Here's a first draft. It's a little long and I've missed some sponsors,
but I'm sure the community will hammer that stuff out!
Thanks,
--Josh
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August 24, 2004 - The PostgreSQL Global Development group today announced
the availability of the landmark 8.0 version of the PostgreSQL database.
PostgreSQL, created in 1986 by UC Berkeley, is the enterprise-ready database
that is the collective work of over 200 developers.
PostgreSQL 8.0 contains many new features that make the database a viable
contender in the enterprise against the likes of Oracle and DB2. The full
list can be found at the PostgreSQL website, but some of the major features
include:
Operability with Windows: PostgreSQL now works natively with Windows
operating systems and does not need an emulation layer. This provides a
big speed boost under Windows and makes PostgreSQL a viable replacement for
Microsoft SQL Server.
Savepoints: Savepoints allow specific parts of a transaction to be aborted
without affecting the whole transaction. This feature is valuable for
application developers who require error recovery within complex
transactions.
Point In Time Recovery: While PostgreSQL is very reliable, PITR increases
its robustness by allowing continuous backup of the server. This allows
data recovery to a point of failure or to any transaction in the past.
Tablespaces: This feature, funded by Fujitsu, allows the database
administrator to choose which filesystems are used for schemas, tables, and
indexes. This allows the administrator to place whole databases on separate
disks to improve performance.
Improved Memory and I/O usage: With this release of PostgreSQL, the memory
and disk I/O subsystems have been improved to use shared buffers more
effectively. With this improvement comes an increase in speed and
performance.
Along with the new features come some new addins. Slony-I is a replication
system funded by domain registry Afilias. PostgreSQL has gained a number of
stored procedure languages, namely PL/PerlNG and PL/Java, which were
sponsored by consultancy Command Prompt, Inc. There are many more
features available for anyone who wants to use them.
The PostgreSQL database can be downloaded freely at
http://www.postgresql.org.
