PGConf.Russia 2025

What does a modern application developer need to transition from familiar cloud-based solutions to SQL databases?

This talk is a practical report on how we transformed an SQL database into a NoSQL-like solution with a developer-friendly interface. We’ll discuss:

What application developers expect from a data framework

How to implement declarative DDL, access control, and automation for reading and writing data

Simplified DML operations, pagination, and other essential features for application development

In this talk, I will challenge architectural stereotypes about the impossibility of communication with external systems directly from a DBMS. PostgreSQL offers vast communication capabilities; you just need to know which extensions to use.

And when extensions aren't enough, you can create your own. For the Luxms BI project, we needed communication with NATS, so we developed our own extension in Rust. I’ll share the GitHub link and my experience of developing PostgreSQL extensions in Rust during this talk.

As part of the import substitution process, we encountered the need to find a reliable alternative to Oracle. PostgreSQL was considered the primary candidate for replacement, but during the research, the "vanilla" version revealed a number of critical limitations that hindered a successful transition.

These issues included support for autonomous transactions, batch variables, and several other specifics. What is special about pg_settings? Why do we need autonomous transactions, and how do HOLD cursors relate to this? These and other topics will be discussed in our presentation, where we will also share our experience of implementing Postgres Pro Enterprise.

Two years ago, I spoke about data retrieval queries, where the LINQ to DB library offers almost limitless possibilities.

This talk is about data modification operations. LINQ to DB allows you to execute UPDATE + JOIN queries, INSERT FROM SELECT, supports the MERGE operator, row-level locking with SELECT FOR UPDATE, temporary table creation, and features a fast data insertion mechanism.

I will also discuss the linq2db. EntityFrameworkCore project — a solution for those who aren’t ready to leave EF Core but still want the capabilities of LINQ to DB. I’ll share our experience implementing LINQ to DB in a large-scale project.