Just my two cents on this (rapidly degenerating) thread.
On 1/13/08, Sean Utt <sean@strateja.com> wrote:
> <sarcasm>Good to see</sarcasm> things haven't changed, and requests for
> features and improvements on the pgsql-hackers list can still degenerate
> rapidly into a discussion about how to request features and improvements.
>
> As Joshua Drake has pointed out before, most of the core people working on
> PostgreSQL don't actually use it for anything themselves. I will expand a
> little on that and say that this means that while they are extremely good at
> what they do, they really don't have a clue what might be useful to someone
> "in the wild". Sort of like automotive engineers who in the 1970's made the
> Cadillac's engine so large that you couldn't change the spark plugs without
> taking the motor mounts loose and lifting the engine.
As a very satisfied Postgres "customer", I take exception to the comparison.
<SNIP>
> There doesn't appear to be an easy way to officially "take the temperature"
> of either the developer community, or the user community, and there
> certainly is no official way to clearly and easily communicate between the
> two in order to effect change.
Huh? A politely worded feature request generally gets discussed and
then put on the TODO list if there is some consensus about its
usefulness. If there is no consensus, then the requester usually has
to do more work, which might involve prototyping some code etc.
Admittedly, some developers get grumpy sometimes, but, as the man
said, "Let him who is without sin throw the first stone..." There was
an issue with the tone of the request for material views in the
beginning of this thread, but that seems to ironed out among those who
are actually interested in accomplishing something.
May I propose the following: (1) can we put materialized views on the
TODO, perhaps as a library or as core, still subject to a lot of
design work and with no particular deadline? (2) Can we discontinue
this particular flame war about the responsive of the developers (who
in my estimation do a huge amount of work that benefits me immensely
with nary a "thank you")?
Sorry for the meta rant, I just couldn't take it anymore.