Looking Back at Postgres

Abstract

This is a recollection of the UC Berkeley Postgres project, which was led by Mike Stonebraker from the mid-1980's to the mid-1990's. The article was solicited for Stonebraker's Turing Award book, as one of many personal/historical recollections. As a result it focuses on Stonebraker's design ideas and leadership. But Stonebraker was never a coder, and he stayed out of the way of his development team. The Postgres codebase was the work of a team of brilliant students and the occasional university "staff programmers" who had little more experience (and only slightly more compensation) than the students. I was lucky to join that team as a student during the latter years of the project. I got helpful input on this writeup from some of the more senior students on the project, but any errors or omissions are mine. If you spot any such, please contact me and I will try to fix them.