PostgreSQL Wishlist

PostgreSQL is a great database, in my opinion much better than Oracle, or the so widely used MySQL. The version 9.0 is going to be out soon. There is the quite huge list of ideas for the future improvements (hopefully in the next 9.1 version).

Depesz wrote his own list of things that he wants to see in the future versions, so I thought I would write my own.

My list is somewhat different, my point of view is different. I’ve been PostgreSQL DBA for a couple of years, but I’m also a programmer. I want to have reliable database but also to be able to use it from a program with ease.

My simple wish list is:

• Parallel query execution – so it would use two cores.
• Master – master replication.
• Locale definitions for each table/column (so multilanguage applications would be easier).
• Index only scans (idea is nice, but there could be too big overhead – so maybe just a special kind of index with visibility map inside).
• Progress bar for queries.
• Materialized views.
• DDL triggers (like on login from Oracle).
• Special logging so that I could define that data from one column won’t be logged (so a column named password won’t be stored in logs).
• Job scheduler in core.

Wish-Not List

And there is one thing that I really don’t want to see in my favourite database:

• The hints like in Oracle.