PgConf.Russia 2019

PostGIS is spatial extension for PostgreSQL.

This talk will go in depth on using PostGIS for disaster management: which functions can be used and for what.

IIn the world of programming, the creation of source code for databases "procedural extensions" is something solitary. Most DBMS offers procedural languages and "stored procedures" to create procedural extensions. In Postgres the number of supported procedural languages has already exceeded a dozen.

Traditionally, stored procedures have many applications: it is difficult to resist the attraction to perform a data operation directly in the storage, especially in the Enterprise development. This approach quickly leads to the spreading of the business logic and dramatically increases the cost of support and development of the system as a whole.

The life cycle of stored procedures makes it difficult to use standard Change Management tools and practices. It is necessary to adapt the operations upon the stored procedures to the standards of Change Management, yet staying within the comfortable development practices.

We'll look at the typical tasks of the procedural extensions development and discuss the solutions we are implementing in the Xobot IDE.

Sometimes there is a great desire to return the database to the past, for a day or two or more days. The reasons are diverse, but most often one is to see what has changed. Or to see if the application behaved incorrectly after the update. Or it was just a command from the boss. The classic way everyone knows is to keep full backups and sets of WAL-logs to be able to recover to an arbitrary moment. This method is a real headache for DBAs/administrators, and it will not work quickly. Sure, there are some ways to optimize this process, but downtime is inevitable. PostgresPro offers a new way — database snapshots and the ability to return to them.

Sometimes problems arise during Postgres operation, and the faster they are identified and resolved, the happier users eventually will be. pgCenter is a set of CLI powerful utilities for troubleshooting in the "here and now" mode. In the talk I will show how to use pgCenter for efficient troubleshooting, the directions in which to search, and how to respond to certain problems, in particular how to:

• check if Postgres is in the normal state;
• identify promptly the faulty clients and stop them;
• reveal too heavy queries;
• and other tips and tricks of pgCenter.