Intro to 8.1 Developer Series

There’s no perticular coherent thought to this post, it’s more some random thoughts I’ve been having about the upcoming 8.1 release. I think at this point we have the process of churning out new press releases and getting the word out regarding new releases, so I am thinking what is the next step, and I think it is writing a series of articles that introduce users to new features we’re getting in 8.1. Josh and Joe wrote a very nice article after 7.4 came out, but we really didn’t get anything similar for 8.0 (While we actually had more articles, they weren’t as technical in nature), which I think is kind of a let down. So for 8.1 I think we should do something like this. The easy part is the topics; 8.1 has a bunch of juicy features like out parameters, roles, 2 phase commit, integrated auto-vacuum, shared row locks, in memory index bitmapping, and plperl is getting a whole bunch of enhancements too; so finding things to write about shouldn’t be too tough. The real questions come down to how to write about them; 1 big article like josh/joe did in 7.4 vs a series of articles that explain each feature individually. The other question is where to publish the articles. We could do it on a community related site like [http://techdocs.postgresql.org techdocs], or try something external like linux mag or onlamp. Anywho there are some thoughts running through my head… I’m hoping to discuss it some more at [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2005/ oscon], and then I imagine we’ll probably do some coordination on the advocacy list. Till then if you have some thoughts or a strong inkling to write on a certain upcoming feature please drop me a note.