It's a well-known fact that most students of data management never see a real production database, and even more alarming, many of their professors never see one, either. While lack of exposure to real-life systems affects all computer science students, the education of future database developers and database administrators (DBAs) suffers the most.
PostgreSQL, the most advanced open source database, originated in an academic environment and is maintained as an open source project, making it an ideal database for teaching relational theory and demonstrating database internals. However, so far, few academic institutions have adopted PostgreSQL for their educational needs.
Prairie Postgres NFP, a Midwest non-profit focused on Postgres education, aims to bridge the gap between Industry and Academia, utilizing two main avenues: facilitating the adoption of PostgreSQL as a foundation for data management courses and inviting students and faculty to participate in PostgreSQL conferences and meetups.
In this talk, we will share our successes in this journey and highlight the problems we are still trying to solve.
