Re: Major features for 9.1 - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On 1 April 2011 20:21, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> Here's a list of the features which seem to me to be major enough to be
> headliners for 9.1.  Please mark which ones you think are major/not
> major/not major and anything you think I've forgotten.
>
> The tough part is going to be picking 5-6 items from the below.
>
> * Synchronous Replication
> Reason: obvious
>
> * wCTE: Writeable Common Table Expressions
> Reason: replace large amounts of app code with single queries.
> Also, we may be the first DB to have this.  Anyone know?
>
> * Per-column collations
> Reason: fully multilingual databases now possible.
> This has been a TODO for a decade.
>
> * SSI: Serializable Snapshot Isolation
> True serializability without locking.  Eliminate a lot of SELECT FOR
> UPDATE code.
> This might also be a PostgreSQL first.
>
> * Unlogged Tables
> Reason: allows using Postgres for not-valuable, high-performance data
> like session tables instead of using a caching database
>
> * SQL/MED with FILE_FDW
> Reason: allows using PostgreSQL to query any kind of data source you can
> roll a driver for.  First one shipping reads CSV files, eliminating the
> need to COPY them into the database in many cases.
>
> * KNN-GiST: K-Nearest Neighbor Indexing
> Permits indexed searches of "what's near X", greatly improving the
> responsiveness of PostGIS applications and allowing new application
> types to be built.
>
> * Single-command cloning, new admin tools for replication
> Not sure about this one, should probably be buried in text somewhere.
>
> * PL/Python Overhaul
> Not sure what went into this, can anyone give me details?
>
> * SEPostgres
> SE-Postgres has been integrated into PostgreSQL through generic security
> hooks and a contrib module.  Allows "military" level security/control
> over database.
>
> * Extensions
> Optional PostgreSQL code, such as extra data types, GIS, languages, etc,
> can now be packaged as pluggable extensions, greatly simplifying
> installing and upgrading them.  In addition, the PGXN network will
> become an online repository of these extensions.
>
> Ones I don't think are major features but are cool anyway:
>
> * Valid-on-creation FKs
> * Checkpoint Goggles
> * Extensible ENUMs
> * Triggers on Views
> * New Trigram implementation (text is similar to ...)
> * Reduced NUMERIC size

What about column data type alterations for populated tables which
don't require rewrites if they're binary-coercible?

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Thom Brown
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