Re: PostgreSQL 12: Feature Highlights

On 5/17/19 10:19 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 08:14:33AM -0400, Evan Macbeth wrote:
>> Long time lurker, first time poster. :) 
>>
>>
>>     80% - 90% of the items listed in the release notes aren't interesting
>>     to users, but *which* 80% - 90% it is varies. The release notes don't
>>     have to function as a press release, because we'll have an actual
>>     press release instead.
>>     --
>>     Peter Geoghegan
>>
>>
>> I think Peter's point here is really important. I read the release notes and
>> the press releases, both, from a very different perspective than others, but I
>> find both very valuable. The release notes benefit from completeness and
>> detail, in my observer's opinion.
>
> As I just stated, if the press release was exhaustive, we could have the
> release notes be more detailed, but this is not the case.  I don't think
> we want to get into a case where the items listed on the preess release
> get a different level of detail from the items not listed.

To step back, it's important to understand the intended goals of the
press release.

I view the primary goal of the press release for a major version to be a
springboard to further dive into what is in the release. It helps to
give some global context to new features / changes and is an effective
"getting started" point. It needs just enough details for people to be
interested, and if they want more info, they can go to the release notes
+ docs.

The release notes then can provide additional details on what said
features (effectively a readable "diff" between versions) are, and, if
needed, the documentation can provide even greater details.

(The "diff" point is important: multiple times in recent weeks I've had
to refer back to the PG10 notes to highlight how the behavior for set
returning functions changed in the SELECT lists. So having that there
was certainly helpful.)

In my more heavy practitioner days, I needed both to help analyze and
make decisions on say, when to upgrade to a major version, or

Bringing it full circle, I view the primary goal of the Beta 1 press
release to be a springboard to _testing_ the release: we need people to
test to ensure the GA release is as stable as possible. It should be a
bit more exhaustive than the final GA press release - ideally I want
people to think of uses cases they can test the new features in -- but
sure, it should not be too much more exhaustive.

Thanks,

Jonathan