Rod Taylor wrote: > > Do we have any "killer" features added to 7.4 that we can shout about? > > There's usually been one or two in the past...? > > A quick glance at the TODO list shows a number of speed improvements in > specific areas (IN, GROUP BY, Subselects in views), ARRAY improvements, > some utility command improvements / additions, and a significant > protocol update. > > The protocol update may not be flashy, but it is a large step forward in > presenting a clean experience for developers using PostgreSQL (reduces > chance of rare, unexpected, and difficult to find logic errors). > > If nothing else, it makes for an excellent cleanup release that rounds > off some of the sharp corners (tab completion for schema elements in > psql, schema dump in psql, fixed cluster support, transactional > truncate, alter sequence, new regex code for fast MultiByte, etc).
The problem with cleanup releases is that most of our recent releases have been of that type. Each release is a good step forward, but I was hoping for a set of killer features for this release. Tom said that our low-hanging fruit is gone and only hard items are left. This is certainly true. What is hard to accept is that those big items take _weeks_ of focused development, and we just don't have enough full-time developers who can spend that amount of time to do them. The sad truth is that there is alway something _else_ to do, rather than block out weeks to code a complex feature. And these are usually features that can't be done incrementally, but require a huge input of time before there is any payback. I tried with Win32, and spent a few weeks getting us closer, but my other work of housecleaning (email/patches/cleanup), and marketing (speaking and tutorial preparation) just make it impossible to spend the time needed to complete a big item. And people were rightly upset that the patches weren't getting applied or cleanup done in a timely manner. It is depressing. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
