Thread: 7.4 compatibility question
Hi, Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4, will DEFAULT 'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? What is the workaround for those defaults? Chris
Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
> Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4, will DEFAULT
> 'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well?
No, because those values don't change over time. The issue here is when
exactly does the default value get evaluated...
regards, tom lane
>>Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4, will DEFAULT >>'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? > > > No, because those values don't change over time. The issue here is when > exactly does the default value get evaluated... Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should also be mentioned in the release notes. Chris
Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
>>> Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4, will DEFAULT
>>> 'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well?
>>
>> No, because those values don't change over time. The issue here is when
>> exactly does the default value get evaluated...
> Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should
> also be mentioned in the release notes.
Good point ... not that I think anyone is actually using such a default
in the field, but the behavior did change ...
regards, tom lane
Tom Lane wrote: > Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes: > >>> Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4, will DEFAULT > >>> 'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? > >> > >> No, because those values don't change over time. The issue here is when > >> exactly does the default value get evaluated... > > > Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should > > also be mentioned in the release notes. > > Good point ... not that I think anyone is actually using such a default > in the field, but the behavior did change ... It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every change, only significant ones. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
> It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not > inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every > change, only significant ones. Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy! How does it hurt us to mention it and you just know that someone, somewhere, is doing it... Chris
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
>>> Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should
>>> also be mentioned in the release notes.
>>
>> Good point ... not that I think anyone is actually using such a default
>> in the field, but the behavior did change ...
> It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
> inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
> change, only significant ones.
A moment's further thought reveals 'today' as another potentially broken
default value, which seems more likely to be used in practice than
'yesterday' or 'tomorrow'. I'm too beat to go digging for other legal
inputs, but there may be some...
regards, tom lane
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 00:41, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > > It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not > > inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every > > change, only significant ones. > > Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy! I agree -- documenting possible areas of incompatibility is important, and I would prefer that we err on the side of mentioning too much, rather than too little. -Neil
> A moment's further thought reveals 'today' as another potentially broken > default value, which seems more likely to be used in practice than > 'yesterday' or 'tomorrow'. I'm too beat to go digging for other legal > inputs, but there may be some... Ah, I didn't mention that one because I thought it was obvious and had already been mentioned :P Chris
Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > > > It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not > > inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every > > change, only significant ones. > > Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy! How does it hurt us > to mention it and you just know that someone, somewhere, is doing it... The release notes are already 550 lines --- adding the mention of something almost no one uses doesn't make sense --- if we did that, the list might be 1000 lines and more unreadable. Same logic goes for the list of changes --- I only mention user-visible changes, in most cases. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Neil Conway wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 00:41, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > > It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
> > > inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
> > > change, only significant ones.
> >
> > Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy!
>
> I agree -- documenting possible areas of incompatibility is important,
> and I would prefer that we err on the side of mentioning too much,
> rather than too little.
Docs updated to include 'today':
<listitem><para> <literal>'now'</literal> will no longer work as a column default; <function>now()</> or
<function>CURRENT_TIMESTAMP</> should be used instead</para></listitem> <listitem><para> <literal>'today'</literal>
willno longer work as a column default; <function>CURRENT_DATE</> should be used instead</para></listitem>
As far as yesterday/tomorrow, I think anyone using that will realize
that if 'today' doesn't work, those will not either. Sure, I like to be
complete too, but at a certain point it becomes overload and people
can't process it. Part of the reason the release notes are read is
because they are _readable_, or as readable was we can make +300
changes.
Do you think I include every user-visible change in the release notes?
It would be 2-3x longer, and probably not more useful.
-- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610)
359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania19073
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 01:08, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Do you think I include every user-visible change in the release notes?
> It would be 2-3x longer, and probably not more useful.
> Part of the reason the release notes are read is
> because they are _readable_
On the contrary, I think we could do a lot to make the release notes
more readable, while at the same time providing more information to
users.
We're really serving two different audiences with the release notes.
Some people are just interested in the highlights of the release, so
that they are up to date on the latest new PostgreSQL functionality. For
these people, I think the existing "highlights of the release" section
at the top of the release notes is sufficient, although it could
probably be made a less terse.
The second audience is the people who are really interested in exactly
what has changed between the new release of PostgreSQL and the previous
release series. It is important that we make it easy for an admin
planning a PostgreSQL upgrade at a fairly large site to be able to see
what changes in PostgreSQL have been made, and what changes will be
necessary in their own applications. This audience is served fairly well
by the present release notes, but I think we could do better. The
backward-incompatibility section could definitely be improved, and the
whole process of summarizing the CVS logs after the fact is sure to lose
information. Furthermore, many of the release note entries are so brief
that it's difficult, even for someone familiar with PostgreSQL, to tell
exactly what they mean. Sometimes the entry doesn't even bother to
specify exactly what has been changed. Using complete sentences, where
warranted, and describing complex or important changes with a full
paragraph of text would be a good idea, IMHO. I've appended a few
examples of less-than-optimal entries to this mail.
So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a
bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively.
We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding <xref>s to
the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really*
maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather
than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch
that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when
the patch is applied.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on how to improve the release notes. I've
been meaning to get this off my chest for a while, so thanks for the
chance :-)
Comments are welcome.
-Neil
Here are a few examples of less-than-optimal entries I noticed while
browsing the release notes recently:
This HISTORY entry from 7.4 doesn't really tell anyone anything:
* Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects
Or take this entry -- I can basically decipher what it means, but it
takes a fair degree of difficulty:
* Disallow literal carriage return as a data value, backslash-carriage-return and \r are still allowed
(Bruce)
Or this entry, which once again conveys little useful information, to me
at least:
* Improve \d display (Christopher)
On Wednesday 22 October 2003 07:37, Neil Conway wrote: > The second audience is the people who are really interested in exactly > what has changed between the new release of PostgreSQL and the previous > release series. It is important that we make it easy for an admin > planning a PostgreSQL upgrade at a fairly large site to be able to see > what changes in PostgreSQL have been made, and what changes will be > necessary in their own applications. Something I was pondering the other day was whether a pg_compat_chk utility would be practical/desirable. You run it against your existing database / schema dump and it prints a set of warnings: Old version = 7.2.1 New version = 7.4.0 Warning: schema support introduced (v7.3) all objects will be placed in the default schema Failure: DEFAULT 'now' not supported (v7.4) table1.column2 table2.column3 Notice: timestamp now holds milliseconds by default (v7.3) tableX.whatever My main concern would be that a 90% solution might be worse than nothing at all. Incidentally, this is not idle speculation, but something I might well have time to stick in gborg during the 7.5 devt cycle. -- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd
Neil Conway wrote: > On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 01:08, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > Do you think I include every user-visible change in the release notes? > > It would be 2-3x longer, and probably not more useful. > > > Part of the reason the release notes are read is > > because they are _readable_ > > On the contrary, I think we could do a lot to make the release notes > more readable, while at the same time providing more information to > users. > > > Here are a few examples of less-than-optimal entries I noticed while > browsing the release notes recently: > > This HISTORY entry from 7.4 doesn't really tell anyone anything: > > * Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects I agree it would be nice to use more xrefs in the release notes. What happens when you go into more detail is that it comes even more confusing --- in most cases we fixed some obscure flag combination or something, and explaining that is even harder than just saying we fixed some rare pg_dump failure cases. The people who reported the problem have already gotten their fix, and in most cases, they are the only ones to have ever tried that combination --- documenting that doesn't really add much, at least for me and I would assume 99% of our users. We could go for 99.9% of our users, but that makes things harder to filter for the other 99%. Please do a test --- do a cvs log of the bin/pg_dump directory and see if I missed anything significant in the release notes. If you start listing obscure changes, the significant ones don't really stand out anymore. You could add a 'obscure changes' section, but I think once you create the list and read it, it will look pretty obscure. > Or take this entry -- I can basically decipher what it means, but it > takes a fair degree of difficulty: > > * Disallow literal carriage return as a data value, > backslash-carriage-return and \r are still allowed (Bruce) OK, please improve the wording. > Or this entry, which once again conveys little useful information, to me > at least: > > * Improve \d display (Christopher) There were a huge number of \d display improvements --- do \d in 7.4 and you will see them --- I don't see much value in saying, "Rules now display as ...", or "defaults now have more parens". I have always encouraged people to improve the existing notes. I don't pretend to use the perfect wording --- please send in improvements. As far as incrementally updating the release notes --- lots of our work is incremental, meaning we fix X, then add Y, and Z, and the resulting change is one release note entry (psql \d display improvements, for example). Documenting them separately just leads to a mess of entries that we have to consolidate at the end anyway. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> As far as incrementally updating the release notes --- lots of our work
> is incremental, meaning we fix X, then add Y, and Z, and the resulting
> change is one release note entry (psql \d display improvements, for
> example). Documenting them separately just leads to a mess of entries
> that we have to consolidate at the end anyway.
We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes
to release.sgml as they are made. That's relatively new though, and I
dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not.
Bruce, did you use those notes at all this time?
regards, tom lane
Tom Lane wrote: > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > > As far as incrementally updating the release notes --- lots of our work > > is incremental, meaning we fix X, then add Y, and Z, and the resulting > > change is one release note entry (psql \d display improvements, for > > example). Documenting them separately just leads to a mess of entries > > that we have to consolidate at the end anyway. > > We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes > to release.sgml as they are made. That's relatively new though, and I > dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not. > Bruce, did you use those notes at all this time? I checked them to make sure they were already included in my CVS notes, and I might have used some of its wording if it was better than mine. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
We integrate PostgreSQL with our product, which we ship to the end user. We do read the release notes, they are important to us. They don't have to be excruciatingly long, they can't be ridiculously short and cryptic. You have to find the golden spot in the middle. Just treat us the way you want to be treated + some extra allowance for ignorance. Mike. > > Part of the reason the release notes are read is > > because they are _readable_
Michael Brusser wrote: > We integrate PostgreSQL with our product, which we ship to the end user. > We do read the release notes, they are important to us. > They don't have to be excruciatingly long, they can't be > ridiculously short and cryptic. > You have to find the golden spot in the middle. Just treat us > the way you want to be treated + some extra allowance for ignorance. The big question is whether the current release notes hit he right balanced. Do they for you? -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 13:26, Tom Lane wrote: > We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes > to release.sgml as they are made. That's relatively new though, and I > dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not. Right, we also did a pretty bad job of incrementally updating release.sgml during the development cycle: only a small portion of all the changes that we made actually got added to it. I think it would be a good idea to try to be better at this during the 7.5 cycle. When 7.5 development begins, we should divide release.sgml into the relevant sections (e.g. "libpq", "contrib", "performance", "highlights of the release", etc.), and then keep it updated whenever a relevant change is made. IMHO that would be bother easier to maintain (see we need to write CVS changelog entries anyway, and Bruce wouldn't need to spend as long summarizing the changes at the end of the dev cycle), as well as producing a better quality release notes -- but since Bruce is the one actually doing the work, I'm content to leave this in his hands. -Neil
Neil Conway wrote: > On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 13:26, Tom Lane wrote: > > We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes > > to release.sgml as they are made. That's relatively new though, and I > > dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not. > > Right, we also did a pretty bad job of incrementally updating > release.sgml during the development cycle: only a small portion of all > the changes that we made actually got added to it. I think it would be a > good idea to try to be better at this during the 7.5 cycle. When 7.5 > development begins, we should divide release.sgml into the relevant > sections (e.g. "libpq", "contrib", "performance", "highlights of the > release", etc.), and then keep it updated whenever a relevant change is > made. > > IMHO that would be bother easier to maintain (see we need to write CVS > changelog entries anyway, and Bruce wouldn't need to spend as long > summarizing the changes at the end of the dev cycle), as well as > producing a better quality release notes -- but since Bruce is the one > actually doing the work, I'm content to leave this in his hands. I find it easier to generate a list from raw CVS than to merge +500 entries into a consistent whole, and I never expect the maintained list to be 100% accurate, so I have to do the CVS thing anyway. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
> > On Wednesday 22 October 2003 07:37, Neil Conway wrote: > > The second audience is the people who are really interested in exactly > > what has changed between the new release of PostgreSQL and the previous > > release series. It is important that we make it easy for an admin > > planning a PostgreSQL upgrade at a fairly large site to be able to see > > what changes in PostgreSQL have been made, and what changes will be > > necessary in their own applications. > > Something I was pondering the other day was whether a pg_compat_chk utility > would be practical/desirable. You run it against your existing database / > schema dump and it prints a set of warnings: > > Old version = 7.2.1 > New version = 7.4.0 > > Warning: schema support introduced (v7.3) > all objects will be placed in the default schema > Failure: DEFAULT 'now' not supported (v7.4) > table1.column2 > table2.column3 > Notice: timestamp now holds milliseconds by default (v7.3) > tableX.whatever > > My main concern would be that a 90% solution might be worse than nothing at > all. > Incidentally, this is not idle speculation, but something I might well have > time to stick in gborg during the 7.5 devt cycle. > > -- > Richard Huxton > Archonet Ltd > A pg_compat_chk utility sounds great. No idea, if this is practical, but it's desirable - at least to me. Regards, Christoph PS I'm surprised no one else replied.
On Friday 24 October 2003 00:01, Christoph Haller wrote: > > A pg_compat_chk utility sounds great. > No idea, if this is practical, but it's desirable - at least to me. Well, I'm confident the first 90% is practical just by running some regexps against a pg_dumped schema. It doesn't need to guarantee there's a problem, just say "here's something you want to check". And there are things you could probably never check convincingly (e.g. the queries in an application). It's that final 10% that makes me uncertain. Maybe it'd be enough to just list "tests I couldn't perform", at first anyway. -- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd
> -----Original Message----- > From: Bruce Momjian ... > The big question is whether the current release notes hit he right > balanced. Do they for you? The last time I read the notes was when we upgraded to 7.3.4. I'll pick up couple entries from Release Notes and the HISTORY file (which we always read) for examples. PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality. => this is entirely sufficient. Detailed info canbe found in the docs. Optimizer improvements=> this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? Fix to_ascii() buffer overruns=> I don't think I need any more details here Work around buggy strxfrm() present in some Solaris releases=> if we did not suffer from this (big thanks for fixing!) Iwould've never guessed how it may manifest itself and affect the database, even though this alone could be a strong reason for upgrade. If you think this would take too much space and bloat the document, then maybe the best solution is to have a reference number:Bug# 123 : Work around ... Then I could go to some http://postgres../bugtrack enter this number and learn more. Mike.
Michael Brusser wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Bruce Momjian > ... > > The big question is whether the current release notes hit he right > > balanced. Do they for you? > > The last time I read the notes was when we upgraded to 7.3.4. > I'll pick up couple entries from Release Notes and the HISTORY file > (which we always read) for examples. > > PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality. > => this is entirely sufficient. Detailed info can be found in the docs. Good. > Optimizer improvements > => this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code > tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major > breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take > a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? Yes, this is always very hard to explain. The optimizer itself is complex, and uses complex terms like merge join and key pruning. It is hard to explain what queries will be affected, though the basic issue is that the optimizer will choose a better plan more frequently. > Fix to_ascii() buffer overruns > => I don't think I need any more details here > > Work around buggy strxfrm() present in some Solaris releases > => if we did not suffer from this (big thanks for fixing!) I would've > never guessed how it may manifest itself and affect the database, > even though this alone could be a strong reason for upgrade. We don't actually explain enough in the release notes for people to determine if they should do _minor_ upgrades --- bottom line is that minor upgrades only require a stop/install/restart postmaster, so we assume everyone will do that, and in this case, if you are running Solaris, that is enough of a reason alone --- whether that particular bug affects you or not. > If you think this would take too much space and bloat the document, > then maybe the best solution is to have a reference number: > Bug# 123 : Work around ... > Then I could go to some http://postgres../bugtrack enter this number > and learn more. Yes, that would be nice. So, it sounds like we are already pretty close to ideal for you. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > Michael Brusser wrote: > > > Optimizer improvements > > => this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code > > tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major > > breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take > > a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? > > Yes, this is always very hard to explain. The optimizer itself is > complex, and uses complex terms like merge join and key pruning. It is > hard to explain what queries will be affected, though the basic issue is > that the optimizer will choose a better plan more frequently. One thing that might be worth mentioning is that "WHERE foo IN (subquery)" type queries are much improved. That's a one of the more common complaints about 7.3 and previous and it's one that fairly easy to recognize. -- greg
Greg Stark wrote: > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > > > Michael Brusser wrote: > > > > > Optimizer improvements > > > => this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code > > > tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major > > > breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take > > > a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? > > > > Yes, this is always very hard to explain. The optimizer itself is > > complex, and uses complex terms like merge join and key pruning. It is > > hard to explain what queries will be affected, though the basic issue is > > that the optimizer will choose a better plan more frequently. > > One thing that might be worth mentioning is that "WHERE foo IN (subquery)" > type queries are much improved. That's a one of the more common complaints > about 7.3 and previous and it's one that fairly easy to recognize. That is right at the top of the release notes: Performance IN/NOT IN subqueries are now much more efficient -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Neil Conway writes: > So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a > bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively. > We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding <xref>s to > the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really* > maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather > than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch > that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when > the patch is applied. I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made. This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc. We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add Informix mode." I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it, it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it doesn't exist either. -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
Peter Eisentraut writes: > Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and there is no > mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add Informix > mode." Sorry, inconsistent spelling tripped me up on this one. But the theoretical point stands. -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 03:11:25PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Peter Eisentraut writes: > > > Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and there is no > > mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add Informix > > mode." I still wonder what "Informix compatibility mode" means. Is it that you can take an embedded-C program from Informix and compile it with ECPG? -- Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>) "Doing what he did amounts to sticking his fingers under the hood of the implementation; if he gets his fingers burnt, it's his problem." (Tom Lane)
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Neil Conway writes: > > > So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a > > bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively. > > We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding <xref>s to > > the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really* > > maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather > > than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch > > that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when > > the patch is applied. > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be If they _must_ be done the way you suggest, why have we been able to generate reliable release notes all these years? Basically, I think release notes are more efficiently written in batch mode, meaning all at once --- sure, we could do it incrementally, but it is more work to fiddle with it in pieces. I want people to focus on reliable commit messages and I can handle the release notes part. The one advantage of incremental is that folks can see what we have added so far, but it doesn't seem worth the extra work. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Alvaro Herrera wrote: > On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 03:11:25PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > > Peter Eisentraut writes: > > > > > Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and there is no > > > mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add Informix > > > mode." > > I still wonder what "Informix compatibility mode" means. Is it that you > can take an embedded-C program from Informix and compile it with ECPG? Yes, it is for compiling/running informix-style ecpg programs with PostgreSQL. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Bruce Momjian writes: > If they _must_ be done the way you suggest, why have we been able to > generate reliable release notes all these years? With all respect for your work and your enthusiasm for this approach, but personally, I have absolutely no confidence that the release notes are complete, accurate, or reliable. That is my deeply founded motivation for trying to institute changes. But I might be wrong and my fears might have no merit. -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Bruce Momjian writes: > > > If they _must_ be done the way you suggest, why have we been able to > > generate reliable release notes all these years? > > With all respect for your work and your enthusiasm for this approach, but > personally, I have absolutely no confidence that the release notes are > complete, accurate, or reliable. That is my deeply founded motivation for > trying to institute changes. But I might be wrong and my fears might have > no merit. Sure, I fear missing things too. One of my goals is to make sure I understand all the CVS commit messages that appear, so I know later I can make a release note about it. Right now, we have a simple process that you can move through step by step and make sure you get everything. With a piecemeal approach, I think we are much more likely to miss something, or have things get confused by merging a CVS log version and a piecemeal version. Looking at the past, I don't remember us missing anything --- I do remember missing a few items that should have been listed in the compatibilities section, but that is more of a problem of us not reviewing the release notes thoroughly. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
> I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made. > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc. > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add > Informix mode." > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it, > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it > doesn't exist either. I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese), otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since there is little info in the official release note. This is painful since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to look for what each item of the official release note actually means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in mailing lists is quite common). -- Tatsuo Ishii
Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can > > supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release > > notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would > > like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the > > official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the > > release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release > > notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release > > notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes > > or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom. > > > > How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It > > basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out > > additional details. > > Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I > am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source > tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe > http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate. > What do you think? Yes, I had thought about that --- I put something about migrating to 7.3 on a web page and put the URL in the release notes, and the URL kept becoming invalid as they changed web configurations. I am afraid we have to keep this in CVS so we don't lose it over time. It could be huge. Current release notes for 7.4 is around 500 lines. I think I could do this in another 500 lines. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have > > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be > > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made. > > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and > > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc. > > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make > > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that > > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and > > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add > > Informix mode." > > > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it, > > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it > > doesn't exist either. > > I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been > working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese), > otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since > there is little info in the official release note. This is painful > since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to > look for what each item of the official release note actually > means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people > involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful > information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical > messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail > archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for > me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the > commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace > what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the > fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to > "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in > mailing lists is quite common). OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom. How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out additional details. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
> Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have > > > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be > > > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made. > > > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and > > > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc. > > > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make > > > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that > > > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and > > > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add > > > Informix mode." > > > > > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it, > > > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it > > > doesn't exist either. > > > > I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been > > working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese), > > otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since > > there is little info in the official release note. This is painful > > since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to > > look for what each item of the official release note actually > > means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people > > involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful > > information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical > > messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail > > archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for > > me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the > > commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace > > what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the > > fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to > > "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in > > mailing lists is quite common). > > OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can > supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release > notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would > like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the > official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the > release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release > notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release > notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes > or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom. > > How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It > basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out > additional details. Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate. What do you think? -- Tatsuo Ishii
Bruce Momjian wrote: >Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > >>>OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can >>>supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release >>>notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would >>>like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the >>>official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the >>>release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release >>>notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release >>>notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes >>>or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom. >>> >>>How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It >>>basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out >>>additional details. >>> >>> >>Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I >>am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source >>tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe >>http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate. >>What do you think? >> >> > >Yes, I had thought about that --- I put something about migrating to 7.3 >on a web page and put the URL in the release notes, and the URL kept >becoming invalid as they changed web configurations. I am afraid we >have to keep this in CVS so we don't lose it over time. > >It could be huge. Current release notes for 7.4 is around 500 lines. I >think I could do this in another 500 lines. > This is starting to sound awfully like a conventional bug tracking system but without the support infrastructure. Why not go the whole distance? Then your release notes could give the numbers and headings of bugs fixed (including features added) and those who want more details could look at the bug reports. The process could be a whole lot less painful than it appears to be right now, I suspect. cheers andrew
Andrew Dunstan wrote: > >Yes, I had thought about that --- I put something about migrating to 7.3 > >on a web page and put the URL in the release notes, and the URL kept > >becoming invalid as they changed web configurations. I am afraid we > >have to keep this in CVS so we don't lose it over time. > > > >It could be huge. Current release notes for 7.4 is around 500 lines. I > >think I could do this in another 500 lines. > > > > This is starting to sound awfully like a conventional bug tracking > system but without the support infrastructure. Why not go the whole > distance? Then your release notes could give the numbers and headings of > bugs fixed (including features added) and those who want more details > could look at the bug reports. The process could be a whole lot less > painful than it appears to be right now, I suspect. Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch. Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for others. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Bruce Momjian wrote: >Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release >notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output >at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch. > >Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary >jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the >release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for >others. > > You do a fine job and I know it is appreciated. I'd hate to think what would happen if you got run over by a bus. It's a bit of a matter of taste - I think bug tracking systems give projects better support than mailing lists, but maybe that's just me. cheers andrew
Andrew Dunstan wrote: > > > Bruce Momjian wrote: > > >Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release > >notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output > >at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch. > > > >Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary > >jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the > >release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for > >others. > > > > > > You do a fine job and I know it is appreciated. I'd hate to think what > would happen if you got run over by a bus. > > It's a bit of a matter of taste - I think bug tracking systems give > projects better support than mailing lists, but maybe that's just me. I think our goal is to get every known problem on the TODO list so people can scan it quickly. It is also easier to have it all centralized and distilled. However, it is hard to get more detail on the bug, so we have TODO.detail. Bug tracking systems are an extra level of abstraction for projects in that it categorizes discussion. However, that abstraction level also slows things down --- hard to say if it is a win or not. Ideally, I would like to do all the unpleasant work and making improving PostgreSQL easy for others. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
I have added my first release note detail item. I used <footnote> to add a description to the first release note item. You can see it rendered here: http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-DEVEL I plan to go through the release notes and add more. If we decide on a different format, I can change this. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have > > > > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be > > > > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made. > > > > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and > > > > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc. > > > > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make > > > > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that > > > > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and > > > > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add > > > > Informix mode." > > > > > > > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it, > > > > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it > > > > doesn't exist either. > > > > > > I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been > > > working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese), > > > otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since > > > there is little info in the official release note. This is painful > > > since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to > > > look for what each item of the official release note actually > > > means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people > > > involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful > > > information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical > > > messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail > > > archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for > > > me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the > > > commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace > > > what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the > > > fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to > > > "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in > > > mailing lists is quite common). > > > > OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can > > supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release > > notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would > > like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the > > official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the > > release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release > > notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release > > notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes > > or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom. > > > > How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It > > basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out > > additional details. > > Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I > am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source > tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe > http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate. > What do you think? > -- > Tatsuo Ishii > -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Bruce Momjian writes: > I have added my first release note detail item. I used <footnote> to > add a description to the first release note item. Please don't use footnotes. They make things really hard to read. There are plenty of other mechanisms to organize information. -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
Bruce Momjian writes: > Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release > notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output > at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch. > > Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary > jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the > release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for > others. That is not the scalable community approach that has been successful in other areas of development. You might as well say, "Just tell me all the features you need and I'll implement them." Now *that* would make it easy for other people. Once upon a time we thought that documentation wasn't important or that is was hindering people to get involved. I think that has largely been disproven and we have been very successful with the "document the code when you write it" approach. The same approach can be used for the release notes. -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Bruce Momjian writes: > > > I have added my first release note detail item. I used <footnote> to > > add a description to the first release note item. > > Please don't use footnotes. They make things really hard to read. There > are plenty of other mechanisms to organize information. OK, please suggest what I should use. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Bruce Momjian writes: > > > Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release > > notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output > > at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch. > > > > Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary > > jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the > > release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for > > others. > > That is not the scalable community approach that has been successful in > other areas of development. You might as well say, "Just tell me all the > features you need and I'll implement them." Now *that* would make it easy > for other people. If I can do some cleanup work that enables five other people to work an hour, my time is well spent. While we like people to indent their code, (and sometimes we indent it after submission) we go through an indent it all at once before the release. I see the release notes as more of a housekeeping service, more efficiently done in one big batch. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania19073
OK, I have committed changes to release.sgml so most complex entries
have a paragraph describing the change. You can see the result at:
http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-7-4
I need people to check this and help me with the items marked 'bjm'. I
am confused about the proper text for those sections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
> > Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
> > > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
> > > > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be
> > > > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
> > > > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
> > > > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
> > > > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
> > > > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
> > > > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
> > > > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add
> > > > Informix mode."
> > > >
> > > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it,
> > > > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
> > > > doesn't exist either.
> > >
> > > I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been
> > > working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese),
> > > otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since
> > > there is little info in the official release note. This is painful
> > > since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to
> > > look for what each item of the official release note actually
> > > means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people
> > > involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful
> > > information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical
> > > messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail
> > > archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for
> > > me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the
> > > commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace
> > > what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the
> > > fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to
> > > "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in
> > > mailing lists is quite common).
> >
> > OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can
> > supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
> > notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would
> > like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
> > official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
> > release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
> > notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
> > notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
> > or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.
> >
> > How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It
> > basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
> > additional details.
>
> Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I
> am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source
> tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe
> http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate.
> What do you think?
> --
> Tatsuo Ishii
>
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce Momjian wrote: > http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-7-4 > > I need people to check this and help me with the items marked 'bjm'. I > am confused about the proper text for those sections. > Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe) > bjm ?? What isn't clear about this? Should/can we refer to related sections of the manual? http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/xfunc-sql.html#AEN28722 http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/extend-type-system.html#EXTEND-TYPES-POLYMORPHIC > Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe) > bjm ?? Same question. From this url: http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/xaggr.html see this paragraph: Aggregate functions may use polymorphic state transition functions or final functions, so that the same functions can be used to implement multiple aggregates. See Section 33.2.1 for an explanation of polymorphic functions. Going a step further, the aggregate function itself may be specified with a polymorphic base type and state type, allowing a single aggregate definition to serve for multiple input data types. Here is an example of a polymorphic aggregate: CREATE AGGREGATE array_accum ( sfunc = array_append, basetype = anyelement, stype = anyarray, initcond = '{}' ); Joe
On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 11:59:05PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> OK, I have committed changes to release.sgml so most complex entries
> have a paragraph describing the change. You can see the result at:
* Full support for IPv6 connections and IPv6 address data types
Prior releases allowed only IPv6 connections and IP data types
only supported IPv4 addresses. This release adds full IPv6 support
in both of these areas.
You probably want to say "Prior releases allowed only IPv4
connections".
Kurt
Kurt Roeckx wrote: > On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 11:59:05PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > > OK, I have committed changes to release.sgml so most complex entries > > have a paragraph describing the change. You can see the result at: > > * Full support for IPv6 connections and IPv6 address data types > Prior releases allowed only IPv6 connections and IP data types > only supported IPv4 addresses. This release adds full IPv6 support > in both of these areas. > > You probably want to say "Prior releases allowed only IPv4 > connections". Fixed. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Joe Conway wrote: > Bruce Momjian wrote: > > http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-7-4 > > > > I need people to check this and help me with the items marked 'bjm'. I > > am confused about the proper text for those sections. > > > Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe) > > bjm ?? > > What isn't clear about this? Should/can we refer to related sections of > the manual? > http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/xfunc-sql.html#AEN28722 > http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/extend-type-system.html#EXTEND-TYPES-POLYMORPHIC > > > Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe) > > bjm ?? > > Same question. From this url: > http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/xaggr.html > see this paragraph: > > Aggregate functions may use polymorphic state transition functions or > final functions, so that the same functions can be used to implement > multiple aggregates. See Section 33.2.1 for an explanation of > polymorphic functions. Going a step further, the aggregate function > itself may be specified with a polymorphic base type and state type, > allowing a single aggregate definition to serve for multiple input data > types. Here is an example of a polymorphic aggregate: > > CREATE AGGREGATE array_accum ( > sfunc = array_append, > basetype = anyelement, > stype = anyarray, > initcond = '{}' > ); What had me really confused was the first release item: Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe) How does an SQL function query the data types passed to it? Once I saw that I thought I didn't underestand what polymorphic functions were. Right now we have: <listitem><para>Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe)</para> <para> bjm ?? </para> </listitem> <listitem><para>Allow polymorphic user defined aggregates (Joe)</para></listitem> These seem like duplicates. Are polymorphic functions currently most useful for aggregates? Why would someone want polymorphic aggregates? That is what I was hoping for. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce Momjian wrote:
> What had me really confused was the first release item:
>
> Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe)
>
> How does an SQL function query the data types passed to it? Once I
> saw that I thought I didn't underestand what polymorphic functions
> were.
It doesn't need to. For example:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION makearray(anyelement, anyelement) returns
anyarray as 'select ARRAY[$1, $2]' language sql;
regression=# select makearray(1,2);
makearray
-----------
{1,2}
(1 row)
regression=# select makearray('a'::text,'b');
makearray
-----------
{a,b}
(1 row)
> <listitem><para>Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic
> functions (Joe)</para> <listitem><para>Allow polymorphic user defined
> aggregates (Joe)</para></listitem>
>
> These seem like duplicates.
They aren't. The first says you could create an aggregate with defined
base and state datatypes, but where the state/final functions might be
polymorphic. The second says that the base and state types might be
polymorphic.
> Are polymorphic functions currently most useful for aggregates? Why
> would someone want polymorphic aggregates? That is what I was hoping
> for.
Well, one example is a calculation aggregate (let's say median) which
you might want to use for any numeric data type. Or an array
accumulator, e.g.
CREATE AGGREGATE myagg1
(
BASETYPE = float8,
SFUNC = array_append,
STYPE = float8[],
INITCOND = '{}'
);
CREATE AGGREGATE
CREATE AGGREGATE myagg1p
(
BASETYPE = anyelement,
SFUNC = array_append,
STYPE = anyarray,
INITCOND = '{}'
);
CREATE AGGREGATE
Joe
I included some text about the information schema in this issue of general bits. I also did some documentation of comparison of the changes in the postgresql.conf. Anyone who wants to grab parts of those items in that issue has my permission. I don't have time to re-edit for the release note format. But maybe there is some clarification text you can use. http://cookie.varlena.com:8080/varlena/GeneralBits/48.php elein On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 11:59:05PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > OK, I have committed changes to release.sgml so most complex entries > have a paragraph describing the change. You can see the result at: > > http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-7-4 > > I need people to check this and help me with the items marked 'bjm'. I > am confused about the proper text for those sections. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > > Tatsuo Ishii wrote: > > > > > I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have > > > > > been, er, boycotting it. I think, too, that release notes *must* be > > > > > written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made. > > > > > This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and > > > > > the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc. > > > > > We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make > > > > > sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that > > > > > period of time. Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and > > > > > there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit "Add > > > > > Informix mode." > > > > > > > > > > I suggest we just do it like the documentation: If you don't document it, > > > > > it doesn't exist. If you don't write a line for the release notes, it > > > > > doesn't exist either. > > > > > > > > I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been > > > > working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese), > > > > otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since > > > > there is little info in the official release note. This is painful > > > > since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to > > > > look for what each item of the official release note actually > > > > means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people > > > > involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful > > > > information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical > > > > messages are something like "see recent discussions in the mail > > > > archive for more details". This is not very helpful at least for > > > > me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the > > > > commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace > > > > what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the > > > > fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to > > > > "coulture gap"... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in > > > > mailing lists is quite common). > > > > > > OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it. I can > > > supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release > > > notes to contain more information. Seems some in the community would > > > like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the > > > official docs. One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the > > > release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release > > > notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release > > > notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes > > > or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom. > > > > > > How does that sound? I can start on this for 7.4 next week. It > > > basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out > > > additional details. > > > > Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I > > am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source > > tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe > > http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate. > > What do you think? > > -- > > Tatsuo Ishii > > > > -- > Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us > pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 > + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road > + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org
OK, release notes updated to:
<listitem><para>Allow polymorphic PL/pgSQL functions (Tom, Joe)</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe)</para>
<para>
Allow functions to accept arbitrary data types for input, and return arbitrary types.
</para>
</listitem>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Conway wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-7-4
> >
> > I need people to check this and help me with the items marked 'bjm'. I
> > am confused about the proper text for those sections.
>
> > Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe)
> > bjm ??
>
> What isn't clear about this? Should/can we refer to related sections of
> the manual?
> http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/xfunc-sql.html#AEN28722
> http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/extend-type-system.html#EXTEND-TYPES-POLYMORPHIC
>
> > Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe)
> > bjm ??
>
> Same question. From this url:
> http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/xaggr.html
> see this paragraph:
>
> Aggregate functions may use polymorphic state transition functions or
> final functions, so that the same functions can be used to implement
> multiple aggregates. See Section 33.2.1 for an explanation of
> polymorphic functions. Going a step further, the aggregate function
> itself may be specified with a polymorphic base type and state type,
> allowing a single aggregate definition to serve for multiple input data
> types. Here is an example of a polymorphic aggregate:
>
> CREATE AGGREGATE array_accum (
> sfunc = array_append,
> basetype = anyelement,
> stype = anyarray,
> initcond = '{}'
> );
>
> Joe
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your
> joining column's datatypes do not match
>
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073