PgConf.Russia 2019

Python may not be the fastest programming language on the CPU, but its fast and easy development saves a lot of costs between the keyboard and the chair. Since database clients spend most of their time waiting for a response from the database server, Python's asynchronous functionality available in the recent versions (3.5+) may help to optimize the application's runtime considerably by working on something else while server's response is being prepared. The asynchronous interface between Python and PostgreSQL is called "asyncpg". In the workshop we'll explore this library and write a short application using some of its useful features.

To migrate to a PostgreSQL/Postgres Pro we need multi-core servers to be carefully tuned for correct parallelism. What settings make multi-terabyte installations work fast and correctly?

We will share our PostgreSQL/Postgres Pro on BullSequana S and Bullion S servers testing experience.

The features of this hardware platform which are crucial for high-loaded configurations
• Multi-core Scale-up servers and PostgreSQL/Postgres Pro
• Results of stress testing of PostgreSQL/Postgres Pro running on the equipment.

This talk will represent a new platform of Distributed Control System for Nuclear Power Plant operation. Participants will learn about control system for very complicated automation objects. In a hard real time node more than 150 special subsystems are operating in order to control various technological processes of nuclear power plant (NPP), such as reactor control system for more than 1000 MW power unit with a turbine weighing more than 2000 tons. More than 100K of data gained from sensors are resulting in up to 500K of parameters representing 5 branches of physical processes: neutron kinetics, hydrodynamics, chemistry and radiochemistry, and physics of strength. Deviations may cause the whole system to become a huge DDoS source made of useful diagnostic information which is always much larger than the network and hardware are capable to manage. This may lead to normal operation failure. The talk will reveal the approaches to solve the issue.

You will learn about hardware and software architecture of such systems, about backup and replication, data redundancy and technological diversity. How to manage high loads, what is QoS, and what will happen in case of normal operation system failure, as for example was at Fukushima. But, hey, there should be a talk about coding! So, no SSD and HDDs, only InMemory, data structures from tens of millions of elements, and forget about processor cache as it does not work. Imagine your newest 4-generation Xeon has lost all the advantages and turned into a "pumpkin", so let's roll up your sleeves and examine timings, synchronicity, and try to make the most of your hardware, discovering the weakest link from processor, operating system and a network.

Postgres is known for it extensibility, which made it the universal database, that means it can meet the requirements of practically any project. Many extensions are well-known and widely used, for example, PostGIS extension - de-facto standard of open source GIS, hstore - an extension for storing and manipulation of arbitrary key/value pairs. I will talk about less known but useful PostgreSQL extensions, which provides a new functionaliy and/or improve the performance of PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL was designed to be extensible, it provides an API to application developers to extend PostgreSQL functionality and/or improve the performance for specific data and workloads. It is important that there is no need of having expertise of core developers, and these new functionality could be added online without restarting of database server. Application developer can create various database objects, such as functions, data types, operators, indexes, and even new access methods.

I will present my choice of two extensions out of hundreds:

vops - greatly improves the performance of Postgres for OLAP queries using vector operations, pg_variables - provides session variables for storing scalars and relations, useful for generating reports on read-only replicas.