Re: Sixth Draft

josh(at)bitbuckets(dot)com wrote:
> The following draft considers everyone's comments. I think the paragraph
> about history (moved to the end) needs more stuff.
>
> Thanks,
> --J

Three points near the top and one near the bottom...

> August 24, 2004 - The PostgreSQL Global Development group today announced
> the availability of the 8.0 version of the PostgreSQL Object-Relational
> Database Management System, the most advanced open source database in the
> world today. With this new release, professional users have an
"have a world-class" ^^^^

> world-class, scalable, open source database solution that does not
> sacrifice many of the conveniences provided by commercial products.

Remove the negative "does not"? Perhaps "that matches many of the
conveniences..."

> PostgreSQL 8.0 contains many new features that make the database a strong
> contender against the likes of Oracle and DB2. Many companies, who view

Perhaps "a stronger contender".
Perhaps "arguably the strongest contender" or "arguably the strongest
competitor".

> PostgreSQL as a strategic part of their overall I.T. plan, have sponsored
> development of the new features, which include:
>
> Native Windows Support: PostgreSQL now works natively with Windows
> systems and does not need an emulation layer. This provides dramatically
> improved performance over previous versions, and offers a compelling
> alternative to Microsoft SQL Server for independent software vendors,
> corporate users, and individual Windows developers.
>
> Savepoints: Savepoints allow specific parts of a database transaction to
> be aborted without affecting the whole transaction. This feature, funded
> by Fujitsu, is valuable for application developers who require error
> recovery within complex transactions.
>
> Point In Time Recovery: PITR provides the ability to recover data to the
> point of failure or to any time in the past.
>
> Tablespaces: This feature, also funded by Fujitsu, allows the database
> administrator to choose which filesystems are used for schemas, tables,
> and indexes. This allows the administrator to place whole databases on
> separate disks to improve performance.
>
> Improved Memory and I/O usage: With this release of PostgreSQL, disk
> input/output subsystems have been improved to use shared buffers more
> effectively, yielding significant increases in speed and performance.
>
> There are also several new external components which complement the core
> PostgreSQL database engine:
>
> - Slony-I is a a "master-slave" replication system with cascading and
> failover capabilities funded by Internet domain registry Afilias.

Perhaps one more sentence on Slony: "It even lets you replicate between
different versions of PostgreSQL".

> - PostgreSQL added to its roster of stored procedure languages with
> PL/PerlNG and PL/PHP which were sponsored by consultancy Command Prompt,
> Inc. as well as PL/Java and the .Net provider Npgsql.
>
> Version 8 is the collective work of hundreds of developers, building on
> almost twenty years of development dating back to the University of
> California at Berkeley.
>
> PostgreSQL is licensed under a BSD-style license, which due to its lack of
> licensing fees allows corporate and individual users more flexibility than
> the competition. The PostgreSQL database can be downloaded freely at
> http://www.postgresql.org.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd