Well, I swear, this is the first release we've actually kept on scheduale with, as far as going into beta is concerned ...
We've just packaged up and released v7.3beta1 for broader testing ... and this is a big one as far as changes are concerned. Major changes in this release: Schemas Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace so two people or applications can have tables with the same name. There is also a public schema for shared tables. Table/index creation can be restricted by removing permissions on the public schema. Drop Column PostgreSQL now supports ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality. Table Functions Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are now much easier to use than before. You can call such a "table function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output like a table. Also, plpgsql functions can now return sets. Prepared Queries For performance, PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries. Dependency Tracking PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows improvements in many areas. Privileges Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and people running them can take on the privileges of their creators. Multibyte/Locale Both multibyte and locale are now always enabled. Logging A variety of logging options have been enhanced. Interfaces A large number of interfaces have been moved to http://gborg.postgresql.org where they can be developed and released independently. Functions/Identifiers By default, functions can now take up to 32 parameters, and identifiers can be up to 63 bytes long. And these are only the Major Changes ... the minor changes are extensive as well, and are documented in the HISTORY file. This release can be found on the main site, as well as the mirrors in: ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/beta Note that this is a *beta* release ... we have only *just* stop'd development of features, so there are instabilities in the system expected. Anyone, and everyone, is encouraged to download and test this on their various platforms, but do not use it in a production environment as of yet. The more people that can test this release, the faster bugs will get reported and fixed in a much shorter time. Any bugs/problems, please report them to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... If we are lucky, we can keep this to a reasonably short beta period ... Marc G. Fournier ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])