Path To Citus Con, for developers who love Postgres Microsoft

You have to find what works for you and Chris Ellis has never been the kind of person that could go and sit in a library—for Chris, the most productive Postgres place is in a coffee shop. In this episode of the Path To Citus Con podcast for developers who love Postgres, Chris Ellis joined Claire and Pino to chat about his path to becoming more (and more) expert at using PostgreSQL. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it’s taken Chris places, beginning as a 5 year old playing with QBASIC. Chris shared his journey to becoming a developer, an electronic engineer, a builder, and a PostgreSQL user. This session also delves into Chris’s work as a Postgres conference speaker (and organizer!) Importantly, we spent time remembering Simon Riggs, Postgres leader extraordinaire. RIP.

Links mentioned in this episode:
Chris's first thread on the PostgreSQL mailing listsSlides: IoT with PostgreSQL—by Chris Ellis at PGConf.EU 2023Slides: Advantage PostgreSQL—by Chris Ellis at Nordic PGDay 2024 Video: Should I use JSON in PostgreSQL?—by Boriss Mejías at PGConf.EU 2023 Slides: Fighting the Butterflies & giving your first Postgres conference talk—by Claire Giordano at pgDay Paris 2024 Markus Winand's website, Modern SQLWikipedia: Linus’s lawAndres Freund’s xz backdoor discoveryAndres Freund’s Mastodon Toot about xz backdoorPodcast: Path to Citus Con Ep08: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki LinnakangasPodcast: Path To Citus Con Ep11: My Journey into Performance Benchmarking with Jelte Fennema-Nio & Marco SlotPodcast: Oxide and Friends next episode on Mon Apr 08 2024, featuring Andres Freund from MicrosoftJessie Frazelle tweet on LLMVideo of pgDay Paris 2024 lightning talks, including Chris's "Electric Elephants" talkPost about Simon Riggs's tragic passing last week. He will be missed, he is missed, and many are heartbroken Simon Riggs: The Next 20 Years—keynote at PGConf.EU 2023Book: The Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri FontainePodcast: Path To Citus Con Ep09: Solving every data problem in SQL w/Dimitri Fontaine & Vik FearingBlog: Planet PostgreSQLBlog: Contributing to Postgres 101: A Beginner's Experience by Elizabeth Christensen Book: Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love Chris Ellis’s LED PCB ArtBlog: pgDay Paris – Postgres Community, cheese and wine by Boriss MejíasPodcast: LUG RadioCFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until Sunday April 7th 2024 at 11:59pm PDTCal invite for next Ep15 of Path To Citus Con podcast with Michael Christofides

Everywhere you look, people are talking about AI. From Copilot to ChatGPT to Postgres’s powerful AI capabilities (think: pgvector), AI is everywhere. In this episode of Path To Citus Con, for developers who love Postgres, Arda Aytekin joined Claire and Pino to chat about spinning up on Postgres and AI. Arda shared his origin story in mechanical engineering and data science before walking us through vector databases, pgvector, and azure_ai. Arda is one of the creators of the azure_ai extension, so the conversation delves into the azure_ai integration between Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure AI Services. Also discussed (of course) was—Responsible AI.

Links mentioned in this episode:
pgvector on GitHub: https://github.com/pgvector/pgvectorAndrew Kane: https://github.com/ankaneSimon Willison’s Blog: https://simonwillison.net/Demo of Azure AI & pgvector with Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Claire Giordano: https://youtu.be/em0PKDGzzlQ?si=TrOQHXO5gqIuGsU0Blog: Introducing the azure_ai extension to Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Denzil Ribeiro: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-database-for-postgresql/introducing-the-azure-ai-extension-to-azure-database-for/ba-p/3980291Documentation: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server Azure AI Extension: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/postgresql/flexible-server/generative-ai-azure-overviewBlog: Vectors are the new JSON in PostgreSQL by Jonathan Katz: https://jkatz05.com/post/postgres/vectors-json-postgresql/Responsible AI at Microsoft: https://aka.ms/raiAndreessen's Corollary: Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering by Bryan Cantrill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wtvQZijPzgBlog: Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models by Mojan Javaheripi & Sébastien Bubeck: https://www.microsoft.com/research/blog/phi-2-the-surprising-power-of-small-language-models/pg_vectorize: https://github.com/tembo-io/pg_vectorizeOpenAI API documentation: https://platform.openai.com/docs/introductionMicrosoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Generative AI - Training: https://learn.microsoft.com/training/paths/introduction-generative-ai/ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers: https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/chatgpt-prompt-engineering-for-developers/Andrej Karpathy's keynote @ Microsoft Build 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZQun8Y4L2AStanford University CS231n: Deep Learning for Computer Vision: http://cs231n.stanford.edu/LangChain: https://www.langchain.com/Towards Data Science: https://towardsdatascience.com/Generative AI for Beginners on GitHub: https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners/Zero-shot learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-shot_learningAndrej Karpathy thread on LLMs: https://www.threads.net/@karpathy/post/C3lBSlov1QJ/Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep01: Working in public on open source with Simon Willison & Marco Slot: https://pathtocituscon.transistor.fm/episodes/working-in-public-on-open-sourceThe Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri Fontaine, get 15% OFF with CLAIRE15: https://theartofpostgresql.com/Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep08: Solving every data problem in SQL w/Dimitri Fontaine & Vik Fearing: https://pathtocituscon.transistor.fm/episodes/solving-every-data-problem-in-sql-w-dimitri-fontaine-vik-fearing)Arda Aytekin’s scheduled talk at PGDay Chicago 2024 on April 26: https://postgresql.us/events/pgdaychicago2024/schedule/session/1542-learnings-from-extension-development-in-rust-pgrx/ CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until April 7th 2024: https://aka.ms/posette-cfp-2024

The best days are when things don’t go as planned. Derk van Veen joined Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on this podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss his journey from Java developer to PostgreSQL specialist and DBA. From his first days with DB2 and Oracle, to his work with Postgres, Derk shared how he learned about databases. And how a very smart colleague would break the database on purpose, to give Derk the tough job of fixing it. Another topic: what to do when you need to jump on a problem but your heart rate doubles? What will it take to get that magical feeling of fixing something in the database? And a segue into sharing your expertise as a speaker at Postgres conferences. Because it’s always about the why.

Links mentioned in this episode:
Explaining the PostgreSQL concurrency control mechanisms by Derk van Veen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkxwaN46K88Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep03: Why give talks at Postgres conferences with Álvaro Herrera & Boriss Mejías: https://pathtocituscon.transistor.fm/episodes/why-giving-talks-at-postgres-conferences-mattersBlog: A Deep Dive into Table Partitioning part 3 by Derk van Veen & Cosmin Octavian Pene: https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/maintenance-under-pressureBook: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King: https://stephenking.com/works/nonfiction/on-writing-a-memoir-of-the-craft.htmlPechaKucha, 20 slides for 20 seconds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PechaKuchapgChess: PostgreSQL 9.1+ extension for the game of Chess on GitHub: https://github.com/gciolli/pgChessFOSDEM PGDay 2023 talk by Derk van Veen: Fighting Write Amplification By Stimulating Hot Updates Through The Fill Factor: https://www.postgresql.eu/events/fosdem2023/schedule/session/4196-fighting-write-amplification-by-stimulating-hot-updates-through-the-fill-factor/Blog: Fighting PostgreSQL write amplification with HOT updates by Derk van Veen & Dave Pitts: https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/postgresql-hot-updatesFOSDEM PGDay 2024 talk by Derk van Veen & Boriss Mejías: High Available Configurations Are Very Common For Postgresql. But How Do You Investigate Performance Problems When The Standby Can't Keep Up? https://www.postgresql.eu/events/fosdem2024/schedule/session/5164-high-available-configurations-are-very-common-for-postgresql-but-how-do-you-investigate-performance-problems-when-the-standby-cant-keep-up/FOSDEM PGDay 2024 slides by Derk van Veen & Boriss Mejías: High Available Configurations Are Very Common For Postgresql. But How Do You Investigate Performance Problems When The Standby Can't Keep Up? https://www.postgresql.eu/events/fosdem2024/sessions/session/5164/slides/460/HA_delay_analysis.pdfX post with picture about Derk and Boriss’ talk on FOSDEM PGDay 2024 by Devrim Gündüz: https://twitter.com/DevrimGunduz/status/1753348159026130959?s=20Blitz Chess game: https://www.chess.com/terms/blitz-chessCFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until April 7th 2024: https://aka.ms/posette-cfp-2024 

No one likes benchmarking. But it can be one of the highest impact things you do. Jelte Fennema-Nio and Marco Slot joined Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on this podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss their journeys into performance benchmarking. And how it can change the course of your career. Do you need to find bottlenecks in your Postgres? Do you want to build skills with database benchmarks? There are many lovely benchmarking tools in the Postgres world: HammerDB, pgbench, YCSB, BenchBase, perf, & more. And in addition to running benchmarks themselves—asking the right questions, introspection, and profiling matter just as much. 
Links mentioned in this episode:
Podcast: Path To Citus Con Ep01: Working in public on open source with Simon Willison & Marco Slot: https://pathtocituscon.transistor.fm/episodes/working-in-public-on-open-sourceStreetlight effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effectBenchBase: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/projects/benchbase/HammerDB: https://www.hammerdb.com/Slides: Intro to benchmarking with pgbench at PGConf NYC 2023 by Melanie Plageman: https://speakerdeck.com/melanieplageman/intro-to-benchmarking-with-pgbenchLocust: https://locust.io/Blog post: How to benchmark performance of Citus and Postgres with HammerDB on Azure by Jelte Fennema-Nio: https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2022/03/12/how-to-benchmark-performance-of-citus-and-postgres-with-hammerdb/Profiling with perf: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Profiling_with_perfFlame Graphs: https://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.htmlBrendan Gregg’s Website, a super-valuable resource for performance engineering: https://www.brendangregg.com/overview.htmlVideo: Analyzing Postgres performance problems using perf and eBPF by Andres Freund: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HghP4D72NocVideo: Explanatory talk about compiler optimization and memory & caches by Matt Godbolt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_smHyqgDTU&t=52sCompiler Explorer is fantastic, especially if you want to know how different compilers will optimize your code: https://godbolt.org/Mark Callaghan Twitter account @MarkCallaghanDB: https://twitter.com/MarkCallaghanDBPGConf.dev CFP is open until Mon Jan 15 2024 at 11:59pm PST: https://2024.pgconf.dev/cfp/3rd party performance benchmark in 2023 by GigaOM on Transaction Processing & Price-Performance Testing of Distributed SQL Databases:  https://gigaom.com/report/transaction-processing-price-performance-testing/Blog post: "Query from any node" feature for Citus, by Marco Slot: https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2022/06/17/citus-11-goes-fully-open-source/

Do you monitor your Postgres error logs for gold? Lukas Fittl and Rob Treat join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on the Path To Citus Con podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss their respective journeys into Postgres monitoring. Have you ever asked yourself: “Why is my query so slow?” Or had to figure out which query is slowing things down? Or why your database server is at 90% CPU? There are so many ways to monitor Postgres: pganalyze, pgMustard, pgBadger, pgDash, your cloud provider’s Query Performance Insights, pg_stat_statements, pg_stat_io, & more. If you’re running Postgres on a managed service, what kinds of things do you need to monitor & optimize for (vs. what will your cloud service provider do)? There’s also a segue on monitoring vs. observability: what’s the difference? 

Links mentioned in this episode:
OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io/pganalyze: https://pganalyze.com/pgDash: https://pgdash.io/pgMustard: https://www.pgmustard.com/pg_stat_statements docs: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.htmlpg_hint_plan: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan pg_hint_plan hint list: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan/blob/master/docs/hint_list.mdExample for PostgreSQL with pg_hint_plan: https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/QueryMethods.html#method-i-optimizer_hints5mins of Postgres by pganalyze: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhqxwIAgz78HZhWyu3UyKrCWNk7VWjVpjMonitoring page on PostgreSQL wiki: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/MonitoringPgHero GitHub repo: https://github.com/ankane/pgheroInsights on pgBadger: A PGSQL Phriday #010 Recap: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-database-for-postgresql/community-insights-on-pgbadger-a-pgsql-phriday-010-recap/ba-p/3880911Get PostgreSQL Logs Into Honeycomb: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/logs/postgresql/Blog post by Lukas Fittl about pg_stat_io by Lukas: https://pganalyze.com/blog/pg-stat-ioBlog post by Andrew Atkinson about pg_stat_io: https://andyatkinson.com/blog/2023/11/01/PostgreSQL-IO-Visibility-wehack-pg_stat_ioBPFtrace by iovisor GitHub repo: https://github.com/iovisor/bpftraceTrace PostgreSQL locks with pg_lock_tracer: https://jnidzwetzki.github.io/2023/01/11/trace-postgresql-locks-with-pg-lock-tracer.htmlsysdig by draios GitHub repo: https://github.com/draios/sysdigUsing BPFtrace to trace PostgreSQL vacuum operations: https://www.timescale.com/blog/using-bpftrace-to-trace-postgresql-vacuum-operations/PostgreSQL Mailing Lists: https://www.postgresql.org/list/psql — PostgreSQL interactive terminal: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-psql.htmlOngoing discussion thread about pg_stat_statements: https://commitfest.postgresql.org/46/2837/Reconnoiter project referenced by Rob: https://github.com/circonus-labs/reconnoiter/tree/master/sqlFunny tweet about PostgreSQL pronunciation: https://twitter.com/as_w/status/1648373353214885892O11ycast EP63 with Lukas Fittl: https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ep-63-observability-in-the-database-with-lukas-fittl-of-pganalyzeOxide and Friends podcast: https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/

Is being lazy a good reason to learn SQL? Dimitri Fontaine and Vik Fearing join Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia on the Path To Citus Con podcast for developers who love Postgres—to discuss whether every data problem can be (or should be) solved in SQL. Have you tried to solve all the Advent of Code puzzles with SQL? Or written a book for application developers about The Art of PostgreSQL? Or tried to solve a murder mystery by running SQL queries? Regardless of whether you pronounce SQL as “sequel” or as “ess-cue-ell”, getting skilled at SQL is like going to the gym for exercise. It’s ideal to do it every day to build up your strength. Also, this episode includes an explanation of what a “declarative” language like SQL is—plus a fun segue into time zones.
Links mentioned in this episode, in the order they were covered:
Dimitri Fontaine’s blog: https://tapoueh.org/ Advent of Code: https://adventofcode.com/Dimitri’s book, The Art of PostgreSQL: https://theartofpostgresql.com/ Blog post about What’s new in SQL:2023: https://peter.eisentraut.org/blog/2023/04/04/sql-2023-is-finished-here-is-whats-newPostgreSQL Exercises at pgexercises.com: https://pgexercises.com/SQL Murder Mystery for learning SQL: https://mystery.knightlab.com/Pgvector extension for Postgres and AI embeddings: https://github.com/pgvector/pgvectorVik’s Advent of Code puzzle solutions in SQL on GitHub: https://github.com/xocolatl/advent-of-codeStack Overflow data in Postgres, from pgtreats GitHub repo: https://github.com/pgtreats/stackoverflow_in_pgOpenStreetMap runs on Postgres: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=4/38.01/-95.84Uber data set: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/uber-tlc-foil-responseIdeas for fun, open data sets: https://data.world/data-society?entryTypeLabel=dataset&tab=resources“Don’t Do This” Timestamp learnings on PostgreSQL wiki: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don't_Do_This#Don.27t_use_timestamp_.28without_time_zone.29