Resent-From: POSTGRES mailing list <postman@postgres.Berkeley.EDU>
Resent-Message-Id: <199311171832.KAA11010@nobozo.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: owner-postman@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 10:32:49 -0800
From: Mike Stonebraker <mike@postgres.Berkeley.EDU>
Message-Id: <199311171832.KAA01391@redrider.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
To: postgres@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: status of POSTGRES
Resent-To: postgres-dist@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Resent-Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 10:32:50 -0800
Resent-XMts: smtp

At the current time POSTGRES is a reasonably mature research
project, having been in existence since 1986.  Moreover, most
of the research ideas have been implemented, and there is
now even a commercial version of the system.

Governement research contracts are appropriate for
"proof of concept" prototypes, but are not designed
to provide long-term support for mature software.

As a result, the POSTGRES group is focused on finishing
the implementation of sets and making the current
code line as robust as possible.  There will be one
more major release of the system (Version 5) probably
first quarter next year.

After that POSTGRES, Version 5 will join its
predecessor, the public domain version of INGRES,
in the never-never land of archived software.

The Berkeley research team will go on to building 
a novel distributed DBMS, called Mariposa.  For
a peek at the goals of this system, check out our paper in 
the 1994 IEEE Data Engineering Conference or get the
tech report from anonymous ftp to toe.berkeley.edu

/Mike Stonebraker