Esoteric Curio - BWPUG

BWPUG: The essential PostgreSQL.conf

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:55:44 -0400

Howdy folks,

This is a reminder that our monthly meetup is scheduled to take place this coming MONDAY, August 11th. As requested, we've moved the meetings from Wednesday to Monday to facilitate some of the would-be-attendees that have contacted me out of band.

This month's presentation is titled "The essential PostgreSQL.conf". With almost 200 configuration parameters, some people might think the postgresql.conf is a bit heady, but the truth is there are only about 2 dozen that you really need for everyday use. This talk will discuss the different types of configuration settings, and give an overview of the ones you'll want to know when running PostgreSQL. Speakers for the talk are Greg Smith, Software Engineer at Truviso, and Robert Treat, Database Architect at OmniTI.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

2008-08-11 @ 6:30pm
OmniTI
7070 Samuel Morse Dr. Ste 150
Columbia, MD 21046

Best regards,

Theo

OSCON2008 Presentation

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:58:09 -0400

Hello from OSCON. I gave my full-stack introspection crash course talk today. It has been quite a while since I've presented anything in a 40 minute format, but I think the talk went quite well. I got a lot of positive feedback.

I decided to take a risky approach inspired by dtrace.conf(08) by demonstrating dtrace on a live, mission-critical system we run at OmniTI. The risks of this are: network connections flake out, dtrace doesn't work correctly or I do something stupid and cause some service unavailability. Well, as I use dtrace just about every day, I wasn't worried about the breaking things. And while my network connection winked out for about one minute and dtrace has some annoying sub-second aborts, I think the demonstration was quite effective.

Many people gave positive commentary at the end and afterward. People asked for the slide to be put online... and while they have no real content of value (as the demo was everything), I put them here anyway:

OSCON2008 Full-stack Introspection Crash Course

view presentation (tags: oscon dtrace)

In addtion to the slide stack, I've included the simple scripts that I used during the demonstration. I ran qps.d, query_speed.d, and query_speed2.d on the database server and r3.sh, perl.d, pcpu.d, papcpu.d, and papcpu2.d on the web server. These require The Devel::DTrace perl module, PostgreSQL patches, and Apache 2.2.8 patches. Some of them are approximations of correctness, so weigh the output appropriately (the perl ones). Enjoy!

BWPUG Meetup Reminder

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:49:56 -0400

Hi all!

Just a friendly reminder that we'll be having our first meetup tomorrow as planned. I thought as a good kick-off we could all collaboratively share what we do with PostgreSQL. We'll start off with a whirlwind tour of how OmniTI uses PotsgreSQL, taking a brief look at ZFS, DTrace and large datasets. After that I think it would be good to get to know each other -- maybe we'll hit a local pub afterwards!

I look forward to seeing you there!

Meetup starts at 6:30pm
7070 Samuel Morse Dr. Ste 150
Columbia, MD 21046

If you have issues getting in the building, ring me on my cell -- it will be posted on the doors.

Best regards,

Theo

Starting the Baltimore/Washington PostgreSQL User Group

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:49:42 -0400

On the second Wednesday of every month, the Baltimore/Washington PostgreSQL User Group will meet at 7070 Samuel Morse Drive, Ste 150 in Columbia, Maryland. Meetings start at 6:30pm and go until around 8:30pm. I am pretty excited about this and pleased to offer up OmniTI's facilities for this. I'm excited about the opportunity to share what I've learned, educate and grow the PostgreSQL community and learn from others in it. This is going to be "good stuff."

Our first meeting will be held on May 14th, 2008. Mark your calendars. Also, subscribe to the mailing list at: bwpug@postgresql.org.