PostgreSQL Version 8.0.0 [LWN.net]

Version 8.0.0 of the PostgreSQL database was announced this week.

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.

The primary new features of this release include:

Savepoints for saving partially entered transaction data.
Point-In-Time Recovery supported by continuous server data backups.
Tablespaces for allowing fine-grained control of storage over multiple filesystems.
An Improved Buffer Management Strategy for improved server performance.
New support for changing column types using ALTER TABLE.
A new Perl Server-Side Language version with enhanced features.
COPY support for Comma-Separated-Value (csv) files.
Native Win32 Support, faster server operation without emulators.

Furthermore: "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."

PostgreSQL continues to hold a position among the forefront of open-source development projects, its rapid evolution proves that the development model works well for large-scale projects. The native Win32 support is likely to cause more widespread usage of PostgreSQL, it may also bring new development talent to the project.

We expect to have a more detailed look at the 8.0 release next week.

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