7.4 Press Release -- Draft #4 - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is pleased to announce the
availability of version 7.4 of the PostgreSQL Relational Database
Management System (RDBMS). This major release represents the work
of our world wide network of over 100 developers and contributors over
the last 9 months, building on the unparalleled success of PostgreSQL 7.3.

Significant advances in PostgreSQL version 7.4 include:

   - A complete redesign of error logging and reporting, providing
     developers with an SQL99 compliant mechanism for debugging and
     troubleshooting, providing users real time suggestions on how to avoid
     error conditions in their applications.

   - Improvements in subquery handling by the planner resulting in up to 400%
     speed increases in some complex queries.

   - The implementation of an SQL99 compliant Information Schema,
     providing developers with database, type, object, and
     configuration information in a standards compliant way.

   - Now supports Statement level triggers, enabling developers and
     users to define and customize behavior of the database when data is
     stored and manipulated.

   - Read only transactions, bringing a greater level of security to web and
     enterprise applications by protecting data from modification.

   - Optional explicit join rewriting by the query planner, easing the
     transition of existing applications and queries running on Sybase and MS
     SQL Server.

   - Takes full advantage of large (>4GB) memory configurations on
     numerous 64 bit platforms including AMD Opteron, HP/Compaq Alpha,
     Sun UltraSPARC, MIPS, PA-RISC, and RS6000*

   Other improvements include:
   - Performance improvements for data warehousing
   - Enhanced implementation of functional indexes
   - Addition of polymorphic function arguments and return types
   - Significant enhancements to array data types
   - Completely overhauled and simplified documentation
   - Improved vacuum process to manage indexes for high availability databases
   - An auto-vacuum feature to help simplify database maintenance
   - Updated multi-byte regular expression package for international users
   - New wire protocol (version 3) increases the speed of data transfers
   - Now supports both row level and statement level triggers
   - A new ranked preference system for the TSearch full text indexing module.

As well as many other features and improvements.

"If you tried PostgreSQL before, and went with a commercial database like
Oracle or DB2 instead, it's time to re-evaluate," says Rod Taylor of Inquent
Technologies. "PostgreSQL's performance has improved tremendously over the
last two years and this, along with its enterprise level feature set, make
PostgreSQL competitive with even the highest-end database systems."

Source for this release is available at:
    http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html

More information on PostgreSQL is available in ten languages on the
PostgreSQL Advocacy website:
    http://advocacy.postgresql.org/

A complete list of changes in PostgreSQL version 7.4 can be found in the
HISTORY file included with the release, or available on the web at:
    [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/740.html]

About PostgreSQL:
    With more than 16 years of development by hundreds of the world's
most generous and brilliant minds from the open source community,
PostgreSQL is the world's most advanced open source database. With its
long time support of an enterprise level feature set including
transactions, stored procedures, triggers, and subqueries, PostgreSQL is
being used by many of today's most demanding businesses and government
agencies.

    Corporations such as BASF, Red Hat, Afilias Limited (supporting the
technical back end of the .org and .info domains), Cisco, Chrysler, and
3Com rely on PostgreSQL's rock solid performance record and open
development process. PostgreSQL is available under a BSD License for
both commercial and non-commercial use.

To find out more about PostgreSQL or to download it, please visit:
    http://www.postgresql.org/

---
issues/thoughts:

statement level triggers probably should be reworded/explained, perhaps
dropped to a one-liner

need to confirm the url for press releases (guess this means submitting the
code to cvs, anyone else want to dig up the old release notes and create
patches?)

new companies...

we need to start thinking about the order if the items mentioned above.

I'll be out of town till monday afternoon and not sure what kind of net access
I'll have.  I suspect this can stew for a few days, but if I seem
unresponsive that's why.

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL