“When a critical crash occurs with databases, it always happens somewhat epically” - Ilya Kosmodemyansky

Today's interview is given by Ilya Kosmodemyansky , CEO of Data Egret , a leading PostgreSQL consulting company, and co-founder of PG Day Russia . Over 15 years of work, Ilya went all the way from the developer and DBA to the head of his own company providing database support services. Today, Ilya is engaged in the formation and implementation of the Data Egret development strategy, promoting the company's brand in the Russian and international community, and overseeing the selection of speakers for the conference.

At PG Day'17 Russia, Ilya will conduct an intensive PostgreSQL training course for system administrators and DevOps .

During the conversation, Ilya shared his vision of the current location of PostgreSQL in the market of modern databases, spoke about the main differences between Russian technology conferences from Western ones, and explained for whom the master class he created is meant.
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PG Day: The company you founded provides support for PostgreSQL. Why PostgreSQL, but not MS SQL Server or ORACLE?

Ilya: Since we started Postgres, before it became fashionable , we can honestly say that it was a conscious choice. Now, only lazy people are not talking about Postgres, but in those days it was a good open source base, but nothing more.

I have something to compare with: I worked quite a lot with Oracle and a little with MySQL. Oracle is a cool base, but it is enough to log in to SQL * Plus to understand that many things have been done there a long time ago and they are not very convenient . With the technological superiority of Oracle, Postgres attracted precisely ease of use , despite the fact that it is a full-fledged database with serious features.

On the other hand, it is open source, and you build your business a little according to other laws, which differ from the support of a commercial product. You depend on the community. Someone from this becomes uncomfortable, but there is no binding to a commercial manufacturer. What will you do if suddenly Oracle decides that all its products should be supported only by certified partners?

Commercial databases are a cat in a bag that is constantly changing not according to your will, you cannot control and foresee it. Open source in this sense is much more pleasant.

Open source support is a rather interesting direction. Now in the market of commercial databases one can observe approximately the same thing that once happened in the market of operating systems. There were very expensive commercial operating systems (Novell Netware, HP UX, Solaris), which were heavily overvalued and cost a lot of money. And now, when free desktop operating systems have appeared, and on Linux servers they have strongly pressed their competitors, the same thing happens with databases. Commercial producers have to change something in their approaches, in prices for licenses. I'm not saying that Postgres will take over the world tomorrow, I would even be sad if it happened, because “long live the competition”. But the prospects for him in this sense are a huge amount, and he is changing this market before our very eyes.

PG Day: In your opinion, PostgreSQL can replace commercial DBMS with its technical capabilities?

Ilya : Specifically in such a formulation - yes, of course, it can and actively replaces. But this does not mean that PostgreSQL is technologically cooler than Oracle . Far from all projects need some kind of super features that Oracle has, such as working on bare hardware without a file system. These are things that are only inherent in Oracle - they are super high-tech, but require the acquisition of very expensive licenses. Not everywhere this technological power is needed. Many times I have come across a situation where a very expensive license for Oracle is bought for a small project simply because the company has become accustomed to doing this. “We have Oracle, we do not want to deal with cheap licenses, we are accustomed to good Oracle EE”, while the project can work without problems on PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL is good enough for such tasks, it copes well with it, is easier to operate, does not require licensing costs . This is a very wide range of situations where Postgres can really replace commercial DBMS. At the same time tasks, where Oracle is better suited technically, is becoming less. In most cases, license prices do not justify the technological superiority that Oracle has for these projects.

PG Day: CEOs often break away from everyday technical work. Tell me, how close are you to solving technical problems in the company?

Ilya: There is a phrase: I want to make a successful startup, hire a CEO there and work as a programmer there. Such schemes, unfortunately, do not work in real life. In order for all this to move forward, technical tasks have to be relegated to the background. Another issue is that we are engaged primarily in technical support and consulting - our entire organization is subordinated to technical issues. It is impossible to build the best in the world technical support for PostgreSQL databases, without delving into the technical details and tasks that DBAs deal with, without participating in disassembling incidents with databases. My task is to organize the interaction of people who are engaged in this. Although I do not do database administration directly, I have to go into all these questions in order to understand what is going on in general, which way we need to go, and so on.

PG Day: Tell me the most epic case from your practice that would have been a good way to illustrate the inscription on your Twitter profile - “Being DBA is as easy as riding a bicycle, only a bicycle is on fire, you are on fire, everything is on fire and you are in hell”?

Ilya: There is hardly a lot of DBA, they will happily tell the most epic episodes in their practice. Anything happened. When a critical crash happens to the databases, it always happens somewhat epically , even though we try to spread straw everywhere.

They call at two o'clock in the morning, they say that everything has fallen, nothing works, the database is covered, because the transaction id has run out and something has not been configured. At the same time, all the administrators who were supposed to watch her at that moment were drunk on the blackboard, two o'clock in the yard, the caller runs out of battery on the phone, and something must be done. Such cases occur regularly, so the phrase about the bike is our motto .

PG Day: You often go to conferences. What is the difference between communities in Russia, Europe and America? How strongly is the presence of the PostgreSQL community at conferences in Russia and abroad?

Ilya: These are two big separate questions. Many conferences abroad are community-driven , they are made by enthusiasts, focusing on the development of the community, and not direct earnings (although it would be wrong to say that they do not pursue such goals).

The first difference that catches the eye is that the organizers of the Russian conferences are counting on making money . The ticket to the event is more expensive, everything happens with a touch of show business. Unlike Russia, in the West, people are less worried about how to make sponsors interested. Many Russian conferences cannot afford a very interesting program, because the sponsors will be bored, because the audience will not go to them, but to an interesting report. At the same time, Russian conferences are fairly well-organized: everything is fine-tuned like a clock, a lot of money is spent, professionals are engaged in the preparation. Western conferences often focus on content, not form.

The second difference is that the market is much smaller than the world market for objective reasons. If you participate only in Russian conferences, it is very easy to expose yourself to the smartest. Therefore, I recommend to get out at international conferences - you instantly understand how many people are much smarter than you, much quicker to understand, they have something to learn. Very useful.

And one moment. In North America, no one perceives attending a conference as a way to unwind, hang out with friends. Most people, listeners and speakers, see this as serious training and professional development . Arriving at the event, they are laid out in full. At the American conference, it is permissible to begin reports and at nine in the morning - students come to work there, and not to hide from the office routine.

PG Day: What do you expect from PG Day Russia? Requirements for the audience - what minimum of knowledge should be, can you recommend something to read?

Ilya: I expect that we will be able to make a good event, moreover, dedicated not only to the Postgres, but also to the databases in general. I always worry that all the techies who work with databases would be interested to participate. To the program was a high level, filled with interesting technical reports.

We have such an idea that it is impossible to bring only good foreign speakers and show, they say, "here, guys, look how it is." We need to grow our Russian community from the inside. We call world-famous speakers to set the bar. We invite our proven Russian comrades, who can tell a lot of interesting things, and always try to find new speakers who have not previously performed at the general public. Not the simplest approach, but, nevertheless, in recent years we have succeeded.

This time we have an even more serious application : in addition to the core core of PostgreSQL, we are planning several additional streams. With the flow of MySQL and other open databases, Percona helps us a lot , attracts speakers and audience. There will also be a stream of system administration. We all know that Postgres admins and developers are very tightly embedded in these topics, so they can also listen to some borderline things.

And organize two unusual flow . There are a lot of worries now: is Postgres better than Oracle? When will Postgres finally defeat Oracle? To understand, we decided to make a stream on commercial databases , to provide an opportunity for both Oracle and Post-Artists to look at other technologies. And we have a stream on computer science . It includes the borderline between the exploitation of databases and the trends that are now occurring in this science. There are many expectations, and most importantly my concern as an organizer is that all should be interesting and well.

There are actually no requirements for the audience; we expect everyone to find an interesting topic for themselves. Our reports are diverse: not only for professionals who already know everything. There are also for those who consider their level a little closer to the average, and for beginners. Just look at our master classes. There will be, for example, a very interesting introductory course on MS SQL Server and on the performance analysis of Oracle . According to Posgres, my workshop will be introductory, and the master class of Alexey Lesovsky is very intense, with a view to a very serious audience. Everyone can find his interest and level.

PG Day: Speaking of your PostgreSQL introductory course for system administrators and DevOps. He always attracts a large number of listeners. Why is this workshop so popular?

Ilya: There is nothing surprising in this. PostgreSQL is gaining popularity, and it is often easier for people to listen to a course that sums up huge documentation for them . Otherwise, you have to read and gain experience for a long time in a more painful way.

Personally, I do not really like the structure of our documentation. It is arranged as a reference manual, the information is structured by sections. Human thinking does not work that way. People want to get an answer, how to solve a more extensive task: install PostgreSQL and start working with it. The documentation is not intended for this, it must be read in its entirety. There are wiki guides, but they are often not relevant. Therefore, these courses are very popular because they are based on practical experience, they are closer to the practical tasks of administrators.

I always try to teach based on the experience that all DBAs in our company have. I see what happens in the analysis of some incidents with clients, which changes with the release of new versions of Postgres. It turns out such a generalization of the practical experience of several very cool specialists. People like it and benefit , so they come to the training.

PG Day: Your workshops and reports are always very detailed. Tell me, how do you keep up-to-date technical information?

Ilya : First of all, I always follow the commitfest and the development process . When the feature list is already more or less “fixed”, I check what changes have occurred and how they work. This is a simple process, which naturally does not add much detail.

I consult with DBA colleagues who work “in the field” every day. I follow our internal knowledge system and what is happening in customer support. DBAs already accustomed to such a case know the material of my slides and say: “Well, listen, you need to update this slide, everything has already changed.” It is hard work, a lot of preparatory work, which I would never have done alone.

My role is not to search for technical details, but to systematize them and present them in a methodological form so that it is easier for people to perceive the material.

PG Day: Your reports are available online. Is it necessary to attend a master class, because you can just download the presentation?

Ilya : Presentations are necessary - people love to see them and extract some information for themselves from there. Frankly, I do not really know how and I like to do self-sufficient presentations. I do not understand why then need a report? For example, there is some kind of scheme on the slide, like something is arranged in PostgreSQL or Linux, and this scheme needs my explanation. If I put these explanations on several adjacent slides, it will not be very clear what is happening. A lot of text will appear, the presentation will be overloaded. Therefore, I usually show and tell on the report in a voice, with a pointer or in some other way.

When it comes to training, I am always a supporter of working in a seminar format . You can come with your own problems (if they are on the topic of this master class), ask questions and get answers to them. This contributes to greater impact and greater effect.

PG Day: What profile specialists should first of all attend your master class? Will the students with different levels of training be able to learn something useful for themselves?

Ilya : It is very difficult to count on a specific audience when you do a master class at a conference. First of all, these are admins and DBA , both beginners and practitioners. Perhaps, to experienced specialists, some things will seem obvious at first, as I usually try to move from simple material to complex. But I always advise even elementary material to listen again, because repetition contributes to the systematization of knowledge .

Just two weeks ago, I was asked to listen to a PostgreSQL performance report. I listened and remembered some moments that had long been forgotten. We discussed the features of swap'ing different pages from memory in Linux, and I realized that I didn’t pay attention to this moment, but people don’t always understand it. Therefore, I myself love to listen, to restore order in my head, and I advise others.

I especially recommend visiting a master class for people who are not involved in the professional administration of PostgreSQL and do not plan to become cool DBA. This material will be especially useful for people who are engaged in DevOps, develop applications. They do not have the ability to have a qualified DBA on staff, and they have to deal with all this themselves. I will try to give full instructions on what to do, where to look. Using this knowledge, students will be able to start using PostgreSQL effectively.

PG Day: Thank you, Ilya!