[GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces Version 7.3 (fwd)

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Wow, this sounds great.

Where can I get a copy? Why would anyone use anything else? ;-)

Well, if you read the announcement in its entirety, you would have
noticed:

"Source for this release is available at:
http://advocacy.postgresql.org/download/
"

*grin*

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Wow, this sounds great.

Where can I get a copy? Why would anyone use anything else? ;-)

Well, if you read the announcement in its entirety, you would have
noticed:

"Source for this release is available at:
http://advocacy.postgresql.org/download/
"

Oh, good. I will go get it right now. ;-)

-- 
  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

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:scrappy@hub.org]
Sent: 03 December 2002 19:12
To: Bruce Momjian
Cc: PostgreSQL-development
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global
Development Group Announces

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Wow, this sounds great.

Where can I get a copy? Why would anyone use anything else? ;-)

Well, if you read the announcement in its entirety, you would have
noticed:

"Source for this release is available at:
http://advocacy.postgresql.org/download/

I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads.
Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow
you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them
anymore?

:-)

Regards, Dave.

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:scrappy@hub.org]
Sent: 03 December 2002 19:12
To: Bruce Momjian
Cc: PostgreSQL-development
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global
Development Group Announces

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Wow, this sounds great.

Where can I get a copy? Why would anyone use anything else? ;-)

Well, if you read the announcement in its entirety, you would have
noticed:

"Source for this release is available at:
http://advocacy.postgresql.org/download/

I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads.
Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow
you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them
anymore?

Haven't you been paying attention? There's this new advocacy and suit
marketing thing going on that makes all of that irrelevant. It's just
there for show now.

:)

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads.
Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow
you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them
anymore?

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

We are looking at some improvements to the download stuff ... Greg(?)
suggested a layout that I really liked for a web based version that would
have to tie into the main mirror database ... one that provided a wee bit
more information then just the directory listings ... but, with that
thought, isn't there a file you can put into an ftp directory that, when
you web into that directory, i gives you the listings with various
comments, or is that just using the .messages file?

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads.
Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow
you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them
anymore?

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

I understood it was intentional so comments wouldn't have done any good.

We are looking at some improvements to the download stuff ... Greg(?)
suggested a layout that I really liked for a web based version that would
have to tie into the main mirror database ... one that provided a wee bit
more information then just the directory listings ... but, with that
thought, isn't there a file you can put into an ftp directory that, when
you web into that directory, i gives you the listings with various
comments, or is that just using the .messages file?

All of them I've seen had an index.html in it.

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Dave Page wrote:
<snip>

I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads.
Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow
you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them
anymore?

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to
the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages.

The only reason for the download page not having a list of mirrors is
due to not having done it yet.

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

:-)

Regards, Dave.

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

Marc G. Fournier writes:

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

And how should we have guessed that release management is now done by the
"advocacy" group? While you're out advocating, don't forget the existing
users.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

And how should we have guessed that release management is now done by the
"advocacy" group? While you're out advocating, don't forget the existing
users.

Sorry Peter.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Justin Clift writes:

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to
the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages.

Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not
considered adequate anymore.

Well, qe're trying to move the new "portal" side of things into place
(presently at wwwdevel.postgresql.org), so that all of the different
PostgreSQL pieces are more easily accessible.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

Justin Clift writes:

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to
the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages.

Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not
considered adequate anymore.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Eisentraut [mailto:peter_e@gmx.net]
Sent: 03 December 2002 23:34
To: Justin Clift
Cc: Dave Page; Marc G. Fournier; Bruce Momjian; PostgreSQL-development
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global
Development Group Announces

Justin Clift writes:

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to

direct people to

the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more
languages.

Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly
it's not considered adequate anymore.

Strangely I was just thinking the same thing. If all the info is on
advocacy, then what exactly will be left on the main site? Idocs?

I was sort of under the impression that the site reshuffle was happening
in a top down manner anyway - start with the portal, then sort out the
less-immediately-visible lower bits.

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have
been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too
am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last
thing I need.

Regards, Dave.

Dave Page wrote:
<snip>

Strangely I was just thinking the same thing. If all the info is on
advocacy, then what exactly will be left on the main site? Idocs?

Good point, and worth thinking about then.

I was sort of under the impression that the site reshuffle was happening
in a top down manner anyway - start with the portal, then sort out the
less-immediately-visible lower bits.

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have
been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too
am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last
thing I need.

Ok then, what do you suggest?

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Regards, Dave.

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Clift [mailto:justin@postgresql.org]
Sent: 04 December 2002 10:59
To: Dave Page
Cc: Peter Eisentraut; Marc G. Fournier; Bruce Momjian;
PostgreSQL-development
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global
Development Group Announces

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you

should have

been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince

:-) - I too

am getting far too much mail these days and another list is

the last

thing I need.

Ok then, what do you suggest?

Not sure, but we do need to define the roles of the groups and keep them
seperate as much as possible otherwise some of us are gonna overload.
I'm sure Vince will have something to say about this, but it seems to me
that advocacy should define what the <urgh>marketing</urgh> plan should
be, and should look like, then the www people should implement it.

Having the www people maintaining most sites, then the advocacy people
doing their own thing seperately is a recipe for trouble. Think about
how this would work in a commercial organisation - you would not have
the web team sitting in on all the marketing meetings.

We also have the advantage that our marketing people (== advocacy) are
technically knowledgable and will not make idiots of themselves on a
regular basis by asking us for impossible things - unlike your regular
run-of-the-mill marketing drones :-)

Regards, Dave.

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

I understood it was intentional so comments wouldn't have done any good.

Anything is only as intentional as nobody making constructive critisms of
it ... ewwww, that was major bad english ... not part of solution, you are
part of problem sort of thing...

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

And how should we have guessed that release management is now done by the
"advocacy" group? While you're out advocating, don't forget the existing
users.

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Dave Page wrote:
<snip>

I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads.
Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow
you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them
anymore?

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to
the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages.

The only reason for the download page not having a list of mirrors is
due to not having done it yet.

So as to not recreate the wheel, or, at least, get the wheel properly
rolling, can we get that download page redirected to the one that does
list the mirrors? :)

I liked Greg(?)'s ideas, but I don't see it as being implemented overnight
:)

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Justin Clift writes:

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to
the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages.

Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not
considered adequate anymore.

As of yet, the new portal isn't ready yet ... and the adequacy of the
existing site isn't so much a problem, but maintainability of it ...
according to Vince, trying to add anything to it is virtually impossible
:(

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have
been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too
am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last
thing I need.

And I'll pre-empt *that* with "the volume of email isn't changing, only
the ability to filter that email" ... the purpose of the -advocacy list is
to focus on how to better market the software ... not through stuff like
advertising, but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the
out-dated myths that still float around ...

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

I understood it was intentional so comments wouldn't have done any good.

Anything is only as intentional as nobody making constructive critisms of
it ... ewwww, that was major bad english ... not part of solution, you are
part of problem sort of thing...

That may be how you understood it, but not how I understood it. There
appears to be an incremental takeover occurring.

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
<snip>

So as to not recreate the wheel, or, at least, get the wheel properly
rolling, can we get that download page redirected to the one that does
list the mirrors? :)

Yep.

Would the best way to do this be changing the wording to say something like:

"PostgreSQL can be downloaded as source code from any of the many mirror
sites:"

With a link after it directing to somewhere that gives the list. The
present "www.postgresql.org" with the list of mirrors would probably be
adequate, but it'll need to be a different url than the straight
"www.postgresql.org" as that's going to change as soon as the new portal
is in place.

Does this sound like a workable approach for now?

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

I liked Greg(?)'s ideas, but I don't see it as being implemented overnight
:)

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself
had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on
it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug*

And how should we have guessed that release management is now done by the
"advocacy" group? While you're out advocating, don't forget the existing
users.

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that were
masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the accomplishments or
promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in this announcement you
may want to try using this tool: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
The stored phrases are much more refined and better paired.

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:scrappy@hub.org]
Sent: 04 December 2002 13:41
To: Dave Page
Cc: Peter Eisentraut; Justin Clift; Bruce Momjian;
PostgreSQL-development
Subject: RE: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global
Development Group Announces

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you

should have

been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince

:-) - I too

am getting far too much mail these days and another list is

the last

thing I need.

And I'll pre-empt *that* with "the volume of email isn't
changing, only the ability to filter that email" ... the
purpose of the -advocacy list is to focus on how to better
market the software ... not through stuff like advertising,
but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the
out-dated myths that still float around ...

Which is perfectly fine, but as one of the web site developers, I don't
want to have to sit in on all the marketing threads to know what they
want done with the websites. Instead I'd rather the discussions are
summarized by one the the guys there (you/Justin/Bruce?), and they
present that to -www and say 'this is what we think is good, please make
it happen', at which point I can start coding.

Regards, Dave.

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Dave Page wrote:
<snip>

Strangely I was just thinking the same thing. If all the info is on
advocacy, then what exactly will be left on the main site? Idocs?

Good point, and worth thinking about then.

I think we're all in pseudo-agreement here ... we need clearer lines drawn
... IMHO, the *main* thing that is on www.postgresql.org is the docs ...
all the docs, not just idocs ... IMHO, techdocs is the tutorials and
guides that are developed/provided independantly of the core documentation
...

www.postgresql.org, once its ready, is going to point to the new portal,
after which what is now www.postgresql.org is going to need to tighten
itself up to reduce redundancy ... I'd personally like to see the iDocs
stuff somehow used more heavily then I think it is now ... one of the neat
things about it is the ability, like with the PHP site, to add
comments/examples.

I think the only limitation that I've heard of anyone talking about as
concerns idocs is the search facility is a bit weak, which is actually one
of the reasons that I don't use it as often as I could ...

xfunc-c.html
release-6-1.html
release-6-2.html
tutorial-table.html
datatype.html
release-6-3.html
release-6-1-1.html
plpgsql-trigger.html
setindex.html
release-6-5-2.html
regress-evaluation.html
plpgsql-declarations.html
plpgsql-expressions.html
release-0-03.html
release-6-5.html
release-7-0-1.html
release-7-0.html
release-7-1.html
release-7-2.html
routine-vacuuming.html
rules-insert.html
runtime-config.html
sql-comment.html
functions-datetime.html
functions-formatting.html
datatype-datetime.html
sql-createtable.html
sql-expressions.html
sql-keywords-appendix.html
sql-set.html
triggers.html

would it be possible to replace the .html file with the page Title? That
way, for instance, I can choose to go to 'Date/Time Types' instead of
going datatype-datetimes.html?

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

And I'll pre-empt *that* with "the volume of email isn't
changing, only the ability to filter that email" ... the
purpose of the -advocacy list is to focus on how to better
market the software ... not through stuff like advertising,
but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the
out-dated myths that still float around ...

Which is perfectly fine, but as one of the web site developers, I don't
want to have to sit in on all the marketing threads to know what they
want done with the websites. Instead I'd rather the discussions are
summarized by one the the guys there (you/Justin/Bruce?), and they
present that to -www and say 'this is what we think is good, please make
it happen', at which point I can start coding.

Ah, okay, that makes sense ... sort of allocate a 'liason' between the
groups ... ?

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Justin Clift writes:

Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to
the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages.

Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not
considered adequate anymore.

As of yet, the new portal isn't ready yet ... and the adequacy of the
existing site isn't so much a problem, but maintainability of it ...
according to Vince, trying to add anything to it is virtually impossible
:(

I have a new design for it, now it's just getting the time to implement
it. It's easy to add to and looks alot nicer.

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:scrappy@hub.org]
Sent: 04 December 2002 13:56
To: Dave Page
Cc: Peter Eisentraut; Justin Clift; Bruce Momjian;
PostgreSQL-development
Subject: RE: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global
Development Group Announces

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

And I'll pre-empt *that* with "the volume of email isn't

changing,

only the ability to filter that email" ... the purpose of the
-advocacy list is to focus on how to better market the

software ...

not through stuff like advertising, but how do we provide
information to debunk alot of the out-dated myths that

still float

around ...

Which is perfectly fine, but as one of the web site developers, I
don't want to have to sit in on all the marketing threads

to know what

they want done with the websites. Instead I'd rather the

discussions

are summarized by one the the guys there

(you/Justin/Bruce?), and they

present that to -www and say 'this is what we think is good, please
make it happen', at which point I can start coding.

Ah, okay, that makes sense ... sort of allocate a 'liason'
between the groups ... ?

Sounds spot on to me.

Regards, Dave.

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote:

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have
been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too
am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last
thing I need.

And I'll pre-empt *that* with "the volume of email isn't changing, only
the ability to filter that email" ... the purpose of the -advocacy list is
to focus on how to better market the software ... not through stuff like
advertising, but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the
out-dated myths that still float around ...

But we *are* filtering. I'm filtering out all mail from -advocacy.
Besides, I already got off of lists that I wanted to be on due to the
traffic. Now you want me to join one that I don't want to be on so I
can get more traffic? I've seen how well filters work. I've asked you
questions that I never did get an answer to. How is that any better than
not getting the mail to begin with?

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On 4 Dec 2002 at 9:54, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

would it be possible to replace the .html file with the page Title?
That way, for instance, I can choose to go to 'Date/Time Types'
instead of going datatype-datetimes.html?

That is something I've long wished for.... If needed, I'll do the
work to get a search engine that does this.
--
Dan Langille : http://www.langille.org/

"Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk> writes:

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have
been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too
am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last
thing I need.

I'm not subscribed to -advocacy either. I'm a little disturbed to hear
that major decisions seem to be getting taken there without any mention
in -hackers.

regards, tom lane

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that
were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the
accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in
this announcement you may want to try using this tool:
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more
refined and better paired.

Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ...

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

I have a new design for it, now it's just getting the time to implement
it. It's easy to add to and looks alot nicer.

Cool, I think the only beef I ever had with it was the way the results
were presented, but loved teh whole annotated aspects ...

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk> writes:

I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have
been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too
am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last
thing I need.

I'm not subscribed to -advocacy either. I'm a little disturbed to hear
that major decisions seem to be getting taken there without any mention
in -hackers.

Everything that is discussed on -advocacy is generally that which is
dealing with the advocacy web site ... case studies and such ... there are
no "major decisions" being made over there ... in my case, it was a small
pool of ppl interested in advocacy/marketing that I could draw on to write
a stronger, less techie oriented, press release around ...

I have a list of 350+ contacts that I used to get it out through, in
various fields (university, publishing, etc) and needed something a little
bit more at that level then I've been able to create in the past ...

Most, if not all, of the stuff going through -advocacy is, right now,
revolving around keeping track of the various press links that ppl find
on the 'Net, which are to be added to the various sites that are currently
being developed ... as well as a point of contact for liason'ng with
companies willing/able to write and publish case studies ...

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that
were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the
accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in
this announcement you may want to try using this tool:
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more
refined and better paired.

Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ...

I was hoping for something that would take existing text and *Bullshit*
it. Bummer.

-- 
  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

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that
were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the
accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in
this announcement you may want to try using this tool:
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more
refined and better paired.

Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ...

I was hoping for something that would take existing text and *Bullshit*
it. Bummer.

Click on it a few times. You'll get the text you need. I've actually
used it for real things with excellent results (I'm not going to
elaborate).

Vince.
--
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that
were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the
accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in
this announcement you may want to try using this tool:
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more
refined and better paired.

Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ...

I was hoping for something that would take existing text and *Bullshit*
it. Bummer.

No, but I figure that at least it will give me a good site to give me BS
fodder from ... man, just wait for the next release announcement :)

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the
minority on this one.

-- 
  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

Also in addition to the advocacy & main page conflicts, there
are conflicts with the techdocs pages that I've raised in the
past. I am hoping the new portal will really help put things
in their place because these scattered sites are pretty
confusing to people looking for definitive information
and finding a mixed bag.

I am also going to ask if we could put a link from postgresql.org
over to General Bits (the pgsql-general column)
after I had a few issues out and the kinks worked out
and everyone was not so swamped with the release and
the new portal. This is also the kind of thing that goes with
what seems to be the meat of the postgresql.org web pages.

elein

On Wednesday 04 December 2002 05:54, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Dave Page wrote:
<snip>

Strangely I was just thinking the same thing. If all the info is on
advocacy, then what exactly will be left on the main site? Idocs?

Good point, and worth thinking about then.

I think we're all in pseudo-agreement here ... we need clearer lines drawn
... IMHO, the *main* thing that is on www.postgresql.org is the docs ...
all the docs, not just idocs ... IMHO, techdocs is the tutorials and
guides that are developed/provided independantly of the core documentation
...

www.postgresql.org, once its ready, is going to point to the new portal,
after which what is now www.postgresql.org is going to need to tighten
itself up to reduce redundancy ... I'd personally like to see the iDocs
stuff somehow used more heavily then I think it is now ... one of the neat
things about it is the ability, like with the PHP site, to add
comments/examples.

I think the only limitation that I've heard of anyone talking about as
concerns idocs is the search facility is a bit weak, which is actually one
of the reasons that I don't use it as often as I could ...

xfunc-c.html
release-6-1.html
release-6-2.html
tutorial-table.html
datatype.html
release-6-3.html
release-6-1-1.html
plpgsql-trigger.html
setindex.html
release-6-5-2.html
regress-evaluation.html
plpgsql-declarations.html
plpgsql-expressions.html
release-0-03.html
release-6-5.html
release-7-0-1.html
release-7-0.html
release-7-1.html
release-7-2.html
routine-vacuuming.html
rules-insert.html
runtime-config.html
sql-comment.html
functions-datetime.html
functions-formatting.html
datatype-datetime.html
sql-createtable.html
sql-expressions.html
sql-keywords-appendix.html
sql-set.html
triggers.html

would it be possible to replace the .html file with the page Title? That
way, for instance, I can choose to go to 'Date/Time Types' instead of
going datatype-datetimes.html?

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your
message can get through to the mailing list cleanly

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
elein@varlena.com Database Consulting www.varlena.com
I have always depended on the [QA] of strangers.

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with

a

stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Ummm...I disagree. Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.
Particularly when you compare against similar efforts from MySQL, Oracle,
etc.

Chris

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with

a

stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Ummm...I disagree. Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.
Particularly when you compare against similar efforts from MySQL, Oracle,
etc.

Yes, indeed.

The _prime_ reason for the fact that MySQL is the "M" in "LAMP" is that there
is a steady, intent set of efforts going into marketing the "M." People think
that MySQL is faster, easier to use and "more standard" than its alternatives,
and that is certainly the result of marketing.

The /real/ technical merit of MySQL has been that there are some integrated
tools for ISPs like CPANEL that make it easy for ISPs that don't know
/anything/ about DBMSes to provide MySQL for their customers. CPANEL doesn't
support PostgreSQL, and historically, it has been somewhat more difficult to
support large numbers of PostgreSQL instances on a web server. Some of that
has changed, though CPANEL /still/ doesn't support PostgreSQL.

If any of you consider these "technical" issues to be small and petty, I'm
afraid I don't /care/. More importantly, the hundreds of ISPs licensing
CPANEL don't care. /They/ are the ones that would need convincing, and I
don't think there's any real route to convince them that they should be
pounding down CPANEL's door asking for a PostgreSQL front end and to convince
them that they have to tell their customers:

"We sold you MySQL, telling you it was good for you to use. We were
wrong, and our new story is that you should convert your databases over
to use PostgreSQL."

Anyone consider that a likely scenario? Anyone?

It's fair to say that PostgreSQL doesn't need the likes of the "Database
HOWTO" that gives a sales job that's so blindly enthusiastic as to be, well,
blind.

But an organization that has /no/ "marketing department" is at a severe
disadvantage, like it or not.

It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to have a marketing group
without there being some wilful blinders involved; it's vital for there to be
some technical involvement in the marketing group to pop whatever bubbles they
grow that are woefully wrong. But even if it operates with some occasional
lack of /real/ vision, it's necessary to have a marketing group...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "sirhc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/advocacy.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #106. "If my supreme command center comes
under attack, I will immediately flee to safety in my prepared escape
pod and direct the defenses from there. I will not wait until the
troops break into my inner sanctum to attempt this."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/&gt;

At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.

What are the consequences of the problem?

Particularly when you compare against similar efforts from MySQL, Oracle,
etc.

You could even include Microsoft here - they do a lot of database
marketing. I am not at all sure the fact that a lot of large companies with
dubious products engage in extensive marketing is a reason for *us* to
engage in extensive marketing.

We already have a substantial following, and our clients have direct access
to the developers, so any marketing group is pretty irrelevant for existing
clients. So the only place I can see for a marketing group is in building
our market share by bringing in new clients.

If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of the
development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced in an
effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate increased
marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality works *both* ways.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner | __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |----/ - \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _________ \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172 | ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au | / \|
| --________--
PGP key available upon request, | /
and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/

[cc: list trimmed]

On Wednesday 04 December 2002 22:52, Philip Warner wrote:

At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.

What are the consequences of the problem?

Actually, lack of easy upgrading is one of PostgreSQL's major problems....

But lack of focused marketing -- truthful, not, as has been said, like the
'Database HOWTO' -- is a real problem. It would be nice to increase our
usage.

If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of the
development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced in an
effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate increased
marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality works *both*
ways.

ISTM there's a separate, non-code-developer group doing this. It doesn't seem
to take away _any_ developer resources to do an advocacy site.

However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as
fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org,
techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org,
developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have
www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in
their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

On Wed, 04 Dec 2002 22:54:37 -0500, Philip Warner wrote:

At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.

What are the consequences of the problem?

One consequence that probably hits home for everyone here is it makes it
extremely hard to make a living working with postgresql. A quick search on
monster.com gives me 17 jobs mentioning postgresql, with none listed in the
last week. A search on mysql gives me 100 jobs, with 3 filed just today.
I won't even go into the numbers for Oracle, DB2, and M$. We all have to
pay the bills and I think we'd like to do it working with postgresql.

Particularly when you compare against similar efforts from MySQL,
Oracle, etc.

You could even include Microsoft here - they do a lot of database
marketing. I am not at all sure the fact that a lot of large companies
with dubious products engage in extensive marketing is a reason for *us*
to engage in extensive marketing.

You can't win marketshare on technology alone, so unless you think we
don't need to increase our market share, that is reason enough to do more
marketing.

We already have a substantial following, and our clients have direct
access to the developers, so any marketing group is pretty irrelevant
for existing clients. So the only place I can see for a marketing group
is in building our market share by bringing in new clients.

Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant
assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no
reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of
business, there really isn't much choice.

In the company I work for now we use at least 4 different
database systems. We could probably switch all of these to postgresql,
but it probably be one heck of a battle to convince people of that. A
simple argument that could be raised is that several of the database
developers use ERWin from computer associates. ERWin's postgresql support
is spotty compared to its support of oracle, and unless there is a
groundswell of demand for better postgresql support, that's not going to
change. If postgresql can gain a larger market share, computer associates
might improve their postgresql support, and we, existing clients that we
are, will be able to use postgresql in more areas.

Marketing is very relevant to existing customers.

If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of
the development effort distorted or the existing user base
inconvenienced in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually
associate increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the
causality works *both* ways.

Aren't most development efforts made simply to gain market share? After
all, I don't think we added schema support to get *less* people to use
postgresql.

Robert Treat

Robert Treat wrote:

On Wed, 04 Dec 2002 22:54:37 -0500, Philip Warner wrote:

At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.

What are the consequences of the problem?

One consequence that probably hits home for everyone here is it makes it
extremely hard to make a living working with postgresql. A quick search on
monster.com gives me 17 jobs mentioning postgresql, with none listed in the
last week. A search on mysql gives me 100 jobs, with 3 filed just today.
I won't even go into the numbers for Oracle, DB2, and M$. We all have to
pay the bills and I think we'd like to do it working with postgresql.

One other thing marketing does is attracting developers, including
_paid_ developers, to work on PostgreSQL. Fortunately PostgreSQL is a
big hit in Japan, so SRA can pay me to work on PostgreSQL. If we can
increase PostgreSQL's popularity, we will get more people working to
improve PostgreSQL, both paid and volunteers.

-- 
  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

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Philip Warner wrote:

What are the consequences of the problem?

Speaking from the perspective of a long time postgresql user, who
currently has several very mission critical applications using postgresql
on the back end, at a very large company...

I can say the one consequence of the problem that I have run into
personally, is convincing management to allow me to use postgresql for my
projects to begin with. Fortunately, where I am currently employed, I was
able to bash my head against the brick wall until they got tired of
hearing from me, and allowed me to go with postgresql instead of sybase
(which was their first choice, as the corporation already has a sybase
site license).

The lack of name recognition was a factor that contributed to the
difficulty of getting postgresql accepted. The last thing a non technical
middle manager wants to tell his or her manager is that some mission
critical application that just crashed was running on some database he had
never heard of before that he gave the go ahead to use.

Anyway, this probably doesn't belong on this mailing list, but I saw the
question and figured I'd answer :)

By the way, I'm happy to report that after a year of absolutely flawless
performance ( except the day the raid array imploded, which was hardly
postgres's fault ), postgresql has a very good reputation in my
department.

Brian Knox
Systems Programmer

Lamar Owen wrote:

However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as
fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org,
techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org,
developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have
www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in
their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here.

I'd love to see this happen. From reading the messages here, it sounds
like the perception is that marketing == spouting bullshit. I don't
believe that's true. I think having an informative, up-to-date,
stylistically consistent website would do a tremendous amount of good.

The JDBC one is a particularly bad example right now - it doesn't fit in
with any of the rest of the site and its most prominent link is to a
completely out-of-date list of compliance tests the driver fails. The
driver may have its flaws but it's a lot better than presented there.

IMHO these things make a difference to technical people as well as
suits. If that site and the MySQL JDBC driver's site were my first
impressions, I would be using MySQL.

The JDBC site is certainly not the only one with flaws. The main website
has this paragraph in <http://www15.us.postgresql.org/related.html&gt;:

For encrypted postgresql connections, Brett McCormick
(brett-public@speakeasy.org) has made a patch for PostgreSQL
version 6.3.2 using SSL. Visit his info page for more information.

That's horribly obselete. In fact, I think a lot of the related projects
are. That's only two clicks away from the main page.

I'm volunteering to do work here. I could at the very least go through
the sites and make a longer list of things like this that I notice. If
they are public CVS somewhere, I can send patches. I saw that there's a
<http://wwwdevel.postgresql.org/&gt;. What's going on with that? Is there
anything I can do to speed up its adoption? How will it affect the rest
of the sites?

Is this list the appropriate place to discuss the websites? or should I
take it to -advocacy? My impression here is that the two sites are
maintained separately and the people involved haven't interacted very
much. Is that accurate or no?

Thanks,
Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Lamar Owen [mailto:lamar.owen@wgcr.org]
Sent: 05 December 2002 04:23
To: PostgreSQL-development
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

However, I seriously question the need in the long term for
our sites to be as
fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got
advocacy.postgresql.org,
techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org,
developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and
we also have
www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they
are fractured in
their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here.

Thats what we're working on. We've designed a new portal to all the
sites. That's go live soon and then we'll start rationalising what's
left. I'm already (admittedly slowly) deprecating odbc.postgresql.org.

Regards, Dave.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Lamb [mailto:slamb@slamb.org]
Sent: 05 December 2002 06:37
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

I'm volunteering to do work here. I could at the very least
go through
the sites and make a longer list of things like this that I
notice. If
they are public CVS somewhere, I can send patches. I saw that
there's a
<http://wwwdevel.postgresql.org/&gt;. What's going on with that?
Is there
anything I can do to speed up its adoption? How will it
affect the rest
of the sites?

That will be going live RSN as the first part of a re-org.

Is this list the appropriate place to discuss the websites?
or should I
take it to -advocacy? My impression here is that the two sites are
maintained separately and the people involved haven't interacted very
much. Is that accurate or no?

There are 2 groups of people -advocacy and the web developers. I have
suggested to Marc that we need liason between the 2 groups, and better
definition of who does what. FYI, -advocacy is an open list (afaik) and
www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work
on the sites. There is a little overlap.

Regards, Dave.

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002 cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:

It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to have a marketing group
without there being some wilful blinders involved; it's vital for there to be
some technical involvement in the marketing group to pop whatever bubbles they
grow that are woefully wrong. But even if it operates with some occasional
lack of /real/ vision, it's necessary to have a marketing group...

And, for the most part, those that are -advocacy are techies that wish to
contribute as they can, but don't have the knowledge/time to dedicate to
actual code ...

Bruce is kinda quiet, but both he and I are on that list, and I read (and
imagine Bruce does to) pretty much everything that goes through ...
but, again, these aren't 'marketing droids' we have over there, but
techies that are using the software and have an idea of her limitations
and benefits ...

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Philip Warner wrote:

At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.

What are the consequences of the problem?

Well, I'd have to say the major one is a difficult in increasing our user
base, as ppl like MySQL are making sure they are heard whenever they
add something new that we've had for years ...

If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of
the development effort distorted or the existing user base
inconvenienced in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually
associate increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the
causality works *both* ways.

That is what we want, and the efforts in no way are meant to
undermine/distort anything ... go to archives.postgresql.org and read
through the threads to get a feel ... its not a closed/hidden list by any
means ...

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Lamar Owen wrote:

However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as
fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org,
techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org,
developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have
www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in
their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here.

Ummm, actually, we have:

advocacy, techdocs, gborg, developer, archives, jobs

note that altho they are seperate URLs, the end result is going to be that
http://www.postgresql.org we become the "town square" of sorts, which
should be "real soon now" ...

jdbc/odbc are 'project sites' off of gborg, similar to what sourceforge
provides ...

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Scott Lamb wrote:

Is this list the appropriate place to discuss the websites? or should I
take it to -advocacy? My impression here is that the two sites are
maintained separately and the people involved haven't interacted very
much. Is that accurate or no?

Expect some major changes coming down the pipe ...
http://www.postgresql.org is in its final stages of a major face lift ...
the informatoin that iscurrently on that site, Vince is in the process of
doing a major face lift on, but as it is now, I guess its been a veritible
nightmare for him to really add anyting to it ...

Once we announce the new http://www.postgresql.org (hopefully this coming
week *cross fingers*), then start bombarding us with problems :)

Note that for the web site development effort itself, there is a
closed list with about a dozen or so of us on it ... the -advocacy list is
meant to be open, with its focus reflected on the advocacy web site itself
...

On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote:

www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work
on the sites.

This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4
different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting
advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to
be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms.

Robert Treat

On Thursday 05 December 2002 09:37, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Lamar Owen wrote:

However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to
be as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got

note that altho they are seperate URLs, the end result is going to be that
http://www.postgresql.org we become the "town square" of sorts, which
should be "real soon now" ...

jdbc/odbc are 'project sites' off of gborg, similar to what sourceforge
provides ...

Glad to hear this.

One question: is there any particular reason the www list is closed? Just
curious -- reading archives of this list, or getting a digest or this list,
even in a read-only manner, might alleviate some misconceptions. Those who
care can at least read what's planned for the web site.

As far as advocacy is concerned, I made a conscious decision to not read that
list -- I don't need to be convinced to use PostgreSQL. :-). Nor am I
necessarily a good 'advocacy' person......my 'convincing' many times comes
across much different from what I meant. So I don't read that list.

Can you (or Vince) distill a roadmap for the website and post here, on
hackers?
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002 cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:

It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to have a marketing group
without there being some wilful blinders involved; it's vital for there to be
some technical involvement in the marketing group to pop whatever bubbles they
grow that are woefully wrong. But even if it operates with some occasional
lack of /real/ vision, it's necessary to have a marketing group...

And, for the most part, those that are -advocacy are techies that wish to
contribute as they can, but don't have the knowledge/time to dedicate to
actual code ...

Bruce is kinda quiet, but both he and I are on that list, and I read (and
imagine Bruce does to) pretty much everything that goes through ...
but, again, these aren't 'marketing droids' we have over there, but
techies that are using the software and have an idea of her limitations
and benefits ...

Yes, I have been way too quiet. I am trying to carve out time before
starting on 7.4 work, but it seems stuff keeps coming up. I have
updated the developers page with company names, and Vince is going to
integrate that. My next step is to split out my advocacy mailbox and
start shooting out content for the advocacy site.

-- 
  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 <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the
minority on this one.

I tend to agree with Peter. Not that we don't need a marketing
presence; we do (I think Great Bridge's marketing efforts are sorely
missed). But the point he is making is that the pgsql mailing lists
go to people who are generally unimpressed by marketing fluff. And
they're already "sold" on PG anyway.

The right way to handle this next time is to generate a PR-style
press release to send to outside contacts, but to do our more
traditional, technically-oriented announcement on the mailing lists.

regards, tom lane

Folks,

We have a marketing group: PGSQL-ADVOCACY. Our problem is that we
don't have enough volunteers.

For example, last week Robert and Justin had job crises, and I left for
the mountains for Thanksgiving. As a result Marc had to pitch in at
the last minute to try to get some kind of release out. Thus the lack
of coordinated media splash for the 7.3 release.

We need more people!!! We have right now about 7 active volunteers and
6-8 translators for Advocacy. That's not nearly enough. If the people
on this thread care about marketing Postgresql, then please join the
pgsql-advocacy mailing list.

BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group, and for that
matter TechDocs.

-Josh Berkus

At 12:12 AM 5/12/2002 -0500, Robert Treat wrote:

What are the consequences of the problem?

One consequence that probably hits home for everyone here is it makes it
extremely hard to make a living working with postgresql.

...

You can't win marketshare on technology alone

I am happy with increasing market share so long a development is not
distorted or current users inconvenienced. We have seen the latter with the
misplaced announcements. And the former because I am writing this on
-hackers, rather than implementing dependency-tracking in pg_dump ;-).

...lots of stuff deleted...
Marketing is very relevant to existing customers.

Good point. Market Share -> Influence ->Corprate Support -> more features
-> market share.

Gaining market share *is* a natural consequence of improving the product;
marketing is about convincing people a product has improved, even if it
hasn't. Advocacy is about telling people about the product as it is - and I
have no problem with that, with the above proviso.

Aren't most development efforts made simply to gain market share?

<diatribe>
I seriously hope not - in fact I would find that very depressing.

In my opinion, anyone who devotes their personal free time to an open
source development project probably has a slew of complex motivations that
have little to do with market share. Perhaps the closest they would come
would be to say "I want to make it better", and in some peoples minds,
"better" is measured by market share.

In my case, development I did on other open source projects (libgd) was
driven by a philosophical objection to application of patents to software
in the US, and to a need for particular features (gd2 format, & gif
support). My work on PG is driven by a desire to make the product more
useful (to me), more usable (for me), and by a philosophical belief in the
importance of free & open software. The fact that other people (& I) profit
from this work is great. In any case, market share, for me, is at best a
third order influence - and I assume that's true for most people who
contribute to OS software. Although I do admit that there is a natural
tendency to want "your team" to win.
</diatribe>

After
all, I don't think we added schema support to get *less* people to use
postgresql.

I am not sure why it was added, and it's sufficiently esoteric and large
that I doubt market share was an issue. If we wanted market share, then
online-vacuum and online-upgrade would have been the big-hitters.

My guess is that it was done because we did not support it, it is in the
SQL standard, and it solved a number of issues that caused existing users &
developers problems. It was probably also an interesting project. Maybe I'm
wrong...

----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner | __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |----/ - \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _________ \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172 | ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au | / \|
| --________--
PGP key available upon request, | /
and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/

On Thu, 05 Dec 2002 21:26:13 -0500, Philip Warner wrote:

At 12:12 AM 5/12/2002 -0500, Robert Treat wrote:
I am happy with increasing market share so long a development is not
distorted or current users inconvenienced. We have seen the latter with
the misplaced announcements.

It seems to me that people were inconvenienced solely because Mark forgot
to CC the right groups and he didn't put the word "7.3" in the right
place in his subject line. Oh, and guess it was disruptive for people who
killfile any piece of email that has quoted text in it...

And the former because I am writing this on
-hackers, rather than implementing dependency-tracking in pg_dump ;-).

so get back to coding already...

...lots of stuff deleted...
Marketing is very relevant to existing customers.

Good point. Market Share -> Influence ->Corprate Support -> more
features -> market share.

Gaining market share *is* a natural consequence of improving the
product;

really? postgresql has been improving by leaps and bounds of the last few
years, but I guarantee you it's been losing market share, and it's losing
that market share to databases without half the features.

marketing is about convincing people a product has improved,
even if it hasn't. Advocacy is about telling people about the product as
it is - and I have no problem with that, with the above proviso.

<snip lots more stuff that basically says marketing isn't all bad, it's
irrelevant too>

well, i think any more discussion at this point becomes a semantical
argument or a flame war, and I've time for neither.

Robert Treat

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh@agliodbs.com]
Sent: 05 December 2002 23:37
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group

When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-)

Regards, Dave.

Dave,

BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group

When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-)

Marc and Justin are periodically keeping the Advocacy group informed
of progress on wwwdevel, and we were asked to test it before. Vince
asked us for suggestions, too.

It's not like Advocacy has so much time to mess around with the
Advocacy site that we need weekly updates from WWW as well ...

==========================================

Postges People:

What really troubles me is that I'm seeing the *implication* on this
list that one or more people offered to help the WWW team and were
rejected. If this is true, I'd like to see that person say so
explicitly and we can find out from Vince and Marc what happened; if
not, I think the insinuations about "exclusiveness" by the WWW team are
completely uncalled for.

-Josh Berkus

Hi Josh,

I'm in. My time is limited, and I do like coding for Postgres as well. I'd
like to contribute articles, etc. once we have some sort of portal up and
running...

BTW, is there any way of making the subject line say [ADVOCACY] instead of
[pgsql-advocacy]?

Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com>
To: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh@agliodbs.com]
Sent: 06 December 2002 17:45
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Dave,

BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group

When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-)

Marc and Justin are periodically keeping the Advocacy group informed
of progress on wwwdevel, and we were asked to test it before. Vince
asked us for suggestions, too.

It's not like Advocacy has so much time to mess around with
the Advocacy site that we need weekly updates from WWW as well ...

Ahh, it's the other way round we don't see (advocacy -> www).

==========================================

Postges People:

What really troubles me is that I'm seeing the *implication*
on this list that one or more people offered to help the WWW
team and were
rejected. If this is true, I'd like to see that person say so
explicitly and we can find out from Vince and Marc what
happened; if not, I think the insinuations about
"exclusiveness" by the WWW team are completely uncalled for.

Yes, this worries me. We have very recently had a couple of new
volunteers join the team who have been actively helping me with the new
portal - I've certainly not heard of anyone being turned away. It was
also not long ago that Vince solicited new design ideas from the
community on -general.

Wrt the closed status of the list, I think (please correct me if I'm
wrong Marc/Vince) this is mainly because we try to keep it very focused.
It is very much a developers meeting place where we *all* contribute
heavily to the work. It is not a support list, or general discussion
list.

Regards, Dave.

As someone who exists mainly as an active user (and part-time
advocate/documentation tweaker), I have found the release of PostgreSQL
7.3 to be disappointing. The ensuing pseudo-flamewar on the various
lists has been similarly disappointing.

I was surprised, for instance, to receive a non-list email announcing
the release of the software but then to have to wait for days actually
to see it show up on the official (or even the advocacy) website in a
news item. Even now it is not listed at PostgreSQL, Inc.

Consider the pieces of the puzzle here:

1) an official website (http://www.postgresql.org/)
2) an advocacy website (http://advocacy.postgresql.org/)
3) official mailing lists
4) a separate email database
5) a developers' website (http://developers.postgresql.org/)
6) an official ftp site (ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/)
7) mirror websites
8) mirror ftp sites
9) a corporate website (http://www.pgsql.com/)

While I have remained impressed with the software itself, the
organization of these pieces has left much to be desired for the
duration of my involvement as an end user.

As someone who works in a small startup company, I am a frequent witness
to both the advantages and disadvantages of the lack of a strong
benevolent dictatorship in the form of management. I think one of the
core problems with the advocacy and presentation of the PostgreSQL
project is the fact that it has been a developer-centric project for
quite some time, and that process, while there are drivers, does not
tend to affect much other than the code. There does not seem to be a
single, driving vision (or even a Board or consensus-based vision)
behind the public face of PostgreSQL. Granted, when a project is
entirely volunteer-based, the management and development are loose. I've
noticed that in many such projects, web design and maintenance become
very low priority, especially when left to groups of hackers. Witness
GNU, Debian, and, I would say PostgreSQL: extremely spare official
websites often intimidating and/or difficult for the newbie.

I've wanted to see a bit more structure given to the PostgreSQL website,
the release process, and various other portions of the project for quite
some time, but often it seems as though such a structure would not even
be welcome. As someone who has not had time to be a true developer on
the project, I'm content to wait for the missing features I'd like to
see.

Still, I'm hoping that developers and advocates alike realize that the
release process and these lists are in the public domain, and the way
business is conducted affects the perceptions of users as much as the
quality of the software or any amount of marketing.

In any case, thanks for all the hard work. I actually thought the text
of the email release I received was good and am working on the upgrade
process now in my own environment.

-tfo

In article <29852.1039115828@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us (Tom Lane) wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the
minority on this one.

Kinda depends who you're asking now, doesn't it? I happen to agree with
him, but as long as you're only going to involve a selected few in the
opinion gathering you can pretty much get the answer you want to get. I
can survey 100 people and get the opposite result putting you in the
minority.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant
assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no
reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of
business, there really isn't much choice.

That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's
open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant
assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no
reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of
business, there really isn't much choice.

That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's
open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that.

Really?

Why do you say that?

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Vince.

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Brian Knox wrote:

Speaking from the perspective of a long time postgresql user, who
currently has several very mission critical applications using postgresql
on the back end, at a very large company...

I can say the one consequence of the problem that I have run into
personally, is convincing management to allow me to use postgresql for my
projects to begin with. Fortunately, where I am currently employed, I was
able to bash my head against the brick wall until they got tired of
hearing from me, and allowed me to go with postgresql instead of sybase
(which was their first choice, as the corporation already has a sybase
site license).

The lack of name recognition was a factor that contributed to the
difficulty of getting postgresql accepted. The last thing a non technical
middle manager wants to tell his or her manager is that some mission
critical application that just crashed was running on some database he had
never heard of before that he gave the go ahead to use.

Not name recognition, but it'd be nice to think that's the reason.
Mysql has alot of name recognition but you didn't mention them. You
mentioned sybase and having a sybase site license. Marketing wouldn't
help here, they want a commercial database used that they've already
paid for.

What too many people fail to realize is that in a commercial environment
many companies want another company to point the finger at in case of
disaster. Sybase failed, or HP failed, or IBM failed, or Microsoft
failed. They feel they can do something about that. If they lose a
few million they have someone they can go after, who are they going to
go after if PostgreSQL fails them? Marc? Bruce?

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

What too many people fail to realize is that in a commercial environment
many companies want another company to point the finger at in case of
disaster. Sybase failed, or HP failed, or IBM failed, or Microsoft
failed. They feel they can do something about that. If they lose a
few million they have someone they can go after, who are they going to
go after if PostgreSQL fails them? Marc? Bruce?

This is when you start to shout that RedHat offers commercial support,
licencing, etc. INCLUDING a free, non-restrictive source licence to the
core components of RHDB.

--
Rod Taylor <rbt@rbt.ca>

PGP Key: http://www.rbt.ca/rbtpub.asc

On 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote:

www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work
on the sites.

This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4
different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting
advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to
be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms.

Well we told you a few times which list you were supposed to subscribe
to but over and over again you didn't. I just finished approving your
subscription to the list we've been telling you to join.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:

Dave,

BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group

When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-)

Marc and Justin are periodically keeping the Advocacy group informed
of progress on wwwdevel, and we were asked to test it before. Vince
asked us for suggestions, too.

I did what? When?

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant
assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no
reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of
business, there really isn't much choice.

That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's
open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that.

Really?

Why do you say that?

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

Anything else you don't understand about that?

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On 7 Dec 2002, Rod Taylor wrote:

What too many people fail to realize is that in a commercial environment
many companies want another company to point the finger at in case of
disaster. Sybase failed, or HP failed, or IBM failed, or Microsoft
failed. They feel they can do something about that. If they lose a
few million they have someone they can go after, who are they going to
go after if PostgreSQL fails them? Marc? Bruce?

This is when you start to shout that RedHat offers commercial support,
licencing, etc. INCLUDING a free, non-restrictive source licence to the
core components of RHDB.

I had considered mentioning redhat but didn't want to blur things. Red
hat markets PostgreSQL under a different name and they're offering a
complete package (including support as you note). The PGDG isn't doing
that and they shouldn't be.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

And.... ?

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Anything else you don't understand about that?

Vince.

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 20:52, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Why do you say that?

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

This is a reason to increase marketing effort. I know the word has
pejorative overtones in our community, but it means talking about
PostgreSQL so that the PHBs hear about it and therefore begin to feel
comfortable about using it.

If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL
familiar. That's why we need marketing.

--
Oliver Elphick <olly@lfix.co.uk>
LFIX Limited

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

And.... ?

And what? If you can't understand the above you're in the wrong business.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

And.... ?

And what? If you can't understand the above you're in the wrong business.

And.... ?

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Vince.

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote:

On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 20:52, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Why do you say that?

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

This is a reason to increase marketing effort. I know the word has
pejorative overtones in our community, but it means talking about
PostgreSQL so that the PHBs hear about it and therefore begin to feel
comfortable about using it.

If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL
familiar. That's why we need marketing.

Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

And.... ?

And what? If you can't understand the above you're in the wrong business.

And.... ?

That's what I thought. You have no argument so your just typing.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 22:27, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote:

If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL
familiar. That's why we need marketing.

Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar.

To PHBs?

MySQL doesn't have anything like the marketing clout of Oracle and IBM.
Be thankful it isn't in the list; it would make it a hell of a lot more
difficult to dislodge it.

If we want people to use PostgreSQL in preference to anything else, we
have to make it known. That is marketing. If we believe we have a good
product we need to say so and say why and how it's better, cheaper and
purer than anything else. If there's no good marketing, bad marketing
will rule the world for sure.

If we don't care, we can retreat into a pure technological huddle and
disappear up our own navels. The rest of the world won't even notice.
Such purity will eventually destroy the project because it will lose the
momentum for growth through a lack of new input. You can grow or you
can decline; a steady state is almost impossible to achieve.

--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
========================================
"For I am the LORD your God; ye shall therefore
sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am
holy." Leviticus 11:44

On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote:

On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 22:27, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote:

If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL
familiar. That's why we need marketing.

Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar.

To PHBs?

I would argue yes. Everywhere you turn you see "Powered by MySQL".
If years of working on it isn't getting them the familiarity to overcome
the PHBs then the PHBs are either not considering open source or the
marketing attempts aren't strong or capable enough to penetrate.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That's what I thought. You have no argument so your just typing.

Hi Vince,

Was more hoping you'd care to share your basis for stating Robert's
employers clients wanted a "commercial database", after he mentioned
specifically DB2 and Oracle. Knowing one of the obvious common factors
they have and then stating it was definitely the reason - not having
sought clarification nor confirmation from Robert - and then further
stating that the PG Advocacy and Marketing group wouldn't be able to
assist even if that were the case, is extremely bad form coming from
anyone, let alone you.

Please consider the statements you make by a more accurate approach in
the future.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Vince.

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That's what I thought. You have no argument so your just typing.

Hi Vince,

Was more hoping you'd care to share your basis for stating Robert's
employers clients wanted a "commercial database", after he mentioned
specifically DB2 and Oracle. Knowing one of the obvious common factors
they have and then stating it was definitely the reason - not having
sought clarification nor confirmation from Robert - and then further
stating that the PG Advocacy and Marketing group wouldn't be able to
assist even if that were the case, is extremely bad form coming from
anyone, let alone you.

Then they come with the insults. Justin, I'm finished discussing this
with you. You're obviously not capable of understanding it and you're
simply wasting my time - like usual.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

Oliver Elphick wrote:

If we want people to use PostgreSQL in preference to anything else, we
have to make it known. That is marketing. If we believe we have a good
product we need to say so and say why and how it's better, cheaper and
purer than anything else. If there's no good marketing, bad marketing
will rule the world for sure.

If we don't care, we can retreat into a pure technological huddle and
disappear up our own navels. The rest of the world won't even notice.
Such purity will eventually destroy the project because it will lose the
momentum for growth through a lack of new input. You can grow or you
can decline; a steady state is almost impossible to achieve.

Couldn't agree more with that last point.

I've had the perspective of working in big companies using various database software, a company specifically focused on PostgreSQL (Great Bridge), and now a new ISV with PostgreSQL underneath a vertical application (OpenMFG). I can tell you that even though the pgsql-hacker community is as strong as it's ever been, I think there's a serious danger of the larger world passing PostgreSQL by.

Oracle and DB2 continue to get better and - significantly - cheaper, and SQL Server ... well, Oracle and DB2 are getting better. MySQL, even though it's an inferior product for most real database work, has always had a significantly larger installed base than PostgreSQL- and it's less controversial for people like Sun (who have deep relationships with Oracle) to get involved with. And despite the productizing of RHDB, Red Hat doesn't seem interested in making a real push for PostgreSQL either. While there are a number of smaller companies trying to help out, I think it's clear that the burden for helping PostgreSQL to find wider acceptance in the marketplace will be on the pgsql-hacker community for some time to come.

I applaud the efforts of the advocacy group, and encourage others here not to look at the marketing as somehow dirty or beneath the dignity of the project.

Keep up the good work,
Ned

On Sunday 08 December 2002 06:14 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote:

On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 22:27, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote:

If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL
familiar. That's why we need marketing.

Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar.

To PHBs?

I would argue yes. Everywhere you turn you see "Powered by MySQL".
If years of working on it isn't getting them the familiarity to overcome
the PHBs then the PHBs are either not considering open source or the
marketing attempts aren't strong or capable enough to penetrate.

I don't think mysql has penetrated the "enterprise class/ mission critical"
mindest, which is the level our service had to be provided that. To be
honest, it was tough to argue PostgreSQL belonged in that group, though we
had a good 2 years worth of history in actually running the business on
PostgreSQL which couldn't be dismissed. Of course, some of these companies
weren't too happy things were running on linux, and not aix or solaris; are
we seeing a pointy haired trend here? Personally I never understood why our
sales guys didn't just tell them "ok we'll port the service to oracle/solaris
for you, but it's going to cost you at least twice what it does now, if not
three times. Oh, and you won't see any better performance."

Robert Treat

On Saturday 07 December 2002 11:10 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote:

www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the
work on the sites.

This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4
different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting
advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to
be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms.

Well we told you a few times which list you were supposed to subscribe
to but over and over again you didn't. I just finished approving your
subscription to the list we've been telling you to join.

And I have multiple "subscription denied" emails from lists I've tried to
join. In fact I was just rejected again from joining pgsql-www. Given that
I'm one of the few people who have actually donated content and/or code to
techdocs, advocacy, and the new portal site; not to mention I already have
shell access for the backend servers; also not to mention my helping out with
the sourceforge PostgreSQL project page; and finally not to mention my solid
open source background which includes coding for the phpPgAdmin project and
work as a php foundry administrator for sourceforge, among other projects; I
have to ask what the hell could be so secretive and important about that list
that people would complain about lack of communication and yet I can't be
allowed access to that group?!?

Robert Treat

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

On Saturday 07 December 2002 11:10 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote:

www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the
work on the sites.

This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4
different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting
advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to
be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms.

Well we told you a few times which list you were supposed to subscribe
to but over and over again you didn't. I just finished approving your
subscription to the list we've been telling you to join.

And I have multiple "subscription denied" emails from lists I've tried to
join. In fact I was just rejected again from joining pgsql-www. Given that
I'm one of the few people who have actually donated content and/or code to
techdocs, advocacy, and the new portal site; not to mention I already have
shell access for the backend servers; also not to mention my helping out with
the sourceforge PostgreSQL project page; and finally not to mention my solid
open source background which includes coding for the phpPgAdmin project and
work as a php foundry administrator for sourceforge, among other projects; I
have to ask what the hell could be so secretive and important about that list
that people would complain about lack of communication and yet I can't be
allowed access to that group?!?

Exactly, and pgsql-www is the wrong goddam list! I've told you over
and over again. pgsql-www is the list that the group leaders use to
collaborate. Over and over again we told you to join pgsql-www-main,
which is an invitation only list for development of the soon to be
released portal.

I'm the one that approves or denies the subscriptions to BOTH of those
lists and the first time I denied you I sent you a note telling you
not only why I denied it, but which list you were SUPPOSED to join.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Sunday 08 December 2002 11:32 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

Exactly, and pgsql-www is the wrong goddam list! I've told you over
and over again. pgsql-www is the list that the group leaders use to
collaborate.

And a fine job of collaboration you're doing *obviously*

Over and over again we told you to join pgsql-www-main,
which is an invitation only list for development of the soon to be
released portal.

I'm the one that approves or denies the subscriptions to BOTH of those
lists and the first time I denied you I sent you a note telling you
not only why I denied it, but which list you were SUPPOSED to join.

fiefdoms!!

Robert Treat

Vince, Peter:

I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL. However, your being opposed to
promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me. How
can you be against promoting PostgreSQL? Don't you want poeple to use
your code?

For me, it's not just a matter of preference, but of necessity; if
Postgres becomes obscure, I stop being able to participate in the
project. While there are people on this list who are fortunate enough
to be able to code whatever they want and still get paid, for a lot of
people, our participation hinges on the cycle:

Postgres Users --> Postgres Contracts --> Postgres Jobs --> Postgres
Contributors --> Improvement *and Promotion* of Postgres --> Postgres
Users ...

The Promotion part of that step is *not* dispensable; all of the best
features in the world are not going to expand the Postgres commmunity
if people haven't heard of it, can't find it, and know a lot more about
MySQL anyway. While this may not be true for everybody, some of us
have clients or bosses who do read trade periodicals and demand that we
follow their technology reccomendations. I already have one client
using MySQL because of MySQL's "much more professional" web site and
"better support" and "better performance".

Frankly, if we blow off marketing PostgreSQL as "irrelevant", we
*deserve* to get steamrollered by MySQL.

I think it's terrific that Postgres is a real, programmer-centric,
democratic Open Source project. I believe that programmers and
contributors should lead the project, and decide features and schedules
based on technical and not marketing reasons. Nobody on the Advocacy
team is trying to take control of the project and turn it into a
dot-com.

But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention. I'm not asking
everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
list to recognize the utility of the effort.

-Josh Berkus

Am Donnerstag, 5. Dezember 2002 05:22 schrieb Lamar Owen:

[cc: list trimmed]

On Wednesday 04 December 2002 22:52, Philip Warner wrote:

At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems.

What are the consequences of the problem?

Actually, lack of easy upgrading is one of PostgreSQL's major problems....

But lack of focused marketing -- truthful, not, as has been said, like the
'Database HOWTO' -- is a real problem. It would be nice to increase our
usage.

If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of
the development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced
in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate
increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality
works *both* ways.

ISTM there's a separate, non-code-developer group doing this. It doesn't
seem to take away _any_ developer resources to do an advocacy site.

However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be
as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org,
techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org,
developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have
www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured
in their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here.

Hi,

there are lots of sites talking about postgresql. But if someone hear about
postgresql he sure tries www.postgresql.org. There he just get a list of
mirrors. Not really a good start. But worse: there is no links to gborg,
advocacy, techdocs, ... Advocacy should be found at www.postgresql.org and
have links to the other pages. I found gborg when reading the mailinglistst.
It is something like a insidertip.

www.apache.org has a much better structure. You go to www.apache.org and get a
welcome-message and links to subprojects as the webserver.

Another point that comes to my mind is design. I'm not a designer, but I like
the design of www.postgresql.org but not advocacy.postrgresql.org.

Tommi

--
Dr. Eckhardt + Partner GmbH
http://www.epgmbh.de

Hi Tommi,

Tommi Maekitalo wrote:
<snip>

Hi,

there are lots of sites talking about postgresql. But if someone hear about
postgresql he sure tries www.postgresql.org. There he just get a list of
mirrors. Not really a good start. But worse: there is no links to gborg,
advocacy, techdocs, ... Advocacy should be found at www.postgresql.org and
have links to the other pages. I found gborg when reading the mailinglistst.
It is something like a insidertip.

There is a new front page for the www.postgresql.org site that was
recently finished, and will be moved into the correct place soon. You
can view it for now at wwwdevel.postgresql.org.

The new front page has links to the other main websites, so it should
help people find the information they need in a much easier way. :-)

Hope that's helpful to know.

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

<snip>

Tommi

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant
assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no
reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of
business, there really isn't much choice.

That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's
open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that.

Really?

Why do you say that?

Because of this taken from the above quoted text:

"they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2"

Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just
happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned.

Anything else you don't understand about that?

There are a number of reasons their clients could have been clamoring
for DB2 or Oracle, only some of which are related to the fact that
they're commercial, closed-source databases:

1. They already have significant in-house expertise with one or the
other product.

2. They need 24x7 support, and are convinced that they'll get better
support for Oracle or DB2 than anything else.

3. They want a company to blame in case things go wrong.

4. They require certain capabilities that they believe only DB2 or
Oracle can provide.

5. They have an established partnership with IBM or Oracle.

6. Some combination of the above.

Some of those reasons are such that it might be possible (depending on
the specifics of the situation) to successfully market PostgreSQL (or
even MySQL) to them, and some of them aren't. It just depends.

And that's why it's a bad idea to simply discard that situation as one
in which it would be impossible to market PostgreSQL.

Marketing is the art of convincing someone that they want your
product. Since the keyword here is "want", it's an art that combines
reason and emotion. Even if the situation seems logically hopeless
(that is, there's no logical reason for the customer to prefer your
product over another), you may still manage to successfully market
your product to them by appealing to their emotions. Happens all the
time.

My personal feeling is that in the case of PostgreSQL, it should be
marketed primarily using reason. More precisely, it should *not* be
marketed to someone for whom a different product would better suit
them. That, to me, would be shady at best and would eventually become
a blemish on the reputation of the PostgreSQL community. But it
doesn't mean giving up just because the client thinks he wants a
commercial database: he may well want something else that a commercial
database just happens to provide.

If you're trying to sell someone on PostgreSQL, it behooves you to
figure out what their real needs are first. Their actual needs may be
significantly different from what they tell you they want.

--
Kevin Brown kevin@sysexperts.com

On 9 Dec 2002 at 1:20, Kevin Brown wrote:

2. They need 24x7 support, and are convinced that they'll get better
support for Oracle or DB2 than anything else.

I have experienced what oracle support means for 24x7. I wouldn't even wish
that penalty for my worst enemy.

I can tell a story about it but I digress. Details aren't important though
true.

What really matters is how kindly and dearly you stand by your product. That is
where all support originates.. Rest is marketing..

Bye
Shridhar

--
I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer toany
question. -- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:

But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention. I'm not asking
everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
list to recognize the utility of the effort.

Here are my main problems with it.

1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.
2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
stay informed on what they're doing.
3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
how or they'll never be taken seriously.

That's all I'm going to say on this subject.

Vince.
--
Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/
http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com
Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.

On Mon, 09 Dec 2002 07:29:55 -0500, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:

But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention. I'm not asking
everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
list to recognize the utility of the effort.

Here are my main problems with it.

1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.

I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.

2) They are,
or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
stay informed on what they're doing.

I think it was only suggested that you join since you obviously have a
lot of feedback you'd like to give to the group. Since a lot of people on
-hackers don't want to be involved in the process, it seemed a bad idea
to post all of the detail work to this list.

3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
how or they'll never be taken seriously.

I've seen more posts saying that "until you get a decent website your
not going to be taken seriously" than anything else, by far. While I'm
hoping that's not entirely true, I do agree that until we get a coordinated and
open web development process the advocacy group is going to have a much
harder go of it.

Robert Treat

Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:

1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.

I think the upshot of the prior discussion was that the outside press
release shouldn't have been used as the release announcement for the
existing mailing lists. Fine, they made a one-time mistake.

2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
stay informed on what they're doing.

It seems to me that people have made it perfectly clear that they don't
want to hear about marketing on the -hackers or -general lists. Taking
it to a marketing-specific list seems like exactly the right response.
Where do you think it should be discussed?

regards, tom lane

Vince,

Here are my main problems with it.

1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.

First off ... not "they", "you". I'm a member of Advocacy; so are
Robert, Justin, Neil, Marc, Bruce and several other members of this
list. The advocacy group is not some privately sponsored bunch of
marketeers; *we* are your fellow contributors.

Yes, we should have released a different version of the announcement to
the internal lists. I believe that I have already explained how that
happened.

2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
stay informed on what they're doing.

Unless you don't want to stay informed. In which case, you're welcome
not to, and one or more Advocacy people will join wwwdevel to keep
links synchronized. Nobody's going to make you do anything. This is
Open Source.

3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
how or they'll never be taken seriously.

One of our volunteers is a professional PR person. Two are periodical
writers. I started (with 2 partners) the OpenOffice.org Marketing
Project, which was cited by one columnist (Amy Wohl) as a better
volunteer marketing team than Sun could put together for a
million-dollar budget (paraphrased). 3 of us are small business
owners. I think we have as much or more combined experience as the
marketing department of any start-up, without the baggage.

Also, half a marketing effort is better than none. At the very least,
we need to keep Postgres in the press, else we are likely to see
PostgreSQL fade into permanent obscurity. The technology world is full
of technically good but poorly marketed products -- FoxPro anyone?
Paradox? Beta video? Amiga?

Last week I got a 5-page long database developer survey from EvansData.
It mentioned 10 other database platforms -- including Ingres! -- but
not PostgreSQL. I personally don't want to see that again.

Sure, we got off to a rocky start. However, I will point out that our
first release happened to fall on a major American holiday; this made
it extra hard to organize the effort, and things didn't work out well.
But the answer to that is not to abandon the effort, but to plan and
prepare better in the future.

I would also be grateful if us folks on the Advocacy team could look to
Hackers to make sure that we *aren't* going off on a tangent, or
pushing Postgres in a way that's inconsistent with the development
goals for the database. We *want* Advocacy to be an integral part of
the Postgres community, serving the general goal of making Postgres the
best possible ORDBMS in existence.

-Josh Berkus

Robert Treat writes:

I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.

Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

Release notes:

Schemas
Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace so
two people or applications can have tables with the same name.
There is also a public schema for shared tables. Table/index
creation can be restricted by removing permissions on the
public schema.

Press release:

Schemas
PostgreSQL now joins the handful of ORDBMS's to support
the SQL 92 Schema specification, improving both enterprise
database management and security through the use of namespaces.

This not only removes all information about the actual use of schemas,
it contains completely bogus information, because SQL 92 is obsolete,
there is no "SQL Schema specification", and none of this has to do
with being an ORDBMS. And besides, whose hands were used to do the
counting?

Release notes:

Drop Column
PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN
functionality.

Press release:

<void>

Release notes:

Table Functions
Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are
now much easier to use than before. You can call such a "table
function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output like a
table. Also, PL/pgSQL functions can now return sets.

Press release:

Table Functions
PostgreSQL version 7.3 has greatly simplified returning result sets
of rows and columns in database functions. This significantly
enhances the useability of stored procedures in PostgreSQL, and will
make it even easier to port Oracle applications to PostgreSQL.

Again, this removes all details about how the feature can be used, and
again it inserts completely bogus information. There are no "sets of
columns", and PostgreSQL does not have stored procedures. Also, it
makes it look as though PostgreSQL exists merely to reimplement
Oracle.

Release notes:

Prepared Queries
PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries, for improved
performance.

Press release:

- Prepared queries for maximized performance on common requests.

I'm curious to know how the marketing department determined that this
is, in fact, the maximal performance.

Release notes:

Dependency Tracking
PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows
improvements in many areas. "DROP" statements now take either
CASCADE or RESTRICT to control whether dependent objects are
also dropped.

Press release:

- Enhanced dependency tracking for complex databases.

Again, all relevant information dropped, replaced by marketing fluff.

Release notes:

Privileges
Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and
functions can be defined to run with the privileges of their
creator.

Press release:

Security Advances
In response to community demands, PostgreSQL has added schema,
function, and other permissions and settings to increase the database
administrator's granular control over security.

Information dropped, replaced by broad and repetitive verbiage. But
at least they didn't write, "in response to market pressures".

And my personal favorite is this:

Release notes:

Internationalization
Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.

Press release:

- Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP,
EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...)

That is just plain wrong. Support for various character sets is years
old.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

On Monday 09 December 2002 12:50, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

If people want to see the details, let them read the release-notes themselves,
and let it be the detail document. A press release of the detail that the
release notes have will not get any 'press' -- and I say that wearing my
radio broadcaster hat, where I have personally approved or disapproved 'press
releases' in news stories in the past. Getting 'press' is what a 'press
release' is all about.

So, IMHO, the pgsql-announce mailing list should get the press release along
with the other 'outside' press outlets -- and the developers' lists (since
hackers is far from the only one) should, IMHO again, get a copy of the
release notes.

And my personal favorite is this:

Release notes:

Internationalization
Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.

Press release:

- Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE,
EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256,
etc...)

That is just plain wrong. Support for various character sets is years
old.

It IS true that the current release supports all of these. The blanket
'Supports' statement above quoted was not true in the blanket case until the
'support' became default, since there were cases that this would not be true.
Support != 'if you pass the right parameters to configure this will work', at
least not at the press release level.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

Robert Treat writes:

I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.

Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

<snip for brevity>

So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next
marketing announcement? I would wager that only a PostgreSQL
developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies
that you were able to find. The press release might have seemed
"obviously ill-informed" to you, but it seemed just fine to me, and I
can guarantee you that I am at least an order of magnitude more
informed about PostgreSQL than the average manager.

The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the
intended audience. The folks that the press release is aimed at
probably don't have any idea that SQL 92 is obsolete, or that
internationalization has been supported for years. Chances are good
that they will skim over the new features entirely.

What *is* important to these people, however, are the customer
testimonials at the beginning of the press release and the list of
happy customers at the end.

Once management has read the press release they can ask their
developers to read the Release Notes. Press releases don't supercede
Release Notes, they complement them. The difference between the 7.3
Release Notes and the press release is that I could give the press
release to my boss.

PostgreSQL desperately needs marketing help. In fact, at this point I
would say that PostgreSQL needs more marketing help than it needs
development work. Technically PostgreSQL is clearly a winner, but
despite its myriad features and impressive performance PostgreSQL is
still not being deployed nearly as much as it *should* be. The team
that has been assembled to market PostgreSQL has some fairly
impressive credentials. They are certainly *much* better than what
you would expect considering how much they are getting paid :).

In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases,
then that's fine and dandy. But if all you want to do is throw rocks
at the people doing the marketing, then that's another story
altogether.

Jason Earl

Jason Earl <jason.earl@simplot.com> writes:

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next
marketing announcement? I would wager that only a PostgreSQL
developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies
that you were able to find.

FWIW, the press release looked fine to me too (and yes, I saw it in
advance).

The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the
intended audience.

Exactly. The level of detail in the release notes is aimed at hackers
(and usually gets criticized as "insufficient" by them ;-)), but a press
release has entirely different purposes.

In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases,
then that's fine and dandy.

One error that I think the advocacy team made is that they didn't invite
review of the press release from a wider part of the community.
Although I generally agree with the viewpoint that marketing issues
should be on a separate list and not on -hackers or -general, I think it
wouldn't be out of place to send one message to those lists saying "a
draft of the press release for <event FOO> is up at <this URL>, please
send comments to <advocacy mail list>." That seems like a reasonable
compromise between filling the lists with unwanted material and having
people feel that they were excluded from the process.

regards, tom lane

Josh Berkus writes:

I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL. However, your being opposed to
promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me. How
can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?

I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL. I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in
ways that embarrass me.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

Peter,

I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL. However, your being opposed to
promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me. How
can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?

I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL. I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in
ways that embarrass me.

What, specifically, were you embarassed by?

--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

I tend to agree with Peter. Not that we don't need a marketing
presence; we do (I think Great Bridge's marketing efforts are sorely
missed). But the point he is making is that the pgsql mailing lists go
to people who are generally unimpressed by marketing fluff. And they're
already "sold" on PG anyway.

The right way to handle this next time is to generate a PR-style
press release to send to outside contacts, but to do our more
traditional, technically-oriented announcement on the mailing lists.

Agreed ... we tried to do 'two-in-one' on this one and it didn't quite
work out as well as it could have ... next time, we'll go with both
methods ...

On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Thomas O'Connell wrote:

I was surprised, for instance, to receive a non-list email announcing
the release of the software but then to have to wait for days actually
to see it show up on the official (or even the advocacy) website in a
news item. Even now it is not listed at PostgreSQL, Inc.

ack, an oversight, I can assure you ... I have proded the apporpriate ppl
for this one :(

On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the
minority on this one.

Kinda depends who you're asking now, doesn't it? I happen to agree with
him, but as long as you're only going to involve a selected few in the
opinion gathering you can pretty much get the answer you want to get. I
can survey 100 people and get the opposite result putting you in the
minority.

Me, I think Peter went to the 'far left', while the press release went to
the 'far right' (or vice versa) ... i think Tom sum'd it up best that we
should have had one for each 'market' we were trying to address ...
definitely something to keep in mind and strive for for the next release
...

s'alright, the 'fiefdoms' are about to be nuked :)

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
<snip>

Press release:

- Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP,
EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...)

That is just plain wrong. Support for various character sets is years
old.

Sure is. Notice it didn't say "just added" or "added with this release"?

It just says "supports". It's to highlight the fact that it can be used
for non-English character sets. Sure, a whole bunch of people know
this, but the main target of the press release is people new to
PostgreSQL that don't.

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

Peter, Robert, Jason, Vince, Justin, et al.:

First off, I'd like to ask everyone to CUT IT OUT WITH THE $^*&^@** FLAMING,
ALREADY! People are *attacking* each other instead of disagreeing.
Several posters seem to be taking to opportunity to say everything in the
most insulting way possible, even when the actual source of disagreement is
small. Perhaps we should declare a moritorium on this topic for 48 hours to
let everyone calm down?

In case we don't, my response:

PETER, it's obvious that the press release team would have benefitted from
your copy-editing of the press release. You have several good points about
places where we did not do the best possible job in the difficult task of
translating technical notes into a form the general press would understand.
I wrote a lot of the paragraphs you take issue with, and I don't deny that
they could stand improvement.

Would you be willing to act as a reviewer on future press releases? That way,
we can get the benefit of your insight in a manner that will benefit the
press release process.

--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

First off, I'd like to ask everyone to CUT IT OUT WITH THE $^*&^@** FLAMING,
ALREADY! People are *attacking* each other instead of disagreeing.

Amen. This was first time 'round for the advocacy group, and it's not
surprising that there are some things they did wrong, or at least could
have done better. Can't we discuss the matter like a group of
reasonably friendly people? I think we all have the same end goals
in mind, so I don't see the need for unpleasantness.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

First off, I'd like to ask everyone to CUT IT OUT WITH THE $^*&^@** FLAMING,
ALREADY! People are *attacking* each other instead of disagreeing.

Amen. This was first time 'round for the advocacy group, and it's not
surprising that there are some things they did wrong, or at least could
have done better. Can't we discuss the matter like a group of
reasonably friendly people? I think we all have the same end goals
in mind, so I don't see the need for unpleasantness.

Agreed. Here's a story:

Myself and a few people wanted live animals for a manger scene on our
church lawn for Christmas. Many thought it was a bad idea, but we went
ahead anyway. It was a huge success, but then people complained we
didn't have enough people on the lawn to greet the hundreds of visitors.

Moral of the story: if you take risks, expect folks to complain. And,
even if you succeed, others will complain you didn't anticipate the
success.

-- 
  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

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

Then you will have what you want. You will be used by a limited number
of developers who understand the idea. And you will have ugly dialogues
like that. This sounds a bit like 'what would happen if all population
of the world were male'. Or all were developers. You should accept the
fact that you never have developers on the front line. Even if you take
Microsoft - I even do not know the name of the chief software engineer
(do not tell me this is Mr. Gates, he is not - there is a guy with a
beard, the third richest man in the world or so). Or if you take Oracle
- you have Larry. Larry is not a developer. Or even with MySQL - you see
the marketing machine. Even with Linux - I have not seen Linus in the
press for ages. Or Alan. All 'gurus' are hidden. You take the hype - the
hype of Bill or the hype of Linus. Or the charming and successfully
arogant Lary. And make a product out of it and a market. As long as the
developers of PostgreSQL want to be on the front line - it will be what
it is - a fine database used by the people who have the clue to talk to
and understand developers. An uncut diamond.

I actually do not understand why is the whole cry - why not somebody who
has REALLY the marketing in his/her heart - does not make an open source
amazingly beautiful and powerful web site. You do not have to ask Bruce
for that. You get BRICOLAGE - it is free, and it is good - salon.com
runs on it. You inspire some great designer to do the desing (do not ask
a developer to do that, otherwise a designer might want to do some code
and PostgreSQL is lost). Call Mario Garcia (www.mariogarcia.com) - he
will be proud to help. And you take ten fanatic advocacy people to fill
in success stories and case studies. News. Whatever.

It does not take that much. It take strong individuals that lead.
However, some people on HACKERS find special pleasure to kill all
initiative. I do not see this for first time...

Iavor

www.pgaccess.org

Iavor Raytchev wrote:

I actually do not understand why is the whole cry - why not somebody who
has REALLY the marketing in his/her heart - does not make an open source
amazingly beautiful and powerful web site. You do not have to ask Bruce
for that. You get BRICOLAGE - it is free, and it is good - salon.com
runs on it. You inspire some great designer to do the desing (do not ask
a developer to do that, otherwise a designer might want to do some code
and PostgreSQL is lost). Call Mario Garcia (www.mariogarcia.com) - he
will be proud to help. And you take ten fanatic advocacy people to fill
in success stories and case studies. News. Whatever.

It does not take that much. It take strong individuals that lead.
However, some people on HACKERS find special pleasure to kill all
initiative. I do not see this for first time...

I think we have gotten over that hurdle and _most_ agree marketing is a
priority.

-- 
  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:

Iavor Raytchev wrote:

I actually do not understand why is the whole cry - why not somebody who
has REALLY the marketing in his/her heart - does not make an open source
amazingly beautiful and powerful web site. You do not have to ask Bruce
for that. You get BRICOLAGE - it is free, and it is good - salon.com
runs on it. You inspire some great designer to do the desing (do not ask
a developer to do that, otherwise a designer might want to do some code
and PostgreSQL is lost). Call Mario Garcia (www.mariogarcia.com) - he
will be proud to help. And you take ten fanatic advocacy people to fill
in success stories and case studies. News. Whatever.

It does not take that much. It take strong individuals that lead.
However, some people on HACKERS find special pleasure to kill all
initiative. I do not see this for first time...

I think we have gotten over that hurdle and _most_ agree marketing is a
priority.

I am sorry. Seems I came too late. I did it out of my good feelings.

Iavor

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Marc G. Fournier writes:

It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a
stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ...

Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the
development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The
last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix.

I am a long term user of PostgreSQL and I think it suffers from a lack
of a marketing department.

If you have the best restaurant in town, but no one eats there, what's
the point?

We all correspond and work on PostgreSQL to make it the best we can. To
create something "good" that people can use. One of the prime parts of
that sentence is "people can use." Like it or not, that means getting
the word out.

MySQL is an appalling database, but people use it, a lot! Why? Because
they really market it. They push it. They craft deceptive benchmarks
which show it is better. PostgreSQL doesn't even need to be deceptive.

My company is working on a Suite of applications and PostgreSQL is a key
component. We will be doing our own local marketing, but it it would
help if the PostgreSQL core understood that a clean professional looking
website, geared toward end users would make a big difference.

Furthermore, I think it would be very rewarding for everyone involved if
we could get some of the "street cred" that MySQL has. PostgreSQL *is* a
better database in almost every way. If MySQL virtually owns the open
source mind share for SQL databases, it is our fault.

Peter, Tom, Bruce, et al. you guys do a great job, IMHO PostgreSQL isn't
lacking in anything technical, as of 7.2, with non-locking vacuum, I
would consider it a viable database with no caveats. 7.3 is superior. A
pure Win32 version would be awesome.

I just think that if we could get people equally talented at spreading
the word and making the noise, it would make a big difference in the
number of users. More users eventually translates to more funding or
development.

Wouldn't you like to say to someone: "I contribute the PostgreSQL
project" and have them say "Cool" instead of "What's that?"

----- Original Message -----
From: "Devrim GО©╫NDО©╫Z" <devrim@tr.net>
To: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 4:58 PM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Also, I have something to say about win32 port.

I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version.
If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install
Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows
support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will
begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz
support.

Ooops.
I'm a Linux user too, but i have a SCO Openserver, UnixWare, Netware and lot
of windows boxes in my office.
Also I have Informix, Sybase ... etc.
This isn't for my entertainment.
Our customers need to "use a real database server".
But what about small business?
A lot of our small customers can't spent money for dedicated linux box :(((

I spent 2 month in trying open source databases (PostgreSQL, SAP DB,
Interbase/Firebird)
finaly i choose PostgreSQL. Now we port one of our products from Sybase SQL
Anywhere to PostgreSQL.

We have more than 100 customers with small networks (2-10). Most of them
cant't aford dedicated linux box.
Another situation DHL Bulgaria and TNT Worldwide Express Bulgaria are our
customers too.
In HQ they choose windows nt (i don't comment how "smart" is this decision),
pay a lot of money to mr.Gates and now what - we say PostgreSQL is great ,
but ......
( and i have personal contacts with their sysadmins i don't believe they are
"dummy windows users")

So if you don't want windows support just don't use it!!!!!

Hi,

On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 13:26, mlw wrote:

MySQL is an appalling database, but people use it, a lot! Why? Because
they really market it. They push it. They craft deceptive benchmarks
which show it is better. PostgreSQL doesn't even need to be deceptive.

<snip>

Furthermore, I think it would be very rewarding for everyone involved if
we could get some of the "street cred" that MySQL has. PostgreSQL *is* a
better database in almost every way. If MySQL virtually owns the open
source mind share for SQL databases, it is our fault.

I do NOT like hearing about MySQL in this (these) list(s).

PostgreSQL is not in the same category with MySQL. MySQL is for
*dummies*, not database admins. I do not even call it a database. I
have never forgotten my data loss 2,5 years ago; when I used MySQL for
just 2 months!!!

If we want to "sell" PostgreSQL, we should talk about, maybe, Oracle.
I have never took care of MySQL said. I just know that I'm running
PostgreSQL since 2,5 years and I only stopped it "JUST" before upgrades
of PostgreSQL. It's just *working*; which is unfamiliar to MySQL users.

I've presented about 28 seminars in last 12 months on PostgreSQL... In
all of them, I always tried to avoid talking about MySQL. But always
"hit" Oracle. I'm sick of hearing such sentences : "We paid $$$$ to
Oracle, we hold 1 GB of data!". Even MySQL can hold that amount of data
:-)

Also, I have something to say about win32 port.

I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version.
If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install
Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows
support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will
begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz
support.

So, hackers (I'm not a hacker) should decide whether PostgreSQL should
be used widely in real database apps, or it should be used even by dummy
users?

I prefer the first one, if we want to compete with Oracle; not MySQL.

Best regards,

--
Devrim GUNDUZ
TR.NET System Support Specialist
devrim@tr.net

Hi,

On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 15:31, Igor Georgiev wrote:

<snip>

In HQ they choose windows nt (i don't comment how "smart" is this decision),
pay a lot of money to mr.Gates and now what - we say PostgreSQL is great ,
but ......
( and i have personal contacts with their sysadmins i don't believe they are
"dummy windows users")

Hey, I did not say that "any windowz user is dummy". If you read my
previous post from the beginning; you'll see that my target is MySQL
users on Windows...

What I've been trying to say that is: If we have a chance to choose, I'd
prefer using PostgreSQL in *nix systems. This is what I've been doing
since 2,5 years.

So if you don't want windows support just don't use it!!!!!

I can't, even if I want it; since I do not have a windows installed
computer. ;-)

Anyway, this will be a "windows-linux" discussion; which is offtopic for
this list.

Best regards,
--
Devrim GUNDUZ
TR.NET System Support Specialist
devrim@tr.net

Devrim G?ND?Z wrote:

I do NOT like hearing about MySQL in this (these) list(s).

PostgreSQL is not in the same category with MySQL. MySQL is for
*dummies*, not database admins. I do not even call it a database. I
have never forgotten my data loss 2,5 years ago; when I used MySQL for
just 2 months!!!

I think you're on to something here, but it's obscured by the way you
said it.

There's no question in my mind that PostgreSQL is superior in almost
every way to MySQL. For those of us who are technically minded, it
boggles the mind that people would choose MySQL over PostgreSQL. Yet
they do. And it's important to understand why.

Simply saying "MySQL has better marketing" isn't enough. It's too
simple an answer and obscures some issues that should probably be
addressed.

People use MySQL because it's very easy to set up, relatively easy to
maintain (when something doesn't go wrong, that is), is very well
documented and supported, and is initially adequate for the task they
have in mind (that the task may change significantly such that MySQL
is no longer adequate is something only those with experience will
consider).

PostgreSQL has come a long way and, with the exception of a few minor
things (the need to VACUUM, for instance. The current version makes
the VACUUM requirement almost a non-issue as regards performance and
availability, but it really should be something that the database
takes care of itself), is equivalent to MySQL in the above things
except for documentation and support.

MySQL's documentation is very, very good. My experience with it is
that it's possible, and relatively easy, to find information about
almost anything you might need to know.

PostgreSQL's documentation is good, but not quite as good as MySQL's.
It's not quite as complete. For instance, I didn't find any
documentation at all in the User's Guide or Administrator's Guide on
creating tables (if I missed it, then that might illustrate that the
documentation needs to be organized slightly differently). I did find
a little in the tutorial (about the amount that you'd want in a
tutorial), but to find out more I had to go to the SQL statement
reference (in my case I was looking for the means by which one could
create a constraint on a column during table creation time).

The reason this is important is that the documentation is *the* way
people are going to learn the database. If it's too sparse or too
disorganized, people who don't have a lot of time to spend searching
through the documentation for something may well decide that a
different product (such as MySQL) would suit their needs better.

The documentation for PostgreSQL improves all the time, largely in
response to comments such as this one, and that's a very good thing.
My purpose in bringing this up is to show you what PostgreSQL is up
against in terms of widespread adoption.

If we want to "sell" PostgreSQL, we should talk about, maybe, Oracle.
I have never took care of MySQL said. I just know that I'm running
PostgreSQL since 2,5 years and I only stopped it "JUST" before upgrades
of PostgreSQL. It's just *working*; which is unfamiliar to MySQL
users.

The experience people have with MySQL varies a lot, and much of it has
to do with the load people put on it. If MySQL were consistently bad
and unreliable it would have a much smaller following (since it's not
in a monopoly position the way Microsoft is).

But you're mistaken if you believe that MySQL isn't competition for
PostgreSQL. It is, because it serves the same purpose: a means of
storing information in an easily retrievable way.

Selling potential MySQL users on PostgreSQL should be easier than
doing the same for Oracle users because potential MySQL users have at
least already decided that a free database is worthy of consideration.
As their needs grow beyond what MySQL offers, they'll look for a more
capable database engine. It's a target market that we'd be idiots to
ignore, and we do so at our peril (the more people out there using
MySQL, the fewer there are using PostgreSQL).

I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version.
If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install
Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows
support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will
begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz
support.

I hate to break it to you (assuming that I didn't misunderstand what
you said), but Oracle offers a native Windows port of their database
engine, and has done so for some time. It's *stupid* to ignore the
native Windows market. There are a lot of people who need a database
engine to store their data and who would benefit from a native Windows
implementation of PostgreSQL, but aren't interested in the additional
burden of setting up a Linux server because they lack the money, time,
or expertise.

So, hackers (I'm not a hacker) should decide whether PostgreSQL should
be used widely in real database apps, or it should be used even by dummy
users?

What makes you think we can't meet the needs of both groups? The
capabilities of PostgreSQL are (with very few exceptions) a superset
of MySQL's, which means that wherever someone deploys a MySQL server,
they could probably have deployed a PostgreSQL server in its place.
It should be an easy sell: they get a database engine that is
significantly more capable than MySQL for the same low price!

Selling to the Oracle market is going to be harder. The capabilities
of Oracle are a superset of those of PostgreSQL. Shops which plan to
deploy a database server and who need the capabilities of PostgreSQL
at a minimum are going to look at Oracle for the same reason that
shops which at a minimum need the capabilities of MySQL would be smart
to look at PostgreSQL: their needs may grow over time and changing the
database mid-project is difficult and time-consuming. The difference
is that the prices of MySQL and PostgreSQL are the same, while the
prices of PostgreSQL and Oracle are vastly different.

That's not to say that going after the Oracle market shouldn't be done
(quite the opposite, provided it's done honestly), only that *not*
going after the MySQL market is folly.

--
Kevin Brown kevin@sysexperts.com

Kevin Brown wrote:

Devrim G?ND?Z wrote:

I do NOT like hearing about MySQL in this (these) list(s).

PostgreSQL is not in the same category with MySQL. MySQL is for
*dummies*, not database admins. I do not even call it a database. I
have never forgotten my data loss 2,5 years ago; when I used MySQL for
just 2 months!!!

I think you're on to something here, but it's obscured by the way you
said it.

There's no question in my mind that PostgreSQL is superior in almost
every way to MySQL. For those of us who are technically minded, it
boggles the mind that people would choose MySQL over PostgreSQL. Yet
they do. And it's important to understand why.

Simply saying "MySQL has better marketing" isn't enough. It's too
simple an answer and obscures some issues that should probably be
addressed.

I think it /is/ a significant factor, the point being that the MySQL company
has been quite activist in pressing MySQL as "the answer," to the point to
which there's a development strategy called "LAMP" (Linux + Apache + MySQL +
(Perl|Python|PHP)).

People use MySQL because it's very easy to set up, relatively easy to
maintain (when something doesn't go wrong, that is), is very well
documented and supported, and is initially adequate for the task they
have in mind (that the task may change significantly such that MySQL
is no longer adequate is something only those with experience will
consider).

... And the consistent marketing pressure that in essence claims:

- It's easier to use than any alternative;
- It's much faster than any other DBMS;
- It's plenty powerful and robust enough.

As near as I can tell, /none/ of these things are true outside of very
carefully selected application domains. But the claims have been presented
enough times that people actually believe them to be true.

PostgreSQL has come a long way and, with the exception of a few minor
things (the need to VACUUM, for instance. The current version makes
the VACUUM requirement almost a non-issue as regards performance and
availability, but it really should be something that the database
takes care of itself), is equivalent to MySQL in the above things
except for documentation and support.

I would point to a third thing: Tools to support "hands-off administration."
My web hosting provider has a set of tools to let me administer various
aspects of my site complete with "pretty GUI" that covers:
- Configuring email accounts, including mailing lists, Spam Assassin, and
such;
- Configuring subdomains;
- Managing files/directories, doing backups;
- Apache configuration;
- Cron jobs;
- A couple of "shopping cart" systems;
- A "chat room system;"
- Last, but certainly not least, the ability to manage MySQL databases.

There is no "canned" equivalent for PostgreSQL, which means that ISPs that
don't have people with DBMS expertise will be inclined to prefer MySQL. It's
a better choice for them.

MySQL's documentation is very, very good. My experience with it is
that it's possible, and relatively easy, to find information about
almost anything you might need to know.

PostgreSQL's documentation is good, but not quite as good as MySQL's.
It's not quite as complete. For instance, I didn't find any
documentation at all in the User's Guide or Administrator's Guide on
creating tables (if I missed it, then that might illustrate that the
documentation needs to be organized slightly differently). I did find
a little in the tutorial (about the amount that you'd want in a
tutorial), but to find out more I had to go to the SQL statement
reference (in my case I was looking for the means by which one could
create a constraint on a column during table creation time).

The reason this is important is that the documentation is *the* way
people are going to learn the database. If it's too sparse or too
disorganized, people who don't have a lot of time to spend searching
through the documentation for something may well decide that a
different product (such as MySQL) would suit their needs better.

The documentation for PostgreSQL improves all the time, largely in
response to comments such as this one, and that's a very good thing.
My purpose in bringing this up is to show you what PostgreSQL is up
against in terms of widespread adoption.

That's probably pretty fair. I'm using the word "fair" advisedly, too.

If someone objects, saying that PostgreSQL docs /are/ good, keep in mind that
new users are not mandated to be "fair" about this. If they have trouble
finding what they were looking for, they couldn't care less that you think the
docs are pretty good: /they/ didn't find what /they/ were looking for, and
that's all they care about.

If we want to "sell" PostgreSQL, we should talk about, maybe, Oracle.
I have never took care of MySQL said. I just know that I'm running
PostgreSQL since 2,5 years and I only stopped it "JUST" before upgrades
of PostgreSQL. It's just *working*; which is unfamiliar to MySQL
users.

The experience people have with MySQL varies a lot, and much of it has
to do with the load people put on it. If MySQL were consistently bad
and unreliable it would have a much smaller following (since it's not
in a monopoly position the way Microsoft is).

But you're mistaken if you believe that MySQL isn't competition for
PostgreSQL. It is, because it serves the same purpose: a means of
storing information in an easily retrievable way.

Indeed. People with modest data storage requirements that came in with /no/
comprehension of what a "relational" database is may find the limited
functionality of MySQL perfectly reasonable for their purposes.

And I'll pull in a quote I saw on comp.databases this week that I think is
quite fabulous:

-------------------------------------------------------------

if you mean by "ideal" that it runs on Unix and crashes all the time
and needs a bazillion DBA's to keep them running and you want to
constantly recover your database and your data files, then you can
have ideal.

A little background on my original comment might be in order. I
don't tend to use the term "ideal" myself, much. I was referring to
a comment made fairly frequently in this forum, to the effect that
"A commercial Relational Databse system has never been built." These
people exclude Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Informix, Interbase, yada
yada, because all of them fail, in one way or another to live up to
the "ideal" of a truly relational system. I have a hard time with such
terminological rigidity, myself. One can say that all those products
aren't perfect relational products, but one shouldn't, in my view, say
that they "aren't even relational".

Why do you think that they are "relational" ? Do they operate on relations ? I
don't think so. If their primary business is not to operate on relations but
on bags of rows, calling them relational is misleading.

Just like ODBMS are often database construction kits or persistence libraries,
SQL DBMSes are a real DBMS (they do provide transactions, recovery,
concurrency control, some data integrity) + a *relational construction kit*.
Meaning that by a skillful use of SQL one can come somewhere close to a
relational database.

But the complexity is left on the user to shoulder, and it is very difficult
to stretch SQL so that you are still in the realm of relational model. And
guess what: most users don't and most users suffer as a consequence.

It's even worse than that : very often product documentation and books
sponsored by the vendors (Oracle press: anyone there ?) simply lie to the
users by defining relational model in the most ridiculous terms. Actually they
screwed up their products, they built a multi-billion dollars industry by
taking agressive shortcuts on the implementation side and transfering the
complexity to the user and now they try to lie and cheat by proclaiming their
version of "relational" (not long ago the auto industry maintained seat belts
and airbags were unnecessarily expensive and not needed).

Best regards,
Costin Cozianu
-------------------------------------------------------------

The interesting argument that Costin makes is that SQL databases are /not/
"relational databases," but rather that they are tools that can be used to
construct relational database systems.

PostgreSQL has enough decent constructs, what with mature implementations of
foreign keys, views, and constraints that it is fairly easy to build
relational systems using PostgreSQL. In contrast, the paucity of supportive
constructs in MySQL means that neither the database nor the resulting
applications are likely to be terribly "relational" in the senses intended by
Codd and Date.

Selling potential MySQL users on PostgreSQL should be easier than
doing the same for Oracle users because potential MySQL users have at
least already decided that a free database is worthy of consideration.
As their needs grow beyond what MySQL offers, they'll look for a more
capable database engine. It's a target market that we'd be idiots to
ignore, and we do so at our peril (the more people out there using
MySQL, the fewer there are using PostgreSQL).

The unfortunate part is that those that outgrow MySQL are likely to have /two/
misconceptions:

1. That the only /real/ reliability improvement will come in moving to
something like Oracle;

2. That PostgreSQL will be a huge step backwards into performance problems
because it is "so much slower."

That these are misconceptions does not prevent people from believing them.
(The third deceptive misconception I see is that MySQL is somehow "more
standard" than some of its competitors.)

I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version.
If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install
Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows
support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will
begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz
support.

I hate to break it to you (assuming that I didn't misunderstand what
you said), but Oracle offers a native Windows port of their database
engine, and has done so for some time. It's *stupid* to ignore the
native Windows market. There are a lot of people who need a database
engine to store their data and who would benefit from a native Windows
implementation of PostgreSQL, but aren't interested in the additional
burden of setting up a Linux server because they lack the money, time,
or expertise.

I think it would be a Bad Thing if making PostgreSQL support Windows better
were to compromise how well it works on Unix, but I haven't seen evidence of
anyone actually proposing patches that would have that result.

So, hackers (I'm not a hacker) should decide whether PostgreSQL should
be used widely in real database apps, or it should be used even by dummy
users?

What makes you think we can't meet the needs of both groups? The
capabilities of PostgreSQL are (with very few exceptions) a superset
of MySQL's, which means that wherever someone deploys a MySQL server,
they could probably have deployed a PostgreSQL server in its place.
It should be an easy sell: they get a database engine that is
significantly more capable than MySQL for the same low price!

You can't sell into the "ISP appliance market" until there's something as
ubiquitous as "PHPMyAdmin" for PostgreSQL. And note that the "ISP appliance
market" only cares about this in a very indirect way. They don't actually use
the database; their /customers/ do. And their customers are likely to be
fairly unsophisticated souls who will use whatever database is given to them.

Selling to the Oracle market is going to be harder. The capabilities
of Oracle are a superset of those of PostgreSQL. Shops which plan to
deploy a database server and who need the capabilities of PostgreSQL
at a minimum are going to look at Oracle for the same reason that
shops which at a minimum need the capabilities of MySQL would be smart
to look at PostgreSQL: their needs may grow over time and changing the
database mid-project is difficult and time-consuming. The difference
is that the prices of MySQL and PostgreSQL are the same, while the
prices of PostgreSQL and Oracle are vastly different.

There are Oracle markets /not/ worth going after, at this point. You /don't/
go after the "ERP" markets or the data center markets where license budgets
are in millions of dollars, and where it's going to be tough to take
PostgreSQL seriously when Oracle is entirely prepared to send in a group of 10
technical marketing people to swamp the customer with marketing information.

What /is/ worth going after is the "small server" market, for departmental
applications. It's not "big bucks;" in the Oracle realm, it might lead to a
licensing fee of $20K. For $20K, they aren't going to send in a swarm of
marketers to fight for the account.

That's not to say that going after the Oracle market shouldn't be done
(quite the opposite, provided it's done honestly), only that *not*
going after the MySQL market is folly.

Indeed.

It is almost a "necessary defense" to counter the deceptive claims that are
made. If nobody says anything, people may actually /believe/ that PostgreSQL
is vastly slower.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/nonrdbms.html
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
-- First Baron Acton, 1834 - 1902

You can't sell into the "ISP appliance market" until there's something as
ubiquitous as "PHPMyAdmin" for PostgreSQL. And note that the "ISP

appliance

market" only cares about this in a very indirect way. They don't actually

use

the database; their /customers/ do. And their customers are likely to be
fairly unsophisticated souls who will use whatever database is given to

them.

Hey! What about phpPgAdmin?

We're actually working on a next generation version atm which is a total
rewrite that:

1. modern php
2. register_globals off, full error checking
3. themable
4. Easily supports all versions
5. etc.

However, even with repeated calls for developers, it's just me and Rob
Treat!

phpPgAdmin does not work with 7.3 so this in an increasingly important
project.

Anyone wanna help? :)

http://phppgdamin.sourceforge.net/

Maybe we should move to gborg?

Chris

cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:

Kevin Brown wrote:

Simply saying "MySQL has better marketing" isn't enough. It's too
simple an answer and obscures some issues that should probably be
addressed.

I think it /is/ a significant factor, the point being that the MySQL company
has been quite activist in pressing MySQL as "the answer," to the point to
which there's a development strategy called "LAMP" (Linux + Apache + MySQL +
(Perl|Python|PHP)).

Oh, I'll certainly not dispute that marketing has had a significant
effect, but I don't think it's the only reason for MySQL's success.

History has a lot to do with it, because it's through history that
momentum gets built up, as it has with MySQL.

People use MySQL because it's very easy to set up, relatively easy to
maintain (when something doesn't go wrong, that is), is very well
documented and supported, and is initially adequate for the task they
have in mind (that the task may change significantly such that MySQL
is no longer adequate is something only those with experience will
consider).

... And the consistent marketing pressure that in essence claims:

- It's easier to use than any alternative;
- It's much faster than any other DBMS;
- It's plenty powerful and robust enough.

As near as I can tell, /none/ of these things are true outside of very
carefully selected application domains. But the claims have been presented
enough times that people actually believe them to be true.

I agree with you -- now. But the situation as it is now has not
always been. Consider where PostgreSQL was 4 years ago. I believe it
was at version 6 at that time, if I remember correctly. And as I
recall, many people had very significant issues with it in the key
areas of performance and reliability. Now, I didn't experience these
things firsthand because I wasn't using it at the time, but it is the
general impression I got when reading the accounts of people who
*were* using it.

MySQL at the time wasn't necessarily any more reliable, but it had one
thing going for it that PostgreSQL didn't: myisamchk. Even if the
database crashed, you stood a very good chance of being able to
recover your data without having to restore from backups. PostgreSQL
didn't have this at all: either you had to be a guru with the
PostgreSQL database format or you had to restore from backups. That
meant that *in practice* MySQL was easier to maintain, even it crashed
more often as PostgreSQL, because the amount of administrative effort
to deal with a MySQL crash was so much less.

PostgreSQL has come a long way and, with the exception of a few minor
things (the need to VACUUM, for instance. The current version makes
the VACUUM requirement almost a non-issue as regards performance and
availability, but it really should be something that the database
takes care of itself), is equivalent to MySQL in the above things
except for documentation and support.

I would point to a third thing: Tools to support "hands-off
administration." My web hosting provider has a set of tools to let
me administer various aspects of my site complete with "pretty GUI"
that covers:

- Configuring email accounts, including mailing lists, Spam
Assassin, and such;
- Configuring subdomains;
- Managing files/directories, doing backups;
- Apache configuration;
- Cron jobs;
- A couple of "shopping cart" systems;
- A "chat room system;"
- Last, but certainly not least, the ability to manage MySQL
databases.

There is no "canned" equivalent for PostgreSQL, which means that
ISPs that don't have people with DBMS expertise will be inclined to
prefer MySQL. It's a better choice for them.

This is true, but the only way to combat that is to get PostgreSQL
more widely deployed. Network effects such as that are common in the
computing world, so it doesn't come as much surprise that the most
popular database engine in the webhosting world is the best supported
one for that role.

It's only because of the relative popularity of MySQL that it has so
much support. The only way to grow PostgreSQL's popularity is to get
it deployed in situations where the tools available for it are
sufficient.

But you're mistaken if you believe that MySQL isn't competition for
PostgreSQL. It is, because it serves the same purpose: a means of
storing information in an easily retrievable way.

Indeed. People with modest data storage requirements that came in
with /no/ comprehension of what a "relational" database is may find
the limited functionality of MySQL perfectly reasonable for their
purposes.

This is true, but the biggest problem is that the requirements of a
project often balloon over time, and the demands on the database
backend will also tend to increase. Because MySQL is rather limited
in its functionality, it doesn't take much until you'll be forced to
use a different database backend.

This is why I view PostgreSQL as a much wiser choice in almost all
cases where you need a database engine. Your needs will have to be
quite considerable before PostgreSQL's capabilities are no longer
enough.

PostgreSQL has enough decent constructs, what with mature
implementations of foreign keys, views, and constraints that it is
fairly easy to build relational systems using PostgreSQL. In
contrast, the paucity of supportive constructs in MySQL means that
neither the database nor the resulting applications are likely to be
terribly "relational" in the senses intended by Codd and Date.

This is true, but what everyone fails to ask is whether or not any
particular customer really *cares* about that. The customer isn't
interested in whether or not an application is "relational", they care
whether or not the application does the job it's supposed to. How
"relational" it is is an implementation detail to them.

The reason that PostgreSQL wins over MySQL is not so much that it's
easier to build relational systems with it, but that it's easier to
build *reliable* systems with it. That building the system in a
relational way is one way to achieve that is, again, an implementation
detail.

Selling potential MySQL users on PostgreSQL should be easier than
doing the same for Oracle users because potential MySQL users have at
least already decided that a free database is worthy of consideration.
As their needs grow beyond what MySQL offers, they'll look for a more
capable database engine. It's a target market that we'd be idiots to
ignore, and we do so at our peril (the more people out there using
MySQL, the fewer there are using PostgreSQL).

The unfortunate part is that those that outgrow MySQL are likely to
have /two/ misconceptions:

1. That the only /real/ reliability improvement will come in moving to
something like Oracle;

2. That PostgreSQL will be a huge step backwards into performance problems
because it is "so much slower."

This is because people lack familiarity with PostgreSQL. That's where
marketing PostgreSQL well comes in.

The performance misconception is the result of history. At one time
PostgreSQL *was* much slower than MySQL. People need to be informed
of the current state of affairs.

That these are misconceptions does not prevent people from believing them.
(The third deceptive misconception I see is that MySQL is somehow "more
standard" than some of its competitors.)

The third misconception happens because most people equate "standard"
with "popular". And in the real world, they're not entirely wrong to
do so, unfortunately.

I think it would be a Bad Thing if making PostgreSQL support Windows
better were to compromise how well it works on Unix, but I haven't
seen evidence of anyone actually proposing patches that would have
that result.

I agree, and I also believe that the maintainers would not accept a
patch that compromised the performance under Unix for the sake of
supporting Windows. And rightly so: such a patch would indicate that
the people doing the Windows port haven't solved the problem properly.

You can't sell into the "ISP appliance market" until there's
something as ubiquitous as "PHPMyAdmin" for PostgreSQL.

But there is: PHPPgAdmin (or whatever it's called these days. I seem
to remember that they changed the name of it). Unfortunately it's not
as well known, largely because PostgreSQL itself isn't as well known.

And note that the "ISP appliance market" only cares about this in a
very indirect way. They don't actually use the database; their
/customers/ do. And their customers are likely to be fairly
unsophisticated souls who will use whatever database is given to
them.

And if that's *really* true, then providers will do just as well to
provide PostgreSQL as they would MySQL (since their customers will
just use whatever database they're given). So it's really a question
of selling the providers on it, which (as you mentioned earlier) is in
part a matter of giving them the tools they need to make managing a
PostgreSQL installation easy.

There are Oracle markets /not/ worth going after, at this point.
You /don't/ go after the "ERP" markets or the data center markets
where license budgets are in millions of dollars, and where it's
going to be tough to take PostgreSQL seriously when Oracle is
entirely prepared to send in a group of 10 technical marketing
people to swamp the customer with marketing information.

This is why marketing PostgreSQL *honestly* is so important. If it
won't do the ERP job well, then it behooves those who are promoting it
to realize that and restrain themselves appropriately.

What /is/ worth going after is the "small server" market, for
departmental applications. It's not "big bucks;" in the Oracle
realm, it might lead to a licensing fee of $20K. For $20K, they
aren't going to send in a swarm of marketers to fight for the
account.

And this is exactly one of the markets that MySQL is currently
targeting. Of course, MS-SQL is *also* targeting this market, with a
reasonable amount of success. PostgreSQL is a *perfect* fit for this
kind of operation, and it's one of the reasons that it really *is*
important to have a native Windows port.

That's not to say that going after the Oracle market shouldn't be done
(quite the opposite, provided it's done honestly), only that *not*
going after the MySQL market is folly.

Indeed.

It is almost a "necessary defense" to counter the deceptive claims
that are made. If nobody says anything, people may actually
/believe/ that PostgreSQL is vastly slower.

The way you counter such deceptive claims is to provide proof that
those claims are wrong. Point them at the head-to-head comparison on
the PHPBuilder site. Prove to them that PostgreSQL is in the same
league (if not better) as MySQL in the performance arena. And for
deity's sake, show them how much *less* work they'd have to do under
PostgreSQL because of its referential integrity features. I really
think most people would be willing to sacrifice a small bit of speed
if it meant doing a whole lot less work.

Copied to the advocacy group because of the relevance.

--
Kevin Brown kevin@sysexperts.com

Something I have done at little cost was to submit a request for a few
books on
PostgreSQL to my local library and I check them out once in while and
see that
others are also checking them out.....

I agree with poor level of documentation....the skeleton is
there....perhpas we could
have some volunteers write up some parts (or add more....)...

Kevin Brown wrote: