Re: Release Notes: Major Changes in 8.2 - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Usually the major items just jump out of the release list.  In this
case, nothing really jumped out, and I felt if I listed sereral, it was
going to look weak because they were not big things, so I figured I
would just go with the "broad" list.

The criteria I usually use are things that were not easy to do before.

Does the list below look good for inclusion?

I guess my point is that what we have now overwhelms people with the
number of small things we did.  If you try to put a few at the top, does
it diminish it because the top things are not large?

Or perhaps we can do more broad-stroke list items, like monitoring or
performance, as listed below.

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Simon Riggs wrote:
> I'd like to include a section on Major changes in this release at the
> top of the release notes, as has been done for at least the last 6 major
> releases. The notes below are one stab at that, for **discussion**. I've
> tried to arrange specific changes into groups... 
> 
> 
> Major changes in this release:
> 
> Improved scalability and performance on multi-processor systems (Tom,
> Alvaro, Itagaki, Qingqing, Heikki)
> 
>     A variety of changes improves the performance of both sequential scans
> and index scans, as well as enhancing multi-processor scalability. The
> advanced query optimizer has also been further enhanced, allowing
> indexes and partitioning to be useful in more cases. 
> 
> Improved utility and large query performance (Tom, Simon, Alon, Andreas)
> 
>     Large sorts will have typical performance increases of 100-300%,
> improving complex queries and creating new indexes. Loading times have
> also been reduced. Large queries, data loads, upgrades and restores will
> be considerably improved.
> 
> Improved monitoring and performance tuning (Tom, Bruce, Greg, Larry)
> 
>     Overhead of statistics collection has been considerably reduced and new
> statistics and system information is available. Better query logging
> improves diagnostics and especially performance tuning. Server now
> includes DTrace support. Indexes can now also be created CONCURRENTLY,
> allowing application tuning without effecting server availability.
> 
> Zero administration overhead now possible (Alvaro)
> 
>     With autovacuum enabled, all required vacuuming will now take place
> without administrator intervention enabling wider distribution of
> embedded databases.
> 
> Improved defaults and configuration (Peter, Andrew)
> 
>     Installation defaults are now improved for many tunable memory
> parameters and these can now be specified in kB, MB and GB. 
> 
> Warm Standby Servers for High Availability (Simon, Tom)
> 
>     Warm Standby servers can now be more easily configured and are
> appropriate in a wider range of circumstances than previously.
> 
> Improved scalability and performance of text search: GIN and Tsearch2
> (Teodor, Oleg)
> 
>     New GIN indexes allow much larger text search indexes than were
> previously possible. TSearch2 has been enhanced and performance has also
> been greatly improved.
> 
> Enhanced DML Functionality (Jonah, Joe, Tom, Susanne, Atsushi)
> 
>     INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING and INSERT .. VALUES (), VALUES (),
> VALUES () allow more efficient application designs. Enhancements to
> UPDATE and DELETE allow additional constructs for clarity and ease of
> use.
> 
> SQL:2003 Analytical functions (Sergey, Tom, Neil)
> 
>     All statistical aggregate functions defined by SQL:2003 are now
> supported and user-defined aggregates now can take multiple columns as
> inputs.
> 
> -- 
>   Simon Riggs             
>   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com
> 
> 
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--  Bruce Momjian   bruce@momjian.us EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com
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