Draft #5 -- radically re-written

Advocacy people:

What follows is my re-write of the press release. I was operating on the
idea of "telling a story", per Heather's advice earlier. The general idea is
to piggyback on the current press fad of articles about MySQL challenging
Oracle; we present the more formidable challenge, and should let the press
know it. Thus the sequence goes: 1) Here's how were as good as
Oracle/DB2/MSSQL, but cheaper; 2) We've made it easier to switch from them; 3)
our current users are excited about the release, too.

Surprisingly enough, I was able to get almost all of our new features to fit
into this framework.

WE NEED TO FINISH THIS BY FRIDAY! We will have to get copies to the
translators in time for them to translate, as questions, and correct, so we
can't tinker to perfection.

Comments and requests for this version of the press release
---------------------------------------------------------------
1. I am not *at all* attached to the ordering of the "features" in this
version; please suggest better orderings.

2. Also, a lot of my "hype it up" wording could use some help. Please?
Particularly I hate the phrase "last piece of the puzzle" but I couldn't think
of anything else.

3. In our "enterprise features", does the "Advanced SQL" paragraph work, or
will it just confuse people?

4. I added three non-profit orgs and two Open Source projects to our list of
"companies". Does this work?

5. I changed it to "hundreds" of developers. Our last count was contributors
btw. 6.3 and 7.3, which included some 200 people; I doubt that number has
dropped.

6. My spellcheck on Kate bugged out, so please look for broken words below and
help me fix them!

7. In addition to the "tranisitioning from other databases" features mentioned
below, we have two biggies that won't be ready for 7.4: the Windows Port and
dblink_oracle. Should we mention these as "coming soon"?

8. Can someone think of a better name than "EXPLICT JOIN REWRITING"?

9. Other suggestions?

===================================================================
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is pleased to announce the
availability of version 7.4 of the PostgreSQL Relational Database
Management System (RDBMS). This major release, the work
of our world wide network of hundreds of developers and contributors over
the last 9 months, provides commercial-grade enterprise database
functionality and performance for the very economical overhead cost of Open
Source software.

"If you tried PostgreSQL before, and went with a commercial database like
Oracle or DB2 instead, it's time to re-evaluate," says Rod Taylor of Inquent
Technologies. "PostgreSQL's expanding enterprise feature set and performance
improvements over the last two years make PostgreSQL competitive with even the
highest-end database systems. And it's certainly less expensive."

NEW ENTERPRISE DATABASE FEATURES
------------------------------------------
Among the large enterprise features which have been added, expanded, or
improved in version 7.4 are:

OPTERON SUPPORT: PostgreSQL is now optimized on the AMD Opteron, thanks to
the work of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, adding to the family
of proven 64-bit platforms which includes HP/Compaq, Alpha, Sun
UltraSPARC, MIPS, PA-RISC, and RS6000*. 64-bit platforms are an emerging
class of high-performance computing, with greater power and scaleability
needed for enterprise systems.

REPLICATION: PostgreSQL Inc. and Affilias Inc. this week contributed their
eRServer Java-based replication solution for PostgreSQL. eRServer
provides a tremendously scalable, battle-tested replication option
significantly more powerful than previous Open Source solutions available.

PERFORMANCE: Several major performance enhancements have been added in version
7.4, ensuring that PostgreSQL can match or exceed other enterprise database
systems' speed. These include:
- Hash aggregation in memory to make data warehousing and OLAP queries
up to 20 times faster;
- Improvements in subquery handling by the planner resulting in up to 400%
speed increases in some complex queries;
- New wire protocol (version 3) increases the speed of data transfers;
- Enhanced implementation of functional indexes allows better
indexing on custom data types and composite fields.

HIGH AVAILABILITY: Expansion of PostgreSQL's Free Space Map disk management
feature to support continuous index maintenence is the last "piece of the
puzzle" in providing 99.999% uptime for PostgreSQL databases. Further, 7.4
downloads with the new Auto Vacuum Daemon which eliminates the guesswork from
scheduling database maintenence.

FULL TEXT INDEXING: PostgreSQL's TSearch module now includes a ranked
preference system, making TSearch equal to or better than many full text
indexing solutions offered by other RDBMSs.

ADVANCED SQL FEATURES: PostgreSQL continues to expand its support for the
Intermediate and Advanced portions of the SQL 92 and 99 standards
including some SQL features not found in other databases. New in 7.4 are
statement-level triggers and read-only transactions, as well as several SQL
extensions including multi-byte regular expressions, polymorphic functions,
and enhanced array data type handling.

ADOPTING POSTGRESQL EASIER THAN EVER
---------------------------------------
As many Database Administrators (DBAs) will want to try PostgreSQL 7.4 for
their companies, we have taken several steps to make the transition from other
enterprise databases to PostgreSQL easier:

SQL-STANDARD ERROR FRAMEWORK: The PostgreSQL Team hascompletelyy redesigned
error logging and reporting, providing developers with an SQL99 compliant
mechanism for debugging and troubleshooting, and giving users real time
suggestions on how to avoid error conditions in their applications.

REORGANIZED AND EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION: The documentation contributors have
completely reorganized and added many new pages to the online documentation,
making it easier for first-time PostgreSQL DBAs to get their databases built,
tuned, and running.

SQL-STANDARD INFORMATION SCHEMA: 7.4 includes an SQL99 compliant Information
Schema (or "metadata"). This provides application developers with database,
type, object, and configuration information in a way which eases the migration
of interfaces and middleware between database systems, and even the
replication of data between commercial databases and PostgreSQL.

EXPLICIT JOIN REWRITING: Core developer Tom Lane has included an option
for explicit join rewriting by the query planner, easing the transition of
existing applications and queries running on Sybase and MS SQL Server, which
handle queries this way by default.

ENTERPRISE USERS ANTICIPATING 7.4
------------------------------------
"We have used PostgreSQL successfully for over two years in a
mission-critical capacity to support our registry systems," said Ram Mohan,
Chief Technology Officer for Afilias Limited, the company responsible for
running the backend database containing all .info and .org Internet domain
names worldwide. "This upgrade of PostgreSQL improves the scalability and
capacity of PostgreSQL and will help to ensure continued advancements to
future releases. For real-time operations, the planner/optimizer
enhancements adds more intelligence and allows more efficient operation of
the database. In addition, the expanded trigger capabilities sets up the
basis for even further gains in future versions of PostgreSQL."

"[quote from Lamar Owen will go here]" commented Lamar Owen, Director of
Information Technology for the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute.

RELEASE DETAILS
-------------------------------------
Source for this release is available at:
http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html

More information on PostgreSQL is available in ten languages on the
PostgreSQL Advocacy website:
http://advocacy.postgresql.org/

A complete list of changes in PostgreSQL version 7.4 can be found in the
HISTORY file included with the release, or available on the web at:
[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/740.html]

About PostgreSQL:
With more than 16 years of development by hundreds of the world's
most generous and brilliant minds from the open source community,
PostgreSQL is the world's most advanced open source database. With its
long time support of an enterprise level feature set including
transactions, stored procedures, triggers, and subqueries, PostgreSQL is
being used by many of today's most demanding businesses and government
agencies.

Corporations such as BASF, Red Hat, Afilias Limited, Cisco, Chrysler, and
3Com, organizations like WGCR Radio, the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, and Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, and Open Source
projects including Bricolage and OpenACS rely on PostgreSQL's rock solid
performance record and open development process. PostgreSQL is available under
a BSD License for both commercial and non-commercial use.

To find out more about PostgreSQL or to download it, please visit:
http://www.postgresql.org/

Note to Editors: Additional information on the following companies quoted in
this release can be found at:
Inquent Technologies: Insert URL Contact: Insert corp. comm contact person
Afilias Limited : http://www.afilias.info/about_afilias/backgrounder
Contact: Heather Carle 215-706-5777 hcarle(at)afilias(dot)info
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute: Insert URL Contact: Insert corp. comm
contact person.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco