Re: State of Beta 2

Kaare Rasmussen wrote:
>>repeat it.  Just any old developer can't do this -- it needs the
>>long-term focused attention of Tom, Jan, or Bruce.  And that isn't going

> I believe that neither of these people was born with the knowledge of how
> PostgreSQL is working. An experienced developer with the time and the money
> would be able to solve your problem.

There is a typo in my post; the indefinite article should be prepended
to the list of names; to solve this problem, we need _a_ Tom, Jan, or
Bruce, meaning a core-grade developer with substantial experience in
this codebase.

> You and others state that this is a very important issue. But it's really only
> an issue if you can't ever have a service window. If people don't have
> service windows, they have very expensive solutions and ought to be able to
> afford the expense of a developer. They get so much for free, so if this is
> the only problem they have, they should collect and hire a programmer.

This is an issue for more than those you state.  I have had numerous
complaints as RPM maintainer for the surprise people have when they find
out that PostgreSQL just has to be different from every other package
that they upgrade.  But again, the issues are well documented in the
archives, and my patience for people who want to rehash these well
documented things is wearing thin.  Tom has said that I have eloquently
stated my side of the argument, which, incidentally, I took as a massive
compliment (many thanks Tom), even though I don't personally feel it was
very eloquent.  So read the archives, it is very thoroughly stated
there.  But if I must continue restating what I have seen and heard,
then I guess I must.

And there are times dump/restore fails.  Read the archives for those times.

It is ludicrous to require dump restore.  I'm sorry, but that is my
studied opinion of the matter, over a period of 5 years.  nd I don't
care if Oracle or anybody else in the RDBMS field also does this; it is
still ludicrous.

> They're occupied with other matters. And yes - they often choose from personal
> interest - and an upgrade tool will never make top 5 for any normal developer
> ;-)

And that's the root of the problem, as I already stated.

> I still believe that users who can't upgrade are few and far between. If they
> are so many, why won't they sponsor the cost for an upgrade utility ?

Read the archives, and read Red Hat's bugzilla for PostgreSQL before
making blanket unsubstantiated statements like that.
--
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute