First beta of PostgreSQL 8.4 released for testing

The first beta of version 8.4 of PostgreSQL, the free object-relational database system, developed under the umbrella of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, has been released. After fourteen months in development, the new release contains hundreds of patches and dozens of new features.

Among the innovations are Windowing Functions, Common Table Expressions, Recursive Joins and Default and Variadic parameters for functions. Hash indexes have been updated and join performance has been improved for EXISTS and NOT EXISTS queries. The terminal front end psql is now version-aware and allows for easy editing of functions. Runtime statistics are now provided for functions. SSL certificates for user authentication are supported. More details about the release can be found in the release notes.

The beta-testing phase for a new version usually lasts six weeks, but may vary depending on whether significant bugs are discovered. The developers are asking users to thoroughly test and report any problems they discover in the release and to compare performance to previous versions. The developers are also urgently seeking translators to translate the documentation for the final release.

Development of this free, object-relational database system began in the 1980s and it was given its current name in 1996. The project uses the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) licence. The system runs under Linux, Unix and Windows. The most up-to-date, stable release is PostgreSQL 8.3.7 from the 16th of March, 2009.

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