pg_hba.conf is perhaps one of the easiest to understand configuration files in PostgreSQL. Its syntax is straightforward, the concept seems to resemble that of any popular IP filter or ACL mechanism in various software packages. pg_hba.conf is also well documented, like the rest of PostgreSQL, and we love it because it lets us do what we want without getting in our way. What else could we possibly ask of it? …
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PgConf.eu is over, it was a blast but I am curious about the future
First let me say that I attended pgConf.eu like I attend every conference (that I am not running). I show up for a few hours on the first day, then I come back and attend my talk. I don't take travel lightly and as much as I bromance my fellow elephant bretheren, I want to explore the sights and this was freaking Ireland people.
I had an odd feeling for …
5 Things a Non-Geek Girl Learned from Playing with Geeks at CMD
When I began at Command Prompt, Java was coffee, Python was a snake, and a Ruby was best used on the color of glittery slippers. If you would have asked me two and a half years ago what "PostgreSQL" does, I would have asked you what language you were speaking.
A year later, I took my first sales call with out Joshua Drake (jd, @linuxhiker). I was shaking in my …
A pg_basebackup Wish List
pg_basebackup was introduced in Postgres 9.1 as a simple way to copy the data directory of a running database cluster. This was a great addition to a small group of PostgreSQL Client Applications.
The pg_basebackup approach differs from the standard pg_start_backup(), rsync (or other file system copy), pg_stop_backup() approach in that it uses the replication protocol over a standard Postgres connection to make the base backup. A few highlights: …
Just back from NYCPug August, on to more talks
In August I spoke at NYCPUG on Dumb Simple PostgreSQL Performance. The talk was well accepted and there was about 60 people in attendance. I have always enjoyed my trips to NYC but this is the first time I have taken a leisurely look at the city. I found myself enjoying a water front walk from 42nd, through the Highline, to Battery Park, all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge …
Compiling and installing OpenSRF 2.2 on Centos 5.9
We do quite a bit of work for King County Library systems. The library system has 45 branches and runs the Open Source Evergreen ILS. One of the very smart things that the Evergreen project decided was that their database of choice would be PostgreSQL. One of the things that the Evergreen project is not good at is supporting LTS releases of Linux and therefore certain things can be a …
Calling Bullsh*t in Open Source communities
We are all human. We all lose our temper. We all have our moments of, "I really wish I could take that back". Of course not if you are not Linus Torvalds. Now everyone knows that Linus has a temper, that he is a foul mouth, lacks certain social graces and is generally one of the, if not the most important developers to surface in the last 20 years. Does …
postgres_fdw for 9.2
We have backported the postgres_fdw to 9.2. It is read only of course as the infrastructure for writes is not in 9.2 but it is usable. Enjoy it!
The steaming pile that is Precise with kernel 3.2
I don't know if it is a mainline kernel problem but I can tell you that on
Ubuntu Precise, Linux kernel 3.2 is a disaster for PostgreSQL. I am not even
going to go into a huge rant about it. I am just posting the numbers. See for
yourself. There should be a public service announcement about it.
before upgrade to 3.9
08:35:01 AM CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal …
Returning multiple results without a round trip
My blog on changes to the wire protocol [1] prompted this question from a reader:
"Would it be necessary to modify the wire protocol to support multiple query/result-set combinations per server round-trip? That is, to be able to send a hundred different queries (each with a different number and type of columns in the result set) and receive a hundred different results all in a single network round-trip? That is …