See you at PASS Data Community Summit!

This year's PASS summit in Seattle is only four weeks away! I am honored that I was selected to provide a full day pre-conference training on PostGIS, as well as a general session talk on extensions. Both of my topics are focused on the Postgres ecosystem. Of course, that is not a surprise to my regular readers! It may be a surprise to those who have been aware of PASS in the past.

What is PASS?

This year's PASS conference is called "PASS Data Community Summit 2023." In the past, PASS was an acronym for Professional Association for SQL Server, and the conference was very much a Microsoft conference. When I attended in 2018 it was because I wanted to learn more about MS SQL Server and PowerBI. This year, that focus is expanding to include Postgres!

Yes, it's still a Microsoft-focused conference. However, Postgres is a well embedded theme throughout the content. Their about page discusses this.

"Historically Summit has been focused on the Microsoft Data Platform, specifically SQL Server. While this is still at the core of Summit and its community, this year we’ll welcome more PostgreSQL professionals as the data community grows."

There is a PostgreSQL Learning Pathway in the schedule with five (5) targeted sessions. Looking at the full session catalog and searching for "Postgres" I am shown 25 sessions that match. That's roughly 12% of all sessions mentioning Postgres! 🐘

About my sessions

While my pre-conference and general session talk are both focused on Postgres, I still work with MS SQL Server daily as well. My cross-platform experience will be helpful to connect with the larger portion of the PASS audience that is likely to be more experienced with MS SQL Server, T-SQL and Windows than they are with Postgres, PL/pgSQL, and Linux.

Pre-Conference: GIS Data, Queries, and Performance

My full-day pre-conference session is on Monday, 11/13/2023. It is titled PostGIS and PostgreSQL: GIS Data, Queries, and Performance. Attendees will have access to a Postgres database pre-loaded with the data for the day's demos, and all the SQL code being explored. The data set used will be available as a download with instructions on how to load into a database of your own. See my prior recorded sessions for examples of how I provide session materials.

This session covers a range of topics from my book and prior recorded sessions using the latest versions and techniques.

General Session: Extensions Shape the Future

My general session talk is on Wednesday, 11/15/2023 from 10:15 - 11:30 AM. It is titled PostgreSQL: Extensions Shape the Future. My goal for this talk is two parts. First, illustrate the amazing and powerful features already available through Postgres' extension system. Second, to show how easy and safe it is to create your own custom extensions today.

This session will start with a bit of a history lesson before highlighting the current state of extension development. The current state is shifting to the pgrx framework, which is proving to be a game-changing addition for potential extension developers. You can read my post on migrating an extension to pgrx for an overview of my experience with extension development.

Summary

The PASS data community summit promises to be a great event with a huge wealth of experience being presented. View the session catalog and register now!

Need help with your PostgreSQL servers or databases? Contact us to start the conversation!