As the creator of the initial major release notes, I am aware of the many changes that go into every release. What I often cannot see is the pattern of feature growth that the Postgres community accomplishes on a yearly basis.
This keynote presentation from PGConf EU contained a graphic that gave me a new perspective. The presentation by EnterpriseDB's Keith Alsheimer includes valuable research and quotes, but slide 18 is the image that caught my eye. It takes Postgres features and groups them into three areas:
- Easy to use / deploy
- High-end enterprise requirements
- New workloads / platforms
With examples under each section, the diagram clearly shows Postgres development targeting three different segments. With this visual, it is easier for me to see which segment a new feature targets, and when a feature might benefit one segment while harming another.