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Speaker photo for Harald Armin Massa

Interview with Harald Armin Massa

Talks

Social Media

Could you briefly introduce yourself?

I’ve been a PostgreSQL user since around 1995; when I migrated an application form Foxpro to PostgreSQL and PHP.

Since 1999 I have been self employed, focussing on Software Development around Databases. Had the opportunity to deploy an application utilizing one of the first PostgreSQL for Windows (beta) versions; which initialized “getting to know the PostgreSQL people”.

Some months after speaking about PostgreSQL on Windows at pgconf.eu in Paris, I was invited to form the German branch of 2ndQuadrant, which was an international PostgreSQL support partnership. From 2010 to 2020 my colleagues and I did grow 2ndQuadrant Deutschland with PostgreSQL Support and Services.

How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?

Pgconf.eu visited Stuttgart in 2010; so I was kind of “local contact”. Since then I am part of the pgconf.eu organizers.

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)

Every year since 2009 I enjoyed pgconf.eu around Europe; I also had the opportunity to take part in some fo the German pgconf.de; even as sponsor and speaker.

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

About a reasonable approach to “availability”.

Reason: within the 10 years I earned my living around replication and stuff, I learned a lot about expectations about availability and the realities that can be delivered. Even on selling “high availability”, there was a lot of expectation management to do.

I also learned a lot about the tendency to over engineer solutions, and this talk shall shine lights on how to be reasonable with availability to be reasonable with available resources.

What is the audience for your talk?

Those:

  • Planning to setup PostgreSQL (once or many many times)
  • Responsible for a PostgreSQL strategy
  • Who want to learn about saving money on databases
What existing knowledge should the attendee have?

The basic technical terminology—what is a database, what is a network, what is other peoples computers.

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

The improvement of the random algorithm. Better randomness is very valuable.

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

The PostgreSQL 15 and beyond talk

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

Make upgrades really easy. As in “download new version, command ‘update existing database with keeping protocol’, and after a while your database is running PostgreSQL n+1.”

After that “select pg_activate_new_feature('featurecode', 15)” selectively to activate compatibility breaking changes.