Re: Survey results from the PostgreSQL portal page

On Sunday 19 January 2003 09:20, Justin Clift wrote:
> Dave Page put up a new survey on the PostgreSQL portal page very
> recently, " What would attract the most new PostgreSQL users?" and the
> results in already are interesting (1,529 results as this is being
> written):
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/survey.php?SurveyID=9
>
> Listed from most voted for to least voted for we have:
>
> ***********
>
> Answer            Responses Percentage
>
> More speed           505      33.028%
> Win32 Port           390      25.507%
> Replication          386      25.245%
> Better docs          160      10.464%
> More features         32       2.093%
> Better marketing      29       1.897%
> Better migration      18       1.177%
> PITR                   9       0.589%
>
> Total number of responses: 1529

What I find interesting is that 25% voted for replication and only 1/2% voted 
for PITR.  I think that that shows that surveys are easily skewed by their 
own parameters.  People interested in both probably just voted for the one 
slightly higher on their wish list.

Anyway, interesting straw vote but let's not make critical decisions based on 
it.  It's not even a vote of the people looking for databases.  It's a vote 
of what those people want in the opinion of the people who voted.

> Now, we don't necessarily have a speed problem, as people who take the
> time to tune the database can attest to, so this is making me consider
> why such a large percentage of folk would vote for that.

Need for speed.  It doesn't matter how fast we are, faster is always better.  
Other items are of the nature have or not have a feature and people may 
disagree whether we need the feature or not but who will ever say that more 
speed is not wanted?

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@{druid|vex}.net>   |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.