About the Authors

Usama Dar is a seasoned software developer and architect. During his 14 years' career, he has worked extensively with PostgreSQL and other database technologies. He worked on PostgreSQL internals extensively while he was working for EnterpriseDB. Currently, he lives in Munich where he works for Huawei's European Research Center. He designs the next generation of high-performance database systems based on open source technologies, such as PostgreSQL, which are used under high workloads and strict performance requirements.

Hannu Krosing was a PostgreSQL user before it was rewritten to use SQL as its main query language in 1995. Therefore, he has both the historic perspective of its development, as well as almost 20 years of experience in using it to solve various real-life problems.

He was the first database administrator and database architect at Skype, where he invented the sharding language PL/Proxy that allows you to scale the user database in order to work with billions of users.

After he left Skype at the end of 2006—about a year after it was bought by eBay—he has been working as a PostgreSQL consultant with 2ndQuadrant, the premier PostgreSQL consultancy with a global reach and local presence in most parts of the world.

He has coauthored PostgreSQL 9 Administration Cookbook, Packt Publishing, together with one of the main PostgreSQL developers, Simon Riggs.

Jim Mlodgenski is the CTO of OpenSCG, a professional services company focused on leveraging open source technologies for strategic advantage. He was formerly the CEO of StormDB, a database cloud company focused on horizontal scalability. Prior to StormDB, he has held highly technical roles at Cirrus Technology, Inc., EnterpriseDB, and Fusion Technologies.

Jim is also a fervent advocate of PostgreSQL. He is on the board of the United States PostgreSQL Association as well as a part of the organizing teams of the New York PostgreSQL User Group and Philadelphia PostgreSQL User Group.

Kirk Roybal has been an active member of the PostgreSQL community since 1998. He has helped organize user groups in Houston, Dallas, and Bloomington, IL. He has mentored many junior database administrators and provided cross-training to senior database engineers. He has provided solutions using PostgreSQL for reporting, business intelligence, data warehousing, applications, and development support.

He saw the scope of PostgreSQL when his first small-scale business customer asked for a web application. At that time, competitive database products were either extremely immature or cost prohibitive.

Kirk has stood by his choice of PostgreSQL for many years now. His expertise is founded on keeping up with features and capabilities as they become available.