As mentioned previously, the OSPN 2013 Tokyo/Spring open source conference was held on February 22/23, and I was able to attend a few sessions on both days. While there was a wide range of sessions covering everything from open source licensing to a project to make available every obscure Chinese character variant (all 60,000 of them), I was interested primarily in the database-related sessions. The open-source database ecosystem was represented by PostgreSQL and the MySQL'n'derivatives family.

For PostgreSQL the sessions were as follows:

• Using Pacemaker + PostgreSQL replication to build a high-availability diskless cluster (MATSUO Toshihide, Linux-HA Japan Project)
• PostgreSQL introduction for Oracle users (TAKASE Yoko, Ashisuto KK)
• Introduction to PostgreSQL backup and recovery (SATO Chika, JPUG)

All three sessions were well-attended with informative presentations.

The JPUG session on backup/recovery

Although I'm not currently an Oracle user and don't exactly require an introduction to PostgreSQL, the session by Ashisuto KK was actually the most eye-opening of the three: if the statistics presented by Ashisuto KK are anything to go by, open source databases are gaining increasing acceptance and PostgreSQL is in a strong position:

Chart shows increase in open-source database usage among Ashisuto KK clients.

Chart shows a 250% growth in Ashisuto KK's revenue derived from PostgreSQL-related activities between 2010 and 2012

Note: Ashisuto KK is one of Japan's oldest IT service providers/consultancy firms and by the looks of things is making open source software support a significant part of its business. Ashisuto is also a JPUG sponsor and kindly provided space for the recent "Unconference" (see report by Satoshi Nagayasu).

Sidenote: over in the Dolphinarium, a representative from Oracle provided an overview of the recently released MySQL 5.6 GA edition (that's 5.6.10 to you and me). I won't repeat the technical details which are available online but it was interesting to here the Oracle representative reiterate how much Oracle values MySQL and how much effort has been placed into its development since acquiring Sun; and also how an unspecified number of developers had initially left for forked versions, an unspecified number had come back into the fold.

Finally, I was pleased to discover a free dynamic DNS service which is powered among others by PostgreSQL.