Monthly Archives: February 2011
twittering on 2011-02-17
- The Open-By-Rule Benchmark http://t.co/hV3VkLK via @maslett #
- Put a Conference On It is the new Put a Bird on It. 20 conferences so far in PDX in 2011 http://bit.ly/fXyFHi (phrase ht @thesethings) #
- In case you're wondering, pricing posted & March 7 is the target start date for Intro to PostgreSQL http://bit.ly/hALpdr #codelesson #
- Listening to lightning talks w @mrthackston at AgilePDX #
- OH: profitable, sustainable and joyful. (World class software development in portland) #fuckyeah #
- I am in love with AgilePDX's mission and visioning process. The work agreement is art. #
twittering on 2011-02-16
- "Portland, Oregon: one of the whitest cities in the US." -@NPR #
- For valentines day: I created "♥ VIM" group at work, noted many more bros at Safeway than normal, made mac and cheese for dinner. #
- At the #pdx11 mentoring meetup with @emmaemail peeps #
- Taking collaborative notes here: http://etherpad.opensourcebridge.org/pdx11-mentoring-20110215 #pdx11 #
- Feeling a little sad at how locked down the teambox site is for the #pdx11 mentoring group. Read-only would be nice. #
- typed in the charter: http://etherpad.opensourcebridge.org/pdx11-mentoring-draft-charter #pdx11 #
- #lazytwitter Can y'all forward me some good information on NGO transparency? Primer-ish, with resources; non-lawyery language would be nice. #
- Did you know there are (at least) 20 tech conferences in #PDX this year? http://www.chesnok.com/daily/?p=2556 #zomg #ftw #
This year is so nuts for having conferences in Portland, OR
UPDATED! Just added Open Gov West! Rearranged, and just listing these all in order now. And added #140Conf in Vancouver, WA. It’s close enough. đŸ™‚ And just added Digital Journalism Portland.
For real.
This summer belongs to the nerds, geeks and hackers. I can’t believe that Portland’s tech scene got no love from Portlandia this year. Thank heavens they got a second season!
I did some research, and found TWENTY distinct conferences happening from now through November in the Portland area.
Anyway, there’s a sweet new service that you might not have heard of called Lanyrd, and a quick search over there revealed 20 conferences.
And over the next few days, several people suggested a few more:
- Agile Open Northwest 2011, 8-9 February 2011
- SearchFest 2011, 23rd February 2011
- Python Software Foundation Sprint, Feb 26th
- PDX11 Civic Hacking Unconference, April 1-2, 2011 (Plans are coming together now.. so pencil it in!)
- Innotech, April 21, 2011
- TEDxPortland, April 30, 2011
- JSConf US 2011, 2nd–3rd May 2011 (Rumors of crazy fun abound for this, also a party open to the public. Epic!)
- NodeConf 2011, 5th May 2011
- Open Gov West, 13-14 May 2011
- Digital Journalism Portland, 14th May 2011
- #140Conf Northwest, 19th May 2011
- WebVisions 2011, 25th–27th May 2011
- World Domination Summit, 4th–5th June 2011
- HotStorage ’11, 14th June 2011 (Third workshop on hot topics in storage!)
- USENIX ATC ’11, 15th–17th June 2011 (USENIX’s annual technical conference)
- WebApps ’11, 15th–16th June 2011 (Second annual conference from USENIX on webapps!)
- Open Source Bridge 2011, 21st–24th June 2011 (Third year! CFP still open!)
- IndieWebCamp, 25th–26th June 2011
- OSCON 2011, 25th–29th July 2011 (Back in Portland, Again! And @gorthx is on the committee!)
- Community Leadership Summit 2011, 23rd–24th July 2011
- Vida Vegan Blog Conference, 26th–28th August 2011 (Blogger conference for vegans! Crazy!)
- DjangoCon US 2011, 6th–8th September 2011 (Organizer recently relocated to Portland!)
- Pacific NW Drupal Summit, October 14-16, 2011
- SPLASH 2011, 22nd–27th October 2011
- Onward! 2011, 22nd–27th October 2011 (@al3x is on the committee for this!)
- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2011, 9th–12th November 2011
Sources: Lanyrd, Plancast, Calagator and the comments.
What other geekery did I miss? Let me know in the comments.
UPDATE:
Here are the conferences without dates:
- BarCampPortland, Tentatively May
- Keeping It Realtime, Fall 2011
- WhereCampPDX, Tentatively September
- WordCampPDX, Tentatively September
- Ignite Portland, Tentatively October
PostgreSQL at MySQL Users Conference: the sessions!
You’ve probably seen a few posts about this – from the CFP, to Baron’s recent pointer to the release of the schedule. And now Josh Berkus just posted a Meetup for the event, so that spurred me on for this post…
So, just to make things even easier for you, I thought I’d summarize the awesome talks we’re having at the O’Reilly MySQL Users Conference this year related to PostgreSQL.
- Building Data Warehouses with PostgreSQL, Josh Berkus (PostgreSQL Experts, Inc.)
Has your database grown to hundreds of gigabytes in size, with no limit in sight? Are you considering moving to an expensive proprietary database system do deal with your huge database? PostgreSQL is an excellent database for small to medium sized data warehouses in the 0.5 to 5 terabyte range. - Bottom-up Database Benchmarking, Greg Smith (2ndQuadrant US)
While databases are increasingly being distributed across multiple nodes, the performance of every node still matters–especially if you’re considering virtualized or cloud deployments that have their own specific trade-offs. Memory performance scaling as core count changes, all aspects of disk performance, and using sysbench to benchmark both MySQL and PostgreSQL are all topics covered here. - An Introduction to PostGIS – the PostgreSQL spatial extension, Ragi Burhum (Burhum LLC – GIS Consulting)
PostGIS is an extension to the PostgreSQL object-relational database system which allows GIS (Geographic Information Systems) objects to be stored in the database. It includes support for spatial indexes, and functions for analysis and processing of GIS objects. - Securing PostgreSQL From External Attack, Bruce Momjian (EnterpriseDB)
This talk explores the ways attackers with no authorized database access can steal Postgres passwords, see database queries and results, and even intercept database sessions and return false data. Postgres supports features to eliminate all of these threats, but administrators must understand the attack vulnerabilities to protect against them. - Introduction to PostgreSQL Configuration, Robert Haas (EnterpriseDB)
PostgreSQL is highly customizable, but which settings are most important and what values are most appropriate for a typical installation? This talk will explain the basics of how to configure PostgreSQL for reliability and good performance. - Mixed MySQL/PostgreSQL environments, Jeff Davis (Aster Data)
Mixed SQL system environments are a reality for most organizations. MySQL and PostgreSQL are a natural combination — both are open source, and they complement each other nicely. See how to improve data consolidation, increase confidence in query results, and analyze data across applications. - Maintaining Terabytes: 10 Things to Watch Out For When PostgresSQL Bets Big, Selena Deckelmann (PostgreSQL)
Size can creep up on you. Some day you may wake up to a multi-terabyte Postgres system handling over 3000 tps staring you down. Learn the best ways to manage these systems as they grow, and find out what new features in 9.0 have made life easier for administrators and application developers working with big data. - Openstreetmap -> (PostGIS|MySQL|SpatiaLite) -> OpenLayers: From Map to Web, Hartmut Holzgraefe (…???…)
OpenStreetMap raw data for any non-trivial area comes as a massive amount of XML data. Processing that XML data directly is possible, importing it into into a spatial database provides for much more interesting processing options though, especially when it comes to producing on demand map data for web applications with acceptable performance. - War Stories and Solutions: Operational Fun with PostgreSQL and PostGIS in the Cloud, Andy Parsons (Obikosh.com)
As CTO of Outside.in, and in my new stealth company, I’ve seen my share of challenging scenarios keeping a very busy PostgreSQL-based startup online and responsive during tremendous growth. EC2 + PostgreSQL + PostGIS + no downtime. Others can probably learn from my battle scars! - Replace phpMyAdmin with Something Better, Jakub Vrana (Self-employed)
phpMyAdmin is a well-known PHP application for managing MySQL database. What’s wrong with it? It is big, slow and it misses support for many advanced features like stored procedures or triggers. Its free alternative Adminer provides user-friendly interface, requires no setup, is lightning fast and highly customizable. Adminer is available for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL and Oracle.
We’re also having a Birds of a Feather session, and staffing a booth on the exhibit floor!
If you’re planning to attend, you can use my code & save 25% in addition to early registration savings: mys11fsd: http://oreil.ly/goaqst
Hope to see you there!
Weekly tweet digest for 2011-02-13
- Prepping for my talk tomorrow @oregonstateuniv: http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/graduate/colloquium/ #
- "I had fun programming with you." – best compliment ever. đŸ™‚ #
- #PDX peeps: Anyone know Guy Gilray? Would like to get in touch about some oil paintings he did in 2001-ish. #
- On my way to @oregonstate with @lhawthorn #
- Had fun meeting Prof. Arwig and students @oregonstateuniv. Thanks @lhawthorn and @osuosl for inviting me! #
- Black history month talk about destruction of Albina in '70s #pdx http://t.co/bTNsklV #
- Places to have events in Portland, OR: http://www.chesnok.com/daily/?p=2490 #pdx #
- Slides from @oregonstateuniv lecture yesterday: http://www.chesnok.com/daily/?p=2499 #postgres #foss #
- "Top Secret Rosies": http://bit.ly/gy2sJy WWII women who were the first "computers" documentary #
- I'm an advisor! Join us. đŸ™‚ RT @vaurora @AdaInitiative launches today! Promoting women in open technology & culture http://bit.ly/eTgPbG #
- The #pdx11 Finance group is running survey to establish priorities: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2CR86MZ #
- Open source as competitive advantage, gartner survey: http://bit.ly/hbwpBp #
- Want to learn more about PostgreSQL? I'm teaching a class: http://codelesson.com/courses/view/introduction-to-postgresql #
- Ah cool. @convore uses #postgres #
- jsconf proposals are out: http://2011.jsconf.us/proposals (via @convore) #
- Current status: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g9HDyaCTlI #
- Yay seeing tons of old friends at Small Society tonight. #
- Hot Standby features for 9.1, just committed: Pause and Resume http://bit.ly/e47GNs #
- join us! discussions about postgres https://convore.com/postgres/ #
- Alter Wiener http://t.co/BO57WPO #
- Roasting red pepper. http://t.co/6z8A3So #
- Putting a bird on it #birdonit /cc @portlandiatv http://t.co/2xo6gxU #
twittering on 2011-02-12
- Alter Wiener http://t.co/BO57WPO #
- Roasting red pepper. http://t.co/6z8A3So #
- Putting a bird on it #birdonit /cc @portlandiatv http://t.co/2xo6gxU #
twittering on 2011-02-11
- Hot Standby features for 9.1, just committed: Pause and Resume http://bit.ly/e47GNs #
- join us! discussions about postgres https://convore.com/postgres/ #
Hot Standby features for 9.1, just committed: Pause and Resume
On February 8th, Simon Riggs committed a couple new functions that will allow Hot Standby to be paused and resumed. You can already *read* from the Hot Standby without pausing, but you could never pause the application of changes in the past. You might want to do this if you have a very high-write-volume server, and some very expensive queries that you want to run on a slave.
Basic Recovery Control functions for use in Hot Standby. Pause, Resume,
Status check functions only. Also, new recovery.conf parameter to
pause_at_recovery_target, default on.
The basic idea is that if you have a read-only standby system, you can give it the command: pg_xlog_replay_pause()
and the standby will stop applying changes. Then you can use the database in read-only mode without new changes being applied. When you’re done you can issue the command: pg_xlog_replay_resume()
and proceed with applying logs.
There are some related features that I can’t wait to test out around named restore points for replay. But the ability to pause replay and run queries is just awesome.
This is a feature that Simon talked about back in 2009 at FOSDEM, and I am very excited to see it implemented.
Offering an Intro to PostgreSQL class
UPDATE: See below for pricing.
I’m working with Code Lesson to offer an Introduction to PostgreSQL class.
Code Lesson is pretty cool – it’s an online course system, and the idea is you get a couple assignments and lessons taught by me each week, and there’s a midterm and final evaluation. I love conferences, but the nice thing about an online course is you don’t have to spend an entire workday taking a tutorial at a conference, or travelling to a particular location, and you can finish assignments when it’s convenient for you.
My current working outline is:
Intro to Postgres
Hello, world!
* History of PostgreSQL project
* Features
* Basic SQLUsage
* psql
* Drivers: Perl and Python examples
* GUIs
* DocumentationSurvey of features
* Full text search
* Built-in functions
* Datatypes
* Indexes
* Transactional DDLCommunity
* Mailing lists & IRC
* Asking questions
* Modules, add-ons, toolsOperations
* System and hardware
* Installation and configuration
* Maintenance and operation
* Replication
Our plan is to provide students with login access to a shared database. During the course, I’ll be available to answer questions and I’m considering making short videos to go along with the course material.
We haven’t set the price for it just yet, but should be figuring that out in the next week or so.
Anyway, if you’re interested, sign up and you’ll get an email when we set the price. I’m happy to answer any questions you have about content.
Another thing that was requested in the Hacker News thread was more advanced material. I think the advanced material falls into two categories – PostgreSQL core functionality, and administration/tuning.
Update! Pricing is set at $325/student, with a 10% discount if you register 2 or more students at the same time.