Not 7.5, but 8.0 ?

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

It seems certain that the next release, in 6-9 months, will have at
a minimum the Windows port and ARC, if not Slony-I as well.

Given all that, don't people think it's time to jump to 8.0?

It seems a little premature to speculate on what features may or may
not be present in 6 to 9 months time. Why make this decision now, when
we don't even know what will be in the next release, rather than at
the end of the development cycle?

-Neil

Josh Berkus writes:

Given all that, don't people think it's time to jump to 8.0?

As has been said before, many people think that a Windows port is the
least interesting feature ever to happen to PostgreSQL, so you're going to
have to come up with better reasons. Also note that most major number
changes in the past weren't because the features were cool, but because
the project has moved to a new phase. I don't see any such move
happening.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

Peter,

As has been said before, many people think that a Windows port is the
least interesting feature ever to happen to PostgreSQL, so you're going to
have to come up with better reasons.

Yeah, I'm more interested in ARC and replication ... and the SQL
standardization that just went into 7.4.

Also note that most major number
changes in the past weren't because the features were cool, but because
the project has moved to a new phase. I don't see any such move
happening.

Now that is interesting. I missed that. Can you explain how that worked
with 7.0?

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

As has been said before, many people think that a Windows port is the
least interesting feature ever to happen to PostgreSQL, so you're going to
have to come up with better reasons. Also note that most major number
changes in the past weren't because the features were cool, but because
the project has moved to a new phase. I don't see any such move
happening.

What happens if Postgres hits 7.9 but still hasn't reached the next
phase? :)

Hello,

If Win32 actually makes it into 7.5 then yes I believe 8.0 would be
appropriate.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Josh Berkus wrote:

Folks,

Of course, while I was editing press releases at 2am, I started thinking about
our next version. It seems certain that the next release, in 6-9 months,
will have at a minimum the Windows port and ARC, if not Slony-I as well.

Given all that, don't people think it's time to jump to 8.0? Seems like
even 7.4 is hardly recognizable as the same database as 7.0.

I'm posting this to both Advocacy and Hackers because I think that some people
will have rather different points of view on the issue. But I wanted to
start a discussion early this time. No flamewars, please! We all want
PostgreSQL to be the best possible database.

--
Co-Founder
Command Prompt, Inc.
The wheel's spinning but the hamster's dead

As has been said before, many people think that a Windows port is the
least interesting feature ever to happen to PostgreSQL, so you're going to

Yes but these are people running Unix/Linux/BSD not Windows ;)

have to come up with better reasons. Also note that most major number
changes in the past weren't because the features were cool, but because
the project has moved to a new phase. I don't see any such move
happening.

--
Co-Founder
Command Prompt, Inc.
The wheel's spinning but the hamster's dead

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Josh Berkus wrote:

Given all that, don't people think it's time to jump to 8.0? Seems like
even 7.4 is hardly recognizable as the same database as 7.0.

Discussion like this tends to be more for just before beta, once we have
an idea what actually made it in :) You be putting the cart before the
horse, eh?

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Hello,

If Win32 actually makes it into 7.5 then yes I believe 8.0 would be
appropriate.

It might be interesting to track Oracle's version number viz. its
feature list. IOW, a PostgreSQL 8.0 database would be feature
equivalent to an Oracle 8.0 database. That would mean:

1) PITR
2) Distributed Tx
3) Replication
4) Nested Tx
5) PL/SQL Exception Handling

IMHO, a major version number jump should at least match the delta in
features one finds in the commercial segment with their major version
number bumps. Otherwise, I suspect it would be viewed as window
dressing...

Could be wrong, though...

Mike Mascari
mascarm@mascari.com

Oops! josh@agliodbs.com (Josh Berkus) was seen spray-painting on a wall:

Given all that, don't people think it's time to jump to 8.0? Seems
like even 7.4 is hardly recognizable as the same database as 7.0.

If wishes were fishes... Shouldn't we see what interesting features
actually _do_ make it in?

If Win32 support does get ready, and we get recursive queries (I'll
point out different TODO items :-)) and Slony-1, PITR, and cache
improvements make it in, then perhaps it's time to call it 8.0. A
"cvs update -Pd" doesn't get me that yet, so it seems early.

I'd _almost_ buy the story that 7.4 should have been called 8.0,
although that _didn't_ happen because it 'just missed' PITR and Win32.

The amusing approach would be to jump straight to 8.1 :-).
--
wm(X,Y):-write(X),write('@'),write(Y). wm('cbbrowne','acm.org').
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/postgresql.html
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar. Believe me. I
speak from experience." -- Matt Welsh

Josh Berkus wrote:

Also note that most major number
changes in the past weren't because the features were cool, but because
the project has moved to a new phase. I don't see any such move
happening.

Now that is interesting. I missed that. Can you explain how that worked
with 7.0?

We stopped crashing in 7.0, or was it 6.5 --- that was our milestone, I
think. :-)

-- 
  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

Mike Mascari <mascarm@mascari.com> writes:

1) PITR
2) Distributed Tx
3) Replication
4) Nested Tx
5) PL/SQL Exception Handling

Of these PITR seems *by far* the most important. It makes the difference
between an enterprise-class database capable of running 24x7 with disaster
recovery plans, and a lesser beast that needs to be shut down for cold backups
periodically.

Features like Nested Transactions and Exception Handling are "would be nice"
features. Especially for pre-existing code-bases. But for new projects they're
not things that make the difference between measuring up and not.

Besides, Oracle 8 had Replication the way Mysql has transactions... It a
recently bolted-on addition that only worked in limited cases until a few
rewrites later.

Oh, and yeah, a win32 port. Yay, another OS port. Postgres runs on dozens of
OSes already. What's so exciting about one more? Even if it is a
pathologically hard OS to port to. Just because it was hard doesn't mean it's
useful.

--
greg

Oh, and yeah, a win32 port. Yay, another OS port. Postgres runs on dozens of
OSes already. What's so exciting about one more? Even if it is a
pathologically hard OS to port to. Just because it was hard doesn't mean it's
useful.

I don't call porting Postgres to run well on something like 40% of the
world's servers (or whatever it is) "just another port".

It could conveivably double Postgres's target audience, could attract
heaps of new users, new developers, new companies and put us in a better
position to compete with MySQL.

I think it's actually a necessary port to keep the project alive in the
long term.

Chris

Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

Oh, and yeah, a win32 port. Yay, another OS port. Postgres runs on
dozens of
OSes already. What's so exciting about one more? Even if it is a
pathologically hard OS to port to. Just because it was hard doesn't
mean it's
useful.

I don't call porting Postgres to run well on something like 40% of the
world's servers (or whatever it is) "just another port".

It could conveivably double Postgres's target audience, could attract
heaps of new users, new developers, new companies and put us in a
better position to compete with MySQL.

I think it's actually a necessary port to keep the project alive in
the long term.

Absolutely! In addition, even if you don't consider win32 a platform to
run production databases on, the win32 port will help developers who
work from windows boxes, which is the certainly the most widely used
desktop environment. My former company would have loved the win32 port
for exactly this reason, even though most of our servers were FreeBSD /
Linux.

Matthew T. O'Connor writes:

Absolutely! In addition, even if you don't consider win32 a platform to
run production databases on, the win32 port will help developers who
work from windows boxes, which is the certainly the most widely used
desktop environment.

At the risk of stating the obvious: Cygwin is your friend in exactly this
case.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

�� ������, 18.11.2003, �� 00:43, William Yu ����������:

What happens if Postgres hits 7.9 but still hasn't reached the next
phase? :)

Easy - 7.10.

--
Markus Bertheau <twanger@bluetwanger.de>

"Matthew T. O'Connor" <matthew@zeut.net> writes:

I don't call porting Postgres to run well on something like 40% of the
world's servers (or whatever it is) "just another port".

It could conveivably double Postgres's target audience, could attract heaps
of new users, new developers, new companies and put us in a better position
to compete with MySQL.

That's a misleading extrapolation. If people wanted to run an open source
database they could just as easily run a Solaris, Linux, or BSD server to run
it on anyways. I assure you 40% of the worlds servers will not switch from
MSSQL to Postgres the day the win32 port comes out...

The reality is it just doesn't happen that way. Postgres isn't the first major
unixy software to get ported to windows. Emacs, Gcc, Mozilla, Gimp, even X all
have windows ports. And they're not dead ports either, they have significant
user-bases. But they don't make much of a dent compared to the much larger
entrenched Unix user-base and they don't change the nature of the development
much.

Absolutely! In addition, even if you don't consider win32 a platform to run
production databases on, the win32 port will help developers who work from
windows boxes, which is the certainly the most widely used desktop environment.
My former company would have loved the win32 port for exactly this reason, even
though most of our servers were FreeBSD / Linux.

Oh sure, it'll be useful. But it doesn't make the difference between different
classes of software. It'll still the same Postgres with the same set of things
it's capable of handling once you get it running.

If you need 24x7, scalability to n terabytes or x transactions/s, guaranteed
data integrity in the face of various failures, none of the checklist items
you'll be looking for will be win32 support. PITR will probably be a factor in
meeting any of those requirements.

In any case, my post was mostly a troll, there's not really much point in
arguing with it. They're all useful features and I hope they're all in the
next version of postgres, whatever version number it's given :)

--
greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Eisentraut [mailto:peter_e@gmx.net]
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:04 PM
To: Matthew T. O'Connor
Cc: Christopher Kings-Lynne; Greg Stark; pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [pgsql-advocacy] Not 7.5, but 8.0 ?

Matthew T. O'Connor writes:

Absolutely! In addition, even if you don't consider win32

a platform

to run production databases on, the win32 port will help developers
who work from windows boxes, which is the certainly the most widely
used desktop environment.

At the risk of stating the obvious: Cygwin is your friend in
exactly this case.

Yes, but how friendly is it?

Cygwin requires a license for commercial use.

Dann Corbit writes:

At the risk of stating the obvious: Cygwin is your friend in
exactly this case.

Yes, but how friendly is it?

What are you asking here? Is it easy to install and use? Yes.

Cygwin requires a license for commercial use.

No, it does not.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

--- Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> wrote:

I don't call porting Postgres to run well on something like 40% of the
world's servers (or whatever it is) "just another port".

Statistics is a tricky thing. IMHO, there are plenty of things that are much
more important than win32 port.

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