On 11/21/2011 11:40 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
I think a question is how often people are waiting for features that
actually can be addressed in a contrib/plugin way.  My gut feeling is
that most missing features have to be added to the server core (e.g.
index-only scans) and are not possible to add in a contrib/plugin way.

Good question; let's talk about 9.0. We were building/distributing three things for that version that poked into the server:

-Replication monitoring tools that slipped from the 9.0 schedule, similar to what became pg_stat_replication in 9.1
-An early version of what became hot_standby_feedback in 9.1.
-pg_streamrecv

While these weren't all packaged as extensions per se, all of them used the PGXS interface. And they all provided deployment blocking features to early adopters before those features were available in core, in some cases after the issues they address had been encountered in production deployments. As I was ranting on my blog recently, I'm seeing more complaints recently about monitoring and management features--exactly the sort of thing that you can improve as an extension, and that the extensions I've proposed provide--than I am over missing big features.

Index-only scans are a good example, as one of the most requested performance feature you can only get in core (I'd put them at #2 behind materialized views for the customers I talk to). I wouldn't bet that they are considered more important by a typical deployment than good built-in query profiling though. I get complaints about query monitoring from every single PostgreSQL install, while complaints about not having index-only scans only come from the bigger installations. Note how demand is high enough that we have two pg_stat_statements replacements submitted right now.

--
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    g...@2ndquadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support  www.2ndQuadrant.us


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