v7.3beta1 Packaged and Released ...

Well, I swear, this is the first release we've actually kept on scheduale
with, as far as going into beta is concerned ...

We've just packaged up and released v7.3beta1 for broader testing ... and
this is a big one as far as changes are concerned.

Major changes in this release:

Schemas

Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace
so two people or applications can have tables with the same
name. There is also a public schema for shared tables.
Table/index creation can be restricted by removing
permissions on the public schema.

Drop Column

PostgreSQL now supports ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality.

Table Functions

Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are
now much easier to use than before. You can call such a
"table function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output
like a table. Also, plpgsql functions can now return sets.

Prepared Queries

For performance, PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries.

Dependency Tracking

PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows
improvements in many areas.

Privileges

Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and
people running them can take on the privileges of their creators.

Multibyte/Locale

Both multibyte and locale are now always enabled.

Logging

A variety of logging options have been enhanced.

Interfaces

A large number of interfaces have been moved to
http://gborg.postgresql.org where they can be developed
and released independently.

Functions/Identifiers

By default, functions can now take up to 32 parameters, and
identifiers can be up to 63 bytes long.

And these are only the Major Changes ... the minor changes are extensive
as well, and are documented in the HISTORY file.

This release can be found on the main site, as well as the mirrors in:

ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/beta

Note that this is a *beta* release ... we have only *just* stop'd
development of features, so there are instabilities in the system
expected. Anyone, and everyone, is encouraged to download and test this
on their various platforms, but do not use it in a production environment
as of yet. The more people that can test this release, the faster bugs
will get reported and fixed in a much shorter time.

Any bugs/problems, please report them to pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org ...

If we are lucky, we can keep this to a reasonably short beta period ...

Marc G. Fournier