me was a recent conversation about sequential scans I had with Jeff Davis. In short, in 8.3 sequential scans should be faster. I decided to test the theory. Using the exact same machine, and an optimized 8.1.8 installation, I compared 8.1.8 versus a out of the …

Have you ever wondered how many tuples you have in a relation? Normally to find out how many tuples you have you would do something like:

SELECT count(1) FROM rows;
 count 
-------
 10002

This will return the exact number, per your snapshot of committed tuples within a relation. It is also a guaranteed sequence scan on the relation and a performance nightmare on large tables. So how do you get …

This is a constant source of argument, flame and general discomfort with any database design. On the PostgreSQL lists it comes up occasionally and it is always a long drawn out thread with people arguing on each side about which one is correct. Before I go on about the good and bad of both, let me define a couple of things. 1. Surrogate keys (also known as artificial keys) are …

OSCON 2007 was a huge success for the PostgreSQL community. Of course, OSCON is usually a good conference for PostgreSQL but this year was different. So what was different about this year than other years? How did we stand out from other community booths? What about MySQL? Professional presence. The community moved to a professional presence of advocating only PostgreSQL at the community booths. Flexing our community muscle to provide …

On July 22nd, PostgreSQL.Org held a single day conference in Portland Oregon preceding OSCON 2007. This conference, although short notice was a huge success. We had solid attendance from new and old community members. Notable talks for me was Theo Schlossnagle's talk on Solaris and PostgreSQL. It was enlightening to see where PostgreSQL is lacking, (places I didn't realize) and how Theo has worked around the problems to provide a …

I recently made a post on the pgsql-advocacy list about a press release that EnterpriseDB put out that was less than flattering about PostgreSQL [1]. This thread was long and a little tiring. To make matters worse an Oracle blogger [2] picked up the thread and blogged an incorrect assessment of what happen.

I would like to take a moment and set the record straight. First there were some in …

We have been stewing here at CMD for some time over training. Command Prompt actually does quite a bit of PostgreSQL Training. In the 12 months preceding April of 2007 we had taught a dozen classes on PostgreSQL. These classes have always been directed at on-site training, meaning that someone from CMD would travel to the customer site to train their employees. We did this for two reasons. One, because …

Command Prompt is working with the PostgreSQL community to have a PostgreSQL party on July 22nd. For those not calendar aware, that is the Sunday before OSCON starts in Portland. For more information please visit www.postgresqlparty.org.