Presented by

  • David Fetter

    David Fetter
    http://fetter.org

    David Fetter is a spouse, parent, and contributor to PostgreSQL and other open source projects at random. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, helped found the PostgreSQL and Perl user groups there, and writes the PostgreSQL Weekly News.

Abstract

Ordinarily, we think of things like converting numbers between the way we see them and the way computers use them as a solved problem, and for many purposes, they are. As data volumes grow and people's patience doesn't, we sometimes find that there is still room for improvement, and improve them even fairly novice low-level coders can. When our time together is done, you will have learned about some recent advances in this, a few of which I've brought to PostgreSQL, some of the things to consider when attempting such improvements, and looked at the world from a new perspective.