On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing I am a bit uncomfortable with about this whole discussion is > that it seems like a lot of the design and research is happening > off-list, with intent to report results back here later. While that > is obviously fine at some level, keeping the design under wraps until > the code is written is a strategy that's had notoriously poor success > in this community, and I hope we're not in for a repeat of that > strategy. I think we ought to be sharing and debugging designs in > public, not internally within 2ndQuadrant - or any other company, or > any other mailing list other than this one. Nobody enjoys doing a lot > of work on a patch and then having it get killed because Tom Lane - or > someone else - points out some critical flaw in the design, and the > way to avoid that is to try to flush out the flaws in public before > too much work goes into it. On the flip side I certainly understand > that sometimes you need to take some time to get your house in order > before you can present a coherent public proposal, so don't take an > accusation that anyone is doing anything wrong, just a possible > concern. I'm aware of the difficulties here. It's a bootstrap. If we start by discussing it then we receive the predictable "that'll never work" replies. If we start by building a prototype then we get the "you're hiding it" replies. Neither is ideal. I'm also well aware of the "if only you'd showed me your design sooner, I could have saved you the time" which is the stock response from every architect I ever met. The truth is, as I'm sure you might guess, that I don't know everything, so making a few mistakes early on allows us to avoid the time wasting annoyance of early stage ideas. All I can say is that I've done this a few times before and the process is easier once we have a little structure in place, with details like which bike shed we are painting and what the meaning of the phrase "to paint" entails. My hope is that we can present a basic set of facts and measurements that will act as a platform for challenge and discussion of requirements and ideas. -- Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers