8.3 Beta 1 Released!

Posted on 2007-10-08

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 release. 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 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 for more information on downloads, testing, docs, and reporting bugs. Download the beta now at:

Beta source code

Win32 Installer

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

This post has been migrated from a previous version of the PostgreSQL website. We apologise for any formatting issues caused by the migration.