PGConf.Russia 2018

"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)

DBeaver is the Universal Databases Manager. We creating DBeaver using Open Source Software model. We pay special attention to the PotgreSQL because of its capabilities, popularity and OSS nature. We will talk about DBeaver evolution and structure, will demonstrate the basic functionality. We are going to cover challenges of PostgreSQL client creation. Also we will discuss requirements management model and interaction with the PostgreSQL community. We will show in details how to debug the PL/pgSQL stored procedures interactively. We are going to introduce some new features of the nearest DBeaver release and to share our plans.

For the majority of System Administrators and DBAs performing an upgrade for RDBMS, let alone a major one, is a pain. That’s because one of the key factors that plays a role in a decision if and when to perform an upgrade is the downtime that it might come to during the process. This is true for any databases but especially important for those that are in production or under a high load.

Often, a major upgrade get’s cancelled and a DBA needs to go back to an older version due to the lack of experience or some basic errors that could have been easily avoided at the planning stage.

In our consultancy, we perform upgrades for our clients regularly and it allowed us to streamline the process and take some preventative measures that help us to perform it quickly, efficiently and with minimal or no downtime.

In this talk, I will share some key steps and tools that will help any DBA to become better at major upgrade performance. I will answer the following questions:

How to prepare for an upgrade of PostgreSQL? What one needs to do at the planning stage? How to plan your actions during the actual upgrade process? How to perform an upgrade successfully without going back to the older version? What actions one must perform following an upgrade?

I will also go through the two most popular processes of an upgrade: pg_upgrade и pg_dump/pg_restore, will compare some of the benefits and downfalls using each of these. I will also discuss some of the main issues one might face throughout the process and ways to avoid them.

This talk would be of interest to those who are new to PostgreSQL, as well as experienced DBAs who would like to learn more about upgrades or those who, in general, would like to understand why major upgrades should NOT be avoided like the plague.

What is a real cost of not paying for Windows for 1C-user? Is there life without COM? Addressing and other issues for the bunch of PostgreSQL. Scheduling disk resources. How to overcome OS CentOS crash.