PGConf & Extension Ecosystem Summit EU 2024
Last week I MCed the first Extension Ecosystem Summit EU and attended my first at PGConf EU in Athens, Greece. Despite my former career as an archaeologist — with a focus on Mediterranean cultures, no less! — this was my first visit to Greece. My favorite moment was the evening after the Summit, when I cut out of a networking shindig to walk to Pláka and then circumnavigate the Acropolis. I mean just look at this place!
The Acropolis of Athens on the evening of October 22, 2024. © 2024 David E. Wheeler
Highlight of the trip for sure. But the Summit and conference were terrific, as well.
Extension Ecosystem Summit
Floor Drees kindly organized The Extension Ecosystem Summit EU, the follow-up to the PGConf.dev original. While the Vancouver Summit focused on developers, we tailored this iteration to users. I started the gathering with a condensed version of my POSETTE talk, “State of the Postgres Extension Ecosystem”, but updated with a Trunk OCI Distribution demo. Links:
We then moved into a lightning round of 10 minute introductions to a variety of extensions:
- Jimmy Angelakos showed off pg_statviz, a “minimalist extension and utility pair for time series analysis and visualization of PostgreSQL internal statistics”.
- Adam Hendel gave a brief history of pgmq, is a “lightweight message queue like AWS SQS and RSMQ, but on Postgres.”
- Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek introduced pgzx, “a library for developing PostgreSQL extensions written in Zig.”
- James Sewell talked about pgvectorscale and pgai for managing machine training workloads on Postgres.
- Alastair Turner described pg_tde, an extension that provides transparent data encryption for Postgres.
Quite the whirlwind! There followed open discussion, in which each maintainer went to a corner to talk to attendees about contributing to their extensions. Details to come in a more thorough writeup on the Tembo blog, but I personally enjoyed some fascinating discussions about extension distribution challenges.
PGConf.eu
Following the Summit, I attended several thought-provoking and provocative presentations at PGConf.eu, which took place at the same hotel, conveniently enough.
Floor Drees speaking at PGConf.eu 2024. © 2024 David E. Wheeler
- In the conference keynote, Stacey Haysler explained the The PostgreSQL License Fee. I’m pleased to say that my employer “pays” license fee!
- Andres Freund (yes, that one) summarized NUMA vs PostgreSQL, covering some of the issues and opportunities for optimization of PostgreSQL on servers using the NUMA multi-processor memory architecture.
- Heikki Linnakangas offered an overview of The Wire Protocol, that bit of PostgreSQL technology that lets clients talk to PostgreSQL.
- Ophir Lojkine and Thomas Guillemard showed how a pretty sweet framework, SQLPage, lets archaeologists like Thomas write complete web applications in pure SQL, enabling rapid data entry while in the field.
- Tomas Vondra’s Performance Archaeology dug into the history of PostgreSQL improvements, mapping their compounding returns over time.
- Floor Drees (photo above) talked about Supporting extensions, but really now, making a strong case for the need to organize infrastructure to support the broader extension ecosystem.
There were many more talks, but clearly I tend to be drawn to the most technical, core-oriented topics. And also archaeology.
Museums
Speaking of which, I made time to visit two museums while in Athens. First up was the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, where I was delighted to explore the biggest collection of Mycenaean artifacts I’ve ever seen, including massive collections from the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann. So much great Bronze Age stuff here. I mean, just look at this absolute unit:
From the museum description: “Fragment of a krater depicting a chariot with two occupants. A male figure holding a staff walks in front of the chariot. Much of the Mycenaean Pictorial Style pottery (14th-12th centuries BC) with representations of humans, chariots, horses and bulls on large kraters, was produced at Berbati in the Argolid and exported to Cyprus, where it was widely imitated. Birds, fish, wild goats or imaginary creatures (i.e. sphinxes) occur on other types of vessels, such as jugs and stirrup jars. Usually only fragments of these vases survive in mainland Greece from settlement contexts. In Cyprus, however, complete vases are preserved, placed as grave gifts in tombs.” © Photo 2024 David E. Wheeler
The animal decorations on Mycenaean and Akrotiri pottery is simply delightful. I also enjoyed the Hellenistic stuff, and seeing the famed Antikythera Mechanism filled my nerd heart with joy. A good 3 hours poking around; I’ll have to go back and spend a few days there sometime. Thanks to my pal Evan Stanton for gamely wandering around this fantastic museum with me.
Immediately after the PGConf.eu closing session, I dashed off to the Acropolis Museum, which stays open till 10 on Fridays. Built in 2009, this modern concrete-and-glass building exhibits several millennia of artifacts and sculpture exclusively excavated from the Acropolis or preserved from its building façades. No photography allowed, alas, but I snapped this photo looking out on the Acropolis from the top floor.
The Acropolis as viewed from inside the Acropolis Museum. Friezes preserved from the Parthenon inside the museum reflect in the glass, as does, yes, your humble photographer. © 2024 David E. Wheeler
I was struck by the beauty and effectiveness of the displays. It easily puts the lie to the assertion that the Elgin Marbles must remain in the British Museum to protect them. I saw quite a few references to the stolen sculptures, particularly empty spots and artfully sloppy casts from the originals, but the building itself makes the strongest case that the marbles should be returned.
But even without them there remains a ton of beautiful sculpture to see. Highly recommended!
Back to Work
Now that my sojourn in Athens has ended, I’m afraid I must return to work. I mean, the event was work, too; I talked to a slew of people about a number of projects in flight. More on those soon.