Hello, world!

My name is JD Wilson. I am in the USA, Eastern Time Zone. I am a database developer/DBA with prior experience in both desktop and full stack web development. My main focus these days is SQL, though I have worked with PHP, Java, HTML, and JQuery among others. I aim to script and automate everything I can, so I have been working to improve my bash and Powershell skills. I am MCP certified, hoping to get my MCSA in Database Development later this year. While I work in a Microsoft shop, I have previous experience with Sybase and MySQL, and I am always willing to get hands-on experience with a new DBMS. I am also willing to learn Python since it seems to be used extensively in the Fedora ecosystem. I like to get my hands dirty whenever and wherever I can, and I strive to be flexible as far as which specific languages or technologies I'm using.

I've wanted to contribute to Linux since I first began using it years ago, I just never knew how. The openness of the Fedora project to volunteers is what made me choose it over Ubuntu years ago. I knew that one day I would be writing an email like this, and to be honest it feels weird that I'm finally here. Time flies! I feel I am useful enough as a professional to make a difference in the Fedora community. I love the idea of open source software and I am ready to "walk the walk", to contribute to the success of Fedora rather than just stand on the shoulders of others. I don't just want to use Fedora, I want to help build it!

I would like to contribute to the back end database work for Fedora. A potential first issue I noticed while looking at https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issues is the sluggish behavior when I click different tags to filter the results. The first tag or two do not make a big difference, but the third+ tags create long wait times. This performance behavior seems isolated to this part of the infrastructure page. My first blind guess is that the query bringing back the issue list is doing a table scan. Maybe an index is too fragmented and is being ignored, maybe it never existed to begin with. Either way, I'm not seeing this performance hit when looking at the other pages like "Commits" or "Files" so I don't believe it to be an issue with pagure.io as a whole, but rather how it is returning the records in the "issues" page.

I understand any hesitation to let a stranger gain access to the database, so I'm open to just about anything that can get my foot in the door and let me prove my worth. I've taken a multi-faceted approach to my career path, and I'm comfortable wearing many hats. I'm positive we can find something for me to work on!

I can pretty easily contribute 2-4 hours a week to start, and I would be willing to ramp it up as I get more involved with the team. My IRC handle is JD_Wilson.


Look forward to meeting you all,
JD