Bruce, Marc, et al-

Bruce Momjian wrote:

> I think it might be nice to get this out on the web page in a prominent
> place until we release 6.5.  Seems like we should be talking up these
> features so people can get excited.

>> In February, we start beta on 6.5...



I have been working on some revisions for the main home page.
A preliminary version, including the 6.5 blurb, can be found at:

  http://www.postgresql.org/mainx.html

What do you think?

Notes:

- I deleted references to Vadim and Jan to make the item seem less
  less like a private communication intended for insiders. No slight
  is intended here.

- The navigation bar is no longer a frame. I think Marc and I agree
  the old navigation-bar frame scheme should be revised. I'd like it
  to have explanatory onMouseOvers, but this isn't there yet - I'm
  still trying out several things. Changing how the navigation bars
  work will affect most pages on the site, giving it a different feel.

Hal

07 Jan 1999 03:34:02 -0600
Hal Snyder <hal@enteract.com>
Upcoming Attractions, web site
Looks nice. Might rephrase:

  Those of you who did not like
  our table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.

to be something like

  Those of you wanting alternatives to
  our table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.

The new CASE statement might be of interest, and I'm looking forward to
getting far enough along on outer joins to get a mention of that too :)

                      - Tom

Thu, 07 Jan 1999 16:16:51 +0000
"Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>
Re: [DOCS] Upcoming Attractions, web site
> Bruce, Marc, et al-
> 
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> > I think it might be nice to get this out on the web page in a prominent
> > place until we release 6.5.  Seems like we should be talking up these
> > features so people can get excited.
> 
> >> In February, we start beta on 6.5...
> 
> 
> 
> I have been working on some revisions for the main home page.
> A preliminary version, including the 6.5 blurb, can be found at:
> 
>   http://www.postgresql.org/mainx.html
> 
> What do you think?

Looks great.

> 
> Notes:
> 
> - I deleted references to Vadim and Jan to make the item seem less
>   less like a private communication intended for insiders. No slight
>   is intended here.

OK.

> - The navigation bar is no longer a frame. I think Marc and I agree
>   the old navigation-bar frame scheme should be revised. I'd like it
>   to have explanatory onMouseOvers, but this isn't there yet - I'm
>   still trying out several things. Changing how the navigation bars
>   work will affect most pages on the site, giving it a different feel.

I like that too.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:31:06 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [DOCS] Upcoming Attractions, web site
> Looks nice. Might rephrase:
> 
>   Those of you who did not like
>   our table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.
> 
> to be something like
> 
>   Those of you wanting alternatives to
>   our table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.
> 
> The new CASE statement might be of interest, and I'm looking forward to
> getting far enough along on outer joins to get a mention of that too :)

Yes, CASE would be good to add.  You can say:

	An SQL-standard CASE statement is planned too.


Thomas, do you need help on outer joins?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:47:34 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [DOCS] Upcoming Attractions, web site
> Looks nice. Might rephrase:
> 
>   Those of you who did not like
>   our table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.
> 
> to be something like
> 
>   Those of you wanting alternatives to
>   our table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.

I don't like the new wording.  It sounds like we are adding an optional
functionality, while we are replacing table-level locking because MVCC
is much better.  We can say:

    Those of you need better locking than our current
    table-level locking will be pleasantly surprised.


-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:54:11 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [DOCS] Upcoming Attractions, web site
> Thomas, do you need help on outer joins?

Yes. I'm going slowly partly because I get distracted with other
Postgres stuff like docs, and partly because I don't understand all of
the pieces I'm working with.

I've identified the place in the MergeJoin code where the null filling
for outer joins needs to happen, and have the "merge walk" code done.
But I don't have the supporting code which actually would know how to
null-fill a result tuple from the left or right. I thought you might be
interested in that?

I've done some work in the parser, and can now do things like:

postgres=> select * from t1 join t2 using (i);
NOTICE:  JOIN not yet implemented
i|j|i|k
-+-+-+-
1|2|1|3
(1 row)

But this is just an inner join, and the result isn't quite right since
the second "i" column should probably be omitted. At the moment I
transform it from the syntax above into existing parse nodes, and
everything from there on works.

I don't yet pass an explicit join node into the planner/optimizer, and
that will be the hardest part I assume. Perhaps we can work on that
together.

So, what I'll try to do (soon, in the next few days?) is put in

  #ifdef ENABLE_OUTER_JOINS

conditional code into the parser area (already there for the executor)
and commit everything to the development tree. Does that sound OK?

Oh, and if anyone is looking for something to do, I've got a couple of
CASE statements in the case.sql regression test which are commented out
because they crash the backend. They involve references to multiple
tables within a single result column, and in other contexts that
construct works. It would be great if someone had time to track it
down...

                     - Tom

Thu, 07 Jan 1999 18:26:56 +0000
"Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>
Outer Joins (and need CASE help)