2026-01-27 –, T9:301
Language: English
Would you like to write queries that perform fast and deliver results on time? During this workshop, you will learn that query optimization is not a dark art practiced by a small group of sorcerers. Any motivated professional can learn to write efficient queries from the get-go and capably optimize existing queries. You will learn to look at the process of writing a query from the database engine’s point of view and know how to think like the database optimizer.
Upon workshop completion, the participants will learn to:
- Identify optimization goals in OLTP (Online Transaction Processing)
and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) systems
- Read and understand PostgreSQL execution plans
- Identify indexes that will improve query performance
- Optimize full table scans
- Distinguish between long queries and short queries
- Choose the correct optimization technique for each query type
- We will conclude the workshop by presenting the Ultimate Optimization Algorithm
Hettie Dombrovskaya (currently a Database Architect at DRW) is a database researcher and developer with 40 years of academic and industrial experience.
Hettie is very active in the PostgreSQL community. She is the founder and President of Prairie Postgres NFP, an organization supporting Postgres education in the Midwest states of the US, and runs the Illinois Prairie Postgres User Group. Her contributions to the community include the pg_bitemporal project, which supports two-dimensional time in PostgreSQL, the postgres_air training database (the largest open-source PostgreSQL training database), and the NORM technology - a novel way of communications between applications and databases.
In addition, Hettie is an ACM Chicago Chapter Communications Chair and an LPI Board of Directors member.