Don't Forget the Elephant

Many database administrators were first introduced to PostgreSQL years ago and have memories (good & bad) of using version numbers starting with 6, 7 & 8. Many people are still running these old versions as well, nervous about upgrading and unsure of the benefits. With the rise in popularity of MySQL, many open source advocates turned there since the majority of internet community support was centered around it. And the advanced features that commercial databases such as Oracle & SQL Server were advertising appealed to many enterprise administrators.

But in the last several years, things have changed. MySQL is still one of the most popular open source databases, but its ownership by Oracle has cast a shadow over the project. And the rising costs and license management of commercial database systems are causing enterprise headaches. NoSQL has also taken off as an alternative data storage model, but the implementations have often been left lacking long term, essential data management features. In all this time, PostgreSQL has been getting many of those advanced features it used to be missing and has been getting some of its own unique capabilities that can set it above the rest.

This talk will go over the major feature improvements in PostgreSQL since the 8.x series was released, how its community has stepped up to fill in the missing feature gaps, and what the future holds for one of the longest running, truly open source relational database management system projects.