August 2019 Summaries

You can get up and running with TablePlus on a distributed SQL database like YugabyteDB by following these steps: first, set up YugabyteDB and install the Northwind sample database, then download and install TablePlus, configure it to connect to YugabyteDB, and finally explore its features such as viewing database objects, querying data, and more.

Andrew Nelson recently joined Yugabyte as a Developer Advocate, focusing on Kubernetes usability and extensibility of YugabyteDB. He brings experience from previous roles at Worldstor, VMware, and Nutanix, where he worked on various projects including virtualization, Big Data, and containers. Nelson is excited to work with an open-source company and contribute to the growth of a new technology platform. In his previous role at Nutanix, he was part of the development team for Kubernetes and had experience working with independent frameworks for running containers and cloud-native applications. He believes that open-source software development can drive more robust and user-driven features. Nelson is looking forward to being part of an agile startup and learning about a next-generation database from the ground up.

Raft is a consensus algorithm that allows distributed systems to agree on a sequence of values in the presence of failures. It provides single-key linearizability, which guarantees that every operation appears to take place atomically and in some total linear order that is consistent with the real-time ordering of those operations. However, Raft's read performance can be affected by leader leases, which require an additional round-trip to the majority of replicas on every read operation, resulting in high latency. To improve this, YugabyteDB uses leader leases, where a newly elected leader cannot serve reads until it has acquired a leader lease, and the old leader steps down upon expiry of its lease duration. This approach creates a time window where the old leader is unavailable, but the unavailability window is bounded and occurs only during failure scenarios, making leader leases safe in practice.

You can get up and running with PGAdmin on a distributed SQL database like YugabyteDB by installing the latest version of PGAdmin, setting a master password, adding a new server connection object, and exploring the Northwind sample database using the tool's intuitive user interface. With features such as a simple to use connection wizard, built-in SQL editor, and auto-generation of SQL scripts, PGAdmin simplifies database management and increases productivity for developers. After installing PGAdmin on a Mac or other supported operating environments, users can view database objects, query data, and explore the Northwind sample database to get started with YugabyteDB.

The Distributed SQL Summit is a one-day event that focuses on building, deploying, and scaling distributed SQL databases in the cloud and on Kubernetes, taking place on September 20, 2019, in San Jose, California. The summit features speakers from top names in cloud and database infrastructure, including Facebook, Amazon Aurora, Google Spanner, Kroger, and Pivotal, who will share best practices and technical knowledge on the cloud-native approach to deploying, operating, and scaling distributed SQL databases. The event is part of PostgresConf Silicon Valley as a "conference within a conference" and includes keynote speakers, panels, and talks on topics such as geo-distributed variants of SQL, microservices in a cloud-native world with distributed SQL, and transforming the omni-channel experience at Kroger. Attendees will gain insights into successfully implementing distributed SQL as part of an enterprise cloud and Oracle migration strategy.

To get up and running with SQL Workbench/J, you'll need to download the latest stable version of the tool for your operating system, install the PostgreSQL JDBC driver, set up a connection to the Northwind sample database, and configure any necessary settings. With SQL Workbench/J, you can run SQL queries interactively or as a batch job, edit and delete data directly in the query result view, import/export datasets, and more. The tool supports several databases over JDBC, making it a popular choice among Java developers. By following the instructions outlined in this post, you'll be able to explore the Northwind database running on a distributed SQL backend using SQL Workbench/J and unlock its full potential for development and administrative tasks.