NEWS

05-09-2000 - PostgreSQL Global Development Group Releases v7.0 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.
• 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

05-09-2000 - Steering committee responce to Great Bridge LLC In January of this year, the PostgreSQL steering committee was approached by Landmark Communications to discuss the creation of a new company to provide commercial support for PostgreSQL and other open-source software.

On March 3-5, Landmark sponsored a gathering of the steering committee in San Francisco. This was the first time the steering committee had ever met face-to-face, and we'd like to thank Landmark for making that possible. Several sessions included Landmark corporate staff and explored how Landmark might work with PostgreSQL.

Landmark has now publicly announced the formation of their company, called Great Bridge, to provide commercial support for PostgreSQL.

Involvement of commercial companies with Open Source projects such as PostgreSQL leads to new and, for some of us, unwelcome issues of confidentiality, and we respected Landmark's request for confidentiality in the time preceding their announcement of Great Bridge. We are happy that Landmark/Great Bridge have chosen to use PostgreSQL in their business, and look forward to seeing future contributions from them for our Open Source effort.

Landmark has expressed interest in hiring PostgreSQL developers to work for their new company. Some individuals are already in negotiations with Landmark and will make announcements at the appropriate time.

We believe this is only good news for PostgreSQL. This will give PostgreSQL two commercial support organizations: PostgreSQL Inc. and Great Bridge. PostgreSQL's increased visibility and credibility in the business world will help the project continue to grow. We encourage other interested companies to contact the steering committee to discuss how they might work with the project for the benefit of all.

See the Postgresql News for the Great Bridge LLC Press Release.

05-09-2000 - New Open-source starup Red Hat angel investor funds new open-source software startup to take on database giants

Frank Batten Jr.'s new Great Bridge LLC to commercialize world's most advanced open-source database

Norfolk, Va, May 9, 2000 - Landmark Communications, a large privately held media company whose chairman bankrolled Linux leader Red Hat Inc., announced it has funded a wholly owned subsidiary with the intention of doing for databases what Red Hat did for Linux and operating systems - give business a formidable open source alternative to existing proprietary applications.

Newly formed Great Bridge LLC is backed by more than $25 million from Landmark Communications, a media conglomerate involved in broadcast, print and interactive media including The Weather Channel, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, and weather.com. Batten funded Red Hat's successful launch and IPO last year, and served on its board of directors.

As Red Hat has done for the open-source Linux operating system, Great Bridge will market commercial products, services and support for PostgreSQL (popularly called "Postgres"), a rapidly evolving, open-source database that rivals leading proprietary databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server in performance and features. After recently winning the prestigious LinuxWorld award for Best Database Management System, the judges said PostgreSQL "has become one of the most mature and powerful open-source tools available."

Open-source software like PostgreSQL and Linux is freely owned, enhanced and supported by global grassroots communities of elite programmers, rather than by a single company. Working with this collaborative software community, Great Bridge will help proliferate the commercial adoption of Postgres by providing the financial stability, assurance and professional support organization corporate buyers require.

The Postgres development community consists of hundreds of developers worldwide, guided by a six-member core steering group, similar to the way Linux creator Linus Torvalds oversees and screens new enhancements for Linux. A key member of the steering group is joining Great Bridge as a senior developer, and the company intends to recruit other members from the Postgres community as well.

"While PostgreSQL's Internet presence is growing rapidly, commercial acceptance has been hampered by the lack of a large-scale support organization," said Bruce Momjian, a PostgreSQL core member and author of PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts (Addison-Wesley). "Even though we continue to make huge advances using the open-source development model, many businesses prefer to get database support from a trusted, professional enterprise. I am excited to see Great Bridge providing that support."

Great Bridge will operate initially as a wholly owned subsidiary of Landmark, which under Batten's leadership has made significant investments in other technology companies over the past two years. Alfred Ritter, former Landmark executive vice president and CFO, will head the company as president and CEO. Robert Strickland, former Landmark chief technology officer who held senior technology officer positions at MediaOne, Harvard Business School and The Weather Channel, will serve as CTO. Ned Lilly, a veteran of several Landmark-funded web startups, will serve as vice president of open-source development. David Mele, a new ventures director at Landmark and former manager with Andersen Consulting, will serve as vice president of marketing.

"We strongly believe that the open-source process is a fundamentally better way to develop software," said Frank Batten, Jr., Chairman of the Board, Landmark Communications. "Products like Red Hat Linux and Apache Web Server proved these technologies can be commercial successes thanks to the faster development cycles, fewer bugs and better flexibility their development communities were able to deliver. The next big venue for the open-source movement will be the database market. We scrutinized all the potential open-source database systems, and Postgres was by far the most sophisticated, ready-for-prime time offering."

Postgres in progress

Today's unveiling of Great Bridge coincides with the Postgres development community's launch of PostgreSQL version 7.0, which adds significant performance improvements, new querying capabilities, and over 300 other enhancements.

While Great Bridge will officially open for business in August, the company has already made significant progress working with the Postgres community to help make the technology a commercial contender:

• In March, Great Bridge hosted the first-ever face-to-face meeting of the PostgreSQL core developers- a three-day meeting in San Francisco at which the core steering group and Great Bridge agreed to coordinate their respective efforts on technology improvements, with Great Bridge focusing on identifying key product and service features required by business customers.
• Great Bridge has established a testing and integration lab and initiated the most comprehensive benchmark tests of PostgreSQL to date to give corporate technology buyers fair and accurate product performance comparisons.
• The company has launched what it believes is the most extensive market research program ever conducted for an open-source software product to help it better understand and meet customer needs, and lay the foundation for the company's business model. These efforts include an initial round of 32 qualitative focus groups conducted across four U.S. cities and an ongoing program of statistically valid quantitative research.

"While open-source development yields superior software, businesses have been reluctant to deploy open-source alternatives without a reliable, professional enterprise behind them. The Postgres community has done an exemplary job in developing a standards-based, object-relational SQL database that can handle the heaviest demands of many e-commerce and enterprise applications," said Ritter. "Postgres can only get better. The community will continue to develop its capabilities beyond the award-winning features and performance it has already achieved. We at Great Bridge will be active contributing members of the community. And, we are committed to providing the kind of service and support that will encourage businesses to enjoy the benefits of this open-source database."

Great Bridge will unveil its initial product and service offerings in August, along with additional members of its management team, and information regarding its channel strategy and business model.

About Great Bridge

Great Bridge LLC is committed to making open-source software commercially viable, and will be the leading commercial provider of PostgreSQL database products, service and support. Headquartered in Norfolk, Va., Great Bridge is a wholly owned subsidiary of Landmark Communications Inc. (www.landmarkcom.com), a multinational media company with businesses in newspapers; broadcasting; cable programming; electronic publishing; and specialty media, including guide books, billboards, interactive media and a new career schools division. The privately held company employs more than 5,000 people worldwide.

Contact: Ed Marshall
Beaupre & Co. Public Relations
603-559-5816
emarshall@beaupre.com

04-10-2000 - Changes for beta5 The PostgreSQL Developers are pleased to announce the release of beta5, available at: ftp.postgresql.org. Changes can be found here.

03-23-2000 - Changes for 7.0b3 The PostgreSQL Developers are pleased to announce the release of beta3, available at: ftp.postgresql.org. Changes can be found here.

03-20-2000 - PostgreSQL 7.0beta2 Released After over 3 weeks of debugging beta1, the PostgreSQL Developers are pleased to announce the release of beta2, available at: ftp.postgresql.org. Changes since beta1 can be found here.

01-14-2000 - Interactive PostgreSQL for Windows Interactive PostgreSQL for Windows is a program which allows you execute PostgreSQL queries, show tables and columns, history, show and edit tables in grid, etc. Interactive PostgreSQL for Windows is available at http://www.zeos.dn.ua

12-22-1999 - Projects Page Jan Wieck has added a Projects Page for TODO items that are currently being developed (not all items are listed). Each project has a project coordinator that you can contact if you want to help out.

12-02-1999 - PostgreSQL In The News PostgreSQL is always making the news in one way or another, be it a review, a how-to or just a general article. The new In The News section has a growing list of these articles

11-05-1999 - PostgreSQL 6.5.3 Released The PostgreSQL Global Development Team is proud to announce the release of version 6.5.3 of its award winning PostgreSQL RDBMS. You can find the full 6.5.3 distribution tarball as well as patches to upgrade from 6.5 to 6.5.1, 6.5.1 to 6.5.2 and 6.5.2 to 6.5.3 at the PostgreSQL ftp server and its mirrors. Source and binary RPMs are also available.

10-29-1999 - PostgreSQL Book Bruce Momjian is in the process of writing a book about PostgreSQL for Addison, Wesley, tentatively titled, "PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts." The book is on our web site now under Info Central/Documentation, in HTML and PDF formats, and is updated regularly.

10-19-1999 - RPM's for PostgreSQL 6.5.2 "RPM's for PostgreSQL 6.5.2 are now available, and shipped with RedHat Linux version 6.1. Included in these RPMS:

• Functional pgAccess 0.98
• Patches to support the Alpha under RedHat Linux
• The regression tests (postgresql-test*.rpm)
• Updated man pages from Thomas Lockhart
• Patches from Thomas Lockhart to gram.y
• Migration scripts to aid in moving between database file formats
• The PostgreSQL-HOWTO.

To upgrade, simply use 'rpm -U' to upgrade each rpm. The postgresql-clients rpm found in versions prior to 6.5 has been split up into several different packages, and will be removed in the upgrade. After performing 'rpm -U', please read the file '/usr/doc/postgresql-6.5.2/README.rpm' for instructions on completing the upgrade.

If you make heavy use of large objects and other structures that are difficult to dump with pg_dump, you will need to make other upgrade provisions.

More detailed documentation is also available at http://www.ramifordistat.net

09-16-1999 - PostgreSQL 6.5.2 Released The PostgreSQL Global Development Team is proud to announce the release of version 6.5.2 of its award winning PostgreSQL RDBMS. You can find the full 6.5.2 distribution tarball as well as patches to upgrade from 6.5 to 6.5.1 and from 6.5.1 to 6.5.2 at the PostgreSQL ftp server and its mirrors.

09-08-1999 - The Gallery is back! The registration form is now online at http://www.pgsql.com/register and the User Gallery is at http://www.pgsql.com/user_gallery.

08-30-1999 - PgAccess 0.98 A new PgAccess (0.98) version has been released and the PgAccess home page has been reorganized. Check: http://speedy.flex.ro/pgaccess/index.html if won't work try the old one (but slower) http://www.flex.ro/pgaccess/index.html

08-11-1999 - LinuxWorld Editors Choice Award The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce that we have received the 'LinuxWorld Editors Choice Award' for The Best Database Management System!

08-10-1999 - Favorite DBMS Poll The Linux Developer's Network (http://linuxdev.net) recently ran a poll of the most popular DBMS among Linux developers. Out of a total of 1549 votes, PostgreSQL held the lead from the first day and finished in first with it's closest competitor (MySQL) trailing by over 200 votes.

08-03-1999 - ElephantWear Now Available PostgreSQL, Inc. proudly announces the addition of PostgreSQL Wearables to its product line at http://www.pgsql.com/merchandise

08-02-1999 - LinuxWorld Editors' Choice Awards The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce that we've been chosen as a finalist for the 'LinuxWorld Editors Choice Award'. The winner is to be announced in a ceremony on August 11, 1999 at LinuxWorld Expo. PostgreSQL's co-finalist in the Database Management category is Oracle 8i from the Oracle Corp.

07-30-1999 - Non-Code Contributing Over the past few years, at various points, there have been people popping up and asking how they can contribute to the project, outside of coding. In response to these queries, and in accordance with our Mission Statement, PostgreSQL, Inc now offers the following method of contributing to the project: http://www.pgsql.com/contribute

07-29-1999 - Documentation in PDF Format The PostgreSQL documentation is available in PDF format in the /pub/doc directory on the FTP server. Check out the mirror site list for a server near you.

07-27-1999 - RedHat RPMs Available RedHat RPMs for v6.5.1 on i386 machines are now available at ftp://postgresql.org/pub/RPMS/ Please report any questions or problems to mailto:pgsql-ports@postgresql.org

Note that a dump/reload is not necessary if you already have v6.5 RPMs installed. Just

• shut down your v6.5 server
• do an "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"
• restart and you're ready to go.

• before upgrading, do a "pg_dumpall > file.dumpall"
• move /var/lib/pgsql aside (e.g. rename to /var/lib/pgsql-6.4.2)
• upgrade or install the RPMs using "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"
• run initdb, setting PGDATA appropriately
• restart the new backend server
• do a "psql < file.dumpall"

07-20-1999 - PostgreSQL 6.5.1 Released Its now been a month since the release of v6.5, and the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is pleased to announce the release of v6.5.1, which is focused on addressing any bugs or issues post-release:

• Fix for datetime constant problem on some platforms(Thomas)
• Add NT README file
• Portability fixes for linux_ppc, Irix, linux_alpha, OpenBSD, alpha
• Remove QUERY_LIMIT, use SELECT...LIMIT
• Fix for EXPLAIN on inheritance(Tom)
• Patch to allow vacuum on multi-segment tables(Hiroshi)
• R-Tree optimizer selectivity fix(Tom)
• ACL file descriptor leak fix(Atsushi Ogawa)
• New expresssion subtree code(Tom)
• Avoid disk writes for read-only transactions(Vadim)
• Fix for removal of temp tables if last transaction was aborted(Bruce)
• Fix to prevent too large tuple from being created(Bruce)
• plpgsql fixes
• Allow port numbers 32k - 64k(Bruce)
• Add ^ precedence(Bruce)
• Rename sort files called pg_temp to pg_sorttemp(Bruce)
• Fix for microseconds in time values(Tom)
• Tutorial source cleanup
• New linux_m68k port
• Fix for sorting of NULL's in some cases(Tom)
• Shared library dependencies fixed (Tom)
• Fixed glitches affecting GROUP BY in subselects(Tom)
• Fix some compiler warnings (Tomoaki Nishiyama)
• Add Win1250 (Czech) support (Pavel Behal)

This release is the latest, stable release of PostgreSQL, and is available at: ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/postgresql-6.5.1.tar.gz

06-14-1999 - PostgreSQL 6.5 released. Version 6.5 adds multi-version concurrency control, a true NUMERIC type with user-specified precision, support for CASE, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT statements plus a whole lot more.

05-06-1999 - PostgreSQLEOAdaptor for NeXT's EOF Turbocat's Development announces the availability of a new beta version of the PostgreSQLEOAdaptor for NeXT's (now Apple's) Enterprise Object Framework. EOF is the base for WebObjects.

You should send feedback dave@turbocat.de when you use the Adaptor. See: http://www.turbocat.de for details.

03-23-1999 - Korean FAQs have moved. Jung Jik Han announced that the Korean versions of the General, Linux, and Developer's FAQs for PostgreSQL are now at http://honest.bawi.org/pgsql/ For an extensive list of FAQ's for PostgreSQL, see docs.

02-12-1999 - PyGreSQL v 2.3 released. D'Arcy J.M. Cain has announced version 2.3 of PyGreSQL, a Python module which interfaces to a PostgreSQL database. It embeds the PostgreSQL query library to allow easy use of the powerful PostgreSQL features from a Python script.

01-04-1999 - PostgreSQL 6.4.2 released. This release is to repair the problems with the 6.4.1 package. Anyone running 6.4.1 should upgrade to 6.4.2 as soon as possible.

01-03-1999 - Pike language update. Francesco Chemolli, author of the Postgres API for the Pike programming language , reports that the PostreSQL Pike module is now part of the standard Roxen webserver distribution. Roxen/1.2 has been released recently, and was appointed a "best of Comdex award". Pike is a free interpreted, object-oriented, loosely-typed, net-aware programming language written by Frederik Hubinette.

12-27-1998 - PostgreSQL/PHP tutorial Linux, SQL, and the Web, by Charles J. Fisher, has been revised and relocated; the link above is the new one.

12-22-1998 - PostgreSQL v6.4.1 Released. This release is a maintenance release. There have been no features added to it, only fixes against v6.4. Major fixes are:

• EXPLAIN VERBOSE coredump fix
• Fix shared-library problems on Linux
• Fix a couple of pg_dump bugs
• OR WHERE clause fix
• Fix for lo_import() crash

04-07-1998 - Aleksey Dashevsky Aleksey Dashevsky (lyolik@luckynet.co.il) has htmlised the 6.3.2 man pages.