Thread: Help me improve the 9.1 release draft

PG fans,

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft

Clearly this needs some work, and wordsmithing.  I do want to keep the focus of the release on the features, because we
havekiller features this release.  Also the theme of "Features, Innovation, Extensibility". 

So, improvements?

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com
San Francisco

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Joshua Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> PG fans,
>
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft
>
> Clearly this needs some work, and wordsmithing.  I do want to keep the focus of the release on the features, because
wehave killer features this release.  Also the theme of "Features, Innovation, Extensibility". 

I'm no marketing guy, so take this with a large grain of salt or
ignore entirely. I think the first paragraph could be improved to
emphasize, as you say, the "killer features". This bit:

| This latest release of the leading open source database contains more
| new features than any previous version, each of which are compelling
| reasons to adopt PostgreSQL

seems too much like hand-wavy-marketing-speak. I think it'd be better
if it were more like the first paragraph of the 9.0 release notes[1].
Maybe something like "This latest release contains many significant
new features aimed at enhancing reliability, performance, and SQL
Standard compliance. Users are particularly excited about synchronous
replication and [other cool features]."

And then maybe this sentence could be axed, or perhaps moved to the
end; it doesn't seem important enough to emphasize in the first
paragraph:

| In PostgreSQL's 25th year of database development, our community
| continues to introduce new innovations with every annual release.

Josh

--
[1] http://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit90.html.en

> seems too much like hand-wavy-marketing-speak. I think it'd be better
> if it were more like the first paragraph of the 9.0 release notes[1].
> Maybe something like "This latest release contains many significant
> new features aimed at enhancing reliability, performance, and SQL
> Standard compliance. Users are particularly excited about synchronous
> replication and [other cool features]."

Hmmm, I'd like to keep it down to categories because we don't want to
list all 9 features in a sentence.  I also like the "more new features"
because I want to hammer it in to people that we're not sitting still
and letting the NoSQL guys to all the innovation.  Let me try ....

"This latest release contains more new features than any prior release
of PostgreSQL, enhancing scalability and security, as well as adding new
use cases for the database."

Needs help, but can you see what I'm driving for?

> And then maybe this sentence could be axed, or perhaps moved to the
> end; it doesn't seem important enough to emphasize in the first
> paragraph:
>
> | In PostgreSQL's 25th year of database development, our community
> | continues to introduce new innovations with every annual release.

Move to end I think.

Thanks!  Like I said, the release does need help.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:

> Hmmm, I'd like to keep it down to categories because we don't want to
> list all 9 features in a sentence.  I also like the "more new features"
> because I want to hammer it in to people that we're not sitting still
> and letting the NoSQL guys to all the innovation.  Let me try ....
>
> "This latest release contains more new features than any prior release
> of PostgreSQL, enhancing scalability and security, as well as adding new
> use cases for the database."
>
> Needs help, but can you see what I'm driving for?

Yeah, and that is better than the original IMO. It would be nice to
have that introduction neatly tie together all the new features with a
single theme -- something more substantive than "enhancing scalability
and security" -- but given that we're talking about 9 or so basically
unrelated major features, that's kind of hard to do.

Now, maybe the bullet points could do a bit better conveying the
appeal/use-case/awesomeness of the features. I think some of John
Wang's suggested changes downthread are along these lines.

Josh

I made a few initial edits to the 9.1 press release which can be seen here:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft

As mentioned by Josh, one of my goals is to explain how the features can benefit users so that:

(a) existing users needing and waiting for features will want to upgrade
(b) existing and new users may see new features they want to try out

I agree it would be nice to have a unifying theme as well so there is more to do.

Please review and let me know what you think.

John

On 8/24/11 9:56 AM, John Wang wrote:
> I made a few initial edits to the 9.1 press release which can be seen here:
>
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft
>
> As mentioned by Josh, one of my goals is to explain how the features can
> benefit users so that:
>
> (a) existing users needing and waiting for features will want to upgrade
> (b) existing and new users may see new features they want to try out
>
> I agree it would be nice to have a unifying theme as well so there is more
> to do.

Thanks!

Hmmm ... looking at a lot of your descriptions, I think they belong on
the "extended release".  Thing is, the official press release needs to
fit into a page and a half of text.

Lemme rearrange and you can see what I'm talking about.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

John, Josh, everyone:

Here's a considerably expanded and improved 9.1 release:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft

I'd like to get this to the translators in the next 48 hours, so please
send me last-minute corrections!

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On ons, 2011-08-24 at 17:00 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> John, Josh, everyone:
>
> Here's a considerably expanded and improved 9.1 release:
>
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft
>
> I'd like to get this to the translators in the next 48 hours, so please
> send me last-minute corrections!

This looks a bit funny:

"""
Linguistic Sorting using Collations: Improve multilingual (M17n)
correctness and user-friendliness with proper and consistent linguistic
sorting rules. PostgreSQL linguistic sort supports monolingual and
multilingual text and is often requested for sorting of diacritics.
Sorting can be performed using language/locale-specific rules or using
UTF-8 for multilingual sorting. For flexibility, collations can be set
on columns, domains, indexes and expressions.
"""

I don't know how one would get from "multilingual" to "M17n".  Also, we
don't support "multilingual text", which is text that consists of
multiple languages(?).  Also, you can't sort "using UTF-8".

Actually, the only thing that's new is the last sentence.  Everything
before that is nonsense and/or not actually new.


Btw., the release announcement ought to contain a link to the full
release notes.

Am Donnerstag, den 25.08.2011, 16:47 +0300 schrieb Peter Eisentraut:
> On ons, 2011-08-24 at 17:00 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> > Here's a considerably expanded and improved 9.1 release:
> >
> > http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft
> >
> > I'd like to get this to the translators in the next 48 hours, so please
> > send me last-minute corrections!
>
> This looks a bit funny:
>
> """
> Linguistic Sorting using Collations: Improve multilingual (M17n)
> correctness and user-friendliness with proper and consistent linguistic
> sorting rules. PostgreSQL linguistic sort supports monolingual and
> multilingual text and is often requested for sorting of diacritics.
> Sorting can be performed using language/locale-specific rules or using
> UTF-8 for multilingual sorting. For flexibility, collations can be set
> on columns, domains, indexes and expressions.
> """
>
> I don't know how one would get from "multilingual" to "M17n".  Also, we
> don't support "multilingual text", which is text that consists of
> multiple languages(?).  Also, you can't sort "using UTF-8".

Heh, I wondered the same and pointed that out to Josh on IRC earlier
today.

M17n expands to "Multilingualization"; I do not think that is a common
enough expansion that people won't think "how do they get from
multilingual to m17n??", so either adding that in parenthesis, or just
using that instead of "multililngual" (if grammar allows) would be
better IMO.

Whether or not it is applicable at all is another matter, of course.


Michael

--
Michael Banck
Tel.: +49 (0) 2161 / 4643-171

credativ GmbH, HRB Mönchengladbach 12080
Hohenzollernstr. 133, 41061 Mönchengladbach
Geschäftsführung: Dr. Michael Meskes, Jörg Folz

I'm still learning about this feature but wanted to put up some information for discussion.

In the official Pg press release, the feature is still called "Per-Column Collations." Is this common enough of a term that people will know what benefit they will derive? As a counterpoint, Oracle has a chapter in their Globalization (G11n) guide titled "Linguistic Sorting" which goes into detail on how linguistic sorting is done; however, it only mentions "collated" once. Is this a valid comparison?

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10500_01/server.920/a96529/ch4.htm#1008649

The guide talks about both monolingual and multilingual linguistic sorts. Sorting on Unicode is considered monolingual. Language-specific sorting is available as both mono- and multilingual. Multilingual sorting (e.g. FRENCH_M vs FRENCH) uses the ISO 14651 multilingual standard.

From the discussion, my impression is that the Pg feature provides monolingual, language/locale-specific (non-Unicode) sorting. Is any other benefit provided?

So two items:

(1) Would the feature be better listed as "Per-Column Collations" or "Linguistic Sorting"

(2) Is the primary benefit monolingual, language/locale-specific sorting.

John

On tor, 2011-08-25 at 11:27 -0700, John Wang wrote:
> (1) Would the feature be better listed as "Per-Column Collations" or
> "Linguistic Sorting"
>
> (2) Is the primary benefit monolingual, language/locale-specific
> sorting.

You can already do locale-specific sorting.  The only new thing is that
you can configure it per column, and per domain, index, or expression,
as the press release says.

All,

Removed industry buzzwords.  Replaced text with:

* '''Per-column Collations:''' Our robust and standards-compliant
multi-encoding support now allows users to set the collation for strings
on a single column.  This permits true multi-lingual databases, where
each text column is a different language, and indexes and sorts
correctly for that language.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On tor, 2011-08-25 at 17:15 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> All,
>
> Removed industry buzzwords.  Replaced text with:
>
> * '''Per-column Collations:''' Our robust and standards-compliant
> multi-encoding support now allows users to set the collation for strings
> on a single column.  This permits true multi-lingual databases, where
> each text column is a different language, and indexes and sorts
> correctly for that language.

The stuff about encoding support is not relevant to the feature (and
it's also wrong).  How about just

* '''Per-column Collations:''' PostgreSQL now allows users to set the
collation for strings on a single column.  This permits true
multi-lingual databases, where each text column is a different language,
and indexes and sorts correctly for that language.

On 08/24/2011 08:00 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Here's a considerably expanded and improved 9.1 release:
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/91releasedraft
>

This is looking good now, I just did a round of carefully polishing the
short version, details e-mailed.  The longer version had less things I
wanted to adjust.

One last minute idea, not sure how close you are to the target length
for this e-mail.  If there's some space left, I think it would be nice
to mention PostGIS here.  We could trot that out to show that the
extensions model enhanced by 9.1 is both powerful and mature.  Pointing
out that you can turn PostgreSQL into a spatial database with an
extension really makes that obvious.

Here's some new text to try and capture this, my idea would be to beef
up either the intro or end of the "Extending the Database Engine" section.

PostgreSQL's powerful extensibility features have always enabled feature
development on top of the core database.  The PostGIS project is a
successful example, adding industry leading spatial data capabilities to
PostgreSQL.  The new Extensions feature makes it easier than ever to
build new features into the database with this proven approach.

--
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    greg@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support  www.2ndQuadrant.us

Il 26/08/11 08:51, Greg Smith ha scritto:
> PostgreSQL's powerful extensibility features have always enabled
> feature development on top of the core database.  The PostGIS project
> is a successful example, adding industry leading spatial data
> capabilities to PostgreSQL.  The new Extensions feature makes it
> easier than ever to build new features into the database with this
> proven approach.
>

My 2 cents here. Not only to build, but to maintain as well - from the
DBA point of view.

--
  Gabriele Bartolini - 2ndQuadrant Italia
  PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
  gabriele.bartolini@2ndQuadrant.it | www.2ndQuadrant.it

> PostgreSQL's powerful extensibility features have always enabled feature
> development on top of the core database.  The PostGIS project is a
> successful example, adding industry leading spatial data capabilities to
> PostgreSQL.  The new Extensions feature makes it easier than ever to
> build new features into the database with this proven approach.

Hmmm, good hedging.  I was reluctant to mention PostGIS since support
for 9.1 in PostGIS is ~~ 6 months away.  But the above quote doesn't
imply that it's immediately available.  Will work it in.

Thanks!

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On Friday, August 26, 2011, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>
>> PostgreSQL's powerful extensibility features have always enabled feature
>> development on top of the core database.  The PostGIS project is a
>> successful example, adding industry leading spatial data capabilities to
>> PostgreSQL.  The new Extensions feature makes it easier than ever to
>> build new features into the database with this proven approach.
>
> Hmmm, good hedging.  I was reluctant to mention PostGIS since support
> for 9.1 in PostGIS is ~~ 6 months away.  But the above quote doesn't
> imply that it's immediately available.  Will work it in.
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
> http://pgexperts.com
>
> --
> Sent via pgsql-advocacy mailing list (pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-advocacy
>

Should the release notes really mention fdw being able pull from twitter? That seems about as relevant to most reader as updates in the lolcode pl. Perhaps language like "and even twitter" would be more ideal.

--
Rob Wultsch
wultsch@gmail.com

> Should the release notes really mention fdw being able pull from
> twitter? That seems about as relevant to most reader as updates in
> the lolcode pl. Perhaps language like "and even twitter" would be
> more ideal.

Possibly, yeah.  Since the driver exists, I was putting it in as an example of the really unusual things you could do
withFDWs, i.e. that they're not limited to pulling from just other RDBMSes. 

--Josh

BTW, I've moved the release to git now, so if you add edits on the wiki please let me know.

--Josh