Re: Development Plans

Hi Simon;

Here are my observations regarding being a user of the software for the
last five years.  Members of the Core should feel free to correct me if
they feel like it.

Simon Riggs wrote:

>
>One of the most frequent set of questions I get asked is around the
>development vision and release strategy of PostgreSQL.
>
>- When is the next release due?
>- What will be in release 8.1?
>- What are you working towards? Performance? Stability? X?
>
>
>
Ok, lets get back to development vision and release strategy.  In this
case, it doesn't really break down into your three questions.

You have already gotten your answers about release schedule and the
strategy of timing.  So lets look at development vision the strategy
regarding what is included in the released version.

The strategy is that it is better to focus on robustness and the correct
way to do things than it is to focus on getting new features in early.
So as Tom (I think) said, this is not a marketing-driven approach.
Instead we have a market-driven approach where features are developed
based on what developers in the market are willing to add either on
their own time or for hire.  For this reason it is very difficult to
predict what will be in the release.  I know a lot of us were surprised
regarding the inclusion of several (great) features in 8.0 which only
happened because of corporate sponsorship.

The market is not a monolithic entity.  It doesn't just focus on one
thing.  So I can say with relative certainty that 8.1 will likely have
better performance, be easier to manage, and scale better than our
current version.  It will probably also conform more closely to the ANSI
SQL 99 standards and have useful other enterprise features.  However
unlike products such as MS SQL Server (or MySQL), our strategy will
likely be guided by what people actually feel the need to fix rather
than what the marketing department things people want to see in the next
version.

I hope that this clarifies the other answers you have received.

Best Wishes
Chris Travers