Please tell us about yourself, and where you are from.

I am Dirk, living near Aachen in Germany and I am actually a Senior Solution Architect with Aiven and a former DBA, Trainer, Consultant and Sales Engineer in several companies but alway related to databases - first Oracle only, later Oracle together with PostgreSQL.

I would describe myself as a geeky and typical German grumpy guy who likes to solve tech problems and somehow figured out how to explain or present all that stuff pretty well to customers.

My first touch with computer science was in fact the Commodore C64 bought by my father not being at all into IT. I am always thankful for this decision because this probably has influenced my whole life. Back then with the C64 when I wasn’t yet in elementary school but I already knew what commands to type in to - of course - load the games. I just remembered the symbols on the keyboard - with that being said my real native language is in fact not German but BASIC 🙂

After school I first finished an apprenticeship as an electrician before I dedicated my career completely to computer science during my study.

I am married and I have 2 sons making sure that I am not staying all the time in front of a computer screen.

How do you spend your free time? What are your hobbies?

If there is time left beside work and my 2 junior DBAs at home asking for my attention, I am a hifi and home cinema head, so all about watching movies and experiencing audio/music content in the best possible, detailed, sometimes loudest and unfortunately expensive way. I used to play saxophone but this is honestly pretty paused for some time now. Beside the usual tech related interests my guilty pleasure is retro computing especially all about the Commodore C64 where I am also part of the community.

To stay active or just freeing up my brain I prefer swimming or cycling MTB in forests or any kind of off-road areas … .but not too extreme as I am not the youngest anymore.

Any Social Media channels of yours we should be aware of?

• LinkedIn
• Xing
• YouTube
• Bluesky
• Mastodon
• Company Blog
• Twitter

Are you known by a nickname in the community? If yes, what’s the history?

Not specifically in the Postgres community but everywhere else my nickname is d33k4y which is a development of old high score lists where it was DK….spoken out by people it became just deekay and later in some nerdy Quake/Gaming/pseudo hacking times it moved to d33k4y.

Last book you read? Or a book you want to recommend to readers?

I am reading through the new translations of Frank Herbert’s Dune Saga and at this moment I am stuck in the Chapterhouse. I probably have to restart because the break was too long 😕

Favorite movie, or show?

As being a cineast it’s hard to select one favorite movie or tv show except the usual famous ones from the toplists.

Best music, best song?

No best …always depending on the mood. But it has to sound good and being consumed in a proper way 🙂

Best food?

Every kind of good cheese and having a proper BBQ makes Dirk happy!

Best drink? Non-alcoholic or alcoholic?

Always open for good black coffee or espresso I am also a passionate beer and wine drinker … not a deep dive expert though but well educated.

What is the best advice you ever got?

I am not sure if that is the best one but lately that advice has been part of my professional and private life very often. The advice is pretty rough but also represents a good pragmatic approach and gains my motivation for just getting things done! The advice is “better ask one time for forgiveness instead of several times for permission!” which was given by a higher sales lead of a former employer. For plenty of circumstances it pushed me forward.

When did you start using PostgreSQL, and why?

The real first start was around 2013 where Postgres became a serious thing in my professional life. Before that it was one of those several databases I have observed in my studies. The reason was the classic step by my employer back then removing Oracle for some internal toolings like JIRA. With me being an Oracle DBA in that very time it was obvious to take care of PostgreSQL as well. At the end it turned out that this was the beginning of something cool in a new area 🙂 Finally Bernd Helmle (shoutout to him) turned me into the whole community mindset one year later.

Do you remember which version of PostgreSQL you started with?

Not 100% sure but I guess it was 9.4 in my professional life. I tested PostgreSQL shortly in my study time but this was somewhere 8.x.

Have you studied at a university? If yes, was it related to computers? Did your study help you with your current job?

I have studied computer science in Germany/Aachen and I am honestly not sure if it would have been the same career with or without the diploma but at least for the starting point it was very helpful getting a job at least back then.

What other databases are you using? Which one is your favorite?

I am still part of the Oracle Database community and still trying to keep this running as much as possible. While Oracle is not a primary part of my business anymore I still think that there is potential in keeping the knowledge and the network not only for commercial aspects. There is so much to exchange in matters of knowledge, experiences and so on.

Meanwhile with Aiven I am seeing huge potential in specialized open source databases like Clickhouse, but no discussions that PostgreSQL ist in fact my favorite.

Any contributions to PostgreSQL which do not involve writing code?

I try to contribute with knowledge sharing on conferences and also helping volunteering on events. I started the PostgreSQL User Group in Germany/NRW and I try to organize 2-4 meetups a year in several cities.

What is your favorite PostgreSQL extension?

My own local first step extension I’ve written which actually was totally senseless from the functionality perspective but it made me so happy to see how straight forward and structured it is to develop an extension for my own. This will be my all time favorite!

What is the feature you like most in the latest PostgreSQL version?

For me the conversion of a physical replica to a logical replica with pg_createsubscriber is very appreciated and helpful in my daily business. I think there is much potential in the whole logical replication scenario where Postgres can address many exciting use cases.

Should PostgreSQL have a built-in connection pooler?

I am always pushy to get things into the Postgres core but in fact connection pooling is not one of those. Even when it is a discussion about having additional components in place the pooler is often a candidate to decouple it from the instance nodes having it as kind of a load balancing or proxy part independent of the actual databases. But I also wouldn’t say no to an integrated pooling solution.

Should PostgreSQL have built-in multi-master replication?

It is controversial as many users are asking for this even when it is not really needed but we aren’t so far away from having this functionality at least on a fundamental basis. So I see much potential in having this for many use cases but also there are many other gaps to fill first.

Could you describe your PostgreSQL development toolbox?

I try to have a toolset which is available on Mac, Win and Linux so that I can always make sure that with every device and every company switch I’d be good to go. I always have a 4 node VM environment running somewhere on which I am testing, developing, evaluating, demonstrating or just crushing almost everything. Beside the classic command line (usually wrapped by Terminus) and vi I am working with the usual suspects like DBeaver and VScodium

Which PostgreSQL conferences do you visit? Do you submit talks?

I try to contribute to conferences as much as possible. To control the travel costs a bit I am focussing on Europe conferences but sometimes looking around for more far opportunities. I also try to create a bridge between the Oracle community and the PostgreSQL community with talks valuable for both sides.

Do you think PostgreSQL has a high entry barrier?

Not at all. I used to train Oracle DBAs and newcomers for some years using PostgreSQL including administration, internal architectures, tuning and everything. The learning curve is very sheer with Postgres in comparison with other database systems. If I look back in time at how long it took for me to get similar deep into Oracle database I appreciate the clean, lightweight architecture of PostgreSQL.

Do you think PostgreSQL will be here for many years in the future?

Professionally I see still a growing demand so absolutely yes.

Would you recommend PostgreSQL for business, or for side projects?

Absolutely both…with many proven results. That is actually the beauty of it that you can create small databases setups for private hobby projects

Are you reading the -hackers mailinglist? Any other list?

Not permanently … just if there is something going on I am interested in. I randomly scan the lists for topics I could contribute or which could be important for me.

What is your opinion on ORMs?

I don’t have much of an opinion about this. I grew up as a DBA so either it was out of my reach or it was usually more of an obstacle in discussions regarding performance tweaks, query rewrites and so on. But to be honest I have seen worse things developers doing everything manually 🙂

SQL versus NoSQL databases?

NoSQL databases are still weird to use for me but I have to admit based on conversations with customers and colleagues that there are use cases that make sense. If I have to choose I would stick with the traditional SQL databases.

What other places do you hang out?

Hanging out is maybe a bit too much rated but I am observing and connected to all possible channels…sometimes more, sometimes less.

Which other Open Source projects are you involved or interested in?

Based on my actual job I am pretty much involved and interested in Kafka and Clickhouse which are also very good additions for data platforms together with Postgres. But both won’t get the same amount of effort and attention like PostgreSQL.