Re: Initial release notes created for 9.6

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Please review and comment before Monday, if you can.

Overall, I think this looks pretty great. Thanks for pulling it
together so quickly. Various nitpicky comments below.

+ <para>
+ Extend relations multiple blocks at a time (Dilip Kumar)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This reduces kernel traffic, and improves scalability when multiple
+ processes are inserting into the same relation.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>

I think this should be rephrased so as to make it clear that we only
do this when there is contention.

+<!--
+2016-04-10 [008608b9d] Avoid the use of a separate spinlock to protect a LWLock
+-->
+ <para>
+ Use atomic operations, rather than a spinlock, to protect an LWLock's
+ wait queue (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>

This was basically an attempt to cure a defect in 48354581a and could
perhaps be lumped under that item.

+ <para>
+ Force backends to exit if the postmaster dies
+ (Rajeev Rastogi and Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+

Separator between names should probably be a comma rather than "and".

+ <para>
+ Ensure that trigonometric functions handle infinity and NaN inputs per
+ spec (Dean Rasheed)
+ </para>

"per spec" is pretty vague. What spec? And how about spelling out
"specification"?

+ <para>
+ An example usage is <literal>CHECK(num_nonnulls(a,b,c) = 1)</> which
+ asserts that exactly one of a,b,c isn't NULL. These functions can
+ also be pressed into service to count the number of null or nonnull
+ elements in an array.
+ </para>

"pressed into service"? If it's a hack, let's not mention it at all.
If it's not a hack, let's just say the functions can do that, plain
and simple.

+ <para>
+ This function converts strings like those produced
+ by <function>pg_size_pretty()</> into sizes in bytes. An example
+ usage is <literal>WHERE pg_total_relation_size(oid) &gt;
+ pg_size_bytes('10 GB')</>.
+ </para>

I would be inclined to expend a few more bytes to turn that into a
complete SQL query, like "SELECT oid::regclass FROM pg_class
WHERE...".

+ <para>
+ In <function>pg_size_pretty()</>, format negative numbers similarly to
+ positive ones (Adrian Vondendriesch)
+ </para>

Maybe add: "Previously, the suffix for a negative number was always
'bytes', never 'kB', 'MB', 'GB', or 'TB'". Or something like that.

+ <para>
+ Add an optional <replaceable>missing_ok</> argument to
+ the <function>current_setting()</> function (David Christensen)
+ </para>

Adjust text to clarify that it suppresses the error for a nonexisting setting?

+ <para>
+ Improve error reporting during <application>initdb</>'s post-bootstrap
+ phase, by not reporting the entire input file as the <quote>failing
+ query</> (Tom Lane)
+ </para>

This reads oddly to me How about "When initdb fails during the
post-bootstrap phase, report the failing query rather than the
entirety of the file that contained it"?

+ <para>
+ Consider performing sorts on the remote server (Ashutosh Bapat)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+<!--
+2016-02-09 [e4106b252] postgres_fdw: Push down joins to remote servers.
+2016-03-09 [aa09cd242] postgres_fdw: Consider foreign joining and foreign sorti
+-->
+ <para>
+ Push down joins to the remote server when possible (Shigeru Hanada,
+ Ashutosh Bapat)
+ </para>

I think these could be worded the same way. Like maybe "Consider
performing sorts on the remote server" and "Consider performing joins
on the remote server".

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company