Thread: PostgreSQL 13 press release draft

Hi,

Attached is a copy of the proposed press release for PostgreSQL 13, with
a link to the current document in our git repository as well[1].

Feedback of course is welcome.

To provide some context on the overall release:

* This follows the previous formats of the press releases to provide
feature highlights and be used as a springboard into discovering the
features.

* The press kit has been slimmed down. This is due to an overall
decrease in actual traffic to the press release through the years,
though downloads themselves have gone up after the release! This likely
due to fragmentation of how people consume PostgreSQL news, as today the
release serves more as a "hey the new PostgreSQL software is available!"

(And yes, according to the stats, PostgreSQL is more popular than ever ;)

This allows us to make the translation effort easier and lower the
overall maintenance efforts of the release.

* I did some research on the contents of the release itself, and it
appears to be comparable to our open source and proprietary database
peers. I did look to see if their releases included user testimonials:
those tended to be in either separate releases or other media.

Given the lack of volunteering for user testimonials over the years and
the time it takes to solicit them, I've dropped those efforts, but if
someone wants to either contribute or provide some and they are
appropriate for the release, I'd be happy to include it.

Anyway, I am personally very excited for the PostgreSQL 13 release :)

If you have any feedback, please provide it **no later than August 30,
2020 AoE**[2] as after that we will need to begin the translation effort.

Thanks!

Jonathan

[1]
https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=press.git;a=blob;f=releases/13/en/release.en.md
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anywhere_on_Earth

On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 17:07, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org> wrote:

> Anyway, I am personally very excited for the PostgreSQL 13 release :)

Yes, looks good.

Some thematic changes would be useful for this release text:

1. Parallel vacuuming is mentioned first and its probably not the
biggest thing we have here.

2. Many of the changes relate directly to large database support
* Partitioning changes
* Hash Agg
* Stats improvements
* Btree dedupe
won't be noticed by people with smaller databases, but those with
larger databases will find those changes dramatic, taken together. As
a result, I recommend that we highlight this group of changes and
describe the use case they improve, so they can be appreciated better
in context.

-- 
Simon Riggs                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
Mission Critical Databases

On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 17:07, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org> wrote:

> * The press kit has been slimmed down. This is due to an overall
> decrease in actual traffic to the press release through the years,
> though downloads themselves have gone up after the release! This likely
> due to fragmentation of how people consume PostgreSQL news, as today the
> release serves more as a "hey the new PostgreSQL software is available!"

It's also because this information is no longer available after
release, we just show them directly to the more detailed release
notes.

That's a shame because there is lots of good work in the release announcement.

-- 
Simon Riggs                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
Mission Critical Databases

On 2020-08-17 21:30, Simon Riggs wrote:
> Some thematic changes would be useful for this release text:

Also, the major features in the release notes should be filled in, 
ideally in a way that is consistent with the press release.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut              http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

Hi Simon,

On 8/17/20 3:30 PM, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 17:07, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org> wrote:
>
>> Anyway, I am personally very excited for the PostgreSQL 13 release :)
>
> Yes, looks good.
>
> Some thematic changes would be useful for this release text:
>
> 1. Parallel vacuuming is mentioned first and its probably not the
> biggest thing we have here.
>
> 2. Many of the changes relate directly to large database support
> * Partitioning changes
> * Hash Agg
> * Stats improvements
> * Btree dedupe
> won't be noticed by people with smaller databases, but those with
> larger databases will find those changes dramatic, taken together. As
> a result, I recommend that we highlight this group of changes and
> describe the use case they improve, so they can be appreciated better
> in context.

Thanks for your feedback. Overall, I do agree with your analysis. My
original intention was to provide an anchor for some features that
people could read into, but going with the "how much of the release will
be read / copied" axiom, I rearranged some of the content and took your
suggestions. Please see the updated copy attached.

This also included feedback from the RMT and expands on some of the copy
in the body of the text.

Everyone: I'm looking to freeze the copy of the release early this
upcoming week so we can begin the translating effort. That said, I will
extend to review *deadline to September 2, 2020 AoE* to ensure there is
ample time to provide feedback.

After that, barring typos / critical errors discovered after that date,
the press release content will be frozen.

Thanks!

Jonathan

On 8/17/20 3:31 PM, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 17:07, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org> wrote:
>
>> * The press kit has been slimmed down. This is due to an overall
>> decrease in actual traffic to the press release through the years,
>> though downloads themselves have gone up after the release! This likely
>> due to fragmentation of how people consume PostgreSQL news, as today the
>> release serves more as a "hey the new PostgreSQL software is available!"
>
> It's also because this information is no longer available after
> release, we just show them directly to the more detailed release
> notes.

Well, the numbers are much lower even when it is "news" -- that's the
period I typically measure.

>
> That's a shame because there is lots of good work in the release announcement.

Before I helped to write these, I used to refer to them a lot to
actually understand what was in a release :)

To your point, perhaps we can make it a bit more visible / accessible on
the website. The presskits themselves are a bit buried after the
release[1] but perhaps we can rearrange some things to make them more
visible for longer. It still does not resolve the first problem I
mention (traffic to press release down even as news...though will still
take the "downloads up" overall problem. So long as we spread awareness!)

Jonathan

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/

On 8/25/20 6:08 AM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On 2020-08-17 21:30, Simon Riggs wrote:
>> Some thematic changes would be useful for this release text:
>
> Also, the major features in the release notes should be filled in,
> ideally in a way that is consistent with the press release.

I'll submit a patch proposal on the release notes thread in that respect
soon.

Jonathan