About the Author

Shaun M. Thomas has been working with PostgreSQL since late 2000. He is a frequent contributor to the PostgreSQL Performance and General mailing lists, assisting other DBAs with the knowledge he's gained over the years. In 2011 and 2012, he gave presentations at the Postgres Open conference on topics such as handling extreme throughput, high availability, server redundancy, and failover techniques. Most recently, he has contributed the Shard Manager extension and the walctl WAL management suite.

Currently, he serves as the database architect at OptionsHouse, an online options brokerage with a PostgreSQL cluster that handles almost 2 billion queries per day. Many of the techniques used in this book were developed specifically for this extreme environment.

He believes that PostgreSQL has a stupendous future ahead, and he can't wait to see the advancements subsequent versions will bring.

I'd like to thank my wife, Jennifer, for putting up with the weeks of long nights and for providing the encouragement I needed to get it all done. This book is my thank you letter to the PostgreSQL community, which helped me out of jams more times than I can count. I'd also like to thank OptionsHouse for putting me in charge of the busiest database I'd ever seen, forcing me to learn enough to keep it all running smoothly.