Josh Berkus just announced the release of PostgreSQL 8.4. The summer issue of Open Source Database Magazine (out July 15th) will include a story on the new features of PostgreSQL 8.4. Go forth and download!! Below is the text of Josh’s email giving an outline of the new features:
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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. Our development team has spent 16 months adding over two hundred improvements to all aspects of database functionality, helping every PostgreSQL user in small or large ways.
Many of the 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. 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
* Greatly Reduced VACUUM Overhead
through the Visibility Map
* New Monitoring Tools
for current queries, query load and deadlocks
Version 8.4 also makes data analysis easier through the advanced ANSI SQL2003 features of windowing functions, common table expressions and recursive queries. Enhancements to stored procedures, such as default parameters and variadic parameters, make database server programming simpler and more compact. Of course, there are also performance improvements included in this version.
