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Speaker photo for Daniel Westermann

Interview with Daniel Westermann

Talks

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Could you briefly introduce yourself?

I am Daniel and I work for dbi services both as a PostgreSQL trainer and consultant. My free time mostly goes to my family and we try to be as much outside as we can. If you want to know anything more about me, feel free to get in touch during the conference.

How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?

I am helping to organize the Swiss PGDay, PGConf.de and recently also PGConf.eu. When I have time to do so, I try to publish what I learned on my company’s blog which is linked above.

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)

Yes, three of them: PGConf.EU, PGconf.DE and FOSDEM PGDay.

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

I will talk about TOAST. I believe TOAST is a great feature that many people are not even aware of and this is the reason for this talk. Having at least a basic knowledge of what it does and why it is required, gives you a better understanding of how you should deal with certain data types.

What is the audience for your talk?

I don’t think that there is a specific audience for this talk. This is useful for developers and DBAs.

What existing knowledge should the attendee have?

Of course they already should have worked with PostgreSQL. A basic understanding of data types and blocks/pages is helpful, but not required.

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

MERGE. A lot of people waited for that and this makes certain migrations from Oracle quite easier.

Which other talk at this year’s conference would you like to see?

Robert Haas’ talk about pg_basebackup. Robert is a great speaker and I always learn something new while listening to him.

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

What is still missing, and many discussions around it already happened, is automatic encryption of columns or even whole tables. We have many customers asking for that because of legal requirements and currently there is no other option than encrypting the file system(s).