Horton

Re: First draft of PG 17 release notes

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

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From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com>
Cc: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2024-05-18T15:13:54Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Revert support for ALTER TABLE ... MERGE/SPLIT PARTITION(S) commands

  2. When creating materialized views, use REFRESH to load data.

  3. Revert temporal primary keys and foreign keys

  4. Avoid needless large memcpys in libpq socket writing

  5. Enhance nbtree ScalarArrayOp execution.

  6. Introduce a non-recursive JSON parser

  7. Combine freezing and pruning steps in VACUUM

  8. Allow SIGINT to cancel psql database reconnections.

  9. Provide API for streaming relation data.

  10. Add hash support functions and hash opclass for contrib/ltree.

  11. Pull up ANY-SUBLINK with the necessary lateral support.

  12. Read WAL directly from WAL buffers.

  13. Introduce the dynamic shared memory registry.

  14. Add macros for looping through a List without a ListCell.

  15. Support +/- infinity in the interval data type.

  16. Extend ALTER OPERATOR to allow setting more optimization attributes.

  17. Consider cheap startup paths in add_paths_to_append_rel

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 09:09:11AM -0400, Melanie Plageman wrote:
> On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 11:48 PM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> >
> > On 2024-05-15 10:38:20 +0200, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > > I disagree with this.  IMO the impact of the Sawada/Naylor change is
> > > likely to be enormous for people with large tables and large numbers of
> > > tuples to clean up (I know we've had a number of customers in this
> > > situation, I can't imagine any Postgres service provider that doesn't).
> > > The fact that maintenance_work_mem is no longer capped at 1GB is very
> > > important and I think we should mention that explicitly in the release
> > > notes, as setting it higher could make a big difference in vacuum run
> > > times.
> >
> > +many.
> >
> > We're having this debate every release. I think the ongoing reticence to note
> > performance improvements in the release notes is hurting Postgres.
> >
> > For one, performance improvements are one of the prime reason users
> > upgrade. Without them being noted anywhere more dense than the commit log,
> > it's very hard to figure out what improved for users. A halfway widely
> > applicable performance improvement is far more impactful than many of the
> > feature changes we do list in the release notes.
> 
> The practical reason this matters to users is that they want to change
> their configuration or expectations in response to performance
> improvements.
> 
> And also, as Jelte mentions upthread, describing performance
> improvements made each release in Postgres makes it clear that we are
> consistently improving it.
> 
> > For another, it's also very frustrating for developers that focus on
> > performance. The reticence to note their work, while noting other, far
> > smaller, things in the release notes, pretty much tells us that our work isn't
> > valued.
> 
> +many

Please see the email I just posted.  There are three goals we have to
adjust for:

1.  short release notes so they are readable
2.  giving people credit for performance improvements
3.  showing people Postgres cares about performance

I would like to achieve 2 & 3 without harming #1.  My experience is if I
am reading a long document, and I get to a section where I start to
wonder, "Why should I care about this?", I start to skim the rest of
the document.  I am particularly critical if I start to wonder, "Why
does the author _think_ I should care about this?" becasue it feels like
the author is writing for him/herself and not the audience.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Only you can decide what is important to you.