I am being interviewed by OReilly

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Oreilly and Assoc is interviewing me and they asked me two questions I
don't have the answers to:
When is 7.3 set to land?
When is 8.0 set to land?

7.3 will go beta at the end of August, barring major disasters.
As for final release, it's done when it's done --- the optimistic
schedule would be end of September, but we do not release by the
calendar. We release when we think the code is ready.

There is no plan anywhere that involves an 8.0; if anyone thinks
they know how many 7.* releases there will be, when 8.0 will be
out, or what will be in it, they are just blowing smoke. We have
a hard enough time seeing ahead to the next release...

regards, tom lane

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 01:46:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

When is 7.3 set to land?

When is 8.0 set to land?

As a matter of curiosity, what would constitute "8.0" as opposed to,
say, 7.4? (I know that 7.0 happened partly because a great whack of
new features went in, but I haven't found anything in the -hackers
archives to explain why the number change. Maybe it's just a phase
of the moon thing, or something.)

A

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                               87 Mowat Avenue 
Liberty RMS                           Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M6K 3E3
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When is 8.0 set to land?

You might point out that every release is an 8.0 by the pathetic
standards now used by many or most products for labeling releases.

We take a perverse pride in versioning The Old Fashioned Way, perhaps to
an extreme ;)

- Thomas

Andrew Sullivan wrote:

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 01:46:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

When is 7.3 set to land?

When is 8.0 set to land?

As a matter of curiosity, what would constitute "8.0" as opposed to,
say, 7.4? (I know that 7.0 happened partly because a great whack of
new features went in, but I haven't found anything in the -hackers
archives to explain why the number change. Maybe it's just a phase
of the moon thing, or something.)

Actually, it was a wack of new features in 6.5 when we realized we had
to up the version on the next release. I think multi-master replication
would be an 8.0 item, and point-in-time recovery.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Andrew Sullivan <andrew@libertyrms.info> writes:

As a matter of curiosity, what would constitute "8.0" as opposed to,
say, 7.4? (I know that 7.0 happened partly because a great whack of
new features went in, but I haven't found anything in the -hackers
archives to explain why the number change. Maybe it's just a phase
of the moon thing, or something.)

I remember quite a deal of argument about whether to call it 7.0 or 6.6;
we had started that cycle with the assumption that it would be called
6.6, and changed our minds near the end. Personally I'd have preferred
to stick the 7.* label on starting with the next release (actually
called 7.1) which had WAL and TOAST in it. That was really a
significant set of changes, both on the inside and outside.

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be
called 8.0, because the addition of schema support will break an
awful lot of client-side code ;-). But I doubt we will do that.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

Andrew Sullivan <andrew@libertyrms.info> writes:

As a matter of curiosity, what would constitute "8.0" as opposed to,
say, 7.4? (I know that 7.0 happened partly because a great whack of
new features went in, but I haven't found anything in the -hackers
archives to explain why the number change. Maybe it's just a phase
of the moon thing, or something.)

I remember quite a deal of argument about whether to call it 7.0 or 6.6;
we had started that cycle with the assumption that it would be called
6.6, and changed our minds near the end. Personally I'd have preferred
to stick the 7.* label on starting with the next release (actually
called 7.1) which had WAL and TOAST in it. That was really a
significant set of changes, both on the inside and outside.

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be
called 8.0, because the addition of schema support will break an
awful lot of client-side code ;-). But I doubt we will do that.

Yes, the problem with incrementing on major features is that we would
start to look like Emacs numbering fairly quickly.

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tom Lane wrote:

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be
called 8.0, because the addition of schema support

Star-schema support?

will break an

Bruce Momjian wrote:

<snip>

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Heh Heh Heh

Let's do the M$ trick and pick a name that everyone will confuse and
assume it's us:

"Standard SQL 1.0".

So when people use the popularity question for deciding their database
"what database does everyone else use? I just want the standard one..."

We win. :)

+ Justin

--
Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
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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, 4 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be called
8.0, because the addition of schema support will break an awful lot of
client-side code ;-). But I doubt we will do that.

Actually, from reading that thread, I started to think along those lines
too ... it is a major change, is there a reason why going to 8.0 on this
one is a bad idea? I realize that its *only* been 2 years that we've been
in v7.0 ... :) v7.0 was released back in Mar of 2000 ... so its almost
2.5 years ...

I don't necessarily agree with Bruce's thought that distributed
replication would be the marker, since there is no set path to that right
now, nor is there, I believe, enough knowledge about whether or not bring
such in will affect anyting other then the backend itself ...

With this next release, we are looking at breaking the front-end apps, as
I understand it ... I think that's pretty drastic of a change to force
going to 8.0 ...

We don't release fast, or often, so our v7.2 is like some other projects
v7.26, at the rate some of them release ...

I'd like to see this next release go to 8.0 ...

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Tom Lane wrote:

Andrew Sullivan <andrew@libertyrms.info> writes:

As a matter of curiosity, what would constitute "8.0" as opposed to,
say, 7.4? (I know that 7.0 happened partly because a great whack of
new features went in, but I haven't found anything in the -hackers
archives to explain why the number change. Maybe it's just a phase
of the moon thing, or something.)

I remember quite a deal of argument about whether to call it 7.0 or 6.6;
we had started that cycle with the assumption that it would be called
6.6, and changed our minds near the end. Personally I'd have preferred
to stick the 7.* label on starting with the next release (actually
called 7.1) which had WAL and TOAST in it. That was really a
significant set of changes, both on the inside and outside.

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be
called 8.0, because the addition of schema support will break an
awful lot of client-side code ;-). But I doubt we will do that.

Yes, the problem with incrementing on major features is that we would
start to look like Emacs numbering fairly quickly.

At 2.5years in v7.x, I think its going to be a long while before we start
getting into the 20's :)

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Ya, that's it ... we've only spent, what, 8 years now making 'PostgreSQL'
known, so let's change the name *just* so that we can start at 1.0 and
face a new challenge of getting ppl to recognize the name?

With this next release, we are looking at breaking the front-end apps, as
I understand it ... I think that's pretty drastic of a change to force
going to 8.0 ...

We don't release fast, or often, so our v7.2 is like some other projects
v7.26, at the rate some of them release ...

I'd like to see this next release go to 8.0 ...

Hmmm...makes sense. I'd be for it.

BTW - has anyone looked at Neil's PREPARE patch yet?

Chris

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Ya, that's it ... we've only spent, what, 8 years now making 'PostgreSQL'
known, so let's change the name *just* so that we can start at 1.0 and
face a new challenge of getting ppl to recognize the name?

I've heard a number of people opine that we should go back to just plain
'Postgres', which is pronounceable by the uninitiate, and besides which
that's what we use informally most of the time. 'PostgreSQL' is about
as marketing-unfriendly a name as you could easily find...

I'd not be in favor of picking something new out of the blue, but I'd
pick 'Postgres' over 'PostgreSQL' if it were up to me.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Ya, that's it ... we've only spent, what, 8 years now making 'PostgreSQL'
known, so let's change the name *just* so that we can start at 1.0 and
face a new challenge of getting ppl to recognize the name?

I've heard a number of people opine that we should go back to just plain
'Postgres', which is pronounceable by the uninitiate, and besides which
that's what we use informally most of the time. 'PostgreSQL' is about
as marketing-unfriendly a name as you could easily find...

I personally agree.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

"Marc G. Fournier" wrote:

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

<snip>

We can also go any number in between... like "7.5"...

:)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

I'd like to see this next release go to 8.0 ...

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--
"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

While there are big changes between 7.2 and the next release, they
aren't really any bigger than others during the 7.x series. I don't
really feel that the next release is worth an 8.0 rather than a 7.3. But
this is just an opinion; it's not something I'm prepared to argue about.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

I'd not be in favor of picking something new out of the blue, but I'd
pick 'Postgres' over 'PostgreSQL' if it were up to me.

As I recall the only real reason for the change was to emphasize that
the query language had changed to SQL. Back in my young and naive days
(probably early '95) I remember picking up Postgres, realizing it didn't
use SQL as the query language, thinking, "How terrible!" and immediately
dropping it for MySQL. (I'm older and wiser now, but it's too late--all
the systems that let you use something less crappy than SQL are now
gone. *Sigh*.) Anyway, I expect that others had the same experience, and
thus something like that was required to get people who had previously
dropped it to go back to it again.

Now that QUEL or PostQUEL or whatever it was is long gone and fogotten
(except maybe in certain CA-Unicenter shops), I see no reason we
couldn't go back to "Postgres" now.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

In my book, schema support is a big thing, leading to rethink a lot of
database organization and such. PostgreSQL 8 would stress this
importance.

--
Alessio F. Bragadini alessio@albourne.com
APL Financial Services http://village.albourne.com
Nicosia, Cyprus phone: +357-22-755750

"It is more complicated than you think"
-- The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Curt Sampson wrote:

While there are big changes between 7.2 and the next release, they
aren't really any bigger than others during the 7.x series. I don't
really feel that the next release is worth an 8.0 rather than a 7.3. But
this is just an opinion; it's not something I'm prepared to argue about.

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ... which,
I'm guessing, is pretty major, no? :)

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Ya, that's it ... we've only spent, what, 8 years now making 'PostgreSQL'
known, so let's change the name *just* so that we can start at 1.0 and
face a new challenge of getting ppl to recognize the name?

I've heard a number of people opine that we should go back to just plain
'Postgres', which is pronounceable by the uninitiate, and besides which

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ...

Only those that inspect system catalogs --- I'm not sure what percentage
that is, but surely it's not "pretty much every" one. psql for example
is only affected because of its \d commands.

regards, tom lane

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ...

Only those that inspect system catalogs --- I'm not sure what percentage
that is, but surely it's not "pretty much every" one. psql for example
is only affected because of its \d commands.

Okay, anyone have any ideas of other packages that would inspect the
system catalog? The only ones I could think of, off the top of my head,
would be pgAccess, pgAdmin and phpPgAdmin ... but I would guess that any
'administratively oriented' interface would face similar problems, no?

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ... which,
I'm guessing, is pretty major, no? :)

I've always thought of our release numbering as having "themes". The 6.x
series took Postgres from interesting but buggy to a solid system, with
a clear path to additional capabilities. The 7.x series fleshes out SQL
standards compliance and rationalizes the O-R features, as well as adds
to robustness and speed with WAL etc. And the 8.x series would enable
Postgres to extend to distributed systems etc., quite likely having some
fundamental restructuring of the way we handle sources of data (remember
our discussions a couple years ago regarding "tuple sources"?).

So I feel that bumping to 8.x just for schemas is not necessary. I
*like* the idea of having more than one or two releases in a series, and
would be very happy to see a 7.3 released.

- Thomas

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Thomas Lockhart wrote:

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ... which,
I'm guessing, is pretty major, no? :)

I've always thought of our release numbering as having "themes". The 6.x
series took Postgres from interesting but buggy to a solid system, with
a clear path to additional capabilities. The 7.x series fleshes out SQL
standards compliance and rationalizes the O-R features, as well as adds
to robustness and speed with WAL etc. And the 8.x series would enable
Postgres to extend to distributed systems etc., quite likely having some
fundamental restructuring of the way we handle sources of data (remember
our discussions a couple years ago regarding "tuple sources"?).

So I feel that bumping to 8.x just for schemas is not necessary. I
*like* the idea of having more than one or two releases in a series, and
would be very happy to see a 7.3 released.

Seems I'm the only one for 8.x, so 7.3 it is :)

Can't figure it out cause you're a techie most of us that subscribe
to these lists are... When I was doing tech support i had people asking
for help with [these aren't typo's]

Prostgre sequel

Postresquirrel

pgsql

psql

Progress

etc...

and alot of the folks i talked to were not newbies, they had been using
it for a while.

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Ya, that's it ... we've only spent, what, 8 years now making 'PostgreSQL'
known, so let's change the name *just* so that we can start at 1.0 and
face a new challenge of getting ppl to recognize the name?

I've heard a number of people opine that we should go back to just plain
'Postgres', which is pronounceable by the uninitiate, and besides which

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

Of course I got it completely round the wrong and thought Postgres was the
latter of the two names. I've got to go change my documents now.

--
Nigel J. Andrews
Director

---
Logictree Systems Limited
Computer Consultants

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

At some point, we may have to modify our name and start at 1.0 again.

Ya, that's it ... we've only spent, what, 8 years now making 'PostgreSQL'
known, so let's change the name *just* so that we can start at 1.0 and
face a new challenge of getting ppl to recognize the name?

I've heard a number of people opine that we should go back to just plain
'Postgres', which is pronounceable by the uninitiate, and besides which

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

Beats me, but when the Addison-Wesley publisher called to talk to me
about doing a book, he called is Postgre. I knew we were in trouble.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ...

Only those that inspect system catalogs --- I'm not sure what percentage
that is, but surely it's not "pretty much every" one. psql for example
is only affected because of its \d commands.

Okay, anyone have any ideas of other packages that would inspect the
system catalog? The only ones I could think of, off the top of my head,
would be pgAccess, pgAdmin and phpPgAdmin ... but I would guess that any
'administratively oriented' interface would face similar problems, no?

That's a good point. Only the admin stuff is affected, not all
applications. All applications _can_ now use schemas, but for most
cases applications remain working unchanged.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Well, for one:

An awful lot of people think the name is:
"Postgre-SQL", or
"Postgre-SEQUEL"

If marketing matters (as a lot of people have been
suggesting in recent threads), then better to have a
non-ambiguous name that is easy to pronounce
correctly.

--- "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> wrote:

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult
about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

__________________________________________________
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Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free
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On Fri, Jul 05, 2002 at 01:50:05PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Beats me, but when the Addison-Wesley publisher called to talk to me
about doing a book, he called is Postgre. I knew we were in trouble.

For what it's worth, the calling cards they printed for me here
(which I have used exactly 0 times) when I arrived have "Postgre SQL
Administrator" on them. And I corrected the typo 5 times and sent it
back for proof each time. They just didn't believe it, I guess.

Anyway, I never thing about it. But I _do_ tend to say "Postgres".
Possibly for the same reason that I find "GNU/Linux" to be too much
trouble.

Andrew "not to mention Micrsoft SQL Server 20,642" Sullivan

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                               87 Mowat Avenue 
Liberty RMS                           Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M6K 3E3
                                         +1 416 646 3304 x110

Bruce Momjian dijo:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

Beats me, but when the Addison-Wesley publisher called to talk to me
about doing a book, he called is Postgre. I knew we were in trouble.

Lots of people here calls it "Postgre", even something like "Postgree"
(Postgri in spanish). Others say "Postgre-S-Q-L". But the vast
majority uses plain "Postgres". I have yet to meet somebody who says
"Postgres-Q-L".

I think the pronunciation is really counter-intuitive. Not that it's
difficult to say; I think it's difficult to read.

--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]atentus.com>)
"God is real, unless declared as int"

Beats me, but when the Addison-Wesley publisher called to talk to me
about doing a book, he called is Postgre. I knew we were in trouble.

I know someone who does that too (even after telling him it is NOT Postgre a
LOT of times)... I just don't know where people get that idea!

Sander.

Hi!

I've always thought of our release numbering as having "themes". The 6.x
series took Postgres from interesting but buggy to a solid system, with
a clear path to additional capabilities. The 7.x series fleshes out SQL
standards compliance and rationalizes the O-R features, as well as adds
to robustness and speed with WAL etc. And the 8.x series would enable
Postgres to extend to distributed systems etc.

This sounds very good to me. I get the feeling sometimes that software
projects just increase the major version number to 'sound interesting'. I
don't think that PostgreSQL needs that anymore. A modest numbering policy
might even give it a 'stable' feeling...

Sander.

Sander Steffann wrote:

Beats me, but when the Addison-Wesley publisher called to talk to me
about doing a book, he called is Postgre. I knew we were in trouble.

I know someone who does that too (even after telling him it is NOT Postgre a
LOT of times)... I just don't know where people get that idea!

I didn't write it correctly. He said "Postgray" I think or "Postgree".
Both made me feel a little ill. The strange thing is that until
PostgreSQL got popular, no one really said the word, we just wrote it,
and my editor has a "PostgreSQL" string macro so I don't even type it
anymore, but when you start to talk to people, it does become a problem.

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Jeff Eckermann wrote:

Well, for one:

An awful lot of people think the name is:
"Postgre-SQL", or
"Postgre-SEQUEL"

If marketing matters (as a lot of people have been
suggesting in recent threads), then better to have a
non-ambiguous name that is easy to pronounce
correctly.

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way? Or
is it just too much work to educate ppl? I'm sorry, but I have alot of
ppl that ask me about 'Postgres', and the first thing I do is explain to
them what *Postgres* was, and how to pronounce Post-gres-Q-L ...
personally, I've been saying it for so long now that it just rolls off the
tongue *shrug*

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way?

With the accent on which sylable?

Rich
:-)

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Rich Shepard wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way?

With the accent on which sylable?

I never really thought about it ... but you tell me:

http://www2.ca.postgresql.org/postgresql.mp3

I don't really hear an accent on any of the syllables in there, but I've
been known to be tone deaf too :)

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Rich Shepard wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way?

With the accent on which sylable?

I never really thought about it ... but you tell me:

http://www2.ca.postgresql.org/postgresql.mp3

I don't really hear an accent on any of the syllables in there, but I've
been known to be tone deaf too :)

I can't say I've had any trouble thinking how to say PostgreSQL but I don't
think it rolls off the tongue as easily as SQL Server for instance.

Although I think that name is a good name using Postgres SQL Server would
enable people to shorten it to just the Postgres part while still clearly
identifying what it is they are on about, I'm ignoring the issue of more
experienced people remembering/knowing about just plain Postgres. Plus it has
the added benefit of being similar to another product, i.e. Microsoft SQL
Server, which people already say. Sometimes, okay so most times, this is
shortened to SQL Server and we'd just be reversing this emphasis.

Anyway, I do quite like the PostgreSQL, even if I've had to go back and
capitalise that S twice now, I just thought I'd point out the blindingly
obvious.

--
Nigel J. Andrews
Director

---
Logictree Systems Limited
Computer Consultants

On July 5, 2002 10:27 am, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

Actually, the "big" change is such that will, at least as far as I'm
understanding it, break pretty much every front-end applicaiton ...

Only those that inspect system catalogs --- I'm not sure what percentage
that is, but surely it's not "pretty much every" one. psql for example
is only affected because of its \d commands.

Okay, anyone have any ideas of other packages that would inspect the
system catalog? The only ones I could think of, off the top of my head,
would be pgAccess, pgAdmin and phpPgAdmin ... but I would guess that any
'administratively oriented' interface would face similar problems, no?

PyGreSQL pokes into the catalogues a bit.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@{druid|vex}.net>   |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

regards, tom lane

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

I never really thought about it ... but you tell me:

http://www2.ca.postgresql.org/postgresql.mp3

I don't really hear an accent on any of the syllables in there, but I've
been known to be tone deaf too :)

No sound card or speakers here, only the built-in squeeker that comes with
all units. In fact, I was just teasing, anyway, because the thread on the
name and its pronounciation had taken on such a long and serious life. From
a linguistic perspective, however, I tend to pronounce it with the accent on
the second syllable.

Ciao,

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
+ 1 503-667-4517 (voice) | + 1 503-667-8863 (fax) | rshepard@appl-ecosys.com
http://www.appl-ecosys.com

Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

IIRC SQL Server (or "SQL-server" to be exact) is just a definition from
the SQL standard. I doubt whether Microsoft can monopolize something
like that (the SQL standard was there first right?). Of course I am
making a pretty big assumption about the sanity of the actual law :)

Whether it is really worthwhile to invest resources into that is an
entirely different matter. Personally, I am happy with PostgreSQL.

Jochem

Jochem van Dieten <jochemd@oli.tudelft.nl> writes:

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

IIRC SQL Server (or "SQL-server" to be exact) is just a definition from
the SQL standard. I doubt whether Microsoft can monopolize something
like that (the SQL standard was there first right?).

Microsoft has managed to make "Windows" into a trademark, even though
it's by rights a generic term. Yes, I know the name of their product
is really "Microsoft Windows", but just try calling something "Windows"
and see what happens ...

Even if we avoid any trademark problems, "Postgres SQL Server" just
seems way too much like a me-too name. It *will* cause confusion
with Microsoft's product.

regards, tom lane

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Jeff Eckermann wrote:

Well, for one:

An awful lot of people think the name is:
"Postgre-SQL", or
"Postgre-SEQUEL"

If marketing matters (as a lot of people have been
suggesting in recent threads), then better to have a
non-ambiguous name that is easy to pronounce
correctly.

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way? Or

I think the problem is that PostgreSQL is both a name and an acronym,
mixed into single word. Postgres is a name, SQL is an acronym,
PostgreSQL is both. That is where people get confused.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way? Or

I think the problem is that PostgreSQL is both a name and an acronym,
mixed into single word. Postgres is a name, SQL is an acronym,
PostgreSQL is both. That is where people get confused.

The problem is that the typography makes it look like the split should
be "Postgre / SQL". I can see exactly why people think the name portion
is "Postgre" --- it's not at all apparent that the "S" is part of both
parts of the word, until you've been told.

Had we capitalized the name like "PostgresQL" maybe the correct
pronunciation would be more obvious.

regards, tom lane

I think the problem is that PostgreSQL is both a name and an acronym,
mixed into single word. Postgres is a name, SQL is an acronym,
PostgreSQL is both. That is where people get confused.

thats the point..
i think "postgres" sounds better :)
infact i have posted , a couple of times, to pgsql-general@postgres.org :p
^_^
--

Varun
------
@n=(544290696690,305106661574,116357),$b=16,@c=' .JPacehklnorstu'=~
/./g;for$n(@n){map{$h=int$n/$b**$_;$n-=$b**$_*$h;$c[@c]=$h}c(0..9);
push@p,map{$c[$_]}@c[c($b..$#c)];$#c=$b-1}print@p;sub'c{reverse @_}

Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way? Or

I think the problem is that PostgreSQL is both a name and an acronym,
mixed into single word. Postgres is a name, SQL is an acronym,
PostgreSQL is both. That is where people get confused.

The problem is that the typography makes it look like the split should
be "Postgre / SQL". I can see exactly why people think the name portion
is "Postgre" --- it's not at all apparent that the "S" is part of both
parts of the word, until you've been told.

Had we capitalized the name like "PostgresQL" maybe the correct
pronunciation would be more obvious.

Yep, there is no other word that has an acronym part and a word part,
and where capitalization not match in the two parts. It is almost a
recipe for confusion.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Post-gres-Q-L ... again, that is difficult to pronounce in what way? Or

I think the problem is that PostgreSQL is both a name and an acronym,
mixed into single word. Postgres is a name, SQL is an acronym,
PostgreSQL is both. That is where people get confused.

The problem is that the typography makes it look like the split should
be "Postgre / SQL". I can see exactly why people think the name portion
is "Postgre" --- it's not at all apparent that the "S" is part of both
parts of the word, until you've been told.

Had we capitalized the name like "PostgresQL" maybe the correct
pronunciation would be more obvious.

No one pronounces MySQL as Mice-QL.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

Nobody to date, I don't believe, has jumped down ppls throat for
informally calling it Postres .. the "formal" name is PostgreSQL ..
nothing stop's ppl from using Postgres in 'conversation' though ... I
personaly use PgSQL more often then not, since I find ppl seem to be able
to spell it, while alot of ppl that I've dealt with have a problem with
spelling the Postgres part of PostgreSQL for some reason ...

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Had we capitalized the name like "PostgresQL" maybe the correct
pronunciation would be more obvious.

^^^^

Remove this word and you'd be dead on. Perhaps the simplest resolution is
to do just this.

Rich

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

Nobody to date, I don't believe, has jumped down ppls throat for
informally calling it Postres .. the "formal" name is PostgreSQL ..
nothing stop's ppl from using Postgres in 'conversation' though ... I
personaly use PgSQL more often then not, since I find ppl seem to be able

I think that is because PgSQL is a full acronym, rather than a mixed
word/acronym combination, though actually if Pg were a word, they would
say pu-gu-SQL. The 'my' in MySQL is a word so they say it that way.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Rich Shepard wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Had we capitalized the name like "PostgresQL" maybe the correct
pronunciation would be more obvious.

^^^^

Remove this word and you'd be dead on. Perhaps the simplest resolution is
to do just this.

What we really need then is Postgres-Q-L.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

Here in Russia, most people use "Postgres".

regards, tom lane

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

Regards,
Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

What we really need then is Postgres-Q-L.

That, or PostgreS-Q-L would both make clear the pronounciation and retain
the differentiation from the former Postgres. Businesses change names and
logos quite successfully. No reason not to make such a change if it resolves
everyone's concerns.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
+ 1 503-667-4517 (voice) | + 1 503-667-8863 (fax) | rshepard@appl-ecosys.com
http://www.appl-ecosys.com

On Sat, Jul 06, 2002 at 02:30:17PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

Nobody to date, I don't believe, has jumped down ppls throat for
informally calling it Postres .. the "formal" name is PostgreSQL ..
nothing stop's ppl from using Postgres in 'conversation' though ... I
personaly use PgSQL more often then not, since I find ppl seem to be able

I think that is because PgSQL is a full acronym, rather than a mixed
word/acronym combination, though actually if Pg were a word, they would
say pu-gu-SQL. The 'my' in MySQL is a word so they say it that way.

I often hear it pronounced Pig-Squeal, which is memorable, but may not
give the right impression.

Cheers,
Steve

Hi,

I didn't write it correctly. He said "Postgray" I think or "Postgree".
Both made me feel a little ill. The strange thing is that until
PostgreSQL got popular, no one really said the word, we just wrote it,
and my editor has a "PostgreSQL" string macro so I don't even type it
anymore, but when you start to talk to people, it does become a problem.

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

Is this under discussion? I do think that "PostgreSQL" is a good
name but does cause a lot of confusion. I usually call it just "Postgres".
I don't see the necessity of having "SQL" in it's name, although "Postgres
SQL" is also interesting.

[]'s
Ricardo.

Maybe not so obvious when people start asking what this "QL"
means. ;-)

[]'s
Ricardo.

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

Then we just leave out the 'Server' :-)

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

If you make it 'Postgres SQL' you have it all. Sure, everybody will call it
'Postgres' (like a lot of them do now). But you still have the 'PostgreSQL'
feeling...

Just my feeling though...
Sander

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Ricardo Junior wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Had we capitalized the name like "PostgresQL" maybe the correct
pronunciation would be more obvious.

Maybe not so obvious when people start asking what this "QL"
means. ;-)

That's obvious. Since QL means "query language," "Postgres QL" would
refer to the old, QUEL-derived query language that Postgres used before
it was ripped out and replaced with SQL, right?

"Postgres" is simple, people use it anyway, and everybody now knows that
Postgres uses SQL instead of its own query language now, so I think it
would be a very good to just switch back to to that. With the demise of
Great Bridge, we even have the postgres.org domain name free for this now.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

Hi Tom:

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be
called 8.0, because the addition of schema support will break an
awful lot of client-side code ;-). But I doubt we will do that.

Hmm. As it happens, I've written an awful lot of client-side code. Can you
elaborate on what will break, or point me to a resource that lays it out?

-- sgl

=======================================================
Steve Lane

Vice President
Chris Moyer Consulting, Inc.
833 West Chicago Ave Suite 203

Voice: (312) 433-2421 Email: slane@fmpro.com
Fax: (312) 850-3930 Web: http://www.fmpro.com
=======================================================

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

I've heard a number of people opine that we should go back to just plain
'Postgres', which is pronounceable by the uninitiate, and besides which

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

Nothing. We even have audio files on the website so there is no question
on how to pronounce it. Some folks just aren't happy unless they can
change what doesn't need changing is all. I guess it's their way of
contributing.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Nothing. We even have audio files on the website so there is
no question on how to pronounce it. Some folks just aren't
happy unless they can change what doesn't need changing is
all. I guess it's their way of contributing.

I don't understand some of the animosity I have seen towards
what I consider a positive change. It obviously does need
changing, otherwise so many people would not be discussing it.
An audio file on the website is not going to help people who
are reading the word inside text somewhere. The very fact that
such an audio file even needs to exist should be telling us
something. It was created because people were having a hard time
pronouncing it. Saying that people can pronounce it properly
because there is an audio file smacks of circular logic.

However, we all have taken a *lot* of time and effort to get
the name "PostgreSQL" recognised, and we should continue on
doing this. Nowdays I'm finding it very unusual to see new
articles and publications going online and getting it wrong,
meaning that although there are legacy documents out there
refering to "Postgres", most of the new stuff online is
calling it the proper "PostgreSQL".

Sorry, but the shortcut "Postgres" is alive and kicking. Look
anywhere, even in the mailing lists. The default user is
"postgres" not "postgresql". Another point is that postgres
fits in the 8.3 naming schema, which is not really used anymore,
but does serve as a fairly good rule of thumb. A product name
should be 8 letters or less (Linux, Apache, Windows, Sybase,
Oracle, Ingres, Sybase, MySQL, Apache, tinydns, sendmail, qmail,
iptables, etc.) (Microsoft products are an exception of course,
but they have the marketing power to name something
"throatwobblermangrove" and still have the masses purchase it :)

I might agree somewhat with the "don't break tradition" argument
if there had been a concerted effort from the start to
*dissuade* people from using the word "postgres", but as far as
I can tell, most people involved with Postgre[sS][QL] don't
really care which one is being used, and all other things being
equal, tend to simplify it to the shorter form, especially
when talking out loud.

I've given presentations on Postgres to technical and
non-technical people, and always have to throw in a section
at the start about the name - how to pronounce the "long form",
how it came about, and to not worry about which term I use
within the presentation, since they are synonymous. I'd rather
spend that time extolling some of the better virtues of the
product, rather than trying to explain why we smushed a word
and an acronym together into something awkward to pronounce.
Perhaps that's the best way to put it: the word is not difficult
to pronounce, but it is awkward.

Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200207081020

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Steve Lane <slane@fmpro.com> writes:

You could make a fair argument that the upcoming 7.3 ought to be
called 8.0, because the addition of schema support will break an
awful lot of client-side code ;-). But I doubt we will do that.

Hmm. As it happens, I've written an awful lot of client-side code. Can you
elaborate on what will break, or point me to a resource that lays it out?

Anything that looks at the system catalogs is likely to have some
trouble; the notion that there is at most one pg_class row named 'foo',
for example, will fall down.

regards, tom lane

From someone whose DSN used to look like: PostgreSQL

I can tell you that P O S T G R E S Q L means *nothing* to people who are
new to it. However, one can clearly see SQL at the end, and recognise that
as a valid acronym, so assume that the prefix, and hence the product
identifier, is POSTGRE

That's where even educated people (perhaps even ESPECIALLY educated people)
get the idea.

Terry Fielder
Network Engineer
Great Gulf Homes / Ashton Woods Homes
terry@greatgulfhomes.com

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

The idea of calling it "Postgres SQL Server" has merit because it is so
close to what we already have, just an added 's' and a space.

... and a M$ trademark violation suit, just waiting to happen whenever
M$ decides we are big enough to be a threat.

Stay far far away from any name including "SQL Server".

(I still like plain "Postgres" though.)

Nobody to date, I don't believe, has jumped down ppls throat for
informally calling it Postres .. the "formal" name is PostgreSQL ..
nothing stop's ppl from using Postgres in 'conversation' though ... I
personaly use PgSQL more often then not, since I find ppl seem to be able

I think that is because PgSQL is a full acronym, rather than a mixed
word/acronym combination, though actually if Pg were a word, they would
say pu-gu-SQL. The 'my' in MySQL is a word so they say it that way.

Wouldn't that be "PiggySeeQuel" ?

Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Nothing. We even have audio files on the website so there is
no question on how to pronounce it. Some folks just aren't
happy unless they can change what doesn't need changing is
all. I guess it's their way of contributing.

I don't understand some of the animosity I have seen towards
what I consider a positive change. It obviously does need
changing, otherwise so many people would not be discussing it.

Funny, that's just about the same argument the pro GPL people use
when the licensing discussion comes up.

An audio file on the website is not going to help people who
are reading the word inside text somewhere. The very fact that
such an audio file even needs to exist should be telling us
something. It was created because people were having a hard time
pronouncing it. Saying that people can pronounce it properly
because there is an audio file smacks of circular logic.

That's not what was said. Some people can play it over and over and
still not be able to pronounce it. Same with my last name and yours
for all that matter. But that's no reason to change it, or are you
willing to change your last name so all of use can pronounce it? The
audio file is there so if someone wants to know how it's really
pronounced they can click on it and listen.

Tell me, do you pronounce "Linux" the same way Linus does or some
other way? Should "Linux" be changed to something that has a more
common pronunciation? And yes, I know how Linus pronounces it, I've
heard it - someone sent me an mp3 of it.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
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==========================================================================

I don't understand some of the animosity I have seen towards
what I consider a positive change. It obviously does need
changing, otherwise so many people would not be discussing it.

Well, it is the same reaction you would have if someone walked up to you
and said "your child has a stupid name. You need to give it another
one". At least you didn't call our child ugly too ;)

I know that "you" is also one of "us", but the point is mostly the
same...

afaict the name has not inhibited our market acceptance. But maybe I'm
giving too much credit to suits' abilities to cope.

PgSQL works for me if I'm wanting an all-acronym acronym, and I've been
known to write and use "Postgres" as a synonym. But historically we
needed to differentiate the name from PostQuel-enabled Postgres. It
could be worse: we could have stuck with Postgres95 (ack, spit).

- Thomas

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

Sorry, but the shortcut "Postgres" is alive and kicking. Look anywhere,
even in the mailing lists. The default user is "postgres" not
"postgresql". Another point is that postgres fits in the 8.3 naming
schema

Sorry, but you just lost your argument the moment you throw out M$/DOS
standards as something to live by ...

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That's not what was said. Some people can play it over and over and
still not be able to pronounce it. Same with my last name and yours
for all that matter. But that's no reason to change it, or are you
willing to change your last name so all of use can pronounce it?

Woah! I gather you are a techie, and don't care much about marketing, hmm?

Personally, if I were trying to market myself to a broader audience
than I have now, I would almost certainly change my name to something
less confusing, more memorable and easier to pronounce. And many others
agree with me, judging by the number of celebrities and wanna-be
celebrities that have done so. Not to mention products that have been
rebranded every decade or three to change with the changing tastes of
the target market.

A lot of the things that market-oriented folks want to do (such as
changing a name) may seem stupid and useless to you, as a techie, but
that doesn't mean that they don't work. It just means that they don't
work on people like you, who comprise a very small market. (I'm in that
market too, by the way; I just recognise that most people do not make
decisions the way I do about what to purchase and/or use.)

I don't know if you were one of the ones complaining about postgres not
being so popular (as, say, compared to MySQL), but if you want it to be
more popular, trying to stop the folks interesting in marketing it from
marketing it is not the way to help things.

Tell me, do you pronounce "Linux" the same way Linus does or some
other way? Should "Linux" be changed to something that has a more
common pronunciation? And yes, I know how Linus pronounces it, I've
heard it - someone sent me an mp3 of it.

This is a quite different situation. Linux is almost never misspelled,
or broken up into two incorrect pieces, and Linux is dead easy to
pronounce in English, even if it's not the same ("correct") Finnish
pronounciation. The incorrect pronounciation of "Linux" is no worse
a problem than your undoubtedly incorrect pronounciation of "Nissan,"
"Toyota", "Tokyo", and many other Japanese words (or the Japanese
pronounciation of many popular foreign names).

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Thomas Lockhart wrote:

I don't understand some of the animosity I have seen towards
what I consider a positive change. It obviously does need
changing, otherwise so many people would not be discussing it.

Well, it is the same reaction you would have if someone walked up to you
and said "your child has a stupid name. You need to give it another
one". At least you didn't call our child ugly too ;)

Another way of putting it ... alot of ppl name their child 'Samantha', but
how many refer to them as 'Sam' in everyday conversation? One of their
'formal, on paper' name, the other is their common name *shrug*

Curt Sampson wrote:

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

That's not what was said. Some people can play it over and over and
still not be able to pronounce it. Same with my last name and yours
for all that matter. But that's no reason to change it, or are you
willing to change your last name so all of use can pronounce it?

Woah! I gather you are a techie, and don't care much about marketing, hmm?

Personally, if I were trying to market myself to a broader audience
than I have now, I would almost certainly change my name to something
less confusing, more memorable and easier to pronounce. And many others
agree with me, judging by the number of celebrities and wanna-be
celebrities that have done so. Not to mention products that have been
rebranded every decade or three to change with the changing tastes of
the target market.

A lot of the things that market-oriented folks want to do (such as
changing a name) may seem stupid and useless to you, as a techie, but
that doesn't mean that they don't work. It just means that they don't
work on people like you, who comprise a very small market. (I'm in that
market too, by the way; I just recognise that most people do not make
decisions the way I do about what to purchase and/or use.)

I don't know if you were one of the ones complaining about postgres not
being so popular (as, say, compared to MySQL), but if you want it to be
more popular, trying to stop the folks interesting in marketing it from
marketing it is not the way to help things.

I totally agree. The name has proven to be hard to pronounce, and that
is bad for marketing, period. Is marketing important enough to change
the name? That is the question.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I totally agree. The name has proven to be hard to pronounce, and that
is bad for marketing, period. Is marketing important enough to change
the name? That is the question.

No, period.

For starters, ppl are confusing 'word of mouth' with marketing, which they
aren't the same ...

Marketing *is* the 8 or so books on the shelves and at Amazon for
PostgreSQL, and the ones to follow ...

Marketing is the thousands of t-shirts and mugs and CDs that have gone out
over the past 4+ years ...

Marketing is the countless articles/reviews that ppl have written that
talk about PostgreSQL ...

Marketing is the awards we have won over the years ...

Marketing is proliferation of the newsgroups over the 'Net over the past
4+ years ...

Marketing is the countless companies out there that offer PostgreSQL
services, support *and* training ...

If ppl want to be lazy and call it Postgres, so be it ... as I mentioned
before, its like calling Samantha, Sam ... but the formal name itself is,
and will remain, PostgreSQL ... its what *alot* of us have been marketing
for years now, period.

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I totally agree. The name has proven to be hard to pronounce, and that
is bad for marketing, period. Is marketing important enough to change
the name? That is the question.

No, period.

For starters, ppl are confusing 'word of mouth' with marketing, which they
aren't the same ...

Marketing *is* the 8 or so books on the shelves and at Amazon for
PostgreSQL, and the ones to follow ...

So you think, even marketing-wise that PostgreSQL is better. At a
minimum, we should add "also called 'postgres'" to all our introductory
documentation.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I totally agree. The name has proven to be hard to pronounce, and that
is bad for marketing, period. Is marketing important enough to change
the name? That is the question.

No, period.

For starters, ppl are confusing 'word of mouth' with marketing, which they
aren't the same ...

Marketing *is* the 8 or so books on the shelves and at Amazon for
PostgreSQL, and the ones to follow ...

So you think, even marketing-wise that PostgreSQL is better. At a
minimum, we should add "also called 'postgres'" to all our introductory
documentation.

I do agree with this ... in fact, it shoudl go as far as saying something
like:

PostgreSQL (aka PgSQL aka Postgres aka Pg) ... ppl use all the various
forms ...

Note that the lists themselves act as their own marketing ...
pgsql-*@postgresql.org ... and all the search engines have postgresql.org
in them, and, I'm sorry, but someones lame argument about 'whether to
search for postgres or postgresql' ... like, come on ... if you have any
doubt, just search for postgres, it *is* a sub-string of the formal name
...

I hate to play devil's advocate, but isn't the reason it is called
PostgreSQL now due to marketing? As I understand it, the name PostgreSQL
came about because the development team wanted to convey the fact that
Postgres95 was now an SQL based DBMS. From a technical standpoint
there's no reason it couldn't be called Postgres2002 or some such
nonsense, but it might be more cryptic as to what purpose it serves.
That's marketing, pure and simple.

Robert Treat

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Curt Sampson wrote:

Personally, if I were trying to market myself to a broader audience
than I have now, I would almost certainly change my name to something
less confusing, more memorable and easier to pronounce. And many others
agree with me, judging by the number of celebrities and wanna-be
celebrities that have done so. Not to mention products that have been
rebranded every decade or three to change with the changing tastes of
the target market.

While I think I agree with Curt, I don't thing that it is an *urgent*
problem that is plaguing Postgres[QL]. Funny thing on /. today with
regards to OpenBeOS interviews:

" The answer to all the 'is there room in the market?' questions was
answered in a way: 'We are an OSS project. Marketing is not our job.' "

Although I do wish that Postgres had better market presence. It is
certainly my DB of choice, but many people I have to work with/for will
first ask 'do you support MySQL?'. Now we've *had* to support MySQL, but I
believe that this is only because of its popularity and market presence.
I'd love to tell them all 'no, we support Postgres[QL] which offers a
whole lot more'.

Cheers,

Chris

--

Christopher Murtagh
Webmaster / Sysadmin
Web Communications Group
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
Canada

Tel.: (514) 398-3122
Fax: (514) 398-2017

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

PostgreSQL (aka PgSQL aka Postgres aka Pg) ... ppl use all the various
forms ...

Having to say that is a very, very good reason to just change the name
back to "postgres" *everywhere*, and stick with that.

Note that the lists themselves act as their own marketing ...
pgsql-*@postgresql.org ... and all the search engines have
postgresql.org in them....

Is there a difficulty in using postgres.org instead?

, and, I'm sorry, but someones lame argument about 'whether to search
for postgres or postgresql' ... like, come on ... if you have any
doubt, just search for postgres, it *is* a sub-string of the formal
name

I did search. A search for "postgres" turns up only one quarter of the
hits, does not turn up the advertisement for postgresql documentation,
and the second link is to a page called "University POSTGRES 4.2".

The advertisement thing worries me particularly; it means that
advertisers have to advertise on more keywords in order to achieve
reasonable coverage.

Now, having done a web search on "pgsql", I can now see your difficulty
with the name change; you are the president of a company called
"PostgreSQL Inc." Why didn't you just say this from the beginnning?
Nobody here is trying to make life difficult for those promoting
postgres, and if you really are marketing the "PostgreSQL" name hard,
maybe we shouldn't change it. But I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of
that marketing, unfortunately (or perhaps I would have heard of your
company before this).

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Curt Sampson wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

PostgreSQL (aka PgSQL aka Postgres aka Pg) ... ppl use all the various
forms ...

Having to say that is a very, very good reason to just change the name
back to "postgres" *everywhere*, and stick with that.

It will *not* happen, so you may as well just drop that part of the
thread.

Note that the lists themselves act as their own marketing ...
pgsql-*@postgresql.org ... and all the search engines have
postgresql.org in them....

Is there a difficulty in using postgres.org instead?

Is there a difficulty in accepting that it will not change?

, and, I'm sorry, but someones lame argument about 'whether to search
for postgres or postgresql' ... like, come on ... if you have any
doubt, just search for postgres, it *is* a sub-string of the formal
name

I did search. A search for "postgres" turns up only one quarter of the
hits, does not turn up the advertisement for postgresql documentation,
and the second link is to a page called "University POSTGRES 4.2".

Guess you should learn to type 'postgresql' then, eh?

Now, having done a web search on "pgsql", I can now see your difficulty
with the name change; you are the president of a company called
"PostgreSQL Inc." Why didn't you just say this from the beginnning?

Because it was irrelevant? And still is ...

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

It will *not* happen, so you may as well just drop that part of the
thread.

And so who died and appointed you king?

Sorry, but PostgreSQL is not your product, much as you might like to
think so. And I find it rather offensive that you should pretend it is.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 12:37 am, Curt Sampson wrote:

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

It will *not* happen, so you may as well just drop that part of the
thread.

And so who died and appointed you king?

Sorry, but PostgreSQL is not your product, much as you might like to
think so. And I find it rather offensive that you should pretend it is.

Curt, you do realize that Marc Fournier helped start this whole thing (taking
over Postgres95 from its two developers and founding PostgreSQL), is a
founding member of the PostgreSQL steering committee (core),
administers/runs/pays for the postgresql.org website, coordinates and
performs the actual work of the release, and many other things that are
necessary.

His contributions to the project entitle him to have far more say than you
have.

If you doubt that fact, you need to read the archives for awhile to get a
sense of how this project is organized. If the steering committee (the core
six) decide against something, then that something _does_not_happen_. End of
story. This is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy. Marc is one of the six
oligarchs, so _Deal_with_it_. Bruce, another of the core six, has to an
extent agreed with some of the difficulty of the current name. But how have
the rest weighed in? Up until the last portions of this thread I might have
agreed with you to an extent. But after I weighed the difficulty of actually
pulling off a name change, I am dead set against it. It's too much effort
for too little gain.

Now, if you want to pay for the bandwidth of a 'postgres.org', want to set up
a full CVS repository, want to administer a popular server, and want to
evangelize enough developers to gather a critical mass to fork a 'postgres'
project, then go ahead.

The name is fine as it is. This is because:
1.) It is well known by that name;
2.) Books are already written using that name (there are no books about
'Postgres';
3.) It is descriptive;
4.) It has history;
5.) "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" -- and the name ain't broke.

The whole project should not have to deal with all the ramifications of a name
change just for a few people's convenience, laziness, and stubborness.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

It will *not* happen, so you may as well just drop that part of the
thread.

Hmm. But anyway, why not register the domain postgres.org in addition to
postgresql.org, no matter if the name will change or not.

Let it point to the same server, forward to postgresql.org or whatever. It
might make a few new people look the right place :-)

--
Kaare Rasmussen --Linux, spil,-- Tlf: 3816 2582
Kaki Data tshirts, merchandize Fax: 3816 2501
Howitzvej 75 �ben 12.00-18.00 Email: kar@webline.dk
2000 Frederiksberg L�rdag 11.00-17.00 Web: www.suse.dk

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Kaare Rasmussen wrote:

It will *not* happen, so you may as well just drop that part of the
thread.

Hmm. But anyway, why not register the domain postgres.org in addition to
postgresql.org, no matter if the name will change or not.

Already is ... and it *was* supposed to be pointing at postgresql.org ...
getting that fixed now :(

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

Hmm. But anyway, why not register the domain postgres.org in addition to
postgresql.org, no matter if the name will change or not.

Already is ... and it *was* supposed to be pointing at postgresql.org ...
getting that fixed now :(

Since we also have postgres.com, don't forget to make that point to the
right place too.

GB did get a couple of things done anyway ;-)

regards, tom lane

Lamar Owen wrote:

If you doubt that fact, you need to read the archives for awhile to get a
sense of how this project is organized. If the steering committee (the core
six) decide against something, then that something _does_not_happen_. End of
story. This is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy. Marc is one of the six
oligarchs, so _Deal_with_it_. Bruce, another of the core six, has to an
extent agreed with some of the difficulty of the current name. But how have
the rest weighed in? Up until the last portions of this thread I might have
agreed with you to an extent. But after I weighed the difficulty of actually
pulling off a name change, I am dead set against it. It's too much effort
for too little gain.

I don't think you can just "shut down" a discussion about a name change.
Some good things are coming out of is, such as adding "also called
'postgres'" to some of our documentation, and properly mapping
postgres.org/com to postgresql.org.

I think there is room for an "also called postgres" push among our users
and for marketing. Oracle is changing the name of their server all the
time to position it for marketing so having a secondary name doesn't
hurt. Our _official_ name is PostgreSQL.

(I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Lamar Owen wrote:

Curt, you do realize that Marc Fournier....

Sure. You do realize that I've been using postgres on and off since
before Postgres95 existed, right?

Regardless, if people think it's not worthwhile to change the name, I
have no problem with that. It's the, "Just shut up because I don't want
to listen to you attitude" that I have a problem with. Not to mention
the, "It's wrong, but I don't have to give any reasons why, because I'm
just right and you're not" attitude.

You know, I just bought this up as an idea to be batted around. And I,
for one, am still not sure whether changing the name is a good idea or
not. But I find really disappointing the number of people here who a)
object to an idea for no good reason that they can explain, beyond "I
don't like it," and b) are flaming those who are discussing this idea
rather than dismissing it.

This is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy. Marc is one of the six
oligarchs, so _Deal_with_it_.

So, basically, "if you don't like the product, get lost."

If this is really the case, we can certainly drop any discussion
of the name, because we have much, much bigger marketing problems.

1.) It is well known by that name;

Not to mention by one or two other names.

4.) It has history;

Though less history than other names.

5.) "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" -- and the name ain't broke.

Well, apparently some people don't agree with you. You can listen to them
or you can tell them to get lost. Your choice.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Curt Sampson wrote:

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Lamar Owen wrote:

Curt, you do realize that Marc Fournier....

Sure. You do realize that I've been using postgres on and off since
before Postgres95 existed, right?

Well you certainly don't act like it - and before you go snapping at me
for saying that, go back and look at your previous posts and ask yourself
why you would ask some of the questions or make some of the statements you
made if you really had been around that long.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

pgman@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) wrote:

Lamar Owen wrote:

If you doubt that fact, you need to read the archives for awhile to
get a sense of how this project is organized. If the steering
committee (the core six) decide against something, then that
something _does_not_happen_. End of story. This is not a
democracy. It is an oligarchy. Marc is one of the six oligarchs,
so _Deal_with_it_. Bruce, another of the core six, has to an
extent agreed with some of the difficulty of the current name. But
how have the rest weighed in? Up until the last portions of this
thread I might have agreed with you to an extent. But after I
weighed the difficulty of actually pulling off a name change, I am
dead set against it. It's too much effort for too little gain.

I don't think you can just "shut down" a discussion about a name
change. Some good things are coming out of is, such as adding "also
called 'postgres'" to some of our documentation, and properly
mapping postgres.org/com to postgresql.org.

I think there is room for an "also called postgres" push among our
users and for marketing. Oracle is changing the name of their
server all the time to position it for marketing so having a
secondary name doesn't hurt. Our _official_ name is PostgreSQL.

(I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

Hear, hear!

This is a _wonderful_ thing.

Note that Netscape Navigator has been spelled many ways over the
years, "but is always pronounced `Mozilla.'"

While 'tigres' sounds quite nice, and strikes me as an attractive
option were things open to a _completely_ new name, it hasn't the
merit "postgres" has of:
a) Being a historical name, and
b) Being highly similar to the current name.

There's NOTHING wrong with having a "legal name" as well as an
"operating as" name; companies do that _all the time_.

And if there are 20 places that say "It's officially spelled
PostgreSQL, but you can _pronounce_ that 'p\O\st-"gres', and here's
the MP3 of Bruce saying it," that can cope with the situation nicely.

I have no problem with the "PostgreSQL" _spelling_, but how it sounds
_is_ important, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect to do the
"Cliff Richard" thing where the famous British pop star coined a name
specifically so that he could regularly remind interviewers "No, no,
not `Cliff Richards,' it's `Cliff Richard.' No 's' on the end!"

Consider the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. The first three
books are _tremendously_ more popular than the later sequels, and I
believe that is the result of them having been first 'honed' by being
presented as radio plays. They actually _sound_ better than they
"read." In contrast, later volumes like _So Long and Thanks for All
the Fish_ never were on radio, and read _very_ differently,
unfortunately not as nicely.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "enworbbc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/nonrdbms.html
"One of my most often repeated quips was the one I made when former
Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon stood by each other at a White House
event. 'There they are,' I said. 'See no evil, hear no evil, and ...
evil.'" -- Bob Dole, 1983

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Christopher Browne wrote:

And if there are 20 places that say "It's officially spelled
PostgreSQL, but you can _pronounce_ that 'p\O\st-"gres', and here's
the MP3 of Bruce saying it," that can cope with the situation nicely.

For the record, the voice on the MP3 isn't Bruce. It's the voice of a
professional broadcaster.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, Jeff MacDonald wrote:

How long did it take you to teach him to say PostgreSQL ? :)

Lessee, the conversation went something like this:

Me: I need a wav file of you saying "PostgreSQL".

Him: "PostgreSQL"?

Me: Yeah.

Him: Ok, I'll get it to you later today.

Then after I made it available someone else did the MP3 conversion
and I put that there as well. He caught on pretty quick! :)

Jeff.

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Vince Vielhaber
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 6:31 AM
To: Christopher Browne
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] I am being interviewed by OReilly

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Christopher Browne wrote:

And if there are 20 places that say "It's officially spelled
PostgreSQL, but you can _pronounce_ that 'p\O\st-"gres', and here's
the MP3 of Bruce saying it," that can cope with the situation nicely.

For the record, the voice on the MP3 isn't Bruce. It's the voice of a
professional broadcaster.

Vince.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote:

On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, Jeff MacDonald wrote:

How long did it take you to teach him to say PostgreSQL ? :)

Lessee, the conversation went something like this:

Me: I need a wav file of you saying "PostgreSQL".

Him: "PostgreSQL"?

Me: Yeah.

Him: Ok, I'll get it to you later today.

Then after I made it available someone else did the MP3 conversion
and I put that there as well. He caught on pretty quick! :)

My experiences tend to be about the same ... worst case scenario, I have
to show them where the syllables break down ... after that, they are
generally fine ...

Curt Sampson wrote:

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Lamar Owen wrote:

Curt, you do realize that Marc Fournier....

Sure. You do realize that I've been using postgres on and off since
before Postgres95 existed, right?

Have been there since v4.2 (last official Berkeley release, PostQUEL
version) and survived the dark era (Postgres95).

That by itself is no argument, nor does it give someones word more
weight.

PostgreSQL is the name of this software for many years, books are
printed using that name, press articles refer to it, marketing is based
on it. If we like it or not, it is IMHO not an option to change it just
to sound better or because people with spelling difficulties don't get
it right.

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).
Some people here in the US think I'm a girl, most pronounce my first
name Dshaen or worse many fail on my last name somewhere around
OUUEEEE... cough, cough. Do you think I consider changing something? No
way, not for people who speak one or less languages only.

PostgreSQL is PostgreSQL, and that's it.

Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #

(I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

??

What about "digress" ??

:-)

--
Kaare Rasmussen --Linux, spil,-- Tlf: 3816 2582
Kaki Data tshirts, merchandize Fax: 3816 2501
Howitzvej 75 �ben 12.00-18.00 Email: kar@webline.dk
2000 Frederiksberg L�rdag 11.00-17.00 Web: www.suse.dk

Marc G. Fournier:

I can never figure this out ... what is so difficult about 'Postgres-Q-L'?

http://www.postgresql.org/

"Ever wonder how PostgreSQL is really pronounced?"

;-)

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Is that how its pronounced?? :) I've known you for how long now and never
had a clue how to pronounce your last name ... first is/was easy, last I
never even tried ...

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Is that how its pronounced?? :) I've known you for how long now and never
had a clue how to pronounce your last name ... first is/was easy, last I
never even tried ...

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

Through the years I've had many friends that I've never seen and several
that I had no idea as to their gender. Isn't e-mail great. No
preconceived ideas when we start communicating. (Heck I get to be called
a @#$%^& based on merit. :-) There has been a Jan, Lynn, Sandy and a
couple others I can't remember but the biggest shock was the phone call I
got from some one I'd been communicating with for several years and she
said "Hi Rod, this is Charlie". I hadn't had a clue Charlie was a woman.

As the cartoon says "On the internet no one knows you're a dog."

Rod
--
"Open Source Software - Sometimes you get more than you paid for..."

Roderick A. Anderson wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

Through the years I've had many friends that I've never seen and several
that I had no idea as to their gender. Isn't e-mail great. No
preconceived ideas when we start communicating. (Heck I get to be called

I do speak to women differently so it was weird not knowing about Jan.
If you have seen the SNL skit about Pat, well, its like that.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Okay, going *way* off subject.... why on earth do you speak to women
differently?

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Ben wrote:

Okay, going *way* off subject.... why on earth do you speak to women
differently?

You don't make sarcastic comments to women, for one thing. I speak less
harshly, I guess. I am married, so dating isn't the issue.

I used to think "treat them the same" but in reality I think most women
prefer that you didn't.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Is that how its pronounced?? :) I've known you for how long now and never
had a clue how to pronounce your last name ... first is/was easy, last I
never even tried ...

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

There are plenty of hard to spell/pronounce names on the lists - and I
don't want to be the one to start *that* thread - but I have to ask:

Mom-jee-arn ?
Mom-jy-ann ?
Mom-jeen ?
Mom-zhon ?

Cheers, Kurt (Male).

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Vaguely remembered, then found on the Web...

Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of PASCAL, gave a talk once at which he
was asked "How do you pronounce your name?". He replied, "You can call
me by name, pronouncing it 'Virt', or call be by value, 'Worth'."

--
John W Hall <wweexxsseessssaa@telusplanet.net>
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
"Helping People Prosper in the Information Age"

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Ben wrote:

Okay, going *way* off subject.... why on earth do you speak to women
differently?

You don't make sarcastic comments to women, for one thing. I speak less
harshly, I guess. I am married, so dating isn't the issue.

I used to think "treat them the same" but in reality I think most women
prefer that you didn't.

Amen.

Mike Mascari
mascarm@mascari.com

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 09:26 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Lamar Owen wrote:

If you doubt that fact, you need to read the archives for awhile to get a
sense of how this project is organized. If the steering committee (the
core six) decide against something, then that something

I don't think you can just "shut down" a discussion about a name change.

Well, you're right. *I* can't shut anything down (except my server...). But
my reply was targeted to the 'who died and made you king' ad hominem.

I think there is room for an "also called postgres" push among our users
and for marketing. Oracle is changing the name of their server all the
time to position it for marketing so having a secondary name doesn't
hurt. Our _official_ name is PostgreSQL.

Is that like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince? Now abbreviated to
'Artist'? Why beat around the bush about our name? This is confusion.

(I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

As in the river? Does that mean we consider ourselves to be the new seat of
power in the world? Hey, maybe I need to change my name to Tiglathpileser or
something. Hey, we could then have Sargon as our engine, Pul as our system
of scripting, Shalmaneser as the trademark for 'readers don't have to wait
for writers', Sennacherib as the patented system for stuffing data that goes
beyond the size of a tuple.....

As long as a project from Iraq called 'Babylon' lead by a royal Nebuchadnezzar
doesn't come around....

Time to retreat to Nineveh....
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 10:19 pm, Curt Sampson wrote:

You know, I just bought this up as an idea to be batted around. And I,
for one, am still not sure whether changing the name is a good idea or
not.

A name change will be traumatic for a number of reasons.

First, every distributor of the progam will have to change its name. Apache
is doing this very thing now, and it has got things in a state of confusion
-- the apache webserver is now packaged in a a tarball called 'httpd' --
which, IMNSHO, is arrogant.

Next, name changes must be effectively communicated to people. If we are
having a hard time communicating our current name, how much harder of a time
will we have with communicating the fact that 'we've changed our name because
we've given up on communicating our name to people'?

Apply Occam's Razor, please. Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter
necessitatem.

It is up to the ones who want to change the name to come up with a compelling
reason to change it -- it's not the responsibility of those who support the
current name to defend the current name in order for it to be kept.

My opinion is simply that the current name is fine. The question becomes 'is
it worth the work to change the name for the minority's convenience?' I
believe the logical answer is 'No. While there are seemingly good reasons
for this move, none compel this drastic of an action.'
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

Kurt at iadvance wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Is that how its pronounced?? :) I've known you for how long now and never
had a clue how to pronounce your last name ... first is/was easy, last I
never even tried ...

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

There are plenty of hard to spell/pronounce names on the lists - and I
don't want to be the one to start *that* thread - but I have to ask:

Mom-jee-arn ?
Mom-jy-ann ?
Mom-jeen ?
Mom-zhon ?

Now, that is a good question. It is MOM-jin. Actually, though the
Armenian way to say it is MOOM-ji-an, but I don't say it that way.

Maybe I need an MP3 file for that. Vince, can you hook me up? ;-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Lamar Owen dijo:

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 09:26 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote:

(I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

As in the river?

I don't think so. The river is actually called "Tigris" (that's the
spanish version, and the version that generates more results in Google,
althought I admit that the english transliteration may be different).

Tigres is the spanish plural for "tiger", and of course it keeps the
play on "-gres" while suggesting some kind of power (and speed?). But I
think Bruce should be actually better informed than me as to what was
the origin of the word suggestion in the first place.

--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]atentus.com>)
www.google.com: interfaz de linea de comando para la web.

Kurt at iadvance wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Is that how its pronounced?? :) I've known you for how long now and never
had a clue how to pronounce your last name ... first is/was easy, last I
never even tried ...

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

There are plenty of hard to spell/pronounce names on the lists - and I
don't want to be the one to start *that* thread - but I have to ask:

Mom-jee-arn ?
Mom-jy-ann ?
Mom-jeen ?
Mom-zhon ?

Sorry for the off-topic, but my wife just corrected the proper Armenian
pronuciation of my name. It should be MOHM-juh-yan.

I rarely correct anyone who pronounces my name. I give them credit for
just trying.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Kurt at iadvance wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Is that how its pronounced?? :) I've known you for how long now and never
had a clue how to pronounce your last name ... first is/was easy, last I
never even tried ...

And we did think Jan was a girl for many months until somehow he
mentioned something that gave us a clue he wasn't.

There are plenty of hard to spell/pronounce names on the lists - and I
don't want to be the one to start *that* thread - but I have to ask:

Mom-jee-arn ?
Mom-jy-ann ?
Mom-jeen ?
Mom-zhon ?

Now, that is a good question. It is MOM-jin. Actually, though the
Armenian way to say it is MOOM-ji-an, but I don't say it that way.

Maybe I need an MP3 file for that. Vince, can you hook me up? ;-)

No problem, the broadcaster in question is my biz partner. I'll get
with him next week.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

Alvaro Herrera wrote:

Lamar Owen dijo:

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 09:26 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote:

(I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

As in the river?

I don't think so. The river is actually called "Tigris" (that's the
spanish version, and the version that generates more results in Google,
althought I admit that the english transliteration may be different).

Tigres is the spanish plural for "tiger", and of course it keeps the
play on "-gres" while suggesting some kind of power (and speed?). But I
think Bruce should be actually better informed than me as to what was
the origin of the word suggestion in the first place.

Tigres (female tiger) was suggested because it is the only common *gres
word we could think of.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Lamar Owen wrote:

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 09:26 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Lamar Owen wrote:

If you doubt that fact, you need to read the archives for awhile to get a
sense of how this project is organized. If the steering committee (the
core six) decide against something, then that something

I don't think you can just "shut down" a discussion about a name change.

Well, you're right. *I* can't shut anything down (except my server...). But
my reply was targeted to the 'who died and made you king' ad hominem.

And my reply was to those who wanted to shut down the discussion.
Lamar, you weren't one of them.

The discussion addressed a serious issue, specifically that though
PostgreSQL looks great on paper, with the Postgre* and the SQL, it is
hard to pronounce.

That was the issue, and people are free to make suggestions on how to
address it. I think the only discussions we really shut down are those
that insult people or are blatantly disrespectful. I think anything
else is open for discussion.

I think there is room for an "also called postgres" push among our users
and for marketing. Oracle is changing the name of their server all the
time to position it for marketing so having a secondary name doesn't
hurt. Our _official_ name is PostgreSQL.

Is that like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince? Now abbreviated to
'Artist'? Why beat around the bush about our name? This is confusion.

Sure, just call us Database. Maybe Red Hat Database is a trend. ;-)

Actually, Prince did that because his record company had rights to his
name for publishing for X years. The contract finally ran out and I
think he is back to Prince.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Thursday 11 July 2002 11:29 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Lamar Owen wrote:

Well, you're right. *I* can't shut anything down (except my server...).
But my reply was targeted to the 'who died and made you king' ad hominem.

And my reply was to those who wanted to shut down the discussion.
Lamar, you weren't one of them.

As I was in the cc list, it was my message replied to, and my Asperger's
kicked in again, I misunderstood.

The discussion addressed a serious issue, specifically that though
PostgreSQL looks great on paper, with the Postgre* and the SQL, it is
hard to pronounce.

You know, I think I brought the issue up once myself. But I further realized
that it really isn't hard to pronounce.

Sure, just call us Database. Maybe Red Hat Database is a trend. ;-)

We might get confused with dBASE. Hmmm. pBASE? (nah.)
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

...

I think there is room for an "also called postgres" push among our users
and for marketing. Oracle is changing the name of their server all the
time to position it for marketing so having a secondary name doesn't
hurt. Our _official_ name is PostgreSQL.

We have had the following in our documentation for years (I remember
writing it ;)

4. Terminology and Notation

The terms "PostgreSQL" and "Postgres" will be used interchangeably to
refer to the software that accompanies this documentation.
...

I fairly recently went through and scrubbed the docs, which at the time
were (if I remember correctly) roughly 60/40 split between the two forms
of name. I think it is not helpful to try to emphasize the "short form",
but we have always acknowledged that it exists and folks have always
used both forms. It just isn't that big a deal, and it just isn't that
confusing.

- Thomas

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Ben wrote:

Okay, going *way* off subject.... why on earth do you speak to women
differently?

You don't make sarcastic comments to women, for one thing. I speak less
harshly, I guess. I am married, so dating isn't the issue.

I used to think "treat them the same" but in reality I think most women
prefer that you didn't.

I personally prefer to be treated the same.
Otherwise i feel a bit like a child , childs are treated with indulgence.
I can't stand the feeling not beeing taken seriously.

Regards
Tina

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 23:16:05 GMT, John Hall wrote:

Look at my own name. Jan Wieck (correctly pronounced like Yann Veek).

Vaguely remembered, then found on the Web...

Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of PASCAL, gave a talk once at which he
was asked "How do you pronounce your name?". He replied, "You can call
me by name, pronouncing it 'Virt', or call be by value, 'Worth'."

You mean this:
"In Europe they call me Niklaus Wirth; in the US they call me Nickel's worth.
That's because in Europe they call me by name, and in the US by value!"

--
Peter Haworth pmh@edison.ioppublishing.com
"The familiar dot '.' symbol from Internet addresses
is used in this book to terminate sentences."
-- Carlton Egremont III, /Mr. Bunny's Guide to ActiveX/

How long did it take you to teach him to say PostgreSQL ? :)

Jeff.

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Vince Vielhaber
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 6:31 AM
To: Christopher Browne
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] I am being interviewed by OReilly

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Christopher Browne wrote:

And if there are 20 places that say "It's officially spelled
PostgreSQL, but you can _pronounce_ that 'p\O\st-"gres', and here's
the MP3 of Bruce saying it," that can cope with the situation nicely.

For the record, the voice on the MP3 isn't Bruce. It's the voice of a
professional broadcaster.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
56K Nationwide Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

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