Thread: Draft of Alpha release announcement

Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Josh Berkus
Date:
All:

This goes out Thursday, so I'm putting it here for final
comments/corrections.  Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but
time kind of got away from me.

I've added a new "what to test" section to get people thinking.  We
should create a more expanded version of this on the wiki for 9.5beta1,
but for now, what do people think?

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

Attachment

Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Darren Duncan
Date:
On 2015-06-30 3:35 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> This goes out Thursday, so I'm putting it here for final
> comments/corrections.  Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but
> time kind of got away from me.

Your first paragraph has a typo saying this is an alpha of 9.4.

I didn't see any other problems.

-- Darren Duncan



Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Josh Berkus
Date:
On 06/30/2015 03:54 PM, Darren Duncan wrote:
> On 2015-06-30 3:35 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> This goes out Thursday, so I'm putting it here for final
>> comments/corrections.  Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but
>> time kind of got away from me.
>
> Your first paragraph has a typo saying this is an alpha of 9.4.

Thank you, fixed!


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


Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Luca Ferrari
Date:
On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 12:35 AM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> This goes out Thursday, so I'm putting it here for final
> comments/corrections.  Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but
> time kind of got away from me.
>

Not sure if these matter:
1) alpha and beta are used either lower and uppercase and I guess
should be coherently capitalized;
2) "see the Beta Testing page" but the link says "Beta Testing Information";
3) I would reorder links so that 9.5 related stuff is packed together as:

* [Downloads Page]
* [9.5 Alpha Release Notes]
* [What's New in 9.5]
* [Beta Testing Information]

Luca


Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Andres Freund
Date:
On 2015-06-30 15:35:02 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Among new major features available for testing in this alpha are:
>
> * Block-Range Indexes (BRIN) which enable compact indexing of very large tables
> * Large speed improvements in in-memory sorting and hashing
> * Automated management of transaction log size
> * INSERT ON CONFLICT UPDATE, otherwise known as "UPSERT"
> * Grouping Sets, CUBE and ROLLUP analytic operations
> * Row-Level Security (RLS) support
> * More JSONB data manipulation functions and operators
> * Added the pg_rewind tool and other high availability improvements to replication
> * Multiple enhancements to Foreign Data Wrappers, including IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA

Maybe add scalability improvements (~three different features)? The
contention around spinlocks has hit a lot of people over the last few
years.

Greetings,

Andres Freund


Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
"Gilberto Castillo"
Date:
> All:
>
> This goes out Thursday, so I'm putting it here for final
> comments/corrections.  Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but
> time kind of got away from me.
>
> I've added a new "what to test" section to get people thinking.  We
> should create a more expanded version of this on the wiki for 9.5beta1,
> but for now, what do people think?


That's OK



Saludos,
Gilberto Castillo
ETECSA, La Habana, Cuba



Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Andres Freund
Date:
Hi,

On 2015-06-30 15:35:02 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Major Features
> --------------
>
> Among new major features available for testing in this alpha are:
>
> * Block-Range Indexes (BRIN) which enable compact indexing of very large tables
> * Large speed improvements in in-memory sorting and hashing
> * Automated management of transaction log size
> * INSERT ON CONFLICT UPDATE, otherwise known as "UPSERT"
> * Grouping Sets, CUBE and ROLLUP analytic operations
> * Row-Level Security (RLS) support
> * More JSONB data manipulation functions and operators
> * Added the pg_rewind tool and other high availability improvements to replication
> * Multiple enhancements to Foreign Data Wrappers, including IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA

> * [9.5 Alpha Release Notes](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-5.html)

I think it'd be good to integrate the major items list into the release
notes in time for the website to update... If necessary, can you ping me
in time to update the sgml?


Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Josh Berkus
Date:
On 07/01/2015 04:50 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2015-06-30 15:35:02 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> Major Features
>> --------------
>>
>> Among new major features available for testing in this alpha are:
>>
>> * Block-Range Indexes (BRIN) which enable compact indexing of very large tables
>> * Large speed improvements in in-memory sorting and hashing
>> * Automated management of transaction log size
>> * INSERT ON CONFLICT UPDATE, otherwise known as "UPSERT"
>> * Grouping Sets, CUBE and ROLLUP analytic operations
>> * Row-Level Security (RLS) support
>> * More JSONB data manipulation functions and operators
>> * Added the pg_rewind tool and other high availability improvements to replication
>> * Multiple enhancements to Foreign Data Wrappers, including IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA
>
>> * [9.5 Alpha Release Notes](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-5.html)
>
> I think it'd be good to integrate the major items list into the release
> notes in time for the website to update... If necessary, can you ping me
> in time to update the sgml?

That's up to Bruce.  I'm happy to write those up in Release Note format,
but I was planning to wait until the Beta in case one or more features
gets the axe before then.


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


Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Andres Freund
Date:
On 2015-07-01 09:53:01 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 07/01/2015 04:50 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> > I think it'd be good to integrate the major items list into the release
> > notes in time for the website to update... If necessary, can you ping me
> > in time to update the sgml?
>
> That's up to Bruce.  I'm happy to write those up in Release Note format,
> but I was planning to wait until the Beta in case one or more features
> gets the axe before then.

I don't see the point of waiting for beta. The features are already in
the release notes, and you're sending out the major features in the
release announcement.  Having an empty 'major enhancements' section in
the release docs, linked to from the release announcement, is just
confusing.

Greetings,

Andres Freund


Re: Draft of Alpha release announcement

From
Peter Geoghegan
Date:
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:35 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> This goes out Thursday, so I'm putting it here for final
> comments/corrections.  Sorry for the last-minute nature of this, but
> time kind of got away from me.

Sorry that I didn't get to this sooner. I have a concern with this item:

 * Large speed improvements in in-memory sorting and hashing

The largest acceleration that I've heard anyone have with the
abbreviated keys sorting patch - a 12X improvement, reported by Corey
Huinker - was actually with an external sort (in-memory sorts were
more effectively accelerated during testing on my laptop, but Corey
used a real server).

I think that the "in-memory" qualifier does not add much information
about the hashing improvements, and misleads about the sorting
improvements. Too late for changing the 9.5 alpha notes now, but
something to remember when the beta comes out.

--
Regards,
Peter Geoghegan