Re: 7.4 Press Release -- starting Draft #5 - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

"Just as good as the big guys" makes us sound smaller and
of minor interest.  Aren't we one of the grown ups?
When do we get to be grown up?

--elein


On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 05:13:34PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Robert, PGadvocates
>
> First of all, thanks for keeping track of all these changes!   I was not
> looking forward to combing through all of the last 3 days' email.  Thank you.
>
> However, I've been thinking some about the tone of the press release.
> Currently, what we have is essentially the technical announcement, "dumbed
> down" for the general press.   While this gives us the correct content, it
> lacks "punch" that will interest reporters.
>
> Or, as Heather put it:
> > please let me know. From what I've seen so far I'd suggest tightening up the
> > lead and adding in the one big idea as to why 7.4 is important. Basically my
> > experience has been that you need to say everything in a short and concise
> > lead or the reporter doesn't even move his mouse to scroll down before
> > hitting the delete button :)
>
> As such, I think we need to re-draft the press release to put the "big news"
> stuff at the top and the "unrelated" detail at the bottom.  And what's our
> "big news"?
>
> Well, the combined fixes and enhancements in 7.4, perhaps for the first time,
> really puts PostgreSQL's core functionality on even footing with Oracle and
> DB2 for large enterprise needs.  Particularly I am thinking of:
> -- planner improvements for speed
> -- index-FSM means that a well-tuned 7.4 database no longer has to lock any
> tables ever for maintainence; true 99.99% uptime at last.
> -- donation of eRServer gives us a "battle-tested" replication solution
> -- read-only transaction setting improves multiuser security
> -- 64 bit support including Opteron
> -- new wire protocol speeds transfer of large objects
>
> Secondary to that but also important to "punch up" are the features that make
> it easier for enterprise to transition from proprietary databases:
> -- error reporting re-design allows vastly improved handling of errors by
> middleware for large distributed applications, especially since we use
> SQL-standard error codes
> -- join rewrite makes an easier transition for MS SQL & Sybase apps
> -- multibyte regex broadens our international support
> -- improved Tsearch exceeds MySQL's FTI and MSSQL's FTS;
> and, most importantly:
> -- reorganized and improved documentation makes the transition to PostgreSQL
> easier than it ever has been before.
>
> The other features/improvements, while important to our internal community,
> aren't going to make sense to most reporters.   Instead, we need to tell a
> story -- a simple story -- which says:
> "Evaluate and switch to PostgreSQL now, it will be easy and we're just as good
> as the Big Guys."
>
> Am I making any sense?
>
> --
> -Josh Berkus
>  Aglio Database Solutions
>  San Francisco
>
>
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