The Place of Postgres in History

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2024-09-19 20:30:02

In this video, EDB Technical Fellow Marc Linster sits down with EDB Vice President & Postgres Evangelist Bruce Momjian to talk about the place of Postgres in history. Watch the video and read Bruce's blog below for a deep dive into the history of Postgres, what informed its creation, and why it continues to be the preferred database for developers around the world.

Postgres is a relational database system that simplifies the job of software developers who write multi-user applications. It provides a reliable data store that can be queried and modified by multiple users simultaneously with minimal overhead. Complex data analysis is supported using a simple declarative language. Like much infrastructure software, you have probably used Postgres and never knew it. Odds are high that an online or in-person purchase, bank deposit, web page access, phone call, or mobile phone interaction probably involves Postgres at some stage.

Postgres started at the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. Led by Michael Stonebraker, the project was a rewrite of his successful Ingres database, with extendibility as its focus. Few software projects are this old, and even fewer are still growing in popularity.