PGConf.DE 2026 Recap and slides
Inspired, energised—and with a slight post-event dip—our team just got back from PGConf.DE 2026 in Essen!
The 10th Annual PostgreSQL Conference Germany took place on April 21–22, bringing together the community for two days of talks, discussions, and shared enthusiasm for all things PostgreSQL. We were excited to be part of the energy, ideas, and community spirit.
For us, as a company based in Saarland, PGConf.DE is a special event—not only as a key PostgreSQL conference in Germany, but also as our annual in-person team get-together.
We had four talks that spanned high availability and backup strategies, safe schema migrations, the business case for open-source contribution, and real-time analytics pipelines—reflecting the breadth of challenges our team works on every day.
Stefan Fercot — pgBackRest in HA setups: deployment patterns that work
Stefan’s talk focused on one of the most critical aspects of any PostgreSQL setup: reliable backup and recovery strategies. While pgBackRest is widely used, many deployments only scratch the surface of what it can do.
Drawing on real-world experience, Stefan explored advanced deployment patterns—combining backup hosts, multiple standbys, and cloud storage—to improve resilience, performance, and cost efficiency in high-availability environments. As one of the project contributors, Stefan also provided valuable insight into how to make the most of its flexibility in production environments.
Given the recent news around pgBackRest, it’s important to highlight that the tool remains fully functional and compatible with PostgreSQL 18.
👉 Slides
Daria Nikolaenko — PostgreSQL Migrations Without Drama
Schema and data changes are a routine part of development—but in PostgreSQL, they can quickly impact performance and availability if not handled carefully.
Daria’s talk focused on practical approaches to applying DDL and DML changes safely in production. She walked through common pitfalls such as blocking operations, long-running transactions, and excessive locking, and shared strategies to minimise risk and maintain system stability.
A very practical session for anyone working with production PostgreSQL systems.
👉 Slides
Valeria Kaplan — Not Just Altruism: Selling PostgreSQL Contributions to Your Employer
This talk explored the business value of contributing to PostgreSQL—not just as a personal passion, but as a strategic advantage for companies.
It covered why organisations choose to support community contributions and what they gain in return: stronger hiring positioning, deeper technical expertise, increased visibility, and greater credibility in the market.
The session aimed to bridge the gap between open-source contribution and business strategy, providing practical arguments for both contributors and companies.
👉 Slides
👉 Valeria also wrote a follow up blog post – Why sell the idea of contributing to PostgreSQL to your employer
Ilya Kosmodemiansky — Operating Postgres as a data source for your analytics pipelines
Ilya’s talk focused on a growing reality: PostgreSQL is no longer just a transactional database—it is increasingly used as a real-time data source for analytics.
He explored modern approaches to change data capture (CDC), comparing xmin-based and logical replication-based solutions, and reviewing tools such as Debezium, Kafka, Apache Flink, and PeerDB/ClickPipes.
The talk highlighted both the opportunities and the operational challenges of running mission-critical PostgreSQL systems under analytical load, offering practical insights into building robust data pipelines.
👉 Slides
If you’re interested in this topic, you can also download our whitepaper:
👉 Seamless Data Propagation and Real-Time Analytics with Apache Flink and PostgreSQL CDC
It was great to see part of our team together in person and to catch up with the PostgreSQL community and friends from across the globe.
Events like PGConf.DE are a reminder that PostgreSQL is not just a technology, it’s a global community of people sharing knowledge, building tools, and shaping the future of the ecosystem together.
