Philippe Beaudoin
Reading time: 3 minutes
PostgreSQL is the World’s most advanced Open Source Relational Database. The interview series “PostgreSQL Person of the Week” presents the people who make the project what it is today. Read all interviews here.
Please tell us about yourself, and where you are from.
I live in France, more precisely in Rouen, in the Normandy. I’m working at Dalibo for about 6 years. In my previous job at Bull, I have had the great opportunity to manage the migration to PostgreSQL for a large customer in France: CNAF. That was 14 years ago.
Philippe Beaudoin
How do you spend your free time? What are your hobbies?
I play the violin for a very long time (I started when I was a child). I am a member of a symphonic orchestra. Playing in an orchestra brings me a lot of pleasure. It is real teamwork, for which everyone is important and has to do its best to achieve a common but ephemeral goal. I also collect stamps. As there are so many stamps issued all around the world, it is necessary to focus on just a few geographic areas or topics. I choose to concentrate on violin and more recently on elephants (I really don’t know why ;-)) My virtual reserve now contains more than 300 different elephants. If you are curious about all existing stamps tagged with elephants, look here.
Any Social Media channels of yours we should be aware of?
What is the best advice you ever got?
I would mention two, which I received more than 10 years ago and related to the beginning of my E-Maj project. The first came from a well-known guy in the community, named Andreas ;-) who said to me about enhancements to an extension: “you can do it by yourself“. This let me discover and practice plpgsql. The second came from another well-known member, Jean-Paul, who told me: “publish your work!”
Do you remember which version of PostgreSQL you started with?
At the time I had the first PostgreSQL course, the version 8.0 was just released! I remember that was a great step forward.
Have you studied at a university? If yes, was it related to computers? Did your study help you with your current job?
That was a long time ago! Strangely for someone involved in a community full of technical experts, I studied in a course related to Business and enterprises administration. I discovered computing at that time and decided that it was too fun to not work in this area. Today, what I learnt during these studies is helpful in my work as an associate at Dalibo.
What other databases are you using? Which one is your favorite?
In my database migration activity, I also use some other RDBMS, like Oracle or SQL-Server. But I used to access them mainly through their FDW :-)
On which PostgreSQL-related projects are you currently working?
I am the main developer of the E-Maj project. I also work on a quite new project named Data2Pg, which we use for large migration projects.
Adding to that, what feature/mechanism would you like to see in PostgreSQL? And why?
I look forward to seeing two patch proposals currently under review: session variables and global temporary tables. That will definitely help migrations from Oracle and also bring nice features for new databases. I was a little bit disappointed that these proposals missed the V14. I hope they will be included into V15.
Do you think PostgreSQL will be here for many years in the future?
Honestly, I don’t see any reason for PostgreSQL not to be here in the coming decades. Its end of life will probably be the relational DBMS end of life too.
Would you recommend PostgreSQL for business, or for side projects?
Of course, and even for mission critical applications.
Are you reading the -hackers mailinglist? Any other list?
I am just a subscriber of the advocacy mailing list.