Postgres and Open Source Experts

If you are compiling PostgreSQL from source you have a configure option called:

--enable-integer-datetimes

Now Debian/Ubuntu wisely turn this option on by default, unfortunately the RPM provided by PostgreSQL.Org and the RPM provided by RedHat/Fedora do not. Why is this a problem? I think we can all agree that given that a particular value is within a column that value should be able to be retrieved from that column. Consider …

The PostgreSQL Conference Fall 2007 has given me a knew appreciation for the little things. If it wasn't for PDXPUG leader Selena Deckelmann the conference would not have the complimentary breakfast/social nor would it have the synopsis of the talks on the conference website. The hard work of Selena, myself and the speakers appears to be paying off. We have a strong list of sponsors as well as a very …

There was a post recently on using Syslog with PostgreSQL on pgsql-general. As you can see, Tom Lane kindly replied in the thread. I decided that it might be a good idea to submit a DOC patch. I only received on comment on the patch, so I don't know if it will be applied or not. The comment, caused me to consider creating a table for the docs that correlated …

When sitting in the booth with the Army of Smurfs (tm) at OSCON 2007, I was struck by the idea that having PostgreSQL Conference(s) (yes plural) could be a great way to insure the growth of our community. Check -- duh! You would think that this is obvious. In fact I would think this is obvious. This is why the community had the Anniversary two years ago and Dan Langille …

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 …