The latest version of the open source database also features roll back via savepoints functionality, point-in-time recovery, tablespaces, and improved memory and I/O usage, and is available to download now.
The open source database management system was originally developed at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department, and a BSD license that means that PostgreSQL can be used, modified, and distributed by anyone free of charge for any purpose, be it private, commercial, or academic.
It was recently adopted by embedded database specialist Pervasive Software Inc as the basis for its entry into the corporate database market, and is also promoted and supported by PostgreSQL, Software Research Associates, Command Prompt, Credativ, and Fujitsu, among others.
PostgreSQL 8.0 no longer requires an emulation layer to run on Windows, resulting in improved system performance, and providing a potential alternative for Windows developers, while the savepoints feature enables specific parts of a database transaction to be rolled back without aborting the entire operation.
Point-in-time recovery enables full data restoration from automatically archived transaction logs, providing an alternative to hourly or daily backups, while the support for tablespace support makes PostgreSQL more suitable for data warehouse deployments.
In addition disk and memory usage have been optimized through the use of the Adaptive Replacement Cache algorithm and other features to result in more predictable loads and more consistent performance during peak usage.
