Postgres-XC has been around for a while, it is primarily developed by NTT and EnterpriseDB. It has a small community but a dedicated engineering/hacker backing. Postgres-XC is interesting because it keeps reasonably up to date with the latest Postgres (1.0 is set to be based on 9.1 of PostgreSQL) but provides a shared nothing clustering architecture. This type of infrastructure is one of the holy grails of web based applications.
Should Postgres-XC deliver on its promises (hint: it does), you will be able to scale out (as opposed to up which Postgres already does extremely well) at an almost 1 to 1 ratio. This means that instead of having to purchase 2 large machines at 10-12k a piece you could purchase 4 machines at 1.5k a piece and achieve similar performance (theoretically, I need to test this). It also means that scaling out in the "cloud" will be easier.
I invite everyone interested in PostgreSQL to take a look at Postgres-XC. It is going to 1.0 soon and it needs community members to help flesh out the warts that haven't been found yet.
Another Postgres fork that has recently appeared is tPostgres. tPostgres (doesn't that look wrong at the beginning of a sentence?) is set to do to Microsoft SQL what EnterpriseDB did to Oracle, with one minor, small, interesting, exception: tPostgres is Open Source. Further Microsoft SQL is more in line with PostgreSQL in the types of workloads you usually see it performing. Imagine a tPostgres with Postgres-XC. Imagine an open source way to easily port Microsoft SQL apps to PostgreSQL.
Now don't get me wrong, the latest versions of Microsoft SQL are actually good products. Yes, I did just say that. However, they are not Open Source, they are expensive (comparatively) and let's get real, we want everyone to run Postgres.
Unfortunately tPostgres is only just announced and they are literally at the beginning of building their community but as it is being initiated by Denis Lussier (co-founder of EnterpriseDB), I imagine that he will come through with something very interesting indeed.
That video represents why I would put on the conferences. They were fun. We had a good time.
If you are looking for other Postgres conferences there are the following:
Personally, I would suggest staying local and attending or help organize a local PUG day for PostgreSQL. PUG days are the best in small conferences. You are meeting with many locals, quite a few contributors usually show up, and you get to go home at night. The content is always top notch and chances are you know many of the people there. There are many. We recently had them in NYC, DC/Maryland, and Austin. There is a Denver PgDay on the 26th of October (no website yet) as well.
Why does this matter? It doesn't really. I am just rambling because my sister asked me today something that surprised me, "What is UNIX?". I had to just kind of stare at the screen for a moment. Of course she asked me this as she was happily proclaiming that she received an iPhone for her birthday. How far we have come.
I explained what UNIX was, the basic history, it's involvement in the Internet and it occurred to me that for me, there was one very specific point in life that my professional world went from, "huh.... give me my 7.50/hr" to, "Hey, I can actually become educated in something useful.". It was the mental absorption of this book.
That book, allowed me to learn Unix, which allowed me to learn Linux (back when SLS was king), which brought me to Postgres95, which brought me to PostgreSQL, which brought me to co-writing this book, which lead me to be a major contributor to PostgreSQL not only through my work with the Fundraising group (via SPI)but also . I would also bring up the conferences but those are already mentioned today.
While waxing nostalgia I am reminded of a recent blog post by Bruce Momjian where he mentions, "Postgres adoption is probably five years behind Linux's adoption.". I would agree with him, and would add that a lot of it is directly contributed to our development model. Many in the community have argued for years that time based releases of PostgreSQL would help development, many others... have argued for years that this is a bad idea. Many of those opponents of time based releasing, and one very influential one at that (TGL) are now starting to come around. More on that later, I have work to do!
These are filling up fast, so you will want to get your registration in.
Of note, Jim Mlodgenski maintainer of Stado (a proper, stable fork of GridSQL) will be teaching a Practical PostgreSQL Administration course. This is a full day course. Jim has graciously agreed to allow his percentage of the training revenue to be used for the feature development community initiative.
I received (reprinted with permission) this email from him today:
Hi Josh,
I am excited to say that the Schemaverse contest at DEFCON 19 went great! By the end of the tournament we had 108 registered players and over a million queries ran against the game in a four day span. Not only did the server do great as far as performance goes but the fact that it wasn't exploited during DEFCON is also an impressive stat to note.
I can also proudly tell you that your contribution was mentioned during my own two presentations, found in our How To guide, discussed at our contest booth (right by the front doors to the high traffic contest area! :D) AND was announced during the DEFCON 19 closing ceremonies during my allotted 2 minutes of speaking time.
The winner of your prize is Ian Haken (xxxx@xxxxxx.com). He kicked some butt in the competition and is certainly deserving of it. He has authorized me to send you his name and email. If you need any further details you can talk to him directly.
I likely sound like a broken record at this point but I really do need to say thanks again. Your contribution definitely helped us generate some interest in the first year of our competition and has helped us gain the respect needed to return with the contest for years to come.
Best Regards,
Josh (Abstrct) McDougall
http://schemaverse.com/
It was an honor to sponsor this contest. It is great little things like this that truly show the power of PostgreSQL in places you least expect.
Just a note, although the CFP is technically closed we have not closed the submission form, if you wanted to sneak in a talk or two you are welcome to.
May 25th: Talk submission opens August 12th: Talk submission closes (EXTENDED!) August 16th: Speaker notification
Help us continue to provide the overwhelming support to the PostgreSQL Community we always have. Submit your talk today!
A recurring question in our community is, "How do I get feature X sponsored?". It is a frustrating question because there are many variables that are at play anytime you do development within an Open Source project. Just because you can develop the feature doesn't mean that the community actually wants the feature. There is also the problem of raising money for a feature, a lot of very skilled hackers do not have the contacts or frankly person skills to "sell" their idea. Once you have the money even more problems arise, what if you underbid the project? What if you can't get everyone to pay that said they would? What if you miss a commit deadline and you have to wait for the next release to start development? The list goes on and on.
The traditional method of getting a feature developed would be to contact a company to do so. There are many people and companies that are used to working in the community, who know how to navigate the shark infested waters and are actively willing to work with you to get whatever feature done. Two of the most well known companies that do this are Command Prompt (duh moment), and 2ndQuadrant. We both have had much of the feature development we do for PostgreSQL sponsored by our customers (some of them, mutual customers). If you have a feature that you wish to get developed I highly recommend contacting one of us.
The traditional method can be too much for a single entity to bare. If you have a feature that is 15,000 USD to develop, that just might be out of the budget of the sponsoring company and it is certainly out of the budget of most individuals. In some communities there is a bounty system where multiple entities can chose to donate to get a bug squashed or a feature developed. Unfortunately, bounties can go on forever and very little money is normally raised. So what do you do?
The PostgreSQL Conference organizers team had an idea. What if, we take one of the resources we are rich in and use that resource in a manner that allows the community as a whole to benefit. What is this resource you might ask? Well people of course. Every 6 months the PostgreSQL Conference pulls more people into a single room than any other PostgreSQL event. What if the PostgreSQL Conference worked out a way to get those people to part with their hard earned dollars to get a feature developed? Imagine, one night instead of pub crawling if we put that 50.00, 100.00 or 250.00 to work for the betterment of PostgreSQL?
If every person that attended #PgEast gave 100.00 to feature development, we would have raised $23,000 dollars. That would have more than paid for the ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN work that Command Prompt would like to develop. So that is what we are going to do at #PgWest. This year at #PgWest there will be up to 5 proposals on the table to sponsor. Only one will be from Command Prompt, we would like the others to be from other developers and companies are welcome to submit as well. Further, #PgWest will also be donating a portion of the registration fees to get these features developed.
Stay tuned for how to submit your proposals.
PostgreSQL Conference West Call for Papers