Interviews

Tom Kincaid

1. How did you first get involved with PostgreSQL?

   Many years ago, I started working for a Postgres Company doing professional services. I became a huge fan of the community and the technology.

2. How did you get interested in the area that is the subject of your talk?

   I have spoken to many customers who are in pain caused due to a lack of understanding about how Postgres Vacuum functionality works. I have also had the opportunity to spend a lot of time speaking with Postgres internals developers about how vacuum is implemented. As a result, I became obsessed with providing people with the technical understanding of the details and design decisions behind Postgres Vacuum. Andrew Dunstan and I developed this talk to help people understand Postgres Vacuum for the purpose of making better database design decisions and implementing better database operational practices.

3. What is one feature of PostgreSQL that more people should use?

   The Declarative Table Partitioning features in Postgres 11 and 12.

4. What future area of PostgreSQL development are you most excited about?

   Transparent Data Encryption.

5. Anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself or PostgreSQL?

   I work for 2ndQuadrant. We are obsessed with providing technical support for large Postgres deployments.