Bruce Momjian
EDB
Bruce Momjian is co-founder and core team member of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, and has worked on PostgreSQL since 1996. He has been employed by EDB since 2006. He has spoken at many international open-source conferences and is the author of PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts, published by Addison-Wesley. Prior to his involvement with PostgreSQL, Bruce worked as a consultant, developing custom database applications for some of the world's largest law firms. As an academic, Bruce holds a Masters in Education, an honorary doctorate, was a high school computer science teacher, and lectures internationally.
POSETTE 2026 Talk
The Wonderful World of WAL
The Postgres write-ahead log, or WAL, is basically a change-log for the database. It enables several important Postgres features: crash recovery, point-in-time recovery, and binary and logical replication. This talk explains what is stored in the WAL, how binary and logical replication work, and how replication slots track replication progress.
Speaker
Interview
About the Speaker
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Tell us about yourself: career, family, passions
I have been working on Postgres for 30 years, and in open source for 35.
About the Talk
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Tell us about your talk? Why did you choose this topic?
The WAL is a foundational capability of Postgres, and many features are built upon it. I have wanted to do a talk about it for years, but only recently found a narrative that would give the talk a good flow.
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Who would benefit the most from your talk and why?
Anyone using crash recovery, PITR, or physical or logical replication. Understanding how these features rely on WAL can help people better use the features.
About PostgreSQL
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What inspired you to work with PostgreSQL?
I was curious how relation databases worked internally.
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What is the single thing that you think differentiates PostgreSQL most from other databases?
Extendibility and open source.
Past Talks
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Databases in the AI Trenches (POSETTE 2025)
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Beyond Joins and Indexes (POSETTE 2024)
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Postgres and the Artificial Intelligence Landscape (Citus Con 2023)
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Explaining the Postgres Query Optimizer (Citus Con 2022)
Podcast Appearances
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Open Source Leadership with Bruce Momjian
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