Postgres95 version 1.01

Mon Feb 26 11:41:44 PST 1996

We are pleased to announce the release of Postgres95, version 1.01. 1.01 is a maintenance release over 1.0. A number of bug fixes and small enhancements have been added. We wish to acknowlege the Postgres95 user community for helping us find bugs from the previous releases. In addition, we would like to especially thank the following individuals for contributing their efforts to this release.

• Julian Assange
• Alistair Crooks
• J. Douglas Dunlop
• Paul Fisher
• Tom Hageman
• Kurt Lidl
• Claire Mosher
• Dorothy Moore
• Keith Parks
• Robert Patrick
• Charles F. Randall
• Paul 'Shag' Walmsley
• Jason Wright

Incompatible Changes

• 1.01 is backwards compatible with 1.0 database provided the user follow the steps outlined in the MIGRATION_from_1.0_to_1.01 file. If those steps are not taken, 1.01 is not compatible with 1.0 database.

Enhancements

• added BSD/OS port
• added PQdisplayTuples() to libpq and changed monitor and psql to use it
• added NeXT port (requires SysVIPC implementation)
• added CAST .. AS ... syntax
• added ASC and DESC keywords
• added 'internal' as a possible language for CREATE FUNCTION. Internal functions are C functions which have been statically linked into the postgres backend.
• a new type "name" has been added for system identifiers (table names, attribute names, etc.) This replaces the old char16 type. The length of name is set by the NAMEDATALEN #define in src/Makefile.global
• a readable reference manual that describes the query language.
• added host-based access control. A configuration file ($PGDATA/pg_hba) is used to hold the configuration data. If host-based access control is not desired, comment out HBA=1 in src/Makefile.global.
• changed regex handling to be uniform use of Henry Spencer's regex code regardless of platform. The regex code is included in the distribution
• added functions and operators for case-insensitive regular expressions. The operators are ~* and !~*.
• pg_dump uses COPY instead of SELECT loop for better performance

Bug fixes

• fixed an optimizer bug that was causing core dumps when functions calls were used in comparisons in the WHERE clause
• changed all uses of getuid to geteuid so that effective uids are used
• psql now returns non-zero status on errors when using -c
• applied public patches 1-14

About Postgres95

Postgres95 is a derivative of the last official release of Postgres (version 4.2). The code has been ANSI-fied and trimmed by 25%. We made many internal changes that improve performance and code maintainability. Postgres95 runs about 30-50% faster on the Wisconsin Benchmark compared to v4.2. Apart from bug fixes, these are the major enhancements:

• The query language POSTQUEL has been replaced with SQL (implemented in the server). We do not support subqueries at the moment. (However, subqueries can be imitated with user defined SQL functions.) Aggregates have been re-implemented. We also added support for GROUP BY. The libpq interface is still available for C programs.
• In addition to the monitor program, we provide a new program (psql) which supports GNU readline.
• We added a new front-end library, libpgtcl, that supports Tcl-based clients. A sample shell, pgtclsh, provides four new Tcl commands to interface tcl programs with the Postgres95 backend.
• The large object interface has been overhauled. We kept Inversion large objects as the only mechanism for storing large objects. (This is not to be confused with the Inversion file system which has been removed.)
• The instance-level rule system has been removed. Rules are still available as rewrite rules.
• A short tutorial introducing regular SQL features as well as those of ours is distributed with the source code.
• gmake (instead of BSD make) is used for the build. Also, Postgres95 can be compiled with an unpatched gcc (data alignment of doubles has been fixed).

Postgres95 is free and the complete source is available. Please read the COPYRIGHT.

Platforms

Postgres95 has been compiled and tested on Alpha (OSF 2.1, 3.0), DECStation (Ultrix 4.4), SPARC (SunOS 4.1.3), SPARC (Solaris 2.4), and HP 9000/700 (HP-UX 9.0), Intel X86 (Linux and NetBSD), and IBM RS6000 (AIX)

In addition, ports are provided for Intel X86 (Linux, 1.2 kernel running ELF), BSD44_derived OS's (NetBSD, FreeBSD, BSD/OS), IBM RS6000 (AIX 3.2.5), and SGI MIPS (IRIX 5.3).

Some ports are contributed efforts and have not been tested at Berkeley by the authors due to unavailability of platforms.

Support

There is NO official support for Postgres95. It is maintained through volunteer effort only.

With the generosity of the Jason Wright and others at Vnet, the postgres95 mailing list now has a new home -- postgres95@postgres95.vnet.net. It is available for discussion of matters pertaining to Postgres95, including but not limited to bug reports and fixes. For info on how to subscribe, send a mail with the lines in the body (not the subject line):

	help
	info postgres95

There is also a digest list available. To subscribe to this list, send email to majordomo@postgres95.vnet.net with a BODY of:

	subscribe postgres95-digest

The mailing lists are unmoderated forums for the discussion of postgres95 related issues. Jolly and Andrew monitor the list closely but since postgres95 development is a volunteer effort, we cannot guarantee timely responses to bug reports and questions.

If support, robustness, performance, or documentation is critical, you should consider a commercial product such as Illustra (which is a commercial version of Postgres).

Contact

Postgres95-1.01 is available for ftp.

If you have bug reports or installation problems, please send mail to the general mailing list. If you have additional questions about postgres95, please send mail to Jolly Chen ( jolly@CS.Berkeley.edu) or Andrew Yu ( andrew@CS.Berkeley.edu).