PostgreSQL 8.0.0 released

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NY, NY: 19 January 2005 - The PostgreSQL Global Development group has released
version 8.0 of the PostgreSQL object-relational database management system, 
building on its position as the most advanced open source database in the 
world. This release includes features previously only available in the most 
expensive proprietary database systems, and is expected to substantially 
increase the adoption of PostgreSQL by both users and software vendors.

In addition to significant improvements in scalability, features, and 
performance, PostgreSQL 8.0 demonstrates the unparalleled development speed 
of open source.  More than a dozen companies, including Red Hat, Fujitsu, 
Afilias, Software Research Associates, Inc., 2nd Quadrant, and Command Prompt 
Inc., as well as hundreds of individual developers, contributed to add more 
major features to 8.0 than have been seen in any previous version.

"We are confident that these enterprise features will attract a great number 
of new PostgreSQL users.", said Mr. Takayuki Nakazawa, Director of Fujitsu's 
OSS Database in Software Group. "Fujitsu is proud of its sponsorship of 
contributions to PostgreSQL and of its work with the PostgreSQL community. We 
are committed to helping make PostgreSQL the leading Database Management 
System."

New features include:

Native Windows Support:  PostgreSQL now works natively with Windows systems 
and does not need an emulation layer.  This provides dramatically improved 
performance over previous versions, and offers a compelling alternative to 
proprietary database software for independent software vendors, corporate 
users, and individual Windows developers.

Savepoints:  This SQL-standard feature allows specific parts of a database 
transaction to be rolled back without aborting the entire operation. This 
benefits business application developers who require complex transactions 
with error recovery.

Point in Time Recovery: This feature allows full data restoration from the 
automatic and continuously archived transaction logs. It provides a 
long-sought alternative to hourly or daily backups for data-critical services 
on PostgreSQL.

Tablespaces:  Crucial to the administrators of multi-gigabyte data warehousing
systems, tablespaces allow the placement of large tables and indexes on their 
own individual disks or arrays, improving query performance.

Improved Memory and I/O:  Disk and memory usage have been optimized through 
the use of the Adaptive Replacement Cache algorithm, the new background 
writer, and the new vacuum delay feature.   This will result in more 
predictable loads and substantially more consistent performance during peak 
usage times.

Javier Soltero, Chief Architect at Hyperic LLC, said, "PostgreSQL 8.0 gives us
the high degree of concurrency and throughput required by our HQ monitoring 
product. Having PostgreSQL 8.0 supported natively on Windows means we can now 
bundle PostgreSQL in our product and benefit from the proven scalability and 
performance of PostgreSQL, as well as its license, which allows us to include 
it in our distribution free of commercial obligations."

In addition to the many features bundled with the release, PostgreSQL has been
enhanced by accelerated development of add-ons and optional components over 
the last year.    The Slony-I replication tool and the pgPool connection 
pooling/brokering utility are both already being used for high-availability 
server pools.   Several stored procedure languages have been added or greatly 
expanded, including PL/Java, PL/J, PL/PHP and PL/Perl, while the Npgsql and 
PGsqlClient .NET data providers have been enhanced to support the many new 
Windows users.

For a full list and description of the many new features in 8.0, please see 
our press page: http://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit80.html

About PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL is the collective work of hundreds of developers,
building on almost twenty years of development which started at the 
University of California at Berkeley.  With its long-time support of an 
enterprise level feature set including transactions, functions, triggers, and 
subqueries, PostgreSQL is being used by many of today's most demanding 
businesses and government agencies. PostgreSQL is distributed under a BSD 
license, which allows use and distribution without fees for both commercial 
and non-commercial applications.

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

For information about Fujitsu and Hyperic LLC, please see our press page.