Re: PostgreSQL 9.0

On 29 Jan 2007 13:25:31 -0800, Karen Hill <karen_hill22(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> I was just looking at all the upcoming features scheduled to make it
> into 8.3, and with all those goodies, wouldn't it make sense for this
> to be a 9.0 release instead of an 8.3? It looks like postgresql is
> rapidly catching up to oracle if 8.3 branch gets every feature
> scheduled for it.

Well I see it in two ways. For one, the features are certainly
great and a significant advance. This alone could mandate version
bump to 9.0.

On the other hand, the 8.x line is so successful I would like it to
stay for a copule revisions more. Well, it does have a nice feeling
about it: "What? Yeah, it does support windowing function, we've
introduced them around version 8.3. Naah, no big deal, wait for
the version 8.4, you'll be surprosed. Naah, we keep version 9.0
for truly significant changes". And I must say, I do like it.

> About the only big features pg 8.3 doesn't have is materialized views
> and RMAN..

Personally I'm missing two things, which were discussed in the
past, but would be nice to have:
* more efficient storage of varlen data -- some time ago there were
ideas to get rid of constant 4-bytes for length and use more elastic
approach. Smaller tables, bigger performance.
* updatable views [ or am I missing something? ] -- it seems to me
they were close to be completed, but I don't remember if they were
completed and committed or not.

Regards,
Dawid