PostgreSQL Global Development Group Releases v7.0

May 9, 2000
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Its been 8 months since the last major release of PostgreSQL, and the
PostgreSQL Global Development Group is now proud to announce our next leap
forward with the release of v7.0.

Although there have been alot of changes between v6.5 and v7.0, most of
them have been under-the-hood ... reducing, and in some cases, eliminating
some of the limitations in previous version of PostgreSQL.

There are over 70 bug fixes, over 100 enhancements and over 30 performance
improvements in this new release ... all of which are documented in our
HISTORY file, but some of the more visible changes are:

Foreign Keys
Foreign keys are now implemented, with the exception of PARTIAL
MATCH foreign keys. Many users have been asking for this
feature, and we are pleased to offer it.

Optimizer Overhaul
Continuing on work started a year ago, the optimizer has been
overhauled, allowing improved query execution and better
performance with less memory usage.

Updated psql
psql, our interactive terminal monitor, has been updated with a
variety of new features. See the psql manual page for details.

Upcoming Features
In 7.1, we plan to have outer joins, storage for very long
rows, and a write-ahead logging system.

Date/time datatypes cleaned up
We have brought the date/time datatypes into compliance with
the SQL standard, replacing the old partially-implemented SQL
date/time types with full-featured implementations. The
default display format for date/time data has also changed
to be ISO style. This may create a few compatibility issues
for old applications. [Thomas may want to rewrite this item...]

Query length limits removed
There is no longer any fixed limit on the length of a query
string. (The block-size limit on the length of a stored row
still exists, but we hope to fix that in 7.1.)

Removal of 8-argument limit on index keys and functions
The maximum number of keys in an index or arguments to a
function is now configurable, with default limit of 16,
rather than the old hard-coded limit of 8.

Sorts and hashes now work for >2GB of data
Temporary files can now be split in the same way that oversize
relations are, so that data volume is only limited by
available disk space and not by OS limits on the size of an
individual file.

Also, to facilitate those with unstable or low bandwidth connections, the
PostgreSQL distribution is now available as a complete .tar.gz file, or 5
seperate .tar.gz files, all available at:

ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/v7.0

For anyone wishing more information on PostgreSQL, please see our website
at http://www.postgresql.org, where complete documentation is available
online.