Charlie Custer
Senior Technical Content MarketerCharlie is a former teacher, tech journalist, and filmmaker who’s now combined those three professions into writing and making videos about databases and application development (and occasionally messing with NLP and Python to create weird things in his spare time).
How one company is beating the cloud giants at their own game
Cloud storage with enterprise-grade availability, durability, and performance – all for less than what the major CSPs charge? It's possible. Here's how.
Charlie Custer
January 23, 2024
What is cloud SQL, and which cloud SQL database is right for you?
What is cloud SQL? For that matter, what is Cloud SQL, and is it different from cloud SQL? Let's get to the bottom of this important but somewhat confusing (thanks, Google!) term.
Charlie Custer
January 16, 2024
PostgreSQL data types: what are they, and when to use each
Let's take a look at the most commonly-used data types in Postgres and how they're used in practice, including examples.
Charlie Custer
January 12, 2024
Product
8 database lessons you can learn from "Star Trek: TNG"
Star Trek: The Next Generation may have stopped airing in 1994, but it’s a series that’s always rewarding to return to. Arguably the most cerebral of the various Star Trek film and television series, the best episodes of TNG are just as thought-provoking today as they were when they were first televised.
Charlie Custer
December 21, 2023
3 lessons from a highly successful database migration and modernization
Modernizing the data layer in your stack can be hugely beneficial, but it can also be risky. Here are three lessons Spreedly learned in their modernization efforts.
Charlie Custer
December 19, 2023
Why multi-cloud: the 5 best reasons, according to experts
There’s a lot of hype around multi-cloud, but that doesn’t mean adopting a multi-cloud architecture is right for everyone. So what are the "right" reasons to adopt it?
Charlie Custer
December 11, 2023
Product
How to change your database schema with no downtime
Just the thought of updating the database schema is enough to give some developers and architects a headache. Designing a good schema is hard enough. Updating it once it’s in production? That has to be a nightmare. Right? Well, historically it certainly has been! But it doesn’t have to be. Let’s take a look at the options for dealing with database schema, and learn how live schema changes solve challenges with both traditional relational databases and NoSQL document-store alternatives.
Charlie Custer
December 8, 2023
The best cloud strategy? Crawl, walk, run.
Running a legacy RDBMS on-prem but dreaming of multi-cloud distributed SQL? It can become reality – but only if you approach the project in the right way.
Charlie Custer
November 29, 2023
Why DoorDash migrated from Aurora Postgres to CockroachDB
Aurora Postgres makes scaling reads easy, but writes are limited to a single node, and that limitation took DoorDash's entire application offline for hours.
Charlie Custer
November 28, 2023