PostgreSQL Anniversary Proposals -- Important Update

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

-- There are only 13 days left to submit a proposal. Please do so. We'd
rather not be forced into a last-minute rush to evaluate all of the stuff
in April. Remember this is a "family" event so you don't have to have all
of your materials together before you send something. Heck, if you have
an idea for a talk you'd really, really, really like to see and can't give
it, send it anyway. We may be able to find a speaker.

Speaking of which, I've been trying to think of a talk proposal and am
not coming up with anything that seems terribly sexy. I've talked a
couple times about the planner and am afraid people would be bored by
that again. I'd be willing to hold forth on almost any part of the
backend system design (a bold claim, but with three months to prepare
I figure I can back it up...). What would people like to hear about?

regards, tom lane

"Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote

What would people like to hear about?

I am really interested in the concurrency control part of the PostgreSQL. I
can see the MVCC/lock rules there, and basically I can follow them -- but
there are so many if-else in the rules, so the problem always for me is: how
can we gaurantee that the rules are complete and correct? So I guess I may
miss a big picture somewhere.

Regards,
Qingqing

"Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq@cs.toronto.edu> writes:

"Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote

What would people like to hear about?

I am really interested in the concurrency control part of the PostgreSQL.

Hm, I already talked about that once:
http://www.postgresql.org/files/developer/transactions.pdf
but perhaps that's not the level of detail you are after?

regards, tom lane

Tom,

On 3/17/06 7:03 PM, "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Speaking of which, I've been trying to think of a talk proposal and am
not coming up with anything that seems terribly sexy. I've talked a
couple times about the planner and am afraid people would be bored by
that again. I'd be willing to hold forth on almost any part of the
backend system design (a bold claim, but with three months to prepare
I figure I can back it up...). What would people like to hear about?

How about future plans, so to speak? You've made some pretty significant
improvements for 8.1 (virtual tuples, the caching algorithm, etc), what's on
deck for 8.2 and beyond?

- Luke

-----Original Message-----
From: "Josh Berkus"<josh@agliodbs.com>
Sent: 18/03/06 01:55:04
To: "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org"<pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Cc: "pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org"<pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org>
Subject: [HACKERS] PostgreSQL Anniversary Proposals -- Important Update

Heck, if you have
an idea for a talk you'd really, really, really like to see and can't give
it, send it anyway. We may be able to find a speaker.

I wouldn't mind talking (or hosting a discussion) but have been unable to think of anything that other hackers might be interested in. I obviously can't discuss the server internals in any great depth, but if anyone wants to hear about pgadmin, pginstaller, the web infrastructure or something else I've worked on, please let me know and I'll see if I can submit a proposal.

-- Thanks to the tremendous generosity of Afilias, EnterpriseDB, Greenplum,
and Pervasive (as well as SRA and OpenMFG), we will have the budget to
help some speakers with travel funds.

Many thanks to them.

Regards, Dave

-----Unmodified Original Message-----
Folks,

Wanted to update you on a few things regarding speaking at the upcoming
PostgreSQL Anniversary Summit:

-- There are only 13 days left to submit a proposal. Please do so. We'd
rather not be forced into a last-minute rush to evaluate all of the stuff
in April. Remember this is a "family" event so you don't have to have all
of your materials together before you send something. Heck, if you have
an idea for a talk you'd really, really, really like to see and can't give
it, send it anyway. We may be able to find a speaker.

-- Due to e-mail issues (not fixed) we lost some proposals without a trace.
So if you submitted a proposal to us, and have not already received a
response, please re-submit it! We might not have seen it.

-- Thanks to the tremendous generosity of Afilias, EnterpriseDB, Greenplum,
and Pervasive (as well as SRA and OpenMFG), we will have the budget to
help some speakers with travel funds. So if you were holding off on a
proposal because you weren't sure you could afford to fly to Toronto,
please send one in.

Proposals can be sent through http://conference.postgresql.org/Proposals/
or directly to conference-submissions@pgfoundry.org.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 22:03 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

-- There are only 13 days left to submit a proposal. Please do so. We'd
rather not be forced into a last-minute rush to evaluate all of the stuff
in April. Remember this is a "family" event so you don't have to have all
of your materials together before you send something. Heck, if you have
an idea for a talk you'd really, really, really like to see and can't give
it, send it anyway. We may be able to find a speaker.

Speaking of which, I've been trying to think of a talk proposal and am
not coming up with anything that seems terribly sexy. I've talked a
couple times about the planner and am afraid people would be bored by
that again. I'd be willing to hold forth on almost any part of the
backend system design (a bold claim, but with three months to prepare
I figure I can back it up...). What would people like to hear about?

This will, presumably, be a very PostgreSQL friendly group so a sales
pitch isn't really required.

How about the opposite? Tom Lanes list of areas that PostgreSQL does a
poor job and a detailed explanation as to how that design decision or
limitation came about as well as what can (or cannot) be done to fix it.

I know there are a large number of items on your personal TODO and
CANNOTDO lists that have either had very brief or no discussion in the
mailing lists. Usage patterns that PostgreSQL simply does not handle
well for not-so-obvious reasons and how to either work around those
limitations as a user or changes that could be made to fix them.

One example might be a 'self-aggregating' structure. Start with one
entry per minute in a table indexed by time. After 2 weeks passes, the
per-minute data is aggregated and the single entry at the start of the
day is updated with the aggregate value with the other entries for the
day being removed. I believe this can cause significant index bloat
since it results in a few entries per page in the index.

Using 2 structures via inheritance with one holding the per-minute data
and one holding the per-day aggregates is much better.

In short, tell us why the hammer of PostgreSQL makes a bad screw driver.

--

Ühel kenal päeval, L, 2006-03-18 kell 12:38, kirjutas Rod Taylor:

This will, presumably, be a very PostgreSQL friendly group so a sales
pitch isn't really required.

How about the opposite? Tom Lanes list of areas that PostgreSQL does a
poor job and a detailed explanation as to how that design decision or
limitation came about as well as what can (or cannot) be done to fix it.

...

In short, tell us why the hammer of PostgreSQL makes a bad screw driver.

Yup. My own ideas for a proposal have mostly revolved aroud topic "Why
postgresql sucks", and how to persuade the core to both understand the
issues and accept solutions for fixing these.

That means discussing areas where there is much room for improvement:

1) OLTP

2) 24/7

3) OLAP

I have written code (mutually non-blocking vacuum) and proposals on
lists (online index creation, archive tables) which would probably help
a lot in each of these areas, once developers start believing that
actual problems exist ;).

And of course one will always want better introspaction into the
backends.

-------
Hannu

Qingqing Zhou wrote:

I am really interested in the concurrency control part of the PostgreSQL. I
can see the MVCC/lock rules there, and basically I can follow them -- but
there are so many if-else in the rules, so the problem always for me is: how
can we gaurantee that the rules are complete and correct? So I guess I may
miss a big picture somewhere.

Are you talking specifically about the stuff in tqual.c? If so, I agree
that there doesn't seem to be enough description of how they work, much
less formal proof that they are complete or correct. I don't know if it
is enough material for a "presentation" though.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

Dave,

I wouldn't mind talking (or hosting a discussion) but have been unable to
think of anything that other hackers might be interested in. I obviously
can't discuss the server internals in any great depth, but if anyone wants
to hear about pgadmin, pginstaller, the web infrastructure or something
else I've worked on, please let me know and I'll see if I can submit a
proposal.

Well, aside from anything else, we seem likely to have you, Devrim, Magnus and
maybe even Robert Treat there (Robert?). Which would mean a good time for a
meeting of the Web Team, yes?

"Plans for the PostgreSQL Web Site (bring your wish list)"

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

Oops! josh@agliodbs.com (Josh Berkus) was seen spray-painting on a wall:

Dave,

I wouldn't mind talking (or hosting a discussion) but have been unable to
think of anything that other hackers might be interested in. I obviously
can't discuss the server internals in any great depth, but if anyone wants
to hear about pgadmin, pginstaller, the web infrastructure or something
else I've worked on, please let me know and I'll see if I can submit a
proposal.

Well, aside from anything else, we seem likely to have you, Devrim, Magnus and
maybe even Robert Treat there (Robert?). Which would mean a good time for a
meeting of the Web Team, yes?

"Plans for the PostgreSQL Web Site (bring your wish list)"

It also seems likely that we'll have a "meaningful quorum" of Slony
developers, which would imply the same thing for Slony...
--
output = reverse("moc.liamg" "@" "enworbbc")
http://linuxfinances.info/info/finances.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #182. "I will not hold any sort of public
celebration within my castle walls. Any event open to members of the
public will be held down the road in the festival pavilion.
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/&gt;

Hi,

On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 11:34 -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:

Well, aside from anything else, we seem likely to have you, Devrim,
Magnus and maybe even Robert Treat there (Robert?). Which would mean
a good time for a meeting of the Web Team, yes?

It seems that I'll be there, and yes, a PostgreSQL.org web development
session will be cool.

Regards,

--
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. 1.503.667.4564
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: PL/php, plPerlNG - http://www.commandprompt.com/

"Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote

Hm, I already talked about that once:
http://www.postgresql.org/files/developer/transactions.pdf
but perhaps that's not the level of detail you are after?

Yeah, I've read the presentation -- and yes, that's not the level I am
after. Actually, I guess the completeness problem can be clarified with a
table:

a_complete_and_clear_division_of_transaction_time
SatisfySnapShot Y Y N N ...
SatisfyVacuum 1 2 2 3 ...

Not sure how to give the corrctness proof -- maybe if the
"a_complete_and_clear_division_of_transaction_time" is designed well enough,
we can find some consistency?

And as Alvaro suggested, maybe that's too narrow topic for a presentation --
so if the above idea is in the right track, I'd like to write an initial
document (so you guys can modify it) if nobody is interested in doing that.

Regards,
Qingqing

On Sat, Mar 18, 2006 at 12:38:30PM -0500, Rod Taylor wrote:

One example might be a 'self-aggregating' structure. Start with one
entry per minute in a table indexed by time. After 2 weeks passes, the
per-minute data is aggregated and the single entry at the start of the
day is updated with the aggregate value with the other entries for the
day being removed. I believe this can cause significant index bloat
since it results in a few entries per page in the index.

FYI, that's exactly what http://rrs.decibel.org does (yeah, I know,
viewcvs is down... :( )
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

Tatsuo,

I'm wondering if this was approved or not...

We haven't approved *anything* yet. The deadline was just Saturday, and I'm
still keying stuff into the conference management system.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco