Re: We are getting old

The history page (/docs/current/history.html)
says "With over two decades of development behind it, PostgreSQL...".

We are nearing four decades now. :-O

Should we regularly update that sentence, or anchor it with an actual date?
--
Vik Fearing

> On 7 Mar 2021, at 12:48, Vik Fearing <vik(at)postgresfriends(dot)org> wrote:

> Should we regularly update that sentence, or anchor it with an actual date?

Including a date with appropriate resolution seems better.

--
Daniel Gustafsson https://vmware.com/

On 3/7/21 1:14 PM, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
>> On 7 Mar 2021, at 12:48, Vik Fearing <vik(at)postgresfriends(dot)org> wrote:
>
>> Should we regularly update that sentence, or anchor it with an actual date?
>
> Including a date with appropriate resolution seems better.

I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
superfluous neon.
--
Vik Fearing

On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
> On 3/7/21 1:14 PM, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
>>> On 7 Mar 2021, at 12:48, Vik Fearing <vik(at)postgresfriends(dot)org> wrote:
>>
>>> Should we regularly update that sentence, or anchor it with an actual date?
>>
>> Including a date with appropriate resolution seems better.
>
> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
> superfluous neon

Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the docs
themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.

To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
could certainly increment the decade count.

I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1] and
placing them in the documentation.

Jonathan

[1] /about/

"Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
>> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
>> superfluous neon

> Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the docs
> themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.
> To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
> could certainly increment the decade count.
> I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1] and
> placing them in the documentation.

+1 for removing the year count in both places, as we'll just forget to
maintain it.

I think referring to "the 1980s" would be fine, but if we can pin it
down more that'd be even better. I see the www page specifies "1986";
do we have evidence favoring that particular year as the start?

regards, tom lane

On 2021-03-08 10:32, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
>> On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
>>> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
>>> superfluous neon
>
>> Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the
>> docs
>> themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.
>> To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
>> could certainly increment the decade count.
>> I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1]
>> and
>> placing them in the documentation.
>
> +1 for removing the year count in both places, as we'll just forget to
> maintain it.
>
> I think referring to "the 1980s" would be fine, but if we can pin it
> down more that'd be even better. I see the www page specifies "1986";
> do we have evidence favoring that particular year as the start?

The Wikipedia article for PostgreSQL seems to say 1985:

PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres project at the University of
California,
Berkeley. In 1982, the leader of the Ingres team, Michael Stonebraker,
left Berkeley to make a proprietary version of Ingres.[13]

He returned to Berkeley in 1985, and began a post-Ingres project to
address
the problems with contemporary database systems that had become
increasingly clear during the early 1980s.

Wikipedia being not-100%-reliable, this is the article it pulls that
year
from:

https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/stonebraker_1172121.cfm

Unfortunately, the only mention of "1985" in that document seems to be:

Stonebraker led development of INGRES at Berkeley until 1985,
supported
by grant money and the labor of graduate and undergraduate students.

With further reference to PG later on in the document, but without
really
seeming to put a clear date to things. :/

Hmmm, don't suppose we can do this the easy way the just look at the
earliest
commit date we have? :)

+ Justin

2021年3月8日(月) 15:42 Justin Clift <justin(at)postgresql(dot)org>:
>
> On 2021-03-08 10:32, Tom Lane wrote:
> > "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> >> On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
> >>> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
> >>> superfluous neon
> >
> >> Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the
> >> docs
> >> themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.
> >> To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
> >> could certainly increment the decade count.
> >> I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1]
> >> and
> >> placing them in the documentation.
> >
> > +1 for removing the year count in both places, as we'll just forget to
> > maintain it.
> >
> > I think referring to "the 1980s" would be fine, but if we can pin it
> > down more that'd be even better. I see the www page specifies "1986";
> > do we have evidence favoring that particular year as the start?
>
> The Wikipedia article for PostgreSQL seems to say 1985:
>
> PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres project at the University of
> California,
> Berkeley. In 1982, the leader of the Ingres team, Michael Stonebraker,
> left Berkeley to make a proprietary version of Ingres.[13]
>
> He returned to Berkeley in 1985, and began a post-Ingres project to
> address
> the problems with contemporary database systems that had become
> increasingly clear during the early 1980s.
>
> Wikipedia being not-100%-reliable, this is the article it pulls that
> year
> from:
>
> https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/stonebraker_1172121.cfm
>
> Unfortunately, the only mention of "1985" in that document seems to be:
>
> Stonebraker led development of INGRES at Berkeley until 1985,
> supported
> by grant money and the labor of graduate and undergraduate students.
>
> With further reference to PG later on in the document, but without
> really
> seeming to put a clear date to things. :/
>
> Hmmm, don't suppose we can do this the easy way the just look at the
> earliest
> commit date we have? :)

The earliest commit date is July 1996:

https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=d31084e9d1118b25fd16580d9d8c2924b5740dff

Some spelunking here might provide some further clues, maybe there are some
release notes or something squirreled away:

https://dsf.berkeley.edu/oldpost/

Regards

Ian Barwick

--
EnterpriseDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com

Oh, hello! You could date from the first POSTGRES paper by Stonebraker
(85), or from Jolly Chen & Andrew Yu's Postgres95 releases (95ish) but I
think the best time to date from would be when Marc volunteered to set up
the Postgres CVS repo in April of '96. You could also date from Marc's
tragically concluding there was consensus around PostgreSQL in October of
the same year.

I collected a bunch of this stuff for a Postgres history talk a while back.
Not sure if there is a video but slides are archived here:
https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfeu2017/sessions/session/1621/slides/49/PGCONF.EUAnIllustratedHistoryofPostgreSQL.pdf

-p

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 10:55 PM Ian Lawrence Barwick <barwick(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> 2021年3月8日(月) 15:42 Justin Clift <justin(at)postgresql(dot)org>:
> >
> > On 2021-03-08 10:32, Tom Lane wrote:
> > > "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> > >> On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
> > >>> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
> > >>> superfluous neon
> > >
> > >> Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the
> > >> docs
> > >> themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.
> > >> To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
> > >> could certainly increment the decade count.
> > >> I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1]
> > >> and
> > >> placing them in the documentation.
> > >
> > > +1 for removing the year count in both places, as we'll just forget to
> > > maintain it.
> > >
> > > I think referring to "the 1980s" would be fine, but if we can pin it
> > > down more that'd be even better. I see the www page specifies "1986";
> > > do we have evidence favoring that particular year as the start?
> >
> > The Wikipedia article for PostgreSQL seems to say 1985:
> >
> > PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres project at the University of
> > California,
> > Berkeley. In 1982, the leader of the Ingres team, Michael Stonebraker,
> > left Berkeley to make a proprietary version of Ingres.[13]
> >
> > He returned to Berkeley in 1985, and began a post-Ingres project to
> > address
> > the problems with contemporary database systems that had become
> > increasingly clear during the early 1980s.
> >
> > Wikipedia being not-100%-reliable, this is the article it pulls that
> > year
> > from:
> >
> > https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/stonebraker_1172121.cfm
> >
> > Unfortunately, the only mention of "1985" in that document seems to be:
> >
> > Stonebraker led development of INGRES at Berkeley until 1985,
> > supported
> > by grant money and the labor of graduate and undergraduate students.
> >
> > With further reference to PG later on in the document, but without
> > really
> > seeming to put a clear date to things. :/
> >
> > Hmmm, don't suppose we can do this the easy way the just look at the
> > earliest
> > commit date we have? :)
>
> The earliest commit date is July 1996:
>
>
> https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=d31084e9d1118b25fd16580d9d8c2924b5740dff
>
> Some spelunking here might provide some further clues, maybe there are some
> release notes or something squirreled away:
>
> https://dsf.berkeley.edu/oldpost/
>
> Regards
>
> Ian Barwick
>
> --
> EnterpriseDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com
>
>
>

--
Peter van Hardenberg
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."—Kurt Vonnegut

Sorry, "The Design of POSTGRES" was in June '86. It seems likely that
POSTGRES was conceptually born in spring of '86 because Stonebraker was
still busy publishing a bunch of INGRES papers until January of that year.

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 12:17 AM Peter van Hardenberg <pvh(at)pvh(dot)ca> wrote:

> Oh, hello! You could date from the first POSTGRES paper by Stonebraker
> (85), or from Jolly Chen & Andrew Yu's Postgres95 releases (95ish) but I
> think the best time to date from would be when Marc volunteered to set up
> the Postgres CVS repo in April of '96. You could also date from Marc's
> tragically concluding there was consensus around PostgreSQL in October of
> the same year.
>
> I collected a bunch of this stuff for a Postgres history talk a while
> back. Not sure if there is a video but slides are archived here:
>
> https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfeu2017/sessions/session/1621/slides/49/PGCONF.EUAnIllustratedHistoryofPostgreSQL.pdf
>
> -p
>
> On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 10:55 PM Ian Lawrence Barwick <barwick(at)gmail(dot)com>
> wrote:
>
>> 2021年3月8日(月) 15:42 Justin Clift <justin(at)postgresql(dot)org>:
>> >
>> > On 2021-03-08 10:32, Tom Lane wrote:
>> > > "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
>> > >> On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
>> > >>> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
>> > >>> superfluous neon
>> > >
>> > >> Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the
>> > >> docs
>> > >> themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.
>> > >> To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
>> > >> could certainly increment the decade count.
>> > >> I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1]
>> > >> and
>> > >> placing them in the documentation.
>> > >
>> > > +1 for removing the year count in both places, as we'll just forget to
>> > > maintain it.
>> > >
>> > > I think referring to "the 1980s" would be fine, but if we can pin it
>> > > down more that'd be even better. I see the www page specifies "1986";
>> > > do we have evidence favoring that particular year as the start?
>> >
>> > The Wikipedia article for PostgreSQL seems to say 1985:
>> >
>> > PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres project at the University of
>> > California,
>> > Berkeley. In 1982, the leader of the Ingres team, Michael
>> Stonebraker,
>> > left Berkeley to make a proprietary version of Ingres.[13]
>> >
>> > He returned to Berkeley in 1985, and began a post-Ingres project to
>> > address
>> > the problems with contemporary database systems that had become
>> > increasingly clear during the early 1980s.
>> >
>> > Wikipedia being not-100%-reliable, this is the article it pulls that
>> > year
>> > from:
>> >
>> > https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/stonebraker_1172121.cfm
>> >
>> > Unfortunately, the only mention of "1985" in that document seems to be:
>> >
>> > Stonebraker led development of INGRES at Berkeley until 1985,
>> > supported
>> > by grant money and the labor of graduate and undergraduate students.
>> >
>> > With further reference to PG later on in the document, but without
>> > really
>> > seeming to put a clear date to things. :/
>> >
>> > Hmmm, don't suppose we can do this the easy way the just look at the
>> > earliest
>> > commit date we have? :)
>>
>> The earliest commit date is July 1996:
>>
>>
>> https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=d31084e9d1118b25fd16580d9d8c2924b5740dff
>>
>> Some spelunking here might provide some further clues, maybe there are
>> some
>> release notes or something squirreled away:
>>
>> https://dsf.berkeley.edu/oldpost/
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Ian Barwick
>>
>> --
>> EnterpriseDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Peter van Hardenberg
> "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."—Kurt Vonnegut
>

--
Peter van Hardenberg
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."—Kurt Vonnegut

On 2021-03-08 19:17, Peter van Hardenberg wrote:
> Oh, hello! You could date from the first POSTGRES paper by Stonebraker
> (85), or from Jolly Chen & Andrew Yu's Postgres95 releases (95ish) but
> I
> think the best time to date from would be when Marc volunteered to set
> up
> the Postgres CVS repo in April of '96. You could also date from Marc's
> tragically concluding there was consensus around PostgreSQL in October
> of
> the same year.
>
> I collected a bunch of this stuff for a Postgres history talk a while
> back.
> Not sure if there is a video but slides are archived here:
> https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfeu2017/sessions/session/1621/slides/49/PGCONF.EUAnIllustratedHistoryofPostgreSQL.pdf

Oh, that's kind of nifty. The "THE DESIGN OF POSTGRES" paper is dated
as
1986 in your slides though. That's the "first POSTGRES paper" you're
meaning?

Either way, that's a good "start" marker design wise, even though coding
may have started later on. :)

+ Justin

2021年3月8日(月) 17:33 Justin Clift <justin(at)postgresql(dot)org>:
>
> On 2021-03-08 19:17, Peter van Hardenberg wrote:
> > Oh, hello! You could date from the first POSTGRES paper by Stonebraker
> > (85), or from Jolly Chen & Andrew Yu's Postgres95 releases (95ish) but
> > I
> > think the best time to date from would be when Marc volunteered to set
> > up
> > the Postgres CVS repo in April of '96. You could also date from Marc's
> > tragically concluding there was consensus around PostgreSQL in October
> > of
> > the same year.
> >
> > I collected a bunch of this stuff for a Postgres history talk a while
> > back.
> > Not sure if there is a video but slides are archived here:
> > https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfeu2017/sessions/session/1621/slides/49/PGCONF.EUAnIllustratedHistoryofPostgreSQL.pdf
>
> Oh, that's kind of nifty. The "THE DESIGN OF POSTGRES" paper is dated
> as
> 1986 in your slides though. That's the "first POSTGRES paper" you're
> meaning?
>
> Either way, that's a good "start" marker design wise, even though coding
> may have started later on. :)

This link also has some useful references, including that 1986 paper:

http://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/stonebraker/5-Hellerstein.pdf

Ian Barwick

--
EnterpriseDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 07:33:23PM +1100, Justin Clift wrote:
> On 2021-03-08 19:17, Peter van Hardenberg wrote:
> > Oh, hello! You could date from the first POSTGRES paper by Stonebraker
> > (85), or from Jolly Chen & Andrew Yu's Postgres95 releases (95ish) but I
> > think the best time to date from would be when Marc volunteered to set
> > up
> > the Postgres CVS repo in April of '96. You could also date from Marc's
> > tragically concluding there was consensus around PostgreSQL in October
> > of
> > the same year.
> >
> > I collected a bunch of this stuff for a Postgres history talk a while
> > back.
> > Not sure if there is a video but slides are archived here:
> > https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfeu2017/sessions/session/1621/slides/49/PGCONF.EUAnIllustratedHistoryofPostgreSQL.pdf
>
> Oh, that's kind of nifty. The "THE DESIGN OF POSTGRES" paper is dated as
> 1986 in your slides though. That's the "first POSTGRES paper" you're
> meaning?
>
> Either way, that's a good "start" marker design wise, even though coding
> may have started later on. :)

Yes, I am told _coding_ started in 1986.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee