Time to start the PR machine - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Well, folks,  it's that time of year again!  That time when we spend a few
weeks arguing over phrasing in the PostgreSQL Release.

So, here's starting it off (get your word-axes ready):
(oh, and this is the same exact layout as previous releases.  innovative
ideas for re-arranging the text are very welcome)

=================
## November 2005:  The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced today
the release of PostgreSQL 8.1.   The new version, containing many advanced
database features as well as performance enhancements, makes PostgreSQL
the reference platform for high-volume, high-peformance open source data
centers.

"This is our second major release in 2005," said _____, PostgreSQL major
contributor, "It's very exciting.  Thanks to all of the new programmers
and companies contributing to the project, as well as automated testing,
development is faster than every before."

Among the many enhancements to PostgreSQL 8.1 are:

Improved Multiprocessor (SMP) Performance:  the buffer manager for 8.1 has
been enhanced to scale almost linearly with the number of processors,
leading to significant performance gains on 8-way, 16-way and multicore
servers.

Two-Phase Commit (2PC): long in demand for WAN applications and
heterogenous data centers using PostgreSQL, this feature allows
ACID-compliant transactions across widely separated servers.

Bitmapscan:  Some indexes will be automatically converted to bitmaps in
memory, giving up to 20x faster index performance on complex queries
against very large tables.  Bitmapscan also greatly reduces the need for
multi-column indexes.

Roles:  PostgreSQL now supports database roles, which simplify the
management of large user bases with complex overlapping database rights.

Shared Row Locking:  we have continued to improve on the "better than
row-level locking" which Multi-version Concurrency Control (MVCC) provides
by supporting shared locks for relational references.

Table Partitioning: in version 8.1, the query planner's ability to select
the correct table partitions for each query (called Constraint Exclusion)
is expanded, making PostgreSQL's table partitioning useful to a broader
range of applications.

"Blah new features blah blah," remarked some high-profile postgresql
contributor. "Blah coolest yet blah blah blah."

There are numerous other enhancements, which are detailed on our 8.1
release page <link here>.

Thanks to automated testing by a variety of sources, the PostgreSQL
community has been able to have a shorter-than-ever beta period while
increasing the reliability of the code.   This included Andrew Dunstan's
pgbuildfarm, OSDL's Scalable Test Platform, SpikeSource's SpikeWatch, and
Coverity Prevent.   As any developer knows, bugs caught early take far
less time to resolve, and these tools have made that adage a reality for
PostgreSQL.

<contact info>

<about postgresql>


--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco