On 8/4/06, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
> It's a pity that some expectations have been raised about features that
> we haven't seen patches for, MERGE/UPSERT & recursive queries
Honestly, I've only had four people say it would be nice to have
hierarchical queries (one of them wasn't even a PostgreSQL user).
Almost everyone else seems to ask some variation of, "what's a
hierarchical query and why do I need it?" It's hard to get excited
about writing a patch no one sees a real need for.
When I have a choice of working on things in my spare time, I choose
what to work on based on basically two things (a) what is my interest
in it and (b) who is going to use it. Based on that, I determine
whether it's worth going through the hassle of design, development,
testing, and final documentation (my prelim docs come from design).
In short, I know a lot of people would probably use this feature after
it was there, but *very* few have shown any interest in it and a patch
for it (while in need of rewriting) has existed since 7.4.
> I am not pointing fingers, but I do think we need
> some way in which the community can ensure
> that certain goals are met, or at least try to help
> if things fall in a ditch, rather than just relying on
> hackers scratching whatever itch they happen to
> get in splendid isolation and then trying to merge
> the results.
I agree. The real problem is that we don't look at things in a
business-like, "what are we going to have in the next release"
perspective. Being as it's an OSS community, we just see what patches
come in and we apply what we choose... then pick which ones we see as
"major features" and announce them.
I'd like to be mistaken here, but I don't think we've ever really had
release planning in regards to features. We can always sit down after
8.2 is finalized and plan what are we doing for 8.3 and go from there.
--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1300
EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 2nd Floor | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830 | http://www.enterprisedb.com/