I recently switched jobs, leaving a nearly 15-year career working with SQL Server. Although I have been using it that long, it has only been in the last 4 years that I finally realized how much I didn’t know about my favorite data technology stack, taking every opportunity to dig deeper and get more connected to the #SqlFamily.
Unfortunately, two months before joining KCF Technologies they transitioned to PostgreSQL because of the Aurora database offering from Amazon Web Services. The sales pitch behind Aurora is great and it has, in fact, saved them a ton of money. And at this point the database backing the application isn’t the complicated part of the application, but rather the the millions of real-time data points that stream into the service every minute (using a separate time-series database).
That said, it has been quite a transition trying to re-learn (or unlearn as the case may be) the PostgreSQL way of doing things and actually missing the huge economy of tooling that has grown up around the SQL Server community… tooling that’s largely missing in the Opensource DB world. Don’t get me wrong, I had some similar feelings 15 years ago when I started using SQL Server after spending a few years with PostgreSQL (of all things)… but this has certainly felt more challenging.
As I’m doing the learning, spending hours on Stackoverflow and a handful of other sites trying to get my bearings, I thought it would be good to write some of it down for my future-self and others that have the need to cross over at some level. PostgreSQL isn’t going away as an alternative, and both AWS and Microsoft have provided “one-click” startup options to use it.
There’s no specific agenda, but the first several posts will certainly share many of my frustrations trying to make the leap back(wards). But as I get my mind wrapped around each piece, I promise to share some positive things too. š