PL/Java 1.5.1-BETA2 announced

PL/Java brings functions, triggers, and types in Java. 1.5.1, now in BETA2,
adds support for PostgreSQL 9.6, 10, and 11 (beta3), with a number of
improvements and fixes.

Project site: http://tada.github.io/pljava/
Release notes: http://tada.github.io/pljava/releasenotes.html

## Security note

Two minor enhancements are described in the release notes.

## Selected changes

New datatype support has been added, with more details in the release notes:

* Classes from the Java 8 new date/time API (in the java.time package) can
now be used in place of the older java.sql.Date/Time/Timestamp classes
to represent PostgreSQL date, time with and without timezone, and
timestamp with and without timezone. These new classes fit the SQL types
much more closely, and PL/Java code written for Java 8 or later is
strongly encouraged to use them (as is PL/Java code written for earlier
Java releases, if it is practical to migrate to Java 8 or later).

* Code that manipulates XML can now receive and return it using the
standard JDBC java.sql.SQLXML API, with efficiency and memory footprint
advantages relative to PL/Java's default behavior of mapping whole XML
documents to Java strings.

Beta testers are encouraged to exercise the new datatype mappings.

This release introduces support for parallel-safety declarations on
functions in PostgreSQL 9.6. Simple cases work as expected, but PL/Java's
code has not been thoroughly audited to be sure its internal behavior cannot
violate constraints on parallel-restricted or parallel-safe functions. See
the release notes and new user-guide page on parallel query.

In PostgreSQL 10, trigger transition tables are supported for `AFTER`
triggers, as described in the release notes.

Please see the release notes for a more complete list of changes.

## Availability:

1.5.1-BETA2 is available from GitHub as a source release, which builds
quickly using Maven:

Release page: https://github.com/tada/pljava/releases/tag/V1_5_1b2

This wiki page will add links to prebuilt packages that become available:
https://github.com/tada/pljava/wiki/Prebuilt-packages