PostgreSQL 8.3, an open-source database licensed under the BSD license, has been released. Updates include heap-only tuples (meaning that a given tuple may not necessarily have to be synchronized to disk), asynchronous commits, SQL/XML support, and full-text search (which was an add-on in the past.) There are lots of other features, of course, some of which may be even more relevant based on your needs. It's quite interesting how much attention Sun has given PostgreSQL 8.3's release (being quoted as being ebullient in the press releases, for example), despite supporting Apache Derby (as JavaDB), and just having announced an intent to acquire MySQL. In any case, though, PostgreSQL is probably the "next step up" for those for whom MySQL has proven inadequate, and this release looks very good with its implications for performance under load and its applications in data warehousing.

Hi, Congratulation to the PostgreSQL team. Always happy to see our choice of PG many years ago was the right one. One Question, anybody know a good backup tool for PostgreSQL support PITR or simlar fast restore capabilities ? Thanks for any help, Holger

We use PostgreSQL extensively 5 years for now and have almost no problems with it, perfomance for our tasks is also VERY good. Always recommend it for our customers. --- Maxim Kramarenko TrackStudio - Hierarchical issue tracking.

PostgreSQL looks rock solid - definitely going to try it out.

PostgreSQL looks rock solid - definitely going to try it out.

It is it is among the best DBs out there and definitely the best OSS db in existence!

PostgreSQL is really great. Simple install, great mailing list. There is one feature that kind of always suprised me, is that only allow you to create functions, there isnt a create procedure statement, and the trigger statements as far as i know only allow you to excute a function, so you can't just embed the code in the trigger! I know it's not a big deal, just weird! PG also need to be tied to any promosing OLAP and Reporting Solution. Where I work we use the MS SQL stack (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS) (Integration, Reporting and Analysis services) the integration is key and the reason why we really can never affort to switch to another DB

Does anyone know the (non political) reasons for using Oracle instead of PostgreSQL?

Easier major version upgrade process

In enterprises (i.e big financial companies) features like RAC, enterprise backup capabilities, database on raw partition, compatibility with enterprise storage (SAN,...) is needed. In mission critical places like a bank you need extensive features of a database like Oracle. I can not even think of having a 1+ Tera Bytes Postgresql database. For fast web serving purpose (like my website with 70 million page views/month with multiple complex queries on a page) I will not even think about oracle though. I will definitely choose MySQL in that case.

There are active PostgreSQL systems in production environments that manage in excess of 4 terabytes of data. see http://www.postgresql.org/about Here is a example of how well PostgreSQL supports websites having 40 millions pages/month by real users, 30 millions by crawlers and a lot of complex SQL queries. 8.3 makes it even better. href="http://people.planetpostgresql.org/gsmet/index.php?/archives/1-A-day-with-8.3.0-on-cityvox.fr.html"

Does anyone know the (non political) reasons for using Oracle instead of PostgreSQL?

- Performance with really large databases. - Grid if you need it. - 2 phase commit in clustered environments. I think PostgreSQL is a fantastic database, but Oracle has it's place.

Does anyone know the (non political) reasons for using Oracle instead of PostgreSQL?

pg_dump and restore as the only clean upgrade option between major versions, which means you have to shut down the db and pg_dump and restore are not the fastest tools on earth. If you have a huge db, this is definitely a huge issue. Also no hotbackup except pg_dump... no direct table cache control MVCC prevents a fast select count(*) from table, there are workarounds for that issue however, and from what I could gather postgresql 8.3 has reduced this issue! Besides that there are loads of political issues as well. Dont get me wrong, I love postgres, it is rock solid, but Oracle is a different game and league :-)

Bravo Postgres... very good and powerful DB for SME and enterprise level application..we are using it with our ERP solution.. till now,we are happy with it.. hope new version brings good features for us

Does anyone know the (non political) reasons for using Oracle instead of PostgreSQL?

Executing a single query on multiple cpus/cores. Especially now multi-core machines are becoming more and more common, this is quite an important advantage. Oracle among others has been able to utilize additional cpus for a single query for quite some time. PostgreSQL on the other hand hasn't even started really looking into this. (there is some discussion of this on their mailinglists now and then, but nothing really fancy) This really becomes an issue when you have an 8 core machine on which you want to execute a complex query. With PostgreSQL, assuming there's no other load on the machine for the moment, 7 cores will be idle and one core will be at 100% cpu usage. That's 7/8 of your machine's potential power that you're not using. Now think of a 32-core machine, which are actually relatively affordable these days, and it will be 31/32 of your machine's potential power that is not being used! Of course this assumes a cpu-bound query and no other active clients for the DBMS, but still... These situations -do- occur and PostgreSQL isn't helping you then.

The one feature I really miss from PostgreSQL is the ability to do "accent-insensitive text comparisons", like MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server have (ie, "LIKE 'Jose'" matches both "José" and "Jose" with the proper locale setting). For many webapps in non-English-speaking countries (I'm from Brazil), this feature is a must.

You could get that by combining "ilike" (for case insensitive matches) and "translate()" for mapping accented to non-accented characters.