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Speaker photo for Bruce Momjian

Interview with Bruce Momjian

Talks

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Could you briefly introduce yourself?

I live in Philadelphia and have been working on Postgres for 26 years. I am one of the PostgreSQL core team members.

How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?

I read all the PostgreSQL community email lists and try to reply if I can help. I specifically focus on small suggestions and improvements that might be ignored. I am a committer and try to improve things where I can. I also speak at many conferences.

Have you enjoyed previous PostgreSQL Europe conferences, either as an attendee or as a speaker? (PGConf.EU, FOSDEM PGDay, Nordic PGDay, pgDay Paris, PGConf.DE)

Sure, all of them.

What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?

My talk is “MVCC Unmasked”. It is my most complicated talk and is about how Postgres implements multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) to allow for high concurrency with minimal locking. While I have delivered it many times, this is the first time I am delivering it at PG-EU since 2010, which I am excited about.

What is the audience for your talk?

It is a very advanced talk, so it is meant for users who want to understand better how Postgres implements high concurrency SQL operations. Someone from my first audience described it as an exhilarating roller coaster ride, and that’s probably accurate.

What existing knowledge should the attendee have?

A strong stomach?

What is the one feature in PostgreSQL 15 which you like most?

I like that we changed server statistics so it is stored in shared memory instead of in the file system.

Which measure, action, feature or activity would—in your eyes—help to accelerate the adoption of PostgreSQL?

I think four things:

  • DDL handling in logical replication
  • Failover of logical replication slots
  • Sharding
  • Cluster file encryption (TDE)