Thread: 8.4 release draft in progress ...
All, http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft Please help; for one thing, I think my wording is a bit stilted. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On 5/26/09 2:55 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: > All, > > http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft > > Please help; for one thing, I think my wording is a bit stilted. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On Wed, 27 May 2009, Josh Berkus wrote: > On 5/26/09 2:55 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: >> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft >> Please help; for one thing, I think my wording is a bit stilted. I made a pass over the whole thing and tightened up the text some. The bit about the pieces committed for the pending 8.5 features didn't read right at all, I changed that to what I think you wanted to say there. You should check what I did to that section in particular to make sure it reflects how you want that to read. -- * Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
i've read it, but currently i'm on the rush for a congress so i cant give a good review yet... tho... tomorrow i'll met a friend from the vepug... ill show it to him too...and see what he says... Josh Berkus escribió: > On 5/26/09 2:55 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: >> All, >> >> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft >> >> Please help; for one thing, I think my wording is a bit stilted. > > Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? >
Greg, > I made a pass over the whole thing and tightened up the text some. The > bit about the pieces committed for the pending 8.5 features didn't read > right at all, I changed that to what I think you wanted to say there. > You should check what I did to that section in particular to make sure > it reflects how you want that to read. Thanks. I'm still struggling with that paragraph; you can see why I want to say something in the release, but it's hard not to drag it out into a 200-word paragraph and still get the point across. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 01:01 -0400, Greg Smith wrote: > On Wed, 27 May 2009, Josh Berkus wrote: > > > On 5/26/09 2:55 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: > >> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft > >> Please help; for one thing, I think my wording is a bit stilted. > > I made a pass over the whole thing and tightened up the text some. The > bit about the pieces committed for the pending 8.5 features didn't read > right at all, I changed that to what I think you wanted to say there. > You should check what I did to that section in particular to make sure it > reflects how you want that to read. Looking good so far! Threw in a couple more cents myself, and included improved deadlock reporting as an administrative feature (at least it seems important enough to me; I could be wrong.) :) Are you sure about leaving the performance features out entirely? Granted there might not be enough benchmark numbers for the general use case, but the topic of performance seems conspicuously absent as it is now. Maybe mark some of the existing features - parallel restore, reduced vacuum overhead - as performance-oriented in some way? - Josh Williams
Josh, > Looking good so far! Threw in a couple more cents myself, Thanks. and included > improved deadlock reporting as an administrative feature (at least it > seems important enough to me; I could be wrong.) :) Yes, but it's one of 50-or-so features which matter to existing production Postgres DBAs, and not to people who haven't used it before. We want to keep the features oriented towards people who aren't already intimate with PostgreSQL; those will read the internal release and the release notes. > Are you sure about leaving the performance features out entirely? > Granted there might not be enough benchmark numbers for the general use > case, but the topic of performance seems conspicuously absent as it is > now. I thought about that some, but I really think it's the best thing to do. Our two main performance features are Visibility Map, new Hash Indexes and Improved Hash Joins, and all of those are "special-case" improvements. As new features, they're not nearly as compelling as Windowing aggregates or column permissions. And the release has three sections as it is: delvoper, administrative, ongoing work on big features. It doesn't need a 4th section; brevity is the soul of wit. ;-) -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
Josh, > Yes, but it's one of 50-or-so features which matter to existing > production Postgres DBAs, and not to people who haven't used it before. > We want to keep the features oriented towards people who aren't already > intimate with PostgreSQL; those will read the internal release and the > release notes. Mind you, what this *does* point out is that everyone has their favorite feature which is going to improve their lives ... and it's not necessarily the headliners. For example, my favorite feature from 8.2? CSVlog. But I'm not sure we even put that on the release announcement. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 15:13 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > Josh, > > > Yes, but it's one of 50-or-so features which matter to existing > > production Postgres DBAs, and not to people who haven't used it before. > > We want to keep the features oriented towards people who aren't already > > intimate with PostgreSQL; those will read the internal release and the > > release notes. > > Mind you, what this *does* point out is that everyone has their favorite > feature which is going to improve their lives ... and it's not > necessarily the headliners. Yep, good point; line removed. Have to remember this is effectively the "executive summary" of the release. If it could leave some people scratching their heads, less is probably more. As you said, brevity. :) - Josh Williams
All, I had an interesting conversation about the release draft with a professional PR person. What he said, in a nutshell, was that is was extremely boring (although he used stronger language than that). And, reading it afresh this morning, I have to agree. What I'm hearing about from users is that each one has their own favorite feature (out of the 293 in the release) which will make their life vastly easier. The cited favorite features are extremely diverse, ranging from column permissions to the SSL cleanup to partial GIN matches to CIText to \df. I'm wondering if that should be the "story" of our release. "PostgreSQL: easier to manage than ever before." It would give some badly-needed structure to the release. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:41 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > All, > > I'm wondering if that should be the "story" of our release. > "PostgreSQL: easier to manage than ever before." It would give some > badly-needed structure to the release. > That isn't a bad idea. Not sure about the above wording but I agree with your point. Joshua D. Drake -- PostgreSQL - XMPP: jdrake@jabber.postgresql.org Consulting, Development, Support, Training 503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:41 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > I'm wondering if that should be the "story" of our release. > "PostgreSQL: easier to manage than ever before." It would give some > badly-needed structure to the release. There was a similar thread a while back, here was my thought at the time: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-advocacy/2009-03/msg00049.php I think maybe words like "analytics" and "expressiveness" are both interesting, and vague enough to capture a lot of the new features that went in. CTEs and window functions are the obvious ones, but everything from "auto-explain" to the visibility map (and even bumping the default stats to 100) seem to make PostgreSQL into a more complete solution to solve that class of problem -- including the manageability and performance aspects to make it work. I think there is a story here somewhere. Regards, Jeff Davis
Jeff Davis wrote: > On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:41 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: >> I'm wondering if that should be the "story" of our release. >> "PostgreSQL: easier to manage than ever before." It would give some >> badly-needed structure to the release. > > There was a similar thread a while back, here was my thought at the > time: > > http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-advocacy/2009-03/msg00049.php > > I think maybe words like "analytics" and "expressiveness" are both > interesting, and vague enough to capture a lot of the new features that > went in. > > CTEs and window functions are the obvious ones, but everything from > "auto-explain" to the visibility map (and even bumping the default stats > to 100) seem to make PostgreSQL into a more complete solution to solve > that class of problem -- including the manageability and performance > aspects to make it work. I think there is a story here somewhere. I kinda like the "analytics/expressiveness" thingy along the lines of: "express more - manage less" :) Stefan
Josh Berkus wrote: > All, > > I had an interesting conversation about the release draft with a > professional PR person. What he said, in a nutshell, was that is was > extremely boring (although he used stronger language than that). +10000 > What I'm hearing about from users is that each one has their own > favorite feature (out of the 293 in the release) which will make their > life vastly easier. The cited favorite features are extremely diverse, > ranging from column permissions to the SSL cleanup to partial GIN > matches to CIText to \df. +10 for \ef :D I *hated* the whole stupid cut and paste process. I <3 \ef -selena
On 6/1/2009 2:41 PM Josh Berkus wrote: > What I'm hearing about from users is that each one has their own > favorite feature (out of the 293 in the release) which will make their > life vastly easier. The cited favorite features are extremely diverse, > ranging from column permissions to the SSL cleanup to partial GIN > matches to CIText to \df. > > I'm wondering if that should be the "story" of our release. "PostgreSQL: > easier to manage than ever before." It would give some badly-needed > structure to the release. +1. And in the wake of the MySQL/Sun/Oracle saga, it would be nice to use the word "easy" more often. Fair or unfair, that'sbeen the knock on Postgres vs. MySQL for some time. Cheers, Ned
Josh Berkus wrote: > All, > > I had an interesting conversation about the release draft with a > professional PR person. What he said, in a nutshell, was that is was > extremely boring (although he used stronger language than that). > > And, reading it afresh this morning, I have to agree. > > What I'm hearing about from users is that each one has their own > favorite feature (out of the 293 in the release) which will make their > life vastly easier. The cited favorite features are extremely diverse, > ranging from column permissions to the SSL cleanup to partial GIN > matches to CIText to \df. > > I'm wondering if that should be the "story" of our release. "PostgreSQL: > easier to manage than ever before." It would give some badly-needed > structure to the release. Another data point - the Drupal release announcement: http://drupal.org/drupal-6.0 -selena
> I think maybe words like "analytics" and "expressiveness" are both > interesting, and vague enough to capture a lot of the new features that > went in. Hmmm. Can I quote you as "Senior Database Architect, Truviso"? ;-) -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
All, OK, try this out and see if it's any better: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft#The_Draft -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
Selena, > Another data point - the Drupal release announcement: > > http://drupal.org/drupal-6.0 Now *that's* a nice release page. 'course, they *have* web designers in their community ... -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
All, Given the total lack of commentary or corrections, I will assume that the current draft is good and send it to the copy-editor. --Josh Berkus -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Josh Berkus wrote: > Given the total lack of commentary or corrections, I will assume that the > current draft is good and send it to the copy-editor. I've been staring at the text and just haven't had any particular inspiration for how to improve the part I don't like yet. The thing that's missing there is tying together the "easier" theme by properly including the programming features in that classification, too. The new 8.4 features certainly make some types of database programming tasks far easier, but the way it reads right now they sound like they've mainly made the product more complicated. I started in that direction with "allowing users to ask interesting questions in a single query that would have been impossible to ask before" fairly deep into there, I wonder if the beginning section around "as well as several advanced programming features" should kick off that idea much earlier. -- * Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
Greg, > The new 8.4 features certainly make some types of database programming > tasks far easier, but the way it reads right now they sound like they've > mainly made the product more complicated. I started in that direction > with "allowing users to ask interesting questions in a single query that > would have been impossible to ask before" fairly deep into there, I > wonder if the beginning section around "as well as several advanced > programming features" should kick off that idea much earlier. Hmmmm, good idea. I'll see if anything comes to me. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
Greg, See what you think of the new version: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft#Version_2:_Emphasizing_Administration --Josh Berkus -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On 6/4/09 12:25 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: > Greg, > > See what you think of the new version: > > http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft#Version_2:_Emphasizing_Administration Actually, out of time ... this needs to go to the translators this weekend. At this point, people should only point out major typos and errors. --Josh Berkus -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Josh Berkus wrote: > See what you think of the new version: > http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/84ReleaseDraft#Version_2:_Emphasizing_Administration Almost there, I just applied some touchup as well. I though that the word "advanced" should be nowhere near the word "easy"; those two just don't go together in most people's minds. Any other changes left here probably fall into the copyediting bin. I also added some verbage to the paragaph about the features that taking a couple of releases to get in, that didn't really make sense to someone who wasn't really familiar with the history of the project. It explains that slightly better now, you might look it over again from that angle before passing it along. -- * Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
Greg, > I also added some verbage to the paragaph about the features that taking > a couple of releases to get in, that didn't really make sense to someone > who wasn't really familiar with the history of the project. It explains > that slightly better now, you might look it over again from that angle > before passing it along. Hmmm, no, that's worse. I'm wondering if we just have to kill that idea out of the release; it's proving impossible to explain in any concise way. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com