PGConf.Russia 2018

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. This talk covers all known Postgres external attack methods.

"And telling GIN from SP-GIST was quite beyond his wit, we found", said the classic. Can you? This masterclass is about not-so-often used index types (compared to conventional B-tree) which however can do a great job for you. We will look into internal mechanics of these indexes and discuss cases where they can be successfully applied. Also we will talk about some peculiarities of PostgreSQL index access. To spend time efficiently, listeners are required to have basic knowledge of PostgreSQL and should be used to read plans of simple queries.

Materials of the master class

• Slides
• Demo 1
• Demo 2
• Demo 3

Backup copy of the database with demo data can be downloaded here:

• Recovery with pg_restore (338 MB)

• Spatial and advanced spatial analysis with pure PostGIS (including cutting edge PostGIS functions available)
• How could we mix and tied efficiently PostgreSQL and Python data types (as NumPy ndarray, and Pandas DataFrames)
• Tools to improve our data manipulation environment (Jupyter tricks, easy dataviz...)
• How to go further throught GeoDataScience, with Python libs and framework tied with PostgreSQL/PostGIS (including Machine and DeepLearning)

This talk will compare architectural decisions that are made in PostgreSQL vs. ORACLE and will provide a closer look at the following components of both DBMSs:

1. The ins and outs of the working DBMS, its processes and their function
2. Structures that DBMS manages
3. Durability mechanics of each respective DBMS
4. MVCC design and database restoration options
5. Storage of data on the physical media

Each architectural decision will be evaluated based on the experience with DBMS of choice, ease of administration and future improvement possibilities.

This review will demonstrate the notable strengths of PostgreSQL as an open-source DBMS compared to the commercial solution in many cases.

This talk will be interesting for:

• PostgreSQL users, as it will allow to take a closer look into an alternative DBMS;
• PostgreSQL administrators, that will be able to see huge administration possibilities that ORACLE offers and that could be adopted in PostgreSQL;
• PostgreSQL hackers, as Postgres is being actively developed and this talk will review new development segments;
• Those who are willing to migrate from ORACLE (or any other commercial DBMS) into an open-source project, as this talk will show the features of PostgreSQL compared to the commercial product.