Schedule & Sessions

Expand all Collapse all

• 
  KEYNOTE: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres

  Regina Obe

  PostGIS, introduced in 2001, is one of the oldest Postgres extensions around. But PostGIS is not just built on Postgres. PostGIS is a love… Show more

  PostGIS, introduced in 2001, is one of the oldest Postgres extensions around. But PostGIS is not just built on Postgres. PostGIS is a love child, born of the Postgres community and the vibrant open source geospatial community.

  Today many geospatial applications house their data in Postgres, because of PostGIS.

  And PostGIS is usually one of the first data sources to be supported by new geospatial tools, whether open source or proprietary. More importantly, folks who know little about spatial can get up to speed with PostGIS quickly and build geospatial applications—with nothing but an application layer that understands how to work with SQL.

  In this talk you’ll learn how (and why) PostGIS came about, and how the open source geospatial community has huge bodies of data that will continue to place demands on PostGIS and Postgres into the future.

  Speaker

  

  Regina Obe

  Paragon Corporation, PostGIS PSC

  Regina Obe is President and co-founder of Paragon… Read more

• 
  Vector data in Postgres - how's it different from “normal” data?

  Heikki Linnakangas

  AI works with vectors. But what is a vector? How is a vector in Postgres different from integers, text, geospatial data, or other… Show more

  AI works with vectors. But what is a vector? How is a vector in Postgres different from integers, text, geospatial data, or other traditional Postgres datatypes? Why can't you create a regular B-tree index over vectors? Ok, but why not a GiST index?

  I will touch on these Postgres and pgvector topics:

  • pgvector extension's data types, including the new sparse and bit vector types
  • Curse of dimensionality with vector databases
  • Vector search algorithms, including HNSW (hierarchical navigable small worlds)

  Speaker

  

  Heikki Linnakangas

  PostgreSQL hacker & committer, co-founder of Neon

  Heikki is a cofounder of Neon and a long-time… Read more

• 
  From Postgres full text search to Retrieval Augmented Generative search

  Adam Wolk

  This talk iterates through the design of an email search application, starting from basic search through Postgres full text search,… Show more

  This talk iterates through the design of an email search application, starting from basic search through Postgres full text search, semantic search, and finally retrieval augmented generation (RAG), a new AI capability enabled by Azure Database for PostgreSQL. And this talk will introduce you to Milly the Mailiphant, who is ready to help with any Postgres database questions you may have.

  Through the session we cover designing the search document, FTS feature inner workings, the pgvector extension to Postgres, plus how to leverage the azure_ai extension to Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

  Speaker

  

  Adam Wolk

  Principal Program Manager in Postgres @ Microsoft

  Spent 7 years working with Oracle PL/SQL in the… Read more

• 
  Lessons Learned from benchmarking and profiling distributed PostgreSQL

  Lotte Felius

  In this talk, I’ll explain how I investigated the performance of Citus using the Citus Benchmark Suite and YCSB. Quantifying… Show more

  In this talk, I’ll explain how I investigated the performance of Citus using the Citus Benchmark Suite and YCSB. Quantifying performance however is not straightforward since Citus is a distributed system where queries are distributed across multiple worker nodes. Therefore, I’ll explain some of my learnings as a former intern with no prior experience in benchmarking Databases, which includes:

  • The pros and cons of different architectures used for distributed database systems based on PostgreSQL
  • Why quantifying performance is harder for distributed database systems and how you can use benchmarks to get an accurate indication of the performance
  • How to identify bottlenecks based on benchmarking results and which optimizations you can possibly to do mitigate them

  Speaker

  

  Lotte Felius

  PhD Student in the Database Architectures group at CWI

  Currently, I am a second year PhD student at the… Read more

• 
  Data-intensive PostgreSQL: Three ways to scale

  Marco Slot

  PostgreSQL is the most versatile data-processing tool available, and a safe choice for practically any type of application. However, as the… Show more

  PostgreSQL is the most versatile data-processing tool available, and a safe choice for practically any type of application. However, as the data volume and velocity in your application grow, a variety of bottlenecks can appear. The type of bottleneck depends heavily on the workload, so there is not one answer to scaling PostgreSQL.

  This talk will discuss 3 data-intensive workload patterns:

  • Growing SaaS app with a high transaction rate.
  • Site-facing analytics dashboard with a high rate of real-time data.
  • Interactive analytics on a high volume of recent and historical data.

  For each workload pattern, we'll discuss the main scalability challenges and key techniques for addressing them in PostgreSQL.

  Speaker

  

  Marco Slot

  Software Imagineer at Crunchy Data

  Marco Slot is building a new generation of PostgreSQL… Read more

• 
  HA and DR at a glance with Azure Database for PostgreSQL

  Silvano Coriani

  Implementing a highly available (HA) database tier for mission critical applications with PostgreSQL is not a walk in the park! It requires… Show more

  Implementing a highly available (HA) database tier for mission critical applications with PostgreSQL is not a walk in the park! It requires selecting the right technologies and workflows, plus involving people with the right skills. Those are the ingredients that a cloud vendor like Microsoft is baking into a PaaS service like Azure Database for PostgreSQL, so you can get business continuity out of the box.

  In this session, you will learn about the capabilities offered by the Azure managed database service, from local and zone-redundant High Availability (HA) to Multi-region Disaster Recovery (DR) for PostgreSQL.

  You will also learn how to leverage new features like Virtual Endpoints and Read Replica's "Promote to Primary" to create highly reliable deployments with minimal effort.

  Speaker

  

  Silvano Coriani

  Product Management - Postgres on Azure

  Silvano Coriani is a Program Manager in Azure Database… Read more

• 
  Even JSONB In Postgres Needs Schemas

  Chris Ellis

  PostgreSQL offers great support for JSON, which has been a game changer for me in a number of projects and use cases, offering easy… Show more

  PostgreSQL offers great support for JSON, which has been a game changer for me in a number of projects and use cases, offering easy solutions for those times where you really need to store complex structures, or the unknowns.

  However often you still need to be in control of what is being stored, or at least requiring some shape at minimum.

  Thankfully PostgreSQL has a great range of features for ensuring data integrity and making our future lives easier.

  We'll take a brief overview of PostgreSQL's JSON support, along with some practical and real world examples of when and how you can use it.

  Then we'll look at how you can control those unknown unknowns with JSON Schema and CHECK constraints.

  Speaker

  

  Chris Ellis

  Nexteam

  Chris is a computing and electronics geek, who loves… Read more

• 
  Postgres Storytelling: What’s going on with Synchronous Replication?

  Boriss Mejias

  This is an illustrated Postgres story about Monica DeBea, a fictional talented support engineer based on real-life talented support… Show more

  This is an illustrated Postgres story about Monica DeBea, a fictional talented support engineer based on real-life talented support engineers. Once upon a time Monica got a phone call at her desk at the end of the working day. She anticipated it was David again with a problem that would keep her at the office until the darkest hour. But it wasn’t David, it was Derk, the software engineer that is always walking around with a chess board, and he had a very interesting problem to discuss. Synchronous replication was extremely slow, and the only observable symptom was a huge amount of ‘SyncRep’ wait events. The network was not to be blamed, the CPU usage was smooth, and the RAM had enough space to still allocate the latest release of “Thundermother” in high resolution. So what was going on? This was a nice challenge.

  In this Postgres “storytelling” talk about Monica DeBea, you will learn how synchronous replication works, how vacuum and large tables affect replication, and what you need to take into account with respect to WAL files.

  Speaker

  

  Boriss Mejias

  PostgreSQL Solution Architect EDB

  I'm a holistic system software engineer,… Read more

• 
  How to Work with Other People

  Jimmy Angelakos Floor Drees

  Lack of awareness around Mental Health issues has always been a problem in IT circles, leading often to unnecessary stress, burnout and… Show more

  Lack of awareness around Mental Health issues has always been a problem in IT circles, leading often to unnecessary stress, burnout and strained relationships with colleagues and employers. This in turn can lead to employee churn for companies and strife within open source projects.

  Neurodiverse colleagues might be struggling more than you are, first with WFH and now with RTO, with industry-wide layoffs, and with biased performance review schemes. Understanding how different things affect different people differently will help make a more safe and more productive workplace. Making things a little better for neurodiverse folks, means making things a little better for everyone.

  We will share how our neurodiversity affects the way we work with others, as well as stories from peers. We aim to contribute to a better understanding of how your team members tick, and we want to invite people to share how others can help them get their best work done.

  We believe that the PostgreSQL community could become one in which its members can bring their true selves to (their open source) work.

  Speakers

  

  Jimmy Angelakos

  Systems & Database Architect, PostgreSQL contributor, author & speaker

  Jimmy Angelakos is a Systems and Database Architect… Read more

  

  Floor Drees

  Staff Community Program Manager at Aiven

  I'm a Staff Developer Advocate at… Read more

• 
  Accelerating PL/pgSQL Code Conversion When Migrating to Postgres

  Deepak Mahto

  Most of the adopters of PostgreSQL are folks moving from another database and code conversion or pl\pgsql development is a critical path.… Show more

  Most of the adopters of PostgreSQL are folks moving from another database and code conversion or pl\pgsql development is a critical path. It is a session, we will walk through curated learning I had moving customers and large code bases to PostgreSQL with pl\pgsql.

  Topics to cover

  1. Subtle art of code conversion, conversion is art not matching code always.
  2. Key difference in PostgreSQL that is unknown to all assessment tools but critical.
  3. How to migrate not only for primary instance but for Read replicas as well
  4. Key Differentiated feature of plpgsql and how to leverage it.
  5. Leverage newer features added in PostgreSQL like alias, unique on null and more.
  6. Avoid surprises around partitions like missing primary keys in partition columns and more.
  7. Why not to Ignore nulls and empty string comparison and what impact it can bring.
  8. How to Handle Packages in Oracle and how to accelerate its migrations.
  9. Build Code planning and uncover dependency at start of projects.
  10. Data type mapping and how to automate it using ora2pg. And more.

  Key Takeaways for the participant

  1. Understand pl\pgsql best practise from a migration perspective.
  2. Uncover hidden caveats with code conversion.
  3. Tips to accelerate code conversion.

  Speaker

  

  Deepak Mahto

  Database Migration Specialist

  I like to call myself a Database Guy who works in… Read more

• 
  PostgreSQL Partitioning: Slicing and Dicing for Performance and Easier Maintenance

  Ryan Booz

  As your database grows, the performance and maintenance of large tables can become challenging. Fear not! PostgreSQL has the right tool for… Show more

  As your database grows, the performance and maintenance of large tables can become challenging. Fear not! PostgreSQL has the right tool for the job: declarative table partitioning. This talk will discuss the benefits of partitioning in PostgreSQL, including improved performance and simplified maintenance.

  After introducing the benefits of table partitioning, we’ll take a whirlwind tour through the range, list, and hash partitioning types available in PostgreSQL, highlight common use cases and trade-offs. From there, we’ll dive right into practical examples of declarative partitioning and discuss some key considerations and best practices when designing the schema for partitioning.

  By the end of this session, you will be able to create partitioned tables in PostgreSQL that improve the performance and maintenance of your application, allowing you to scale with more control than ever before.

  Speaker

  

  Ryan Booz

  Developer Advocate at Redgate

  Ryan is an Advocate at Redgate focusing on PostgreSQL.… Read more

Expand all Collapse all

• 
  KEYNOTE: Why I love open source development & what I learned from K8s

  Sarah Novotny

  Every open source community I work with teaches me something. While I had a misspent youth in open source database communities, over the… Show more

  Every open source community I work with teaches me something. While I had a misspent youth in open source database communities, over the last 10 years, Kubernetes has been my most fruitful teacher. In this talk, I’ll share a few of my favorite takeaways from the Kubernetes world about collaboration, community, and the chaos of humans developing code on the public stage of the internet.

  Speaker

  

  Sarah Novotny

  Open Source Wonk

  Sarah Novotny is a technology executive renowned for… Read more

• 
  Beyond Joins and Indexes

  Bruce Momjian

  My presentation Explaining the Postgres Query Optimizer covers the details of query optimization, optimizer statistics, joins, and indexes.… Show more

  My presentation Explaining the Postgres Query Optimizer covers the details of query optimization, optimizer statistics, joins, and indexes. This talk covers 42 other operations the optimizer can choose to handle complex queries, large data sets, and to enhance performance. These include merge append, gather, memoize, and hash aggregate. It explains their purpose and shows queries that can generate these operations.

  Speaker

  

  Bruce Momjian

  EDB

  Bruce Momjian is co-founder and core team member of… Read more

• 
  Tales from the Field - Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations

  Adithya Kumaranchath

  Enterprises are increasingly making the move from Oracle databases to open source Postgres. This has emerged as one of the most common… Show more

  Enterprises are increasingly making the move from Oracle databases to open source Postgres. This has emerged as one of the most common migration patterns in the recent times. I spent my initial few years of my career working with Oracle and later in PostgreSQL, and for the past 4 years my focus has been on Oracle to PostgreSQL. So, I think am in the best position to compare and talk about both of these database technologies in detail, share key learnings, and experiences from numerous successful (and failed) customers Oracle to PostgreSQL engagements. Some key questions that will be answered in this session: What are the drivers to migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL? What are the benefits for business stakeholders and what motivates them to make this move? How difficult would it be for the team adopting to PostgreSQL? What tools are available for migration? How can mission critical applications be migrated with near zero downtime? How and why did a few customers fail?

  Speaker

  

  Adithya Kumaranchath

  Architect @ Microsoft

  I have been working with customers from various… Read more

• 
  pgvector for Python developers

  Pamela Fox

  Learn how to use pgvector, the Postgres extension for vector storage and querying, from Python scripts and web apps. I'll include demos… Show more

  Learn how to use pgvector, the Postgres extension for vector storage and querying, from Python scripts and web apps. I'll include demos with the most common drivers and ORMs, like psycopg, asyncpg, SQLAlchemy, SQLModel, and deploy a full FastAPI app using pgvector for a vector search API. I'll also talk about embedding model options and indexing strategies.

  Speaker

  

  Pamela Fox

  Cloud Advocate in Python, Microsoft

  Pamela Fox is a human that loves to learn, teach, and… Read more

• 
  PostgreSQL physical replication - internals, latest development and opportunities

  Krishnakumar R Melih Mutlu

  In this talk you will get to learn about the internals of Physical replication in PostgreSQL. We will start with architectural overview of… Show more

  In this talk you will get to learn about the internals of Physical replication in PostgreSQL. We will start with architectural overview of how physical replication works and go through details of various components involved such as WAL records, WAL receiver, WAL sender etc. Further we dig into details of how the recovery and WAL apply interacts to ensure that standby and read replicas maintains a consistent view. We will also delve into the role buffer pool plays in these interactions and look deeper into features such as hot standby feedback. We will also look at the protocol used in physical replication.

  PostgreSQL 16 & 17 has some exciting improvements been made in the physical replication space. This session will go through the overview of those improvements.

  Finally, we will conclude the talk with a brief overview of potential improvement opportunities in the physical replication space.

  Speakers

  

  Krishnakumar R

  Group Engineering Manager, PostgreSQL engine @ Microsoft

  Krishnakumar (KK) started his professional life with… Read more

  

  Melih Mutlu

  Software Engineer, Microsoft

  Software Engineer at Microsoft. Working on open source… Read more

• 
  Using Azure Query Store to Understand PostgreSQL Performance

  Grant Fritchey

  Capturing query metrics in Postgres can be a challenge. This is especially true because when capturing metrics, it's not enough to… Show more

  Capturing query metrics in Postgres can be a challenge. This is especially true because when capturing metrics, it's not enough to simply measure a query's performance. You must have multiple data points, a before and after if you will, to ensure that you know if a query is running faster, slower, or the same. Within Azure Database for PostgreSQL, there exists an extension, that measures query behaviors, and does it in a way to provides multiple data points, Query Store. This session will demonstrate why the Query Store will make it easier for you to identify the queries that need attention. Further, the Query Store gives you tools to help you with tuning those PostgreSQL queries on Azure. You no longer need to guess at which queries are the highest priority for your query tuning. Come to this session to find out how.

  Speaker

  

  Grant Fritchey

  Redgate Software

  Grant Fritchey is a Data Platform MVP and AWS… Read more

• 
  How/Why to Sweep Async Tasks Under a Postgres Table

  Taylor Troesh

  Instead of returning hostile "500" errors to users, a small async worker query pattern makes fault-tolerant design the… Show more

  Instead of returning hostile "500" errors to users, a small async worker query pattern makes fault-tolerant design the default.

  In this talk, we'll talk about (1) how backend/database design impacts frontend experience, (2) the pervasive insanity of hand-rolling two-phase commit, (3) Postgres as a platform, (4) how async DB queues form a natural complement to Jira, and (5) how the tiny async query pattern works, and (6) how to tweak the query for optimized parallelism, prioritization, and sampling.

  Speaker

  

  Taylor Troesh

  mayor of taylor.town

  Taylor tinkers with writing, learning, time, design,… Read more

• 
  6 things you can do with azure_ai & PostgreSQL on Azure

  Denzil Ribeiro

  Are you looking to spin up on how to leverage AI in Postgres in the cloud? This session will show you 6 things you can do today with the… Show more

  Are you looking to spin up on how to leverage AI in Postgres in the cloud? This session will show you 6 things you can do today with the azure_ai and pgvector extensions combined with the Azure Database for PostgreSQL managed service. The session will cover how the azure_ai extension gives you the ability to call Azure OpenAI LLMS using SQL, plus how to use it in conjunction with pgvector from within your Postgres database. You’ll also see how the new AI features in Azure Database for PostgreSQL give you capabilities for text analytics, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, real-time translation, as well as how real-time scoring can invoke trained ML models. You will learn how easy it is to integrate your application with the Azure AI ecosystem.

  Speaker

  

  Denzil Ribeiro

  Principal PM Manager @ Azure Database for PostgreSQL

  Denzil is a Principal PM manager in the Azure Data… Read more

• 
  Revitalizing Outdated Data Models with PostgreSQL Views

  Newvick Lee

  Are you grappling with a data model that's fallen behind the times? Whether due to evolving business needs, legacy system constraints,… Show more

  Are you grappling with a data model that's fallen behind the times? Whether due to evolving business needs, legacy system constraints, or simply the advance of technology, your current model doesn't have to be a stumbling block. In this talk, learn how PostgreSQL Views can update your data strategy without the need for costly migrations and code refactoring. Dive into the practical benefits, trade-offs, and helpful tips for using Views to address common problems such as data integrity and report generation, ensuring your database continues to serve you effectively.

  Speaker

  

  Newvick Lee

  Software Developer and Data Wrangler

  I'm a software developer with experience working… Read more

• 
  What Makes Azure Database for PostgreSQL Great for Developers?

  Varun Dhawan

  What matters to developers in a managed database service for PostgreSQL? Of course you care about integration with other tools, ease of… Show more

  What matters to developers in a managed database service for PostgreSQL? Of course you care about integration with other tools, ease of configuration, data protection, and performance tuning. But what else? In this talk, discover 8 things in Azure Database for PostgreSQL you'll find useful. What are these 8 features? Let’s find out!

  Learn how Flexible Server not only supports the latest open source Postgres release but also integrates with 60 essential extensions such as pgvector, PostGIS, and TimescaleDB—plus how Azure Bicep can simplify your deployment processes. We'll also detail how AAD (EntraID) makes connectivity straightforward and secure.

  Additionally, we'll examine integrations with popular developer tools including Azure Open AI, Power BI, and Azure Data Studio. With Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server, you'll likely also appreciate customizable configuration flags, Query Store, and Performance Insights.

  This session is ideal for anyone interested in running on a cloud-based PostgreSQL service, from beginners to seasoned users. Join us to learn how these 8 features in Azure Database for PostgreSQL features can make your life better in the cloud.

  Speaker

  

  Varun Dhawan

  Product @ Microsoft Azure Data ☁️

  Varun Dhawan is a Senior Product Manager @Microsoft… Read more

Expand all Collapse all

• 
  KEYNOTE: A Walking Tour of PostgreSQL

  Thomas Munro

  I'll talk about the origins and history of PostgreSQL and the POSTGRES research project it descends from; how it fits into the space of… Show more

  I'll talk about the origins and history of PostgreSQL and the POSTGRES research project it descends from; how it fits into the space of databases; and how it fits into the space of open source projects. I’ll show how hundreds of open source developers and companies collaborate to make PostgreSQL. I’ll talk about a couple of projects on my own journey from long-time user through to full-time developer and committer. And how anyone with an itch to scratch is welcome to get involved. Let’s go on a walking tour of PostgreSQL together!

  Speaker

  

  Thomas Munro

  PostgreSQL hacker working at Microsoft

  I am a PostgreSQL developer and committer based in New… Read more

• 
  Partitioning your Postgres tables for 20X better performance

  Derk van Veen

  Over the last two years we mastered the skill of creating and maintaining partitions in PostgreSQL and shared our work with the Postgres… Show more

  Over the last two years we mastered the skill of creating and maintaining partitions in PostgreSQL and shared our work with the Postgres database community: https://github.com/Adyen/adyen-postgres-partitioning.

  But we forgot a very important detail. Until now we have been partitioning individual Postgres tables in the most optimal way, taking locking into account. But in a relational database you JOIN a lot of tables together. And we did not optimise our strategy for joining, resulting in suboptimal database performance—and even an almost performance incident.

  In this session I will share our latest insights with respect to Postgres partitioning, optimal partitioning strategies, and how to use check constraints to help the Postgres query optimiser create the best plans.

  With the improved strategy and denormalising a few Postgres tables, we have been able to make queries up to 50 times faster. We have been totally blown away by the results this far.

  Speaker

  

  Derk van Veen

  Database specialist @ Adyen

  Derk van Veen is a database specialist at Adyen. Adyen… Read more

• 
  Where do the performance cliffs come from?

  Tomas Vondra

  When running queries on a Postgres database, chances are you have experience with hitting a "performance cliff" - an abrupt… Show more

  When running queries on a Postgres database, chances are you have experience with hitting a "performance cliff" - an abrupt change of performance for a given Postgres query, after only a small change in data and/or query parameters.

  In this talk, you'll learn why performance cliffs happen in Postgres. After a brief explanation of how cost-based optimizers work and what assumptions that relies on, I'll show a couple examples why/how it fails. I'll also share recommendations on how to mitigate these issues.

  If time permits, I'll talk about a couple interesting improvements & possible solutions proposed in recent research projects, focused on making Postgres query execution more adaptive & robust.

  Speaker

  

  Tomas Vondra

  EDB

  long-term PostgreSQL contributor & committer,… Read more

• 
  Hazards of logical decoding in PostgreSQL

  Polina Bungina

  Logical decoding was introduced in PostgreSQL 9.4 and has been greatly improved since then. One of the popular use cases of this feature is… Show more

  Logical decoding was introduced in PostgreSQL 9.4 and has been greatly improved since then. One of the popular use cases of this feature is implementation of the Change Data Capture (CDC) pattern. Although developers are usually eager to adopt this modern approach to make use of all the apparent benefits it brings, my strong belief is that usage of logical decoding in PostgreSQL requires at least a basic understanding of the implementation and should definitely be treated with great care. In this talk I will share the problems we, as Zalando's DBaaS team, dealt with while adopting and maintaining our internal CDC solution based on logical decoding and point you out to the nuances you should always keep in mind when using this technology.

  Speaker

  

  Polina Bungina

  Senior Software Engineer, Zalando SE

  Software and database engineer at Zalando. Greenplum… Read more

• 
  PostgreSQL performance tips you have never seen before V2.0

  Hans-Jürgen Schönig

  Most people are aware of the standard ways to improve performance. More RAM, more CPUs, better storage and alike. However, there are many… Show more

  Most people are aware of the standard ways to improve performance. More RAM, more CPUs, better storage and alike. However, there are many hidden tricks which can be applied to make your database faster, more efficient and more user friendly.

  Welcome to secret performance tips you have never seen before. This talks adds many tricks to what has been presented last years and hopefully enjoys even more attraction

  Speaker

  

  Hans-Jürgen Schönig

  CEO of CYBERTEC

  Hans-Jürgen Schönig has been in professional… Read more

• 
  Autotuning PostgreSQL on Azure Flexible Server

  Luigi Nardi

  We'll explore the intricate world of PostgreSQL parameter tuning, where the database management system reveals a multitude of… Show more

  We'll explore the intricate world of PostgreSQL parameter tuning, where the database management system reveals a multitude of configurable parameters that govern its runtime behavior. As the system evolves, the increasing number, the non-linear relationship and the complexity of these parameters highlight the importance of their correct configuration in optimizing application performance and cloud resource utilization.

  This talk delves into various tuning approaches. We'll start with the traditional, meticulous method of manual tuning, relying on expert analysis of metrics like query response times and resource usage. We'll then explore heuristic-based tools like PGTune and PostgreSQL Configurator, offering one-size-fits-all solutions. Finally, we'll set our sights on the future: auto-tuning with machine learning. We'll showcase how these more sophisticated methods can be customized to a specific workload and machine resources.

  We'll highlight the challenges and the advantages of transforming PostgreSQL into a more self-driving database management system and show a proof-of-concept on auto-tuning PostgreSQL Azure Flexible Server with some preliminary performance results.

  Speaker

  

  Luigi Nardi

  Founder & CEO at DBtune

  Luigi Nardi is the founder and CEO of DBtune (Read more

• 
  You Don't Need a Database Backup Policy

  Karen Jex

  I can hear what you’re thinking: “Don’t be ridiculous, Karen! Of course I need a database backup policy. All hell will… Show more

  I can hear what you’re thinking: “Don’t be ridiculous, Karen! Of course I need a database backup policy. All hell will break loose if I don’t backup my Postgres databases.”

  Hear me out. A backup policy specifies things like

  • type and frequency of backups
  • backup tool(s)
  • backup storage and retention

  But how do you decide those things? Finger in the air? Copy what you put in place for your other Postgres databases?

  Since the primary goal of backing up your Postgres databases is probably to recover data in case of failure, it makes more sense to consider

  • the types of failure you need to be able to recover from
  • how quickly you need to recover
  • how much data you can afford to lose

  The answers to these recovery-based questions will determine how and when you take backups. In this talk, we’ll look at the different things you need to consider in order to be confident in your ability to recover your Postgres database from disaster.

  Speaker

  

  Karen Jex

  Senior Solutions Architect at Crunchy Data

  Karen was a database administrator for over 20 years… Read more

• 
  Advancing Drug Search with PostgreSQL and Azure AI

  Taras Kloba

  "Advancing Search with PostgreSQL and Azure AI" is a session that details how PostgreSQL's features and Azure AI Services can… Show more

  "Advancing Search with PostgreSQL and Azure AI" is a session that details how PostgreSQL's features and Azure AI Services can be effectively used to significantly enhance the search functionality in any application.

  In this session, we'll share insights on how we used PostgreSQL to facilitate precise searches across multiple fields in our mobile application. The techniques include using LIKE and ILIKE operators and integrating a trigram-based search to handle potential misspellings, thereby increasing the search accuracy.

  We'll also discuss how the azure_ai extension on PostgreSQL databases in Azure and Azure AI Services were utilized to create vectors from user input, a feature beneficial when users wish to find specific items based on text prompts.

  While our application's case study involves a drug search, the techniques and principles shared in this session can be adapted to improve search functionality in a wide range of applications. Join us to learn how PostgreSQL and Azure AI can be harnessed to enhance your application's search capability.

  Speaker

  

  Taras Kloba

  Senior Partner Solutions Architect, Data & AI at Microsoft

  I'm Taras Kloba, Associate Director of Big Data… Read more

• 
  Vindicating ZFS with PostgreSQL: Unleashing the Power of Scalability

  Federico Campoli

  In the ever-evolving landscape of database systems, PostgreSQL stands as a robust and highly capable RDBMS. However, achieving optimal… Show more

  In the ever-evolving landscape of database systems, PostgreSQL stands as a robust and highly capable RDBMS. However, achieving optimal performance at scale requires careful consideration of the underlying file system.

  This presentation will talk about ZOL (ZFS on Linux), a powerful and advanced file system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. ZFS point of strength are robust data storage management, data integrity, data compression, snapshotting, and efficient storage allocation. However ZFS performances are terrible if compared with the native file systems like XFS or EXT4.

  This presentation will help the attendees to have a better understanding for harnessing the power of ZFS and run PostgreSQL on ZOL at scale levels not so different from XFS or EXT4.

  Speaker

  

  Federico Campoli

  Freelance PostgreSQL consultant

  Federico is a freelance consultant with long… Read more

• 
  Semantic search with Django, PostgreSQL, & pgvector

  Paolo Melchiorre

  Artificial intelligence is now a required functionality in many fields, and we often find ourselves needing to add to existing… Show more

  Artificial intelligence is now a required functionality in many fields, and we often find ourselves needing to add to existing projects.

  The first problem to face is that of having to store the vectors, there are vector databases ready to use, but they also introduce new problems, fortunately pgvector allows us to continue to exploit PostgreSQL for this purpose.

  In this talk we will see how to add semantic search functionality to an existing Python-based web project, in particular Django, with data storage on PostgreSQL.

  Speaker

  

  Paolo Melchiorre

  CTO @ 20tab - Django Software Foundation member

  I’m Paolo Melchiorre, a longtime Python backend… Read more