EnterpriseDB, which provides products, services, support and training based on the PostgreSQL open source database project, has announced support for the newly released PostgreSQL 9.0 open source relational database.
PostgreSQL 9.0 includes more than a dozen major improvements that enhance every aspect of database application design and performance, including built-in replication and hot standby capabilities that give PostgreSQL 9.0 the high availability required for the "scale out" and failover architectures that characterize cloud computing and other demanding application environments, as well as 64-bit Windows support. The new release also that simplifies major upgrades by removing the need for the "dump/load data" procedure required in prior versions and instead performs an in-place upgrade, which is much easier and faster.
The new release includes many of the important enterprise features that people have been waiting for, according to Robin Schumacher, director of product strategy at EnterpriseDB.
For example, Schumacher tells 5 Minute Briefing, under the banner of high availability, the streaming replication that is in 9.0 is going to be very welcome to EnterpriseDB customers. "The EnterpriseDB customers that I have spoken to are all eager to upgrade to get to that. Postgres has had third-party contributors that have brought along replication solutions but now it has built-in streaming replication." A close second in terms of the most sought after new capability is the hot warm standby feature which gives database administrators more capabilities in terms of the area of data protection and "being able to easily set up and configure a hot warm standby that is able to take over in the event of a failure on the actual primary database server."
Additionally, he notes, for EnterpriseDB customers, another key feature in the new Postgres release is the in-place upgrade capability. "One of the most stressful things that a database administrator does is upgrade software. Especially if they have to dump the data, install the new software, and reload the data, there is always fear that it is going to be an error-prone process and they are going to have issues." The in-place upgrade capability streamlines and simplifies the upgrading of the software - "and, again, for some of the customers that I have spoken to, that is one of the first things that they point to in the new release, even more so than the streaming replication in some cases," says Schumacher.
Additionally, there is 64-bit Windows support that was not available previously, Josh Berkus, PostgreSQL core team member, notes. "It is still dependent on the Windows user having some other libraries in 64-bit which will limit its usefulness for some Windows users," he cautions. But at this point, he says, if someone has a complete 64-bit Windows environment, which not all Windows users do, they can now run Postgres as well and that should help limit the performance gap that has existed between Postgres on Windows and Postgres on Linux, Berkus explains.
"I am happy to see that because if you look at the growth in terms of database platforms now, Linux still has the lead in terms of the momentum percentage gain but right on its heels is Windows," adds Schumacher. "It is definitely an accelerating platform and anybody that is going to want maximum horsepower out of their database on the Windows platform is going to use a 64-bit platform and so that is why it is very, very key to announce support for 64-bit Windows."
And beyond these capabilities, says Berkus, PostgreSQL 9.0 adds a "grab-bag" assortment of additional features. While they may seem "specialty," he says, "A lot of these are actually features that no other database system has, particularly features that make it easier to plug in external applications and external libraries to PostgreSQL, improved Perl and Python and C++ compatibility, the ability to do uniqueness over range types which I predict is going to make Postgres the number-one database for calendaring applications in the future. A lot of this we will see pay off 2 or 3 years down the road, but I think increasingly, you are going to see people - first within open source and then within proprietary applications - using PostgreSQL for certain specific applications, as they do now with geographic applications and biological applications and a couple of other things. You are going to see people using PostgreSQL for new types of specific applications simply because we have features that really no other database system has."
Additional PostgreSQL 9.0 improvements are detailed on the PostgreSQL community site.
EnterpriseDB customers and PostgreSQL community members can immediately benefit from EnterpriseDB's one-click installer for PostgreSQL 9.0.