Re: 7.4 Features

Josh,

<grin> If you'd paid more attention on this list, you wouldn't need to ask
this question. Below is our summary which is going into the Press Kit.

BTW, are you going to solicit on the lists for writers soon?

-Josh

New Enterprise Features in 7.4

Among the large enterprise features which have been added, expanded, or
improved in version 7.4 are the following:

REPLICATION
PostgreSQL Inc. has contributed their eRServer Java-based replication
solution to the PostgreSQL community. eRServer provides a highly scalable,
battle-tested replication option significantly more powerful than previously
available Open Source solutions. For more information, see the release on
PostgreSQL Inc.'s web site.

PERFORMANCE
Several major performance enhancements have been added in version 7.4,
enabling PostgreSQL to match or exceed the speed of other enterprise database
systems. These include:

Hash aggregation in memory to make data warehousing and OLAP queries up to 20
times faster;
Improvements in subquery handling by the planner resulting in up to 400% speed
increases in some complex queries;
New script to set more reasonable postgresql.conf defaults for shared buffers,
yielding better "out of the box" performance;
New wire protocol (version 3) increases the speed of data transfers;
Enhanced implementation of functional indexes allows better indexing on custom
data types and composite fields;

HIGH AVAILABILITY
Expansion of PostgreSQL's Free Space Map disk management feature to support
continuous index maintenance is the last "piece of the puzzle" in providing
24/7/365 uptime for PostgreSQL databases. The many hardware solutions vendors
who include PostgreSQL as the embedded database in their applications may now
eliminate the need for any data locking or downtime in their applications.

OPTERON SUPPORT
PostgreSQL is now optimized on the AMD Opteron, thanks to the work of the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, adding to the family of proven 64-bit
platforms which includes HP/Compaq, Alpha, Sun UltraSPARC, MIPS, PA-RISC, and
RS6000*. 64-bit platforms are an emerging class of high-performance computing,
with greater power and scalability needed for enterprise systems.

FULL TEXT INDEXING
PostgreSQL's TSearch module now includes a ranked preference system, making
TSearch equal to or better than many full text indexing solutions offered by
other RDBMSs.

Adopting PostgreSQL Easier Than Ever

The following enhancements aid in the testing, prototyping, and porting
efforts of database professionals considering a switch to PostgreSQL:

REORGANIZED AND EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION
Completely reorganized and expanded online documentation, making it easier
for first-time PostgreSQL database developers to get their databases built,
tuned, and running.

SQL-STANDARD ERROR FRAMEWORK
Completely redesigned error logging and reporting, providing developers
with
an SQL99 compliant mechanism for debugging and troubleshooting, and giving
users
real time suggestions on how to avoid error conditions in their applications.

SQL-STANDARD INFORMATION SCHEMA
7.4 includes an SQL99 compliant Information Schema (or "metadata"). This
provides application developers with database, type, object, and configuration
information in a way which eases the migration of interfaces and middleware
between database systems, and even the replication of data between commercial
databases and PostgreSQL.

NEW GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE (GUI) VERSIONS
PGAdmin and PHPPgAdmin, two of the three most popular GUIs for PostgreSQL
will have new, extensively rewritten versions for PostgreSQL 7.4, making it
morecomfortable than ever for database administrators to switch.

QUERY REWRITING
Includes a new option for explicit join rewriting by the query planner,
easing the transition of existing applications and queries running on Sybase
and MS SQL Server, which handle queries this way by default.

Other Major Features

ADVANCED SQL FEATURES
PostgreSQL continues to expand its support for the SQL 92 and SQL 99
standards, maintaining its place as the industry leader in standards
compliance
by including many SQL features not found in other databases. New in 7.4 are
statement-level triggers, enhanced data type domains, and read-only
transactions, as well as improved support for SQL 92 schema introduced in
version 7.3.

MORE DATABASE PROGRAMMING OPTIONS
Extending database server programming beyond the SQL standard, 7.4 adds
multibyte regular expressions for text searching in Asian and Middle Eastern
languages, polymorphic functions for more rapid development of custom data
types
and aggregates, and enhanced array data type handling for scientific
databases.
PostgreSQL is already the acknowledged leader in database customizability, and
these new features widen the lead over other major RDBMSs.

NEW ARRAY FEATURES
Array data type support has been extended by introducing a host of new
features. New functions and operators exist to support array operations such
as
insertion, concatenation and comparrison. In addition, array columns may now
have btree indexes built on them, and they may be included in ORDER BY and
DISTINCT clauses. See the release notes for more information.

NEW NETWORK SUPPORT
Now supports IPv6 Standard for TCP/IP networking, and Apple Computer's
Rendezvous zero-configuration networking protocol.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco