Re: Draft #6: Semi-Final

Josh Berkus wrote:
<snip>
> 3) Who should be our contact(s)? For e-mail, press(at)postgresql(dot)org is fine.
> For non-english versions, the translator will be the contact. But we need
> people willing to take phone calls about PostgreSQL. I can do it in the US;
> we should also have one person in Australia and one in Europe. Volunteers?

I can be the contact point for Australlia if needed. :)

> 4) Speaking of which, who's lead for the Japanese PostgreSQL community?

Not sure. Chris Phelan of Vanten KK <chris(at)vanten(dot)com> would most likely be able to assist though.

> 5) Revisions to the release: we are NOT going to add anything at this point.
> Suggestions on stuff to CUT, however, are welcome, the release is too bloddy
> long. Also spelling and grammatical corrections.
>
> 6) IMPORTANT: Heather is absolutely right, we need a "Press introduction" page
> to send people to from the press release. This should include:
> - The release (again)
> - links to the advocacy site
> - links to download locations
> - links to a few articles which laud PostgreSQL.
> Is anyone available to do this?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> CONTACT: press(at)postgresql(dot)org
>
> PANAMA CITY, PANAMA: SEPTEMBER 1, 2003
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> 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 with the flexibility and low total cost of
> ownership widely associated with 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 you can't beat the cost."
>
> NEW ENTERPRISE FEATURES
> -----------------------------
> Among the large enterprise features which have been added, expanded, or
> improved in version 7.4 are:
>
> REPLICATION: PostgreSQL Inc. has contributed their eRServer Java-based
> replication solution to the PostgreSQL community. eRServer provides a highly
> scalable, battle-tested replication option significantly more powerful than
> previously available Open Source solutions.
>
> PERFORMANCE: Several major performance enhancements have been added in version
> 7.4, enabling PostgreSQL to match or exceed the speed of other enterprise
> database systems. 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.
>
> Lamar Owen, Director of Information Technology for the Pisgah Astronomical
> Research Institute, commented on the new features, "The improved performance
> of PostgreSQL 7.4 for very large, data-warehouse tables will allow me to
> provide efficient access to a huge library of astronomical photography and
> spectrography, correlated with geological and meteorlogical observations, over
> the Internet. The improved indexing capabilities for custom and composite
> types will allow unprecedented ease in analyzing this data, which tends to be
> difficult to shoehorn into traditional index paradigms."
>
> HIGH AVAILABILITY: Expansion of PostgreSQL's Free Space Map disk management
> feature to support continuous index maintenence and the Auto Vacuum Daemon
> are the last "puzzle pieces" in providing 99.999% uptime for PostgreSQL
> databases. The achievement of 'five nines' is the highest level of uptime
> available in any commercial software, and is associated with only the most
> mission-critical business applications.
>
> 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.
>
> 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, enhanced data type domains, and read-only
> transactions, as well as several SQL extensions including multi-byte regular
> expressions, polymorphic functions, and enhanced array data type handling.
>
> "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."
>
> ADOPTING POSTGRESQL EASIER THAN EVER
> ----------------------------------------
> The following enhancements aid in the testing, prototyping, and porting
> efforts of database professionals considering a switch to PostgreSQL:
>
> REORGANIZED AND EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION: Completely reorganized and expanded
> online documentation, making it easier for first-time PostgreSQL DBAs to get
> their databases built, tuned, and running.
>
> SQL-STANDARD ERROR FRAMEWORK: Completely 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.
>
> 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.
>
> NEW GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE (GUI) VERSIONS: PGAdmin and PHPPgAdmin, two
> of the three most popular GUIs for PostgreSQL will have new, extensively
> rewritten versions for PostgreSQL 7.4, making it more comfortable than ever
> for database administrators to switch.
>
> QUERY REWRITING: Includes a new 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.
>
> RELEASE DETAILS
> -------------------------------------
> More information on this release is available at:
> <URL here>
>
> 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,
> OpenMFG and 3Com, organizations like WGCR Radio, the University of
> Massachusetts at Amherst, and Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, and Open
> Source projects including Bricolage, OpenACS and GForge 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: http://www.pari.edu
> Contact: Lamar Owen 828-862-5554 lowen(at)pari(dot)edu
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo(at)postgresql(dot)org