Speaker photo for Dirk Krautschick

Interview with Dirk Krautschick

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Could you briefly introduce yourself?

I’m Dirk, a nerdy database guy from Germany, Solution Architect with Aiven and proud father of two junior DBAs.

How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?

Mostly with doing talks and lately creating a local user group in Germany. (and of course meet, discuss and have good times with all the other community members) I am always on call for helping on conferences regarding orga or anything else. Contributing as much as possible is very important for me so I try to evolve on this from year to year.

Have you enjoyed previous PostgreSQL Europe conferences, either as an attendee or as a speaker?

Yeah, plenty of. I am really happy to got the opportunity from several employers to speak on and attend events like this.

What about pgDay Paris specifically

This would be my very first visit to pgDay Paris, which makes me very happy because it is not that far away from my hometown (Aachen).

What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?

I prevent talking about this but my dark history is based on Oracle databases. While I have rescued my soul moving to the light side joining the open source community there are still concepts I miss and I’ll try to support with Postgres.

What is the audience for your talk?

Everyone who is facing performance issues. Especially DBAs and developers being able to analyze issues happening in the past or where the root course like a specific statement or so is not clearly defined.

What existing knowledge should the attendee have?

I’ll try to keep it low on this. I wouldn’t expect attendees with much knowledge but more people facing the same issues and searching for such approaches and tools. So overall maybe basic DBA knowledge and some experience with performance issues at all.

Which other talk at this year’s conference would you like to see?

Hopefully all of them :-) It is a very awesome lineup where I am very honored being part of. But if I have to choose, it would be a head to head between Matthias talk about Postgre without local storage (I am very hooked on what Neon is doing) and the logical decoding talk from Betrand.

What is the one feature in PostgreSQL 16 which you like most?

There is no specific feature at the moment but I like the way how logical replication is evolving and improving with every version. I believe that this is a very important thing in the near future regarding scaling and flexibility.

Which measure, action, feature or activity would - in your eyes - help to accelerate the adoption of PostgreSQL?

I do not see any reason to accelerate. There are always features which would help for several use cases. Postgres is evolving but It doesn’t jump on every trend or hype. That on one hand makes things slow but on the other hand keeps things stable and reliable. For everything else extensions are a good middle ground. And that is key and should be more accepted as a strong benefit of Postgres and not as a interface for workarounds out there.

What one action could pgDay Paris take in the future that would make it more inclusive and diverse?

Most important is to support and encourage everyone to contribute or engage in any way. If there is even just a small idea or a bit of motivation of being part of such a great community and a great thing like Postgres it should be recognized and elaborated no matter from who it came from.

What PostgreSQL event in 2024 are you most excited about?

Overall I am always excited for every conference especially when I was chosen as a speaker. This time I would say that I am mostly excited about the first scheduled meetups of the new User Group for Northrine Westfalia in Germany which was created this year. It is the first time for me organizing such so I am excited and nervous at the same time if everything will go well and if actually enough attendees will show up.

Which book are you reading right now?

I am reading "Heretics of Dune" by Frank Herbert. As a big fan of the whole franchise and with the new movie coming out I’m pushing myself (again) through the books - even the not so famous ones :-)