This Editorial is coming to you during an exciting birthday for the United States. If you are in the US, you are most likely celebrating the 4th of July. This is the 250th anniversary for the US, quite a milestone. I hope that all my US friends are celebrating safely and responsibly. While it is a turbulent time for the country, I am hopeful of the future and where we will go in the next 250 years.  

We are halfway through the year. Have you checked on your goals? Kpis? Backups?  As an Operational DBA, I usually saw the middle of the year in either 1 of 2 ways. Either it was the end of the quarter, and sales were pushing hard, meaning the Databases were very busy right at the end of June. Or it was a lull in the system, and we were ramping up for the fall when things got busy again. Regardless of what it is for you, it’s a time to review what you have planned for the year and how you are progressing toward those goals. 

For those of you fighting the heat waves in the EU, perhaps it’s a good idea to think about how hot those Databases are going to get. Perhaps review your top queries and see whether anything has changed recently. Hopefully, the changes in your system are known to you through some release process or change control, but as we all know, databases are living, breathing entities, things can and frequently do change, and you often need to stay on top of which queries and stats might have changed.  

I would strongly suggest that everyone have a restoration script in place to test their backups frequently. As the saying goes, if you haven’t restored your database, then you haven’t backed up a database. The only way to truly trust your backups is to restore them. If you don’t have a schedule for this, now is the perfect time to test that backup system and make sure you can restore what you need. When you test that restore, it’s a great time to consider automating those restores so you can always have something running to test your backups. I’ve been through too many systems that had failures because we thought the backups were running properly, only to find we couldn’t restore them.  

My last suggestion for this mid-year check-in is to start getting ready for the fall conferences and events. I believe a critical part of everyone’s career is to network and attend events; perhaps it’s just user groups or small local events. Whatever fits your schedule, budget, and time, make sure you include networking with others as part of your career path. This is critical for your future as you move forward. Some amazing events are coming up this fall, and I listed a few sites where you can find info about them.   

I hope you take this mid-year point to reflect or perhaps take a little break and figure out next steps. For all those in very warm regions, I hope you don’t melt!  

Events coming up: 

PASS Data Community Summit US: https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/west/

Pg Summit US: https://2026.postgressummit.us/

Pg conf Eu: https://2026.pgconf.eu/

Day of Data Events & SQL Saturday events: https://dayofdata.org/

PG US Events:  https://www.postgresql.org/about/events/

PG EU Events: https://www.postgresql.eu/events/

Best of luck with meeting goals, and wishing you an excellent second half of the year!

Pat Wright