Il modo corretto di uscire da Vi(m)

C'è una maglietta promozionale per Vim che riporta un comando errato, che trovo molto spesso anche nei manuali all'editor dedicati.

Spesso si trova, come metodo di uscita "sicura" dall'editor di fornire il comando ':wq!', che significa 'scrittura' (w) 'forzata' (!) ed 'uscita' (q); in altre parole si salva il file corrente e si esce.

Qual'è il problema? Che la scrittura forzata aggiorna i metadati del file anche quando questo non è stato modificato, mandando quindi in confusione programmi che digeriscono questi metadati (es. make). Il metodo corretto per uscire dall'editor è usare 'ZZ', che si preoccupa di salvare i file non salvati che sono stati modificati, lasciando inalterati gli altri.

ITPUGLab @ PGDay.IT 2015

I had the opportunity and pleasure to play an active role in the third ITPUGLab, a well established tradition and a successful event me and my friend Gianluca proposed a few years ago.
And I have to say: it was really fun and educative.

What is the ITPUGLab? In short: it is an Open Space container entirely focused on PostgreSQL.
Attendees meet for exchanging, proposing or requesting ideas, thoughts, approaches and experiences getting 'hands-on' in a LAN environment and building a constructive shared experience on their laptops, or even philosophical discussions of any kind all being user-experience centric and related to PostgreSQl. No matter what the participants' skill level is.
There are no predefined contents: attendees come and propose or join others' proposals.

The evolution of the shared interactive contributions is what leads to discovering a path (not necessarily the right one) and get to a possible goal.

This translates to human-networking with a  PostgreSQL-social approach, allowing attendees to get acquainted in ways one cannot predict.

This year we had two and half hours dedicated to the lab, a very comfortable room and very nice people attending.

The following is the list of topics discussed end experienced:

• installation on Microsoft Windows, where the users challenged the differences on installing PostgreSQL on a Unix-unlike machine, coming to the goal of providing a running instance to other people in the room;
• migration and upgrade, with particular interest to the migration of a quite old cluster from a MS Windows machine to a mature and up-to-date cluster on a *nix machine, as well how to do it automatically and error-safely;
• install, configure and use the PostGIS extension from scratch;
• pl/pgsql scripting, with particular focus on editors, repos and best practices;
• data integrity check and validation with regard to the database and/or application;
• periodical data dump and load from one server to one (or many) others, with regard to various scenarios and possible automations.

Rules in the ITPUGLab are simple: after introducing themselves, participants start grouping spontaneously, warm up and get discussing, hands-on. Everybody can join a formed OpenSpace as well as leave it or, even, the room. When it's over, it's over: once the time elapsed pencil are down, and what happened is always the only and rightmost thing could happened.
Pictures cannot provide the excitement and fun filling the room.

As said, this is the third edition of the ITPUGLab, and quite frankly I'm proud of the continuous success it is getting within the PGDay.IT annual conference.
One thing all the three edition did have in common is the same request by attendees for more time: we are evaluating how to extend the session in the next PGDay.IT.

If you are coming to the next PGDay.IT, get into the lab: it's an experience you really don't want to miss!

PGDay.IT 2015: nine editions and counting!

We made it!
ITPUG (Italian PostgreSQL Users' Group) organized the ninth edition of the Italian PGDay, namely PGDay.IT.
We have a very strong a quite long tradition in organizing this national conference, and as in previous editions, we had a successful conference even this year.
The location, the Camera di Commercio di Prato, was simply great: a modern and really beautiful context to host the two tracks and the third edition of the ITPUGLab, the Open Space container entirely dedicated to PostgreSQL.
The keynote speech was performed by the well known community member Andres Freund, but he was not the only member of the international community.
After the keynote and the usual coffee break, with many delicious Italian pastries, the conference split in two parallel tracks where a set of very competent and efficient speakers  presented new projects, ideas, features and core implementations of our favorite database.
In the afternoon another track added to the already mentioned two giving the possibility to attendees to participate to the ITPUGLab, another well established tradition of the PGDay.IT.
Last but not least, the usual session of lightning talks, the group picture and the very good beer offered by one of the conference sponsor.

At the end we can count one hundred attendees, ten regular talks, sixteen speakers, six sponsors and two social beers.

It is quite difficult to recap in a few lines what this event was and has been in the past edition. I can only say that if you are missing this conference you are missing a very technical event within a friendly environment and fun context

PGDay.IT 2015: we are here!

The ninth edition of the Italian PGDay (PGDay.IT 2015) is really close, and ITPUG is proud to announce that the schedule is available on-line.

As in the previous editions we have a rich set of talks and contributions, as well as the third edition of the ITPUG's own Open Space named ITPUG-Lab.

Check out the official website at http://2015.pgday.it and see you soon at PGDay.IT 2015!