Linux.conf.au 2003 Report

Linux.conf.au Report
--------------------

The Linux.conf.au is an international Linux/Open Source event that attracts
lots of international speakers. Total conf attendance was around 360, maybe
even 400 I think.

Gavin Sherry was speaking at this particular conf, and I attended as a
hobbyist.

PostgreSQL got a reasonable amount of attention, particularly since there
were no representatives from other database products there.

Some pics of our PostgreSQL BOF and the Perth Bell Tower:
http://www.zip.com.au/~swm/lca2003
(Gavin is the beardy looking dude 3rd from the left :) I'm taking the
photo.)

These are the main questions we where asked, or features that were
requested:

* Replication, replication, replication!

- We told them that there are a few solutions, none of them are particularly
great. Gavin got all sorts of ideas about log shipping.

* IPV6 data types

- Apparently there are some ISPs in some countries that have started to bill
people for IPV6 bandwidth, and the lack of IPV6 address types is hurting
them.

* Collisions in auto-generated names.

- The standard table modification tactic (that I also use) or renaming table
to *_old and creating new one breaks because the primary key of the new
table is assigned the same name as the PK of the old, causing CREATE TABLE
to fail. This is really annoying. I think that auto-generated names should
never collide.

* Problem: person has large database with 4 or 5 humungous tables that they
aren't interested in backing up. However, they want to back up the rest.

- I suggested that if pg_dump could dump individual schemas, then they could
move their 'don't backup' tables to another schema, and just dump the other
one.

We found out all sorts of interesting places that PostgreSQL is being used:
a large Australian Telco, several restaurants in the Perth area, the Debian
inventory system and the Katie revision control system. It is also being
evaluated for process control analysis at a steel plant. Maybe we should
chase some people for case studies?

Chris Kings-Lynne