If you could work on anything, would you quit your job to pursue it? Postgres committer and major contributor Melanie Plageman joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share her story about becoming a Postgres committer. Melanie pivoted from IT consulting to open-source development, driven by her fascination with systems engineering and Postgres open source. What’s the secret to getting your patch committed? Feedback is a gift, but how willing are you to embrace it? How important is mentorship—and how important is it to ask for help? Even though crafting clear, concise emails to a technical community might not be easy, Melanie shows how empathy for other Postgres developers can help your work to stand out.Links discussed in this episodePgsql-hackers mailing list: Announcement about new Postgres committersConference: PGConf.dev 2025Blog: Talk, then code by Dave ChenyBlog posts about mentoring by Robert HaasBlog: Mentoring Program Updates by Robert HaasX: Brendan Burn’s tweet about the Kubernetes Chop Wood and Carry Water awardAward: Chop Wood Carry WaterBlog: Who Contributed to PostgreSQL Development in 2023? by Robert HaasAbstract: What's in a Postgres major release? An analysis of contributions in the v17 timeframe for PGConfEU 2024 by Claire GiordanoTalking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David RowleyWikipedia: PostgreSQL Contributor GiftsCal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane to be recorded LIVE on Wed Oct 9, 2024Podcasts & conference videos that Melanie listens to when running that she recommends to Postgres developers:Podcast: Oxide and FriendsPodcast: postgres.fmPodcast: Software Engineering RadioPodcast: Talking Postgres with Claire GiordanoPodcast: Two’s ComplementSE Radio: Ep 432: Brian D Foy on Perl 7Video: Memory & Caches by Matt GodboltVideos: POSETTE 2024 playlistVideo: RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi MetzYouTube: Brandon FoltzYouTube: CMU Database GroupYouTube: Kernel RecipesYouTube: Linux Plumbers ConferenceYouTube: Matt GodboltYouTube: Onur Mutlu LecturesYouTube: pganalyzeYouTube: PostgreSQL Development ConferenceYouTube: SNIAVideoYouTube: Strange Loop ConferenceYouTube: The Linux Foundation

Ever wonder how driving a forklift at a cheese factory could lead to a career in databases? Postgres committer David Rowley joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share his story about how he got started as a developer and in Postgres. Could an unexpected job lead to your dream career? Does speeding things up give you a buzz? How could an idea from a hike become a Postgres patch? And what is the importance of doing the research before you submit a proposal to the Postgres mailing list? Also discussed: resources available to start your Postgres journey such as books, blogs, videos, and the pgsql-hackers mailing list.Links mentioned in this episode:Wikipedia: Acorn ComputersPostgreSQL Mailing List Archives: David’s first email: Possible problem with EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM TIMESTAMP)Google Usenet: Larry Page’s Java question from Jan 7, 1996Blog: Speeding up sort performance in Postgres 15 by David RowleyBlog: What’s new in the Postgres 16 query planner / optimizer by David RowleyBook: The Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri FontaineBook: The Art of SQL by Stéphane Faroult, Peter RobsonBook: The Art of Writing Efficient Programs: An advanced programmer's guide to efficient hardware utilization and compiler optimizations using C++ examples by Fedor G. PikusX: Simon Willison’s tweetBlog by Tony FinchBook: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason CurreyGitHub Issue: Coughing in my microphone causes segfaultPostgreSQL Mailing Lists: OverviewPostgreSQL Mailing Lists: pgsql-generalPostgreSQL Mailing Lists: pgsql-hackersVideo: Making your patch more committable by Melanie Plageman at PGConf.EU 2023Cheese company: Seriously CheddarTalking Postgres Ep04: How I got started as a dev and in Postgres with Melanie Plageman & Thomas MunroTalking Postgres Ep08: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki LinnakangasCal invite for next Ep19 of Talking Postgres with Melanie PlagemanCal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane

Have you ever eavesdropped on other people’s conversations? Former co-host Pino de Candia joins Claire Giordano on this episode of Talking Postgres (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share their experience on podcasting about Postgres. Is listening to a podcast the next best thing to being in the hallway track at a conference? Does it bring the community together? How beneficial has it been to have a parallel chat while recording live? What is the “sweet spot” for the number of guests to have per episode? Is structure important for a podcast? Also discussed: this podcast’s rename, a walk down memory lane reflecting on the past 16 episodes, and shout-outs to other podcasts about Postgres.Links mentioned in this episode:Cal invite for next Ep18 of Talking Postgres with David RowleyPodcast: Talking Postgres Talking Postgres Ep01: Working in public on open source with Simon Willison & Marco SlotEp02: How to get Postgres ready for the next 100 million usersEp03: Why giving talks at Postgres conferences matterswith Álvaro Herrera and Boriss MejíasVideo: Postgres Storytelling: What’s going on with Synchronous Replication | POSETTE 2024 by Boriss MejíasVideo: Postgres Storytelling: Support in the Darkest Hour | Citus Con 2023, by Boriss MejíasEp04: How I got started as a dev and in Postgres with Melanie Plageman & Thomas MunroEp05: My favorite ways to learn more about PostgreSQL with Grant Fritchey & Ryan BoozVideo: Fibonacci Spirals and Ways to Contribute to Postgres—Beyond Code | Citus Con 2022, by Claire GiordanoEp06: You're probably already using Postgres with Chelsea Dole & Floor DreesWikipedia: Object–relational mappingVideo: How to work with other people | POSETTE 2024, by Floor Drees and Jimmy AngelakosEp07: Why people care about PostGIS and Postgres with Paul Ramsey & Regina ObeEp08: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki LinnakangasSatya Nadella’s LinkedIn post about Andres Freund’s xz backdoor discoveryEp09: Solving every data problem in SQL with Dimitri Fontaine & Vik FearingWikipedia: Advent of CodeEp10: My Journey into Postgres Monitoring with Lukas Fittl & Rob TreatEp11: My Journey into Performance Benchmarking with Jelte Fennema-Nio & Marco SlotEp12: From developer to PostgreSQL specialist with Derk van VeenEp13: Spinning up on Postgres & AI with Arda AytekinEp14: Becoming expert at using PostgreSQL with Chris EllisVideo: Electric Elephants | pgDay Paris 2024, by Chris EllisEp15: My Journey to Explaining Explain with Michael ChristofidesPodcast: Postgres FMEp16: The Making of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres with Teresa Giacomini & Aaron WislangPodcast: Scaling PostgreSQLPodcast: Postgres FM Ep99 with guest Claire Giordano: Sponsoring the communityPodcast: Hacking PostgresPlaylist: 5mins of Postgres

It’s not a conference unless you can confer, right? POSETTE organizers Teresa Giacomini and Aaron Wislang join Claire Giordano on the Path To Citus Con* podcast to share backstage perspectives on the making of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres. How do you feel about captions: love or hate? Should livestream talks be pre-recorded or presented live? Why rename from Citus Con to POSETTE? Where did the inspiration for POSETTE come from? And can the hallway track at a conference actually be fun—if it is virtual? Also discussed: Avett Brothers lyrics, the surprising number of POSETTE speakers with chickens, and the existential question of whether the work in organizing a conference is worth it.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode: Blog post: What’s in a name? About the naming of POSETTE: An Event for PostgresFOSDEM: the conference whose name inspired the POSETTE namePlaylist of all 42 talks from POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024Playlist of the 4 unique livestreams from POSETTE 2024 CFP is open: PGDay Lowlands 2024 Call for Papers will close July 9, 2024Virtual conference that POSETTE organizers were inspired by: P99 ConfDiscord: Microsoft Open Source Discord, Home for virtual hallway track for #posetteconfAdam Wølk’s speaker page for POSETTESpeaker interview with Polina Bungina at POSETTEBlog post: About Talk Selection for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, by Claire GiordanoBlog post: Building the PGConf.dev Programme, by Paul RamseypgDay Paris 2024 note about talk selection processKeynote: All The Postgres Things at Microsoft, POSETTE edition, by Charles FeddersenKeynote: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres, by Regina ObeKeynote: Why I love open source development & what I learned from K8s, by Sarah NovotnyKeynote: A Walking Tour of PostgreSQL, by Thomas MunroLyrics from The Perfect Space by The Avett BrothersVideo: Lessons Learned benchmarking & profiling distributed PostgreSQL, by Lotte FeliusVideo: Postgres Storytelling: Support in the Darkest Hour | Citus Con 2023, by Boriss Mejías Video: Postgres Storytelling: What's going on with Synchronous Replication?, by Boriss MejíasVideo: Vindicating ZFS with PostgreSQL: Unleashing the Power of Scalability, includes a bit of jazz music by Federico CampoliBlog post: Ultimate Guide to POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, 2024 editionSocial post: Tweet by Kelsey Hightower with advice to conference organizersVideo from PGConfEU 2023: So you want a PGDay in your city, by Henrietta Dombrovskaya & Teresa GiacominiBlog post: The Story Behind the Activity Book for Postgres, by Teresa Giacomini

Did you know that sometimes the fastest way of doing something is not having to do it at all? In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, the podcast for developers who love Postgres, Michael Christofides joins Claire Giordano to chat about his journey to explaining explain (or should we say EXPLAIN!?) Michael shared his origin story as a mathematician and his first experience with Postgres before walking us through co-founding a Postgres company and now co-hosting a podcast. Like many in the Postgres community, he is opinionated in the best way possible! We even learned about his passion for BUFFERS and why he believes everyone should use them. This session also dives into Michael’s belief in the importance of Postgres documentation. Because great documentation can be worth its weight in Gold, especially when the going gets tough.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode:Schedule for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024Michael Christofides' company, pgMustardBlog: Where our name came from by Michael ChristofidesWiki: Using EXPLAIN X: Nikolay SamokhvalovVideo: Lightning Talks at pgDay Paris 2024Blog: What’s new with Postgres at Microsoft (August 2023) by Claire GiordanoBlog: Faster PostgreSQL Counting by Joe NelsonGitHub: pg_docs_bot (browser extension)GitHub Docs: About GitHub Copilot ChatDocumentation: Using EXPLAINGlossary: EXPLAIN Glossary by Michael ChristofidesVideo: EXPLAIN Explained by Josh BerkusBlog: Reading a Postgres EXPLAIN ANALYZE Query Plan by Caleb HearthBlog: Explaining the unexplainable by DepeszPostgreSQL execution plan visualizer, explain.dalibo.comBlog: Planet PostgreSQLNews: Postgres WeeklyPlaylist: 5mins of PostgresPodcast: Postgres FM podcastCal invite for next Ep16 of Path To Citus Con podcast with Aaron Wislang & Teresa Giacomini

You have to find what works for you and Chris Ellis has never been the kind of person that could go and sit in a library—for Chris, the most productive Postgres place is in a coffee shop. In this episode of the Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres, Chris Ellis joined Claire and Pino to chat about his path to becoming more (and more) expert at using PostgreSQL. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it’s taken Chris places, beginning as a 5 year old playing with QBASIC. Chris shared his journey to becoming a developer, an electronic engineer, a builder, and a PostgreSQL user. This session also delves into Chris’s work as a Postgres conference speaker (and organizer!) Importantly, we spent time remembering Simon Riggs, Postgres leader extraordinaire. RIP.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode:Chris's first thread on the PostgreSQL mailing listsSlides: IoT with PostgreSQL—by Chris Ellis at PGConf.EU 2023Slides: Advantage PostgreSQL—by Chris Ellis at Nordic PGDay 2024 Video: Should I use JSON in PostgreSQL?—by Boriss Mejías at PGConf.EU 2023 Slides: Fighting the Butterflies & giving your first Postgres conference talk—by Claire Giordano at pgDay Paris 2024 Markus Winand's website, Modern SQLWikipedia: Linus’s lawAndres Freund’s xz backdoor discoveryAndres Freund’s Mastodon Toot about xz backdoorPodcast: Path to Citus Con Ep08: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki LinnakangasPodcast: Path To Citus Con Ep11: My Journey into Performance Benchmarking with Jelte Fennema-Nio & Marco SlotPodcast: Oxide and Friends next episode on Mon Apr 08 2024, featuring Andres Freund from MicrosoftJessie Frazelle tweet on LLMVideo of pgDay Paris 2024 lightning talks, including Chris's "Electric Elephants" talkPost about Simon Riggs's tragic passing last week. He will be missed, he is missed, and many are heartbroken Simon Riggs: The Next 20 Years—keynote at PGConf.EU 2023Book: The Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri FontainePodcast: Path To Citus Con Ep09: Solving every data problem in SQL w/Dimitri Fontaine & Vik FearingBlog: Planet PostgreSQLBlog: Contributing to Postgres 101: A Beginner's Experience by Elizabeth Christensen Book: Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love Chris Ellis’s LED PCB ArtBlog: pgDay Paris – Postgres Community, cheese and wine by Boriss MejíasPodcast: LUG RadioCFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until Sunday April 7th 2024 at 11:59pm PDTCal invite for next Ep15 of Path To Citus Con podcast with Michael Christofides

Everywhere you look, people are talking about AI. From Copilot to ChatGPT to Postgres’s powerful AI capabilities (think: pgvector), AI is everywhere. In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, for developers who love Postgres, Arda Aytekin joined Claire and Pino to chat about spinning up on Postgres and AI. Arda shared his origin story in mechanical engineering and data science before walking us through vector databases, pgvector, and azure_ai. Arda is one of the creators of the azure_ai extension, so the conversation delves into the azure_ai integration between Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure AI Services. Also discussed (of course) was—Responsible AI.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode:pgvector on GitHub: https://github.com/pgvector/pgvectorAndrew Kane: https://github.com/ankaneSimon Willison’s Blog: https://simonwillison.net/Demo of Azure AI & pgvector with Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Claire Giordano: https://youtu.be/em0PKDGzzlQ?si=TrOQHXO5gqIuGsU0Blog: Introducing the azure_ai extension to Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Denzil Ribeiro: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-database-for-postgresql/introducing-the-azure-ai-extension-to-azure-database-for/ba-p/3980291Documentation: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server Azure AI Extension: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/postgresql/flexible-server/generative-ai-azure-overviewBlog: Vectors are the new JSON in PostgreSQL by Jonathan Katz: https://jkatz05.com/post/postgres/vectors-json-postgresql/Responsible AI at Microsoft: https://aka.ms/raiAndreessen's Corollary: Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering by Bryan Cantrill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wtvQZijPzgBlog: Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models by Mojan Javaheripi & Sébastien Bubeck: https://www.microsoft.com/research/blog/phi-2-the-surprising-power-of-small-language-models/pg_vectorize: https://github.com/tembo-io/pg_vectorizeOpenAI API documentation: https://platform.openai.com/docs/introductionMicrosoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Generative AI - Training: https://learn.microsoft.com/training/paths/introduction-generative-ai/ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers: https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/chatgpt-prompt-engineering-for-developers/Andrej Karpathy's keynote @ Microsoft Build 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZQun8Y4L2AStanford University CS231n: Deep Learning for Computer Vision: http://cs231n.stanford.edu/LangChain: https://www.langchain.com/Towards Data Science: https://towardsdatascience.com/Generative AI for Beginners on GitHub: https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners/Zero-shot learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-shot_learningAndrej Karpathy thread on LLMs: https://www.threads.net/@karpathy/post/C3lBSlov1QJ/Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep01: Working in public on open source with Simon Willison & Marco Slot: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/working-in-public-on-open-sourceThe Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri Fontaine, get 15% OFF with CLAIRE15: https://theartofpostgresql.com/Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep08: Solving every data problem in SQL w/Dimitri Fontaine & Vik Fearing: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/solving-every-data-problem-in-sql-w-dimitri-fontaine-vik-fearing)Arda Aytekin’s scheduled talk at PGDay Chicago 2024 on April 26: https://postgresql.us/events/pgdaychicago2024/schedule/session/1542-learnings-from-extension-development-in-rust-pgrx/ CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until April 7th 2024: https://aka.ms/posette-cfp-2024

The best days are when things don’t go as planned. Derk van Veen joined Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on this episode of Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss his journey from Java developer to PostgreSQL specialist and DBA. From his first days with DB2 and Oracle, to his work with Postgres, Derk shared how he learned about databases. And how a very smart colleague would break the database on purpose, to give Derk the tough job of fixing it. Another topic: what to do when you need to jump on a problem but your heart rate doubles? What will it take to get that magical feeling of fixing something in the database? And a segue into sharing your expertise as a speaker at Postgres conferences. Because it’s always about the why.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode:Explaining the PostgreSQL concurrency control mechanisms by Derk van Veen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkxwaN46K88Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep03: Why give talks at Postgres conferences with Álvaro Herrera & Boriss Mejías: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/why-giving-talks-at-postgres-conferences-mattersBlog: A Deep Dive into Table Partitioning part 3 by Derk van Veen & Cosmin Octavian Pene: https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/maintenance-under-pressureBook: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King: https://stephenking.com/works/nonfiction/on-writing-a-memoir-of-the-craft.htmlPechaKucha, 20 slides for 20 seconds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PechaKuchapgChess: PostgreSQL 9.1+ extension for the game of Chess on GitHub: https://github.com/gciolli/pgChessFOSDEM PGDay 2023 talk by Derk van Veen: Fighting Write Amplification By Stimulating Hot Updates Through The Fill Factor: https://www.postgresql.eu/events/fosdem2023/schedule/session/4196-fighting-write-amplification-by-stimulating-hot-updates-through-the-fill-factor/Blog: Fighting PostgreSQL write amplification with HOT updates by Derk van Veen & Dave Pitts: https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/postgresql-hot-updatesFOSDEM PGDay 2024 talk by Derk van Veen & Boriss Mejías: High Available Configurations Are Very Common For Postgresql. But How Do You Investigate Performance Problems When The Standby Can't Keep Up? https://www.postgresql.eu/events/fosdem2024/schedule/session/5164-high-available-configurations-are-very-common-for-postgresql-but-how-do-you-investigate-performance-problems-when-the-standby-cant-keep-up/FOSDEM PGDay 2024 slides by Derk van Veen & Boriss Mejías: High Available Configurations Are Very Common For Postgresql. But How Do You Investigate Performance Problems When The Standby Can't Keep Up? https://www.postgresql.eu/events/fosdem2024/sessions/session/5164/slides/460/HA_delay_analysis.pdfX post with picture about Derk and Boriss’ talk on FOSDEM PGDay 2024 by Devrim Gündüz: https://twitter.com/DevrimGunduz/status/1753348159026130959?s=20Blitz Chess game: https://www.chess.com/terms/blitz-chessCFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until April 7th 2024: https://aka.ms/posette-cfp-2024

No one likes benchmarking. But it can be one of the highest impact things you do. Jelte Fennema-Nio and Marco Slot joined Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on this episode of Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss their journeys into performance benchmarking. And how it can change the course of your career. Do you need to find bottlenecks in your Postgres? Do you want to build skills with database benchmarks? There are many lovely benchmarking tools in the Postgres world: HammerDB, pgbench, YCSB, BenchBase, perf, & more. And in addition to running benchmarks themselves—asking the right questions, introspection, and profiling matter just as much. *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode:Podcast: Path To Citus Con Ep01: Working in public on open source with Simon Willison & Marco Slot: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/working-in-public-on-open-sourceStreetlight effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effectBenchBase: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/projects/benchbase/HammerDB: https://www.hammerdb.com/Slides: Intro to benchmarking with pgbench at PGConf NYC 2023 by Melanie Plageman: https://speakerdeck.com/melanieplageman/intro-to-benchmarking-with-pgbenchLocust: https://locust.io/Blog post: How to benchmark performance of Citus and Postgres with HammerDB on Azure by Jelte Fennema-Nio: https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2022/03/12/how-to-benchmark-performance-of-citus-and-postgres-with-hammerdb/Profiling with perf: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Profiling_with_perfFlame Graphs: https://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.htmlBrendan Gregg’s Website, a super-valuable resource for performance engineering: https://www.brendangregg.com/overview.htmlVideo: Analyzing Postgres performance problems using perf and eBPF by Andres Freund: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HghP4D72NocVideo: Explanatory talk about compiler optimization and memory & caches by Matt Godbolt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_smHyqgDTU&t=52sCompiler Explorer is fantastic, especially if you want to know how different compilers will optimize your code: https://godbolt.org/Mark Callaghan Twitter account @MarkCallaghanDB: https://twitter.com/MarkCallaghanDBPGConf.dev CFP is open until Mon Jan 15 2024 at 11:59pm PST: https://2024.pgconf.dev/cfp/3rd party performance benchmark in 2023 by GigaOM on Transaction Processing & Price-Performance Testing of Distributed SQL Databases:  https://gigaom.com/report/transaction-processing-price-performance-testing/Blog post: "Query from any node" feature for Citus, by Marco Slot: https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2022/06/17/citus-11-goes-fully-open-source/

Do you monitor your Postgres error logs for gold? Lukas Fittl and Rob Treat join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on the Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss their respective journeys into Postgres monitoring. Have you ever asked yourself: “Why is my query so slow?” Or had to figure out which query is slowing things down? Or why your database server is at 90% CPU? There are so many ways to monitor Postgres: pganalyze, pgMustard, pgBadger, pgDash, your cloud provider’s Query Performance Insights, pg_stat_statements, pg_stat_io, & more. If you’re running Postgres on a managed service, what kinds of things do you need to monitor & optimize for (vs. what will your cloud service provider do)? There’s also a segue on monitoring vs. observability: what’s the difference? *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode:OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io/pganalyze: https://pganalyze.com/pgDash: https://pgdash.io/pgMustard: https://www.pgmustard.com/pg_stat_statements docs: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.htmlpg_hint_plan: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan pg_hint_plan hint list: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan/blob/master/docs/hint_list.mdExample for PostgreSQL with pg_hint_plan: https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/QueryMethods.html#method-i-optimizer_hints5mins of Postgres by pganalyze: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhqxwIAgz78HZhWyu3UyKrCWNk7VWjVpjMonitoring page on PostgreSQL wiki: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/MonitoringPgHero GitHub repo: https://github.com/ankane/pgheroInsights on pgBadger: A PGSQL Phriday #010 Recap: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-database-for-postgresql/community-insights-on-pgbadger-a-pgsql-phriday-010-recap/ba-p/3880911Get PostgreSQL Logs Into Honeycomb: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/logs/postgresql/Blog post by Lukas Fittl about pg_stat_io by Lukas: https://pganalyze.com/blog/pg-stat-ioBlog post by Andrew Atkinson about pg_stat_io: https://andyatkinson.com/blog/2023/11/01/PostgreSQL-IO-Visibility-wehack-pg_stat_ioBPFtrace by iovisor GitHub repo: https://github.com/iovisor/bpftraceTrace PostgreSQL locks with pg_lock_tracer: https://jnidzwetzki.github.io/2023/01/11/trace-postgresql-locks-with-pg-lock-tracer.htmlsysdig by draios GitHub repo: https://github.com/draios/sysdigUsing BPFtrace to trace PostgreSQL vacuum operations: https://www.timescale.com/blog/using-bpftrace-to-trace-postgresql-vacuum-operations/PostgreSQL Mailing Lists: https://www.postgresql.org/list/psql — PostgreSQL interactive terminal: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-psql.htmlOngoing discussion thread about pg_stat_statements: https://commitfest.postgresql.org/46/2837/Reconnoiter project referenced by Rob: https://github.com/circonus-labs/reconnoiter/tree/master/sqlFunny tweet about PostgreSQL pronunciation: https://twitter.com/as_w/status/1648373353214885892O11ycast EP63 with Lukas Fittl: https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ep-63-observability-in-the-database-with-lukas-fittl-of-pganalyzeOxide and Friends podcast: https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/

Is being lazy a good reason to learn SQL? Dimitri Fontaine and Vik Fearing join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on the Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss whether every data problem can be (or should be) solved in SQL. Have you tried to solve all the Advent of Code puzzles with SQL? Or written a book for application developers about The Art of PostgreSQL? Or tried to solve a murder mystery by running SQL queries? Regardless of whether you pronounce SQL as “sequel” or as “ess-cue-ell”, getting skilled at SQL is like going to the gym for exercise. It’s ideal to do it every day to build up your strength. Also, this episode includes an explanation of what a “declarative” language like SQL is—plus a fun segue into time zones.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode, in the order they were covered:Dimitri Fontaine’s blog: https://tapoueh.org/ Advent of Code: https://adventofcode.com/Dimitri’s book, The Art of PostgreSQL: https://theartofpostgresql.com/ Blog post about What’s new in SQL:2023: https://peter.eisentraut.org/blog/2023/04/04/sql-2023-is-finished-here-is-whats-newPostgreSQL Exercises at pgexercises.com: https://pgexercises.com/SQL Murder Mystery for learning SQL: https://mystery.knightlab.com/Pgvector extension for Postgres and AI embeddings: https://github.com/pgvector/pgvectorVik’s Advent of Code puzzle solutions in SQL on GitHub: https://github.com/xocolatl/advent-of-codeStack Overflow data in Postgres, from pgtreats GitHub repo: https://github.com/pgtreats/stackoverflow_in_pgOpenStreetMap runs on Postgres: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=4/38.01/-95.84Uber data set: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/uber-tlc-foil-responseIdeas for fun, open data sets: https://data.world/data-society?entryTypeLabel=dataset&tab=resources“Don’t Do This” Timestamp learnings on PostgreSQL wiki: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don't_Do_This#Don.27t_use_timestamp_.28without_time_zone.29

Lots of stories of how folks got started as developers! Andres Freund and Heikki Linnakangas join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia to explore more paths for getting into Postgres on Path To Citus Con*, the podcast for developers who love Postgres. How do you do development: with a cup of coffee, with music in the background, maybe at 3am? How do you approach mentoring other developers? Why did you stick with Postgres and make it a career? Lots of lively discussion about building not only code, but relationships in the community, in the open. Also, stories about Heikki’s and Andres’s first Postgres patch submissions, and working via the hackers mailing list. Finally, what advice would you give to your younger self starting in the development world? *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode, in the order they were covered: Neon: https://neon.tech/ Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman's book: The Imposter's Handbook (https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1610805353255677953) Path To Citus Con Ep04: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/how-i-got-started-as-a-developer-in-postgres Andres’ first patch to Postgres: https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=c43feefa806c81d68115ed03a7f723720cefad31  PGConf NYC 2023: https://2023.pgconf.nyc/ Flow book: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Flow/QVjPsd1UukEC  Archives of Postgres hackers mailing list: https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/ List of Postgres Contributors: https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ Description of Postgres Core Team: https://www.postgresql.org/developer/core/ Postgres Weekly newsletter: https://postgresweekly.com/

The geospatial world of Postgres is so much more than mapping. Paul Ramsey and Regina Obe join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia to explore the "where" on Path To Citus Con*, the podcast for developers who love Postgres. What are some of the unexpected use cases for PostGIS, one of the most popular extensions to Postgres? How have Large Language Models helped in the geospatial world? Can you really model almost anything with pgRouting? “Where” is the universal foreign key. They talk about communities and governments using geospatial data and how it's very difficult to build a database that does not have some sort of spatial component to it. Why do people care about PostGIS? Find out more about OpenStreetMap and its place in the open source geospatial world. Finally, Paul and Regina share the origin story for the PostGIS extension to Postgres. *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode, in the order they were covered:PostGIS: https://postgis.net/  FOSS4G NA: https://foss4gna.org/ Ushahidi: https://www.ushahidi.com/  Humanitarian Open Street Map: https://www.hotosm.org/  OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/ pgRouting: https://pgrouting.org/ Regina Obe’s books: https://locatepress.com/book/pgr  Regina’s book “PostGIS In Action”: https://www.manning.com/books/postgis-in-action-third-edition?experiment=B MobilityDB: https://github.com/MobilityDB/MobilityDB Blog: Analyzing GPS trajectories at scale with Postgres, PostGIS, MobilityDB, & Citus: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-database-for-postgresql/analyzing-gps-trajectories-at-scale-with-postgres-mobilitydb-amp/ba-p/1859278  OSGeo: https://www.osgeo.org/  Simon Willison’s presentation on "The weird world of LLMs": https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/3/weird-world-of-llms/ QGIS: https://qgis.org/en/site/ QGIS “Gentle Introduction” documentation: https://docs.qgis.org/3.28/en/docs/gentle_gis_introduction/ PostGIS Workshops: https://postgis.net/documentation/training/#workshop Locate Press: https://locatepress.com/ FedGeoDay 2023: https://www.fedgeo.us/about-2023 Schedule of FOSS4G NA 2023: https://foss4gna.org/schedule.html#schedule FOSS4G Brazil, December 2024: https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/foss4g-2024-has-been-awarded-to-belem-brazil/  Paul's keynote talk at PGConfEU in Lisbon in 2018, titled "Put some "where" in your WHERE clause": https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xyXA4-0wmNX7WfiLeH9h10bIkZxrej278-mMaClagys/edit?usp=sharing

Drop the fear, not the tables. Chelsea Dole and Floor Drees join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia to explore the app developer perspective on Path To Citus Con*, the podcast for developers who love Postgres. If you’re an app developer, you’re probably already using Postgres. Now what? What do you need to know? Are databases your best friend or your worst enemy? They talk about the steps to becoming more Postgres-savvy. Should you go depth-first or breadth-first in order to learn more about the underlying database? What are Postgres extensions and how do you go about adopting them? Find out more about the strength of what Floor calls “boring technology.” Finally, both guests tell stories of their non-traditional entries into Postgres that led to their deep work with databases today.*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comLinks mentioned in this episode: Fintech startup where Chelsea works, Brex: https://www.brex.com/  Open source data platform where Floor works, Aiven: https://aiven.io/  “Mission-Critical PostgreSQL Databases on Kubernetes" by Karen Jex at KubeCon Europe 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NBQ9JmOMko The Imposters Handbook by Rob Conery: https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/ Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-data-intensive-applications/9781491903063/  Devopsdays Amsterdam: https://devopsdays.org/events/2023-amsterdam/welcome/  Building Community in Open Source with Floor Drees on the Last Week in AWS podcast: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/building-community-in-open-source-with-floor-drees/ pg_stat_statements: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.html PostGIS: https://postgis.net/  “Postgres tips for optimizing Django & Python performance, from my PyCon workshop” by Louise Grandjonc: https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2020/05/20/postgres-tips-for-django-and-python/  Video of Louise’s PyCon talk, Optimize Django & Python performance with Postgres superpowers: https://youtu.be/dyBLGjCQJHsGrafana: https://grafana.com/pganalyze: https://pganalyze.com/ auto_explain: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/auto-explain.html EXPLAIN ANALYZE in PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-explain.html  psql: https://www.postgresguide.com/utilities/psql/ Path To Citus Con Episode 05: My favorite ways to learn more about PostgreSQL with Grant Fritchey and Ryan Booz: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/my-favorite-ways-to-learn-more-about-postgresql-with-grant-fritchey-and-ryan-booz Coffee Meets Bagel (dating app): https://coffeemeetsbagel.com/

Everyone learns differently. Grant Fritchey and Ryan Booz, database advocates at Redgate focusing on PostgreSQL, talk with Path To Citus Con* co-hosts Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia to explore the learning resources available to developers and users in all the corners of the PostgreSQL world. What drives you to learn: need or curiosity? What can podcasts teach us while we bike to work? Are conference talks good for growing skills, or are they better for networking? What about books? And do older books still have much to offer? It turns out, most people need much more than one approach to build their knowledge. *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comSome of the (many) links shared in the order they were mentioned: Talk: Ryan’s talk Point-in-time query tuning and observability with pg_stat_statements at Citus Con: An Event for Postgres 2022Blog: Learning PostgreSQL with Grant, a series for SQL Server devs learning about Postgres  Podcast: postgres.fm, a weekly podcast about all things Postgres Podcast: Path To Citus Con Episode 01: Working in public on open sourceBlog aggregator: Planet PostgreSQL Email Newsletters: Cooperpress, including the Postgres Weekly email Podcast: Scaling PostgreSQL with Creston Jamison User Groups: PostgreSQL Community User Groups Videos: pganalyze "5 minutes of Postgres," by Lukas Fittl Book: The Art of PostgreSQL, by Dimitri Fontaine Book: PostgreSQL Query Optimization: The Ultimate Guide to Building Efficient Queries, by Henrietta Dombrovskaya Book: SQL Performance Explained, by Markus Winand Blog: Modern SQL, by Markus WinandBlog: Use The Index, Luke, by Markus WinandBook: Database Administration, by Craig Mullins Book: A Curious Moon, by Rob Conery Book: The Little SQL Book, by Rob Conery, “Learn SQL While Watching Football This Weekend - Free!” Event: PGDay Chicago Blog: Redgate – Simple Talk Videos: CMU Database Group’s Talks on YouTube: Quarantine (2020), First Dose (2021), Second Dose (2021),  Booster (2022) Crunchy Data’s Postgres Playground Blog: CYBERTEC Blog: Citus Open Source Blog Talk: How To Make Your Postgres Blog Posts Reach A Ton More People, by Claire GiordanoConference: PGCon 2023, super useful to watch recorded talks after the fact Conference: PGConf.EU, 2022, good example of an in-person event with lots of opportunities for learning Conference: Citus Con: An Event for Postgres 2023 Conference: PGConf NYC 2023 Blog Series: PGSQL Phriday, created by Ryan BoozBlog Series: PostgreSQL Person of the Week, by Andreas Scherbaum Blog: Robert Haas' blogBlog: select * from depesz;Book: PostgreSQL 14 internals, by Egor Rogov

In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, Melanie Plageman, a PostgreSQL hacker working at Microsoft, and Thomas Munro, PostgreSQL developer and committer also at Microsoft talk with co-hosts Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia. They talk through all the different ways they got started as developers. Does making your first patch to Postgres get you hooked for a lifetime? Do you have to be a tinkerer to be a good software engineer? What is the “toothbrush test”—and how do you make your avocation be your vocation? We hear stories about dropping out of school or dropped out of career fields before they found their true passions in development and Postgres. *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comSome of the links mentioned in the order they were said: Parallelism in PostgreSQL 15: Thomas’ Citus Con talk Additional IO Observability in Postgres with pg_stat_io: Melanie’s Citus Con talk Visualizing PostgreSQL I/O Performance for Development: Melanie’s talk at PGCon 2023Add pg_stat_io view, providing more detailed IO statistics, committed by Melanie Plageman in PG 16  Neil deGrasse Tyson’s podcast StarTalk From Nand to Tetris by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken Sinclair ZX81 All Things Open conference PostgreSQL BuildFarm Queues in PostgreSQL: Thomas’ 2022 talk

Álvaro Herrera, and Boriss Mejías, both longtime members of the Postgres developer community, explore the value of giving conference talks—as well as the work involved, the time it takes, and the many different types of conference talks, including presentations about about failure and things that have gone wrong.  In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, Claire and Pino guide the conversation on questions like: Should you add humor to your talks? How does your personality—introvert or extrovert—affect your conference presentations? Is it OK to give the same conference talk at different events?  *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comSome of the links mentioned in the order they appeared: Postgres Storytelling: Support in the Darkest Hour: Boriss’ Citus Con talk A Curious Moon book by Rob Conery Tomas Vondra's talks on YouTubepgDay Paris 2022FOSDEM PostgreSQL devroomFOSDEM PGDAY 2023Nordic PGDay 2022PGConf.EU 2022LFMF: How a CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY led to a 6 hour downtime by Gunnar "Nick" Bluth

Join Claire and Pino as they talk with Citus and Postgres open source team members to explore how to get Postgres ready for the next 100 million users. What will future Postgres users look like? How will the Postgres development process evolve with more users? What are the common challenges faced by Postgres users?  Citus open source team members Abdullah Ustuner and Burak Yucesoy are joined by Postgres open source teammates Melanie Plageman and Samay Sharma—and co-hosts Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia—in this episode of Path To Citus Con*. Listen to the deep dive on what it means to scale the code and the community far beyond the Postgres world of today. *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comSome links from the show in the order they were mentioned: Additional IO Observability in Postgres: Melanie's talk at Citus Con 2023Optimizing Postgres for write heavy workloads ft. Checkpoint and WAL configs: Samay's talk at Citus Con 2023The Design of Postgres, by Michael Stonebraker and Lawrence A. Rowe, 1986 HyperLogLog PostGIS timescale/pgspot

Simon Willison is the creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django. Marco Slot is the lead architect for the Citus database extension to Postgres. In this episode of Path To Citus Con*, Simon and Marco talk about working in public on open source. Simon shares many of his learnings in public—with weeknotes, tweets, blogs, and “today I learned” (TIL) posts. Marco has been developing Citus in public since it was first open sourced in 2016.  Hosted by Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia from the Postgres team at Microsoft, listen to find out how working in public can help “future you”—and how there are selfish benefits to be had by working in open source. (Also: how to stay positive in the face of critics?)  *[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.comSome of the topics covered in the order they were mentioned:Simon's weeknotesSimon's TIL postsDatasette pluginsCitus open source GitHub repoFibonacci Spirals and Ways to Contribute to Postgres—Beyond Code - Claire's talk in 2022Big Opportunities in Small Data - Simon's keynote at Citus Con: An Event for PostgresThe Distributed PostgreSQL Problem and How Citus Solves It - Marco’s keynote at Citus Con: An Event for Postgres