Re: "A huge debt of gratitude" - Michael Stonebraker

<p dir="ltr"><br /> On Jul 22, 2015 12:07 PM, "Jolly Chen" <<a
href="mailto:jolly@chenfamily.com">jolly@chenfamily.com</a>>wrote:<br /> ><br /> > Hey everyone,<br /> ><br
/>> You have probably heard that Mike Stonebraker recently won the Turing award.  A recording of his award lecture
isavailable at:<br /> > <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbGeKi6T6QI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbGeKi6T6QI</a><br/> ><br /> >
Itis an entertaining talk overall. If you fast forward to about the 1:07 mark, he makes some comments about
postgres.<br/> ><br /> > Here’s my rough transcription:<br /> ><br /> > "The abstract data type system in
postgreshas been added to a lot of relational database systems. It's kind of de facto table stakes for relational
databasesthese days, essentially intact.  That idea was really a good one. It was mentioned in the citation for my
Turingaward winning.  However, serendipity played a huge role, which is, the biggest impact of postgres by far came
fromtwo Berkeley students that I'll affectionately call Grumpy and Sleepy.  They converted the academic postgres
prototypefrom QUEL to SQL in 1995. This was in parallel to the commercial activity. And then a pick-up team of
volunteers,none of whom have anything to do with me or Berkeley, have been shepherding that open source system ever
since1995. The system that you get off the web for postgres comes from this pick-up team.  It is open source at its
bestand I want to just mention that I have nothing to do with that and that collection of folks we all owe a huge debt
ofgratitude to, because they have robustize that code line and made it so it really works.”<br /> ><br /> > Thank
youall so much for your hard work over the last twenty years!!<br /> ><br /> > Affectionately,<br /> ><br />
>Grumpy<p dir="ltr">Thank you! And a big thanks to the stewards of the project.<p dir="ltr">Sincerely,<br />