PostgreSQL 8.3 Beta 1 now ready for testing!

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group today released the long-awaited
first beta of version 8.3. Thanks to an unprecedented number of new
patches, this version introduces more new and improved features than any
previous one. Of course, more new features means that 8.3 needs more
user testing than any previous version, so we're counting on you to
download it and test it with development versions of your applications.

Among the features in the new version are:

-- Greatly improved performance consistency, through HOT, Load
Distributed Checkpoint,
JIT bgwriter, Asynchronous Commit, and other features.
-- TSearch2 full text search integrated into the core code with improved
syntax
and ease of adding custom dictionaries.
-- SQL:XML syntax.
-- Logging to database-loadable CSV files.
-- Automated rebuilding of cached plans.
-- ENUMs, UUIDs and arrays of complex types.
-- GSSAPI and SSPI authentication support.

... and many others. See the release notes
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/release-8-3.html) for a more
complete list of new features.

How soon this beta turns into a release depends on testing by our
community of users. As soon as possible, please help us with community
testing:

-- Test installing & configuring the new version.
-- Try out the new features, alone or in combination.
-- Test porting your old applications.
-- Test integration with drivers and other database tools.
-- Run performance tests on the new database.
-- If you are a Windows developer, try compiling using our new Visual
C++ support.

See the 8.3 Beta Page (http://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta) for
more information on downloads, testing, documentation, and reporting
bugs. Get started downloading the beta at:
Source code: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/v8.3beta1/
Win32 Binaries: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/binary/v8.3beta1/win32/

Your help with testing will ensure that this version of PostgreSQL is as
secure, reliable and bug-free as previous versions -- and that we get
the beta done quickly!