PgConf.Russia 2020

In May 2019 «Postgres Professional» launched the PostgreSQL Certification Program. Now you can not only get training in our courses, but also confirm your knowledge by passing an appropriate set of tests.

In this presentation, I will share the results of the first months of the program and answer the most frequently asked questions:

Where can I get information about the certification program?
PostgreSQL or Postgres Pro certification?
Certificates for PostgreSQL version 10. When will you upgrade to the current version?
Do I have to attend training centers?
Can I pass the test remotely? Not in Moscow?
Is it possible to take several tests at once in one day?
How to prepare for the test? Are there any examples of training questions?
During the test I got an incorrect question, what should I do?
How to find out exactly which questions the answers were not correct?
When can I retake after an unsuccessful attempt?
How to appeal the test results? 

Role-based access control (RBAC) is one of the main mechanisms used for access control in many DBMS, including PostgreSQL. This model is a sub-type of traditional discretionary access control with its restrictions. In addition to DAC, many operating systems also use mandatory access control (MAC) based on security labels. This additional security mechanism is obligatory for protecting information that demands higher levels of security. Naturally, we would like to use MAC within DBMS when working in OS with mandatory access control switched on.
In this talk, we'll give an overview of existing MAC implementations in DBMS, as well as share our approach to using security mechanisms provided by SELinux, the sepgsql extension for PostgreSQL, and the standard mechanism of row-level security (RLS), which has been available in PostgreSQL starting from version 9.5.
In our presentation, we will use the "Airlines" demo database provided by the Postgres Professional company to show how to protect sensitive information and personal data, compare different ways of storing security labels, and assess performance of our solution.

Everyone has probably heard about such a service as AWS RDS. I will talk about my experience by using the AWS RDS PostgreSQL Engine: the positive and negative aspects of the DBA work. This talk will focus on the tools that helped me create a comfortable environment in RDS. https://www.dropbox.com/s/v7udx5x96as5gbd/pgconf2020.pdf

pg_repack is one of the most popular instruments for removing bloat of tables and indexes in Postgres. In most cases, it works perfectly. But if you use such a feature of Postgres as deferred constraints, using pg_repack becomes more difficult or even impossible. I will talk about how we encountered the problem and will describe some workarounds - from internal instruments of Postgres to a small patch for pg_repack.