CONTACT: press@postgresql.org PANAMA CITY, PANAMA: SEPTEMBER 1, 2003 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of version 7.4 of the PostgreSQL Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). This major release, the work of our world wide network of hundreds of developers and contributors over the last 9 months, provides commercial-grade enterprise database functionality and performance with the flexibility and low total cost of ownership widely associated with Open Source software. "If you tried PostgreSQL before, and went with a commercial database like Oracle or DB2 instead, it's time to re-evaluate," says Rod Taylor of Inquent Technologies. "PostgreSQL's expanding enterprise feature set and performance improvements over the last two years make PostgreSQL competitive with even the highest-end database systems. And you can't beat the cost." NEW ENTERPRISE FEATURES ----------------------------- Among the large enterprise features which have been added, expanded, or improved in version 7.4 are: 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. 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 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. Lamar Owen, Director of Information Technology for the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, commented on the new features, "The improved performance of PostgreSQL 7.4 for very large, data-warehouse tables will allow me to provide efficient access to a huge library of astronomical photography and spectrography, correlated with geological and meteorlogical observations, over the Internet. The improved indexing capabilities for custom and composite types will allow unprecedented ease in analyzing this data, which tends to be difficult to shoehorn into traditional index paradigms." HIGH AVAILABILITY: Expansion of PostgreSQL's Free Space Map disk management feature to support continuous index maintenence and the Auto Vacuum Daemon are the last "puzzle pieces" in providing 99.999% uptime for PostgreSQL databases. The achievement of 'five nines' is the highest level of uptime available in any commercial software, and is associated with only the most mission-critical business 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 scaleability 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. ADVANCED SQL FEATURES: PostgreSQL continues to expand its support for the Intermediate and Advanced portions of the SQL 92 and 99 standards including some 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 several SQL extensions including multi-byte regular expressions, polymorphic functions, and enhanced array data type handling. "We have used PostgreSQL successfully for over two years in a mission-critical capacity to support our registry systems," said Ram Mohan, Chief Technology Officer for Afilias Limited, the company responsible for running the backend database containing all .info and .org Internet domain names worldwide. "This upgrade of PostgreSQL improves the scalability and capacity of PostgreSQL and will help to ensure continued advancements to future releases." 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 DBAs 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 more comfortable 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. RELEASE DETAILS ------------------------------------- More information on this release is available at:     About PostgreSQL:     With more than 16 years of development by hundreds of the world's most generous and brilliant minds from the open source community, PostgreSQL is the world's most advanced open source database. With its long time support of an enterprise level feature set including transactions, stored procedures, triggers, and subqueries, PostgreSQL is being used by many of today's most demanding businesses and government agencies.     Corporations such as BASF, Red Hat, Afilias Limited, Cisco, Chrysler, OpenMFG and 3Com, organizations like WGCR Radio, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, and Open Source projects including Bricolage, OpenACS and GForge rely on PostgreSQL's rock solid performance record and open development process. PostgreSQL is available under a BSD License for both commercial and non-commercial use. To find out more about PostgreSQL or to download it, please visit:     http://www.postgresql.org/ Note to Editors: Additional information on the following companies quoted in this release can be found at: Inquent Technologies: Insert URL Contact: Insert corp. comm contact person Afilias Limited : http://www.afilias.info/about_afilias/backgrounder Contact: Heather Carle 215-706-5777 hcarle@afilias.info Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute: http://www.pari.edu Contact: Lamar Owen 828-862-5554 lowen@pari.edu