Re: DRAFT beta release announcement

Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> "other radical new features" is a strong claim: can we back it up?
>

I just read the release notes again, and I don't think a statement that
strong really works there either. There are tons of great features of
various sizes here, none of which besides the replication stuff really
are "radical" though. "Totally awesome", sure, perhaps even "tubular",
but not quite "radical" I think. The description of the replication
features needed to be punched up even more though, it wasn't clear what
the new capabilities were and why there were so important.

Below is a candidate second draft. Along with the above, I did some
wording updates to reflect two Gregs worth of ideas and the other
comments on the list so far, changes were too numerous to be worth
enumerating individually. I cleared up the DO description without using
any buzzwords too. And I specifically highlighted the internal PL/PgSQL
modifications in this version as ones expected to introduce backward
compatibility issues. That's something I think could use a little
migration guide in the docs, because it's not really obvious what the
implications of the changes noted in the release notes are.

===

DATE: The first beta release of PostgreSQL version 9.0 is now
available. Version 9.0 is the first version of PostgreSQL to include
built-in real-time binary database replication with query scale-out,
consisting of two features, "Hot Standby" and "Streaming Replication".
Combining that with its other major features, this release will expand
adoption of PostgreSQL by new users and in new types of applications.

This release is a beta version. This means that it is expected to have
bugs, issues, and missing documentation. 9.0 beta is being released so
that our users will find those issues and allow eliminating them before
the final release. All PostgreSQL users are emphatically requested to
download and test version 9.0 to help us produce a timely and more
trouble-free 9.0 release.

In addition to the expanded replication features, a number of new
features allow developers and DBAs to broaden their use of PostgreSQL,
including:

* 64-bit support on Windows
* Improved LISTEN/NOTIFY allows fast internal database event messaging
* The DO() statement executes procedural code without needing to declare
a function
* Conditional and SQL-compliant per-column triggers
* Support for Python 3 in in PL/Python and numerous PL/Perl improvements
* Uniqueness constraints for non-scalar data
* Improved key-value data support

The full list of over 200 changes is available in the release notes:
http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/release-9-0.html

Users interested in taking advantage of these new features should
download and test porting their applications to PostgreSQL 9.0 beta
now. Because version 9.0 includes many new major features as well as
overhauled internal code, such as changes to the syntax allowed by the
PL/PgSQL language, backwards compatiblility issues are expected.

Source code, as well as binary installers for many platforms, is
available from the PostgreSQL Web Site:

* Source:
* Windows Installer:
* Binaries for other platforms:
* Release Notes:
* Participating in Testing:

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.us