Re: Joe Hellerstein's "Looking Back at Postgres" paper - Mailing list pgsql-docs

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:
> On 4 Jul 2024, at 07:40, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> I happened to come across this:
>> https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973
>> I found this to be really interesting reading, so I wonder if
>> we shouldn't cite it in history.sgml or some such place.

> It's a really good read, +1 for referencing it in history.sgml.  I would
> probably have placed it at the tail end of 2.1 to wrap up that section or at
> the very end.

After thinking for awhile, that seemed like burying the lede.
It's an independent telling of the tale, and could reasonably
go near the top, as in the attached draft.

(I'm not too sure how to cite book chapters in DocBook, so feel
free to critique that.  Also, I noticed that the ports12 item
was not in alphabetical order, so I moved it.)

> Unrelated to that, but reading history.sgml I found this sentend at the end of
> the page to be sort of misleading:
>     "Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found
>     in Appendix E."

Fixed that too.

BTW, I contacted Hellerstein to make sure he's okay with this,
and he is.

            regards, tom lane

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/biblio.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/biblio.sgml
index cd8aa3e8aa..443e2d6fac 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/biblio.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/biblio.sgml
@@ -230,27 +230,6 @@ ssimkovi@ag.or.at
   <bibliodiv>
    <title>Proceedings and Articles</title>

-   <biblioentry id="ports12">
-    <biblioset relation="article">
-     <title><ulink url="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4179">Serializable Snapshot Isolation in PostgreSQL</ulink></title>
-     <authorgroup>
-      <author>
-       <firstname>D.</firstname>
-       <surname>Ports</surname>
-      </author>
-      <author>
-       <firstname>K.</firstname>
-       <surname>Grittner</surname>
-      </author>
-     </authorgroup>
-    </biblioset>
-    <confgroup>
-     <conftitle>VLDB Conference</conftitle>
-     <confdates>August 2012</confdates>
-     <address>Istanbul, Turkey</address>
-    </confgroup>
-   </biblioentry>
-
    <biblioentry id="berenson95">
     <biblioset relation="article">
      <title><ulink url="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/tr-95-51.pdf">A Critique
ofANSI SQL Isolation Levels</ulink></title> 
@@ -288,6 +267,24 @@ ssimkovi@ag.or.at
     </confgroup>
    </biblioentry>

+   <biblioentry id="hell18">
+    <biblioset relation="article">
+     <title><ulink url="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973">Looking Back at Postgres</ulink></title>
+     <author>
+      <firstname>J.</firstname>
+      <surname>Hellerstein</surname>
+     </author>
+    </biblioset>
+    <biblioset relation="book">
+     <title>Making Databases Work</title>
+     <isbn>978-1-947487-19-2</isbn>
+     <publisher>
+      <publishername>Association for Computing Machinery and Morgan & Claypool</publishername>
+     </publisher>
+     <pubdate>2018</pubdate>
+    </biblioset>
+   </biblioentry>
+
    <biblioentry id="olson93">
     <title>Partial indexing in POSTGRES: research project</title>
     <authorgroup>
@@ -328,6 +325,27 @@ ssimkovi@ag.or.at
    </biblioset>
    </biblioentry>

+   <biblioentry id="ports12">
+    <biblioset relation="article">
+     <title><ulink url="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4179">Serializable Snapshot Isolation in PostgreSQL</ulink></title>
+     <authorgroup>
+      <author>
+       <firstname>D.</firstname>
+       <surname>Ports</surname>
+      </author>
+      <author>
+       <firstname>K.</firstname>
+       <surname>Grittner</surname>
+      </author>
+     </authorgroup>
+    </biblioset>
+    <confgroup>
+     <conftitle>VLDB Conference</conftitle>
+     <confdates>August 2012</confdates>
+     <address>Istanbul, Turkey</address>
+    </confgroup>
+   </biblioentry>
+
    <biblioentry id="rowe87">
    <biblioset relation="article">
     <title><ulink url="https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/ERL-M87-13.pdf">The <productname>POSTGRES</productname>
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/history.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/history.sgml
index 19bea5390b..e7d134e53a 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/history.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/history.sgml
@@ -17,6 +17,12 @@
   the most advanced open-source database available anywhere.
  </para>

+ <para>
+  Another take on the history presented here can be found in Dr. Joe
+  Hellerstein's paper <quote>Looking Back at Postgres</quote>
+  <xref linkend="hell18"/>.
+ </para>
+
  <sect2 id="history-berkeley">
   <title>The Berkeley <productname>POSTGRES</productname> Project</title>

@@ -215,8 +221,10 @@
   </para>

   <para>
-   Details about what has happened in <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> since
-   then can be found in <xref linkend="release"/>.
+   Details about what has happened in
+   each <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> release since then
+   can be found at
+   <ulink url="https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/">https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/</ulink>.
   </para>
  </sect2>
 </sect1>