One of the coolest features that Greenplum offers to Data warehousing and Business Intelligence operators as far as ETL is concerned, is the combination of read only external tables with gpfdist, Greenplum’s parallel file distribution server. The typical use case for this solution is parallel data loading of text files (coming from etherogeneous sources – databases or applications) into a...

During EuroPython 2011, the major annual event for Python developers and users in Europe, 2ndQuadrant will deliver a special hands-on training session entitled “The Python and the Elephant”. This 4-hour workshop will take place on Thursday June 23 and will cover the two main techniques for writing applications in Python for PostgreSQL: standard client applications using PsycoPG or internal...

2ndQuadrant will be delivering two courses on PostgreSQL in Australia. The location will be the prestigious Rialto Towers, one of the greatest attractions in Melbourne, right in the heart of the Central Business District, and one of the tallest office buildings in the world. Gabriele Bartolini will be teaching the most requested “PostgreSQL Database Administration” course on November 29 and 30, as...

One of the main reasons users switch from other relational databases to PostgreSQL is the advanced support for geographic objects included in the PostGIS extension. Being PostgreSQL specialists at 2ndQuadrant, we have tried to investigate if it was possible (and how) to install PostGIS on the Greenplum Single Node edition. Let’s see how Marco Nenciarini, 2ndQuadrant consultant and a long time...

If you have a Linux server of the RedHat family (inclusing CentOS and Fedora), you might envy the way Debian/Ubuntu distributions handle PostgreSQL clusters management. Although it is not easy to install different PostgreSQL versions on the same RedHat Linux server using RPMs, it is much simpler to install several instances of PostgreSQL (servers) and, at the same time, take advantage of the...

I have been thinking for a while now about adding Greenplum support to an open-source application for web analytics that I wrote a few years ago, which is called htMiner and uses PostgreSQL. In order to do this, I need a multi-CPU environment. While still waiting to get our new servers installed here in our data centre in Italy, I decided to look at Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)...

Due to the weather related travel issues this week, the launch party we had planned for this Friday has been canceled.

Come on-line and discuss the features set of Hot Standby for PostgreSQL 8.5. Meeting is for anybody planning to actively use the Hot Standby in the next main release of PostgreSQL. Major focus is on providing user feedback direct to developers to guide the final weeks of development before we go into Beta. Topics: * Overview of Hot Standby – Simon * Lightning Talks * User/tester feedback to...

After the earthquake that shook the city of L’Aquila and the entire Abruzzo region, 2ndQuadrant Italia is pleased to announce the signing of a collaborative agreement with the University of L’Aquila. In assisting the university to reinstate its teaching program, 2ndQuadrant Italia will offer students a free and preferential consulting service on PostgreSQL, the “world’s most advanced open-source...