Press Release, Final Draft? - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Folks,

Here's my synthesis for the final draft of the press release.    In order to
get some of the quotes I want, it has to be more-or-less finished by THURSDAY
NIGHT.   So please give your feedback on what version of the text to use or
any changes you want to see.

The format presented below starts with my version of each paragraph, followed
by the previous version (mostly by Josh@bitbuckets) and notes.

PARAGRAPH ONE:
My Version:
NY, NY: October XX, 2004 - The PostgreSQL Global Development group has
released version 8.0 of the PostgreSQL object-relational database management
system, maintaining its position as the most advanced open source database in
the world. This release includes many features previously only available in
the most expensive proprietary database software, and is expected to
dramatically increase the adoption of PostgreSQL by both developers and
software vendors.

Draft Seven:
August 24, 2004 - The PostgreSQL Global Development group today made
available version 8 of the PostgreSQL Object-Relational Database
Management System, the most advanced open source database in the world.
With this new release, professional users have a world-class, scalable,
open source database solution that has many of the features provided by
commercial products.

Notes: Pretty much same content, with my re-writes on language.   Main
addition is "dramatically increase the adoption ... by software vendors".
This was a suggestion early on which I liked, and ties in with one of the
quotes.

PARAGRAPH TWO:
My version:
In addition to reaching a new milestone in scalability, PostgreSQL 8.0
demonstrates the unparalleled development ability of open source.  Red Hat,
Fujitsu, Afilias, SRA of Japan, 2nd Quadrant, Command Prompt, and more than a
dozen other companies as well as over 200 individual developers contributed
to add more major features to 8.0 than have been seen in any previous
version.   These features include:

Draft Seven:
PostgreSQL 8.0 contains many new features that make the database the
strongest contender against the likes of Oracle and DB2.  Many companies,
such as Fujitsu, Afilias, Red Hat, the Command Prompt consultancy, and SRA,
who view PostgreSQL as a strategic part of their overall I.T. plan, have
sponsored development of the new features, which include:

Notes: this is a major change in content; I feel that we are better off
emphasizing our development strength than our comparison to Oracle and DB2.
Partly this is because we did that last release, and we don't need to repeat
it.   Also, the idea ties in better with listing the companies involved in
PostgreSQL.  Oh, and Peter, I need to list "SRA of Japan" because there is an
SRA, Inc. in the US which is a different company.  And I'm currently polling
Hackers for more companies to avoid leaving anyone out.

LIST OF FEATURES:

Windows:
My Version, Same as Draft Seven:
Native Windows Support:  PostgreSQL now works natively with Windows
systems and does not need an emulation layer.  This provides dramatically
improved performance over previous versions, and offers a compelling
alternative to proprietary database software for independent software vendors,
corporate users, and individual Windows developers.

Savepoints:
My Version:
Savepoints:  This SQL-standard feature allows specific parts of a database
transaction to be rolled back without aborting the entire operation. This
benefits business application developers who require complex transactions
with error recovery.

Draft Seven:
Savepoints:  Savepoints allow specific parts of a database transaction to
be aborted without affecting the whole transaction.  This feature is
valuable for application developers who require error recovery within
complex transactions.

Notes: I think my language makes more of a "business case" for the feature.

PITR:
Simon Riggs' version, same as Draft Seven:
Point in Time Recovery: Point in Time Recovery provides a full recovery
model that allows data recovery from bare-metal to the point of failure or
to a specific point in time, based around automatically archived
transaction logs.

Tablespaces:
My Version:
Tablespaces:  crucial to the administrators of multi-gigabyte data warehousing
systems, tablespaces allow the placement of large tables and indexes on their
own individual disks or arrays, improving query performance.

Draft Seven:
Tablespaces:  This feature allows the database administrator to choose
which filesystems are used for schemas, tables, and indexes.  This allows
the administrator to separate different parts of their data onto separate
disks to improve performance.

Notes: again, focussing on the business case so the press will clue in.

Memory & I/O:
My Version:
Improved Memory and I/O:  Disk and memory usage have been improved through
an Adaptive Replacement Cache, the Background Writer, and Lazy Vacuum.   This
will result in more predictable loads and substantially more even performance
during peak usage times.

Draft Seven:
Improved Memory and I/O usage:  With this release of PostgreSQL, disk
input/output subsystems have been improved to use shared buffers more
effectively, yielding more predictable loads and substantially better
performance during peak usage times.

Notes: I prefer to name the three features involved.

NEW ADD-INNS:
My Version:
In addition to the many features bundled with the release, PostgreSQL has been
enhanced by accelerated development of add-ons and optional components over
the last year.    The Slony-I replication tool and the pgPool connection
pooling/brokering utility are both already being used for high-availability
server pools.   Several stored procedure languages have been added or greatly
expanded, including PL/Java, PL/PHP and PL/Perl, and the Npgsql and
PGsqlClient .NET data providers have been enhanced to support our many new
Windows users.

Draft Seven:
There are also several new external components which complement the core
PostgreSQL database engine:
- Slony-I is a a "master-slave" replication system with cascading and
failover capabilities.  It even lets you replicate between two different
versions of PostgreSQL, allowing for simple and painless upgrades.
- PostgreSQL has beefed up several areas of its language interoperability
including the procedural languages PL/Perl, PL/PHP and PL/Java.
- With this version, Postgresql also offers the .Net provider, Npgsql.

Notes:  I really dislike the list format for the add-ons.   It takes up too
much space and detracts from the narrative flow of the press release.
Also, pgSphere, pgst, and PQA are also new add-ons, but I can't see how to fit
them in.

OTHER MATERIAL:

My Version Only:
Of course, there are many more new features.   For a full list, see our
Press Page <link>

Draft Seven Only:
Version 8 is the collective work of hundreds of developers, building on
almost twenty years of development dating back to the University of
California at Berkeley.  The PostgreSQL group has over one thousand
members, working at different companies all over the world.

PostgreSQL is licensed under the BSD license, giving maximum flexibility
for both commercial and noncommercial use.  This puts PostgreSQL users in
full control of how PostgreSQL is deployed in their organizations. The
PostgreSQL database can be downloaded freely at http://www.postgresql.org.

My Version Only:
About PostgreSQL:
With more than 18 years of development by hundreds of the world's
most generous and brilliant minds from the open source community,
PostgreSQL is the world's most advanced open source database. With its
long time support of an enterprise level feature set including
transactions, stored procedures, triggers, and subqueries, PostgreSQL is
being used by many of today's most demanding businesses and government
agencies. PostgreSQL is available under a BSD License for both commercial and
non-commercial use.

To find out more about PostgreSQL or to download it, please visit:
  http://www.postgresql.org/

Notes: I think a synthesis of the two "what is" versions might work best.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco