# Serge Rielau > Principal Software Engineer at Databricks, SQL Tsar Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/sergerielau Serge Rielau got interred into IBM's Toronto penal colony from the University of Kaiserslautern/Germany (aka K-Town) a quarter century ago. Having previously served a year's time at the Almaden Research Lab where he got into DB2 his life took a turn for the worse (see "OO what have they done to DB2?!"). Over the years Serge has been guilty of many crimes including SQL Functions, generated columns and what's come to be known as the "new SQL": select from insert, update and delete! No bad deed goes unpunished though. He served time as DB2 for LUW's SQL Architect and was accused of being an STSM. Not having learned a thing and obviously becoming delusional he likened himself to a modern day Robin Hood. In a truly despicable act he had not shied from masquerading DB2 as Oracle. Having sunk that low he launched raids across the the seven seas stealing from the rich buccaneer Larry E. to give to his then master Sam P. After years of doing that, and none the wiser, he became a governor of risks. But those who knew him, could predict that compliance with just about anything would not be his thing. Thus, before long, Serge jumped ship altogether and signed on with the new Force.com. Some say he actually got shanghaied, but let's not split hairs.... As an unprincipled architect he is tried to postgress and learn how to share - plans, functions, variables. all from his cache - which is too small, always too small he laments - because his plans may be great, but they are too big - and they take too long. In frustration feeling it‘s all going to break into shards he decided to help build a house, by the lake, with bricks, from data. He‘s not picky, any data will do: structured, semi-structured, unstructured. As he set data bricks on data bricks he realized the instructions were faulty! How can anyone follow these instructions? And nothing is standard, it's giving him Hives, and Sparks are flying everywhere.... Now Serge rules his Bricksters with an iron fist: how bricks must be shaped, so they fit, so they can bear weight, and the house may last. Years of Lego finally paying off! Along the way he writes his memoirs, catalogs everything, and perhaps, just perhaps people can follow along at https://docs.databricks.com/sql/language-manual/index.html. Specialties: SQL Expert, competitive migrations from Oracle, SQL Server to DB2, SQL compiler technology. ## Work Experience ### Principal Software Engineer @ Databricks Jan 2020 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States SQL Tsar Tech Lead for SQL Features and anyone who listens. Hobby doc writer (typos are mine): ### Principal Architect @ Salesforce Jan 2015 – Jan 2020 Returning back to my core competency of relational databases I own the query processing half of a PostgreSQL derivative. That is the portion from the "traffic cop" through query compilation down to the execution engine. My current goals are to reduce backend memory consumption through shared caches, to achieve "zero downtime" schema evolution, and to dramatically improve executor performance of PostgreSQL. ### Principal Architect @ Salesforce Jan 2015 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco, California, United States ### Chief Architect OpenPages @ IBM Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Ottawa/Littleton,MA OpenPages is an enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance (eGRC) solution used in many of the worlds big financial services institutions, but growing beyond these verticals. Basically , if you have to comply with regulations and your boss doesn't want to get in serious trouble for not paying close enough attention your company complies, or if you want to actively manage your risk and risk appetite, OpenPages is what you need. As Chief Architect my first and foremost duty is to ensure our eGRC architecture is sound, extensible, and effective. In the fast paced application space and under the guise of agile and continuous development, there is a whole lot of running and often not enough thinking ahead. I try to be jimmy cricket when it works well and when it doesn't, well, I'm not really a cricket. Secondly I ensure decisions are being made and stuck with. Analysis paralysis and executive attention deficit disorder are work related injuries some don't even know they are inflicted with. ### SQL Architect, STSM @ IBM Jan 2008 – Jan 2013 * Lead Architect for Oracle Compatibility in DB2 9.7 for LUW * Architect in the SQL compiler and the SQL language * Teach ISVs, customers, and the general public DB2 and SQL ### Sr. Software Developer @ IBM Jan 2005 – Jan 2008 My role was three fold (mostly). * Act as an architect in the SQL compiler andthe SQL language * Interact as much as possible with ISVs and customers. Typically I help them port/migrate from Oracle or SQL Server to DB2 for LUW or give deep technical presentations at conferences and customer-sites * Plan and own solutions for future versions of DB2 as they pertain to ISV enablement to DB2 ### Team lead/Mgr in the SQL compiler @ IBM Jan 1998 – Jan 2004 I owned the "Query Graph Model" (QGM) of the Starburst query compiler in DB2 for LUW (http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/cis650/papers/starburst.pdf). During that time I designed and implemented numerous SQL features such as: * typed views * expression generated columns * sequences and identity columns * inline SQL Procedural language * SELECT FROM INSERT * ... ### Coop Student @ IBM Almaden Research Center Jan 1996 – Jan 1997 I did ad tech work in the database field http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.datamgmt.html Nowadays my work is known as "inline SQL PL" and "structured datatypes". It is available in DB2 for LUW. ### Graduate Research Assistant ("HiWi") @ University of Kaiserslautern Jan 1993 – Jan 1996 | Kaiserslautern, Germany Not sure about the start date anymore but: My job was to integrate a myriad of theses by PhD, Graduate and Undergrad students into a Knowledge Base Management System (KBMS) called Krisys (odd choice of name, I know). It was very interesting since the smarts were written in LISP and the underpinnings Ingres. In hindsight I acquired the following skills: * Reverse engineer code from minimal documentation with the developer long gone * Become a self starter It's not that the PhD student I worked for knew much about the code to get me started. Took weeks (at 8 hrs or so a week) just to get "create database" working) * A good insight into rule engines * Basic practice with SQL * Multi threaded programming (curses) * Appreciate the forever back and forth of schema chaos (now NoSQL, key value and triple store) and fixed schema (SQL) ## Education ### Masters in Computer Science, Math RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau ### Abitur in Math, Physics Martin von Cochem Gymnasium Cochem ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/srielau - Portfolio: http://www.ibm.com - Portfolio: http://www.SQLTips4DB2.com - Portfolio: http://www.Oracle2DB2Wiki.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/sergerielau JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sergerielau/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12