84ReleaseDraft

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8.4 Final Release Draft

Quote Candidates

Below is the draft release we're working with. We still need to find quotes to go in the release; current candidates are:

  • EnterpriseDB and/or EDB customer
  • OpenStreetMap
  • Wisconsin Courts
  • ZooLoo.com (see press release)

More candidates would be good, provided that we can get a quote from them this week.

Notes

Josh: You'll notice that I've excluded the "performance" features from this release. That's because, at this time, we're unable to show benchmarks which demonstrate large gains in general performance (as opposed to specific operations, where there have been gains). So even though we have some cool features (hash indexes, new hash joins, etc.) they don't present a compelling story for the press release.

The Draft

Version 2: Emphasizing Administration

PostgreSQL 8.4 Released

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released version 8.4, continuing the rapid development of the world's most advanced open source database. This release contains an abundance of enhancements to make administering, querying, and programming of PostgreSQL databases easier than ever before. With 293 new or improved features in version 8.4, there are even more reasons to choose PostgreSQL for your next project.

The most numerous changes in PostgreSQL 8.4 are new or improved administration and monitoring tools and commands. Each user has their own favorite features which will make day-to-day work with PostgreSQL easier and more productive for them.

"We've used PostgreSQL for seven years now, and we're really looking forward to many of the features in 8.4, particularly column permissions, per-database locale, partial matches for GIN indexes and user defined exceptions," says Jeffrey Webster, CTO of ZooLoo.com. "PostgreSQL has allowed us to grow without sacrificing data integrity."

Among the most popular enhancements are:

  • Parallel Database Restore, speeding up recovery from backup up to 8 times
  • Per-Column Permissions, allowing more granular control of sensitive data
  • Per-database Collation Support, making PostgreSQL more useful in multi-lingual environments
  • In-place Upgrades through pg_migrator beta, enabling upgrades from 8.3 to 8.4 without extensive downtime
  • New Query Monitoring Tools, giving administrators more insight into query activity

Version 8.4 makes data analysis easier through the advanced ANSI SQL2003 features of windowing functions, common table expressions and recursive joins. "These query structures increase the expressiveness of PostgreSQL's dialect of SQL substantially, allowing users to ask interesting questions in a single query that would have been impossible to ask before," explains Jeff Davis, database engineer at Truviso. Enhancements to stored procedures, such as default parameters and variadic parameters, make database server programming simpler and more compact.

The new release boosts application performance as well, as Kevin Grittner, Database Administrator for the Wisconsin Courts System comments: "PostgreSQL continues to improve performance in every major release. Version 8.4 has added several optimizations, such as semi-joins and anti-joins, which provide dramatic improvement in the run time of some of our most demanding queries."

These features mean that PostgreSQL 8.4 will serve more users than ever, such as the OpenStreetMap project: "When we were planning the new version of the OpenStreetMap API, it became clear that we needed a world-class database that not only ticks the right feature boxes, but actually runs well at the scale we need. Although there are many open source databases available, PostgreSQL was the obvious choice," says Tom Hughes, OpenStreetMap system administrator.

Download PostgreSQL 8.4: http://www.postgresql.org/download/

Full list of 8.4 Features: http://www.postgresql.org/about/press/features84

Release Notes: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release.html

Extended Press Release: http://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit84.html

About PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL is the collective work of hundreds of developers, building on twenty-two years of development which began at the University of California, Berkeley. With its long-term support of enterprise-level transactional database features and scalability, PostgreSQL is being used by many of today's most demanding businesses and government agencies. PostgreSQL is distributed under a BSD license, which allows use and distribution without fees for both commercial and non-commercial applications. Learn more on our home page.

Version 1: Straight Features

PostgreSQL 8.4 Released

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released version 8.4 of the world's most advanced open source database, continuing the rapid development progress of the PostgreSQL Project. This release contains new features that allow more advanced application design and that lower the administrative overhead of running PostgreSQL.

Quote

Developers will be able to enhance their database applications with several new features, including windowing functions, common table expressions, recursive joins, default parameters and variadic parameters. Windowing functions allow users to perform complex multilevel reports and range-based calculations in a single query. Common table expressions and recursive joins help programmers build tree, graph and more exotic relationships inside the database. Default and variadic parameters for stored procedures support more complex business logic, as well as making it easier to port stored procedures from other database systems.

"We've used PostgreSQL for seven years now, and we're really looking forward to many of the features in 8.4, particularly column permissions, per-database locale, partial matches for GIN indexes and user defined exceptions." said Jeffrey Webster, CTO of ZooLoo.com. "PostgreSQL has allowed us to grow without sacrificing data integrity."

Version 8.4 also contains a large number of features designed to make administering PostgreSQL easier and give more insight into database activity. Among these improvements and features are:

  • Parallel Restore
  • Column Permissions
  • Per-database Collation Support
  • In-place Upgrades through pg_migrator (beta)
  • New Query Monitoring Tools
  • Reduced VACUUM maintenance penalty on large tables

Quote?

In one of the most significant developments in PostgreSQL project history, 8.4 lays a foundation in anticipation of several large future features: SQL/MED foreign data connections, hot standby, synchronous replication, and index-only data access. API hooks and code changes to support these features have been included in version 8.4 to pave the way for planned completion in the next version.

"As PostgreSQL becomes more mature," said Bruce Momjian, Core Team member, "you'll see more of these major features requiring two or even three years of development."

Download PostgreSQL 8.4:

Release Notes:

About PostgreSQL:

About quoted companies:

8.4 Beta Release Announcement

Schedule

  • -3 days (or more): tarballs up in private FTP for packagers. Packagers start building packages. (Marc, packgers)
  • -1 day: tarballs moved to public FTP (Marc)
  • 0800 UTC: all packages, especially Windows, posted to public FTP (packagers)
  • 1300 UTC: home page updated. Beta page updated. (Dave Page)
  • 1400 UTC: News item approved. Link 8.4 Docs. (Dave Page)
  • 1600 UTC: pgsql-announce goes out (Marc)

Draft

PostgreSQL 8.4 Beta Released

The first beta of Version 8.4 of the world's most advanced open source database, PostgreSQL, was just released by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. After fourteen months of development, 8.4 is ready for testing by PostgreSQL users all over the world in order to make it our best release ever.

Version 8.4 includes hundreds of patches and dozens of new features. Among them:

  • Windowing Functions
  • Common Table Expressions (helps with tree and other recursive structures)
  • Default & Variadic parameters for functions
  • Parallel Restore
  • Column Permissions
  • Per-database locale settings
  • Improved hash indexes
  • Improved join performance for EXISTS and NOT EXISTS queries
  • Easier-to-use Warm Standby
  • Free Space Map auto-tuning
  • Visibility Map (reduces vacuum overhead)
  • Version-aware psql (backslash commands)
  • Support SSL certs for user authentication
  • Per-function runtime statistics
  • Easy editing of functions in psql
  • New contrib modules: pg_stat_statements, auto_explain, citext, btree_gin

Please download and install version 8.4 and test out these new features as soon as you can! You can especially help the PostgreSQL developers by trying new features in combination, and by doing a test port of your production applications to version 8.4. Performance comparisons with 8.3 are also very helpful. Tell us what you find!

Beta Information Page: http://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta

Release Notes: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release-8-4.html

Source Code: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/v8.4beta1/

Windows Installers and Binaries: see the Beta Information Page

Translation teams are at this time asked to begin completing the message translations for the 8.4 release. The PostgreSQL project always needs more translators! If you are bilingual please consider joining a translation team to help translate PostgreSQL:

Translation home page: http://babel.postgresql.org/

Translators mailing list: pgtranslation-translators@pgfoundry.org

The usual duration of the beta testing period for a new version of PostgreSQL is 6 weeks. However, that time can vary significantly depending on what bugs our testing discovers. The PostgreSQL project does not release until all significant known bugs are fixed.

Notes on 8.4 Press Release

Theme: we need a theme.

Features to mention: we should only plug features in the release which would make a difference to someone who is not already a dedicated PostgreSQL user. Here's a draft list of what to mention:

SQL Features:

  • Windowing Functions
  • Common Table Expressions (SELECT-time Views and Recursion)
  • Default & Variadic parameters for functions

Administration Features:

  • Parallel Restore
  • Column Permissions
  • Per-database Collations

Performance Features:

  • New hash indexes
  • Improved JOIN performance for some joins
  • pg_stat_statements

Laying foundation for next version:

  • Warm Standby improvements to pave way for Hot Standby
  • SQL/MED syntax to lead to full SQL/MED features
  • Vacuum made cheaper (no more FSM, added Visibility Map)

The following features are NOT in the press release list, because they are only meaningful to existing production PostgreSQL users. The might appear in the "internal" release though:

  • ON TRUNCATE triggers
  • Version-aware psql(?)
  • Support SSL certs for authentication
  • pg_stat_functions

List of Major Features for release notes

  • Windowing Functions
  • Common Table Expressions
  • Default & Variadic parameters for functions
  • Parallel Restore
  • Column Permissions
  • Per-database locale settings
  • Improved hash indexes
  • Improved join performance for EXISTS and NOT EXISTS queries
  • Easier-to-use Warm Standby
  • Automatic sizing of the Free Space Map
  • Visibility Map (greatly reduces vacuum overhead for slowly-changing tables)
  • Version-aware psql (backslash commands work against older servers)
  • Support SSL certs for authentication
  • Per-function runtime statistics
  • Easy editing of functions in psql
  • New contrib modules: pg_stat_statements, auto_explain, citext, btree_gin
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