Joe Hellerstein's "Looking Back at Postgres" paper

On 4 Jul 2024, at 07:40, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I happened to come across this:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973

I found this to be really interesting reading, so I wonder if
we shouldn't cite it in history.sgml or some such place.

It's a really good read, +1 for referencing it in history.sgml. I would
probably have placed it at the tail end of 2.1 to wrap up that section or at
the very end.

Unrelated to that, but reading history.sgml I found this sentend at the end of
the page to be sort of misleading:

"Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found
in Appendix E."

While technically true, it seems a bit overpromising in a history section to
refer to the release notes which are written in a very different way from the
prose here (and the release notes are not even in Appendix E anymore).

--
Daniel Gustafsson

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:

Unrelated to that, but reading history.sgml I found this sentend at the end of
the page to be sort of misleading:

"Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found
in Appendix E."

While technically true, it seems a bit overpromising in a history section to
refer to the release notes which are written in a very different way from the
prose here (and the release notes are not even in Appendix E anymore).

Well, it made sense with our old practice of including all the notes
back to 1996 in appendix E. But now, not so much. The simplest fix
would be to change this text to point to

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/

regards, tom lane

On 4 Jul 2024, at 17:12, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:

Unrelated to that, but reading history.sgml I found this sentend at the end of
the page to be sort of misleading:

"Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found
in Appendix E."

While technically true, it seems a bit overpromising in a history section to
refer to the release notes which are written in a very different way from the
prose here (and the release notes are not even in Appendix E anymore).

Well, it made sense with our old practice of including all the notes
back to 1996 in appendix E.

Yup, and I'm glad we don't anymore.

But now, not so much. The simplest fix would be to change this text to point to

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/

Agreed. I would probably reword that to say "Details about what has happened
in each PostgreSQL release since.." while at it.

--
Daniel Gustafsson

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:

On 4 Jul 2024, at 07:40, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I happened to come across this:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973
I found this to be really interesting reading, so I wonder if
we shouldn't cite it in history.sgml or some such place.

It's a really good read, +1 for referencing it in history.sgml. I would
probably have placed it at the tail end of 2.1 to wrap up that section or at
the very end.

After thinking for awhile, that seemed like burying the lede.
It's an independent telling of the tale, and could reasonably
go near the top, as in the attached draft.

(I'm not too sure how to cite book chapters in DocBook, so feel
free to critique that. Also, I noticed that the ports12 item
was not in alphabetical order, so I moved it.)

Unrelated to that, but reading history.sgml I found this sentend at the end of
the page to be sort of misleading:
"Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found
in Appendix E."

Fixed that too.

BTW, I contacted Hellerstein to make sure he's okay with this,
and he is.

regards, tom lane

On 4 Jul 2024, at 22:22, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:

On 4 Jul 2024, at 07:40, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I happened to come across this:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973
I found this to be really interesting reading, so I wonder if
we shouldn't cite it in history.sgml or some such place.

It's a really good read, +1 for referencing it in history.sgml. I would
probably have placed it at the tail end of 2.1 to wrap up that section or at
the very end.

After thinking for awhile, that seemed like burying the lede.
It's an independent telling of the tale, and could reasonably
go near the top, as in the attached draft.

Agreed, good idea.

(I'm not too sure how to cite book chapters in DocBook, so feel
free to critique that. Also, I noticed that the ports12 item
was not in alphabetical order, so I moved it.)

Reading the docbook reference I wasn't able to figure out a better way than
what you have done so +1 on going ahead with this version.

Unrelated to that, but reading history.sgml I found this sentend at the end of
the page to be sort of misleading:
"Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found
in Appendix E."

Fixed that too.

Thanks.

BTW, I contacted Hellerstein to make sure he's okay with this,
and he is.

+1

--
Daniel Gustafsson

On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 5:40 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I happened to come across this:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973

I found this to be really interesting reading,

Just by the way, for anyone interested, that paper appeared as a
chapter in a book "The Pragmatic Wisdom of Michael Stonebraker". It
is expensive but a very enjoyable read. I doubt many other chapters
from it are obvious candidates for a pointer from our docs like that
one, except a couple of the old papers that we reference already.
Another one that I especially enjoyed was Mike Olson's description of
how Ingres, and Postgres not long behind it, were the first completely
open source software, because through a series of coincidences they
finished up publishing everything under an early not-yet-finalised BSD
license before BSD itself. (BSD still required an AT&T licence for
some bits until they were removed so it wasn't 100% open source until
they fixed that, I think )

As for Joe Hellerstein's paper, personally I am still chewing on the
many ramifications of the stuff pointed to by one paragraph of
Hellerstein's paper, that I rambled about here, gulp, 5 years ago:

/messages/by-id/CA+hUKGL-Fo9mZyFK1tdmzFng2puRBrgROsCiB1=n7wP79mTZ+g@mail.gmail.com

Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com> writes:

On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 5:40 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I happened to come across this:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973

Just by the way, for anyone interested, that paper appeared as a
chapter in a book "The Pragmatic Wisdom of Michael Stonebraker".

Hmm, the arxiv.org copy claims it appeared in "Making Databases Work",
so that's how I cited it in the proposed patch. Is that wrong?
Perhaps it was published twice?

regards, tom lane

On Fri, Jul 5, 2024 at 11:13 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Hmm, the arxiv.org copy claims it appeared in "Making Databases Work",
so that's how I cited it in the proposed patch. Is that wrong?
Perhaps it was published twice?

No, you have it right, I confused myself with the subtitle.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Databases-Work-Pragmatic-Stonebraker/dp/1947487167