PostgreSQL 8.1 Released

8 November 2005, Frankfurt, Germany (Open Database Conference):  
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group proudly announces the release of
PostgreSQL 8.1, further extending PostgreSQL's lead as the most advanced
open source database management system. Designed, built, and tested by a 
large and thriving community and backed by a growing number of corporate
sponsors and support companies, version 8.1 will expand the scope of 
PostgreSQL application development.  The new release includes performance
improvements and advanced SQL features which will support bigger data 
warehouses, higher-volume transaction processing, and more complex 
distributed enterprise software.

These features will continue the adoption trend established by the previous
release. Version 8.0 has been downloaded one million times in its first seven
months, which compares with about 300,000 over a similar period for the prior
release.

"The project is clearly accelerating in the minds of database users," 
said Lance Obermeyer, Director of Products at Pervasive Software, 
one of PostgreSQL's corporate sponsors. "Given the growing interest
in open source infrastructure software, we're expecting PostgreSQL
to pick up even more steam."

New Advanced Database Features
-------------------------------

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

IN/OUT Parameters: PostgreSQL functions now support IN, OUT and INOUT
parameters, which substantially improves support of complex business logic for
J2EE and .NET applications.

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

Performance Enhancements
--------------------------

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, dual-core, and multi-core CPU servers.

Bitmap Scan: indexes will be dynamically converted to
bitmaps in memory when appropriate, giving up to twenty times
faster index performance on complex queries against very 
large tables. This also helps simplify database management
by greatly reducing the need for multi-column indexes.

Table Partitioning: the query planner is now able to avoid 
scanning whole sections of a large table using a technique known
as Constraint Exclusion. Similar to the Table Partitioning found
in other database management systems, this feature improves both
performance and data management for multi-gigabyte tables.

Shared Row Locking: PostgreSQL's "better than row-level
locking" now supports even higher levels of concurrency through the
addition of shared row locks for foreign keys.  Shared locks will improve
insert and update performance on many high-volume OLTP applications.

"PostgreSQL 8.1 offers a huge performance increase pretty much
across the board, [on our] dual processor Opteron production
servers," said Merlin Moncure, Database Administrator for 
Reliable Computer Solutions. "More specifically, I'm seeing 
around 20% reduction in run times for simple queries and 
an additional 20% reduction in CPU load, for a staggering 20-40% 
improvement in server load characteristics."  

There are more than 120 other enhancements, some of which are detailed on our
8.1 presskit: http://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit81.html.en

About PostgreSQL
------------------
PostgreSQL is the collective work of hundreds of developers,
building on 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.