Fwd: [ANNOUNCE] PostgreSQL v7.2 Final Release

[Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>]

I'm forwarding this announcement as some of the things discussed on the 
list during the last week may be affected by some of the new features, 
particularly the Transactions problem, making OID's optional (would save a 
lot of disk space & processing time) and the new Statistics module.

Peter

>For Immediate Release                           February 5th, 2002
>
>         After almost a full year of development since PostgreSQL v7.1 was
>released, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce the
>availability of our latest development milestone ... PostgreSQL v7.2,
>another step forward for the project.
>
>         A full list of changes to v7.2 can be found in the HISTORY file,
>included with the release, as well as under all ftp mirrors as:
>
>                 /pub/README.v7_2
>
>         Highlights of this release are as follows:
>
>    VACUUM
>            Vacuuming no longer locks tables, thus allowing normal user
>            access during the vacuum. A new "VACUUM FULL" command does
>            old-style vacuum by locking the table and shrinking the on-disk
>            copy of the table.
>
>    Transactions
>            There is no longer a problem with installations that exceed
>            four billion transactions.
>
>    OID's
>            OID's are now optional. Users can now create tables without
>            OID's for cases where OID usage is excessive.
>
>    Optimizer
>            The system now computes histogram column statistics during
>            "ANALYZE", allowing much better optimizer choices.
>
>    Security
>            A new MD5 encryption option allows more secure storage and
>            transfer of passwords. A new Unix-domain socket authentication
>            option is available on Linux and BSD systems.
>
>    Statistics
>            Administrators can use the new table access statistics module
>            to get fine-grained information about table and index usage.
>
>    Internationalization
>            Program and library messages can now be displayed in several
>            languages.
>
>         .. with many many more bug fixes, enhancements and performance
>related changes ...
>
>         Source for this release is available on all mirrors under:
>
>                 /pub/source/v7.2
>
>         As always, any bugs with this release should be reported to
>pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org ... and, as with all point releases, this
>release requires a complete dump and reload from previous releases, due to
>internal structure changes ...
>
>Marc G. Fournier
>Co-ordinator
>PostgreSQL Global Development Group