Postgres 7.3 Beta

[chriskl]

Postgres 7.3 Beta will be released today or tommorrow. Here are the major changes:

Overview

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
       [url]http://gborg.postgresql.org[/url] 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.

[ultraslacker]

Cool! More changes than I had expected. I was looking forward to the function + result sets improvement, but the prepared queries addition is very interesting.

[chriskl]

Per-backend prepared queries - so they're only useful really if you repeat the same query many times in one connection. eg. Persistent connections are essential...

Chris

[ken]

Having just started working with PostgreSQL, I've been looking for way to pull a recordset from a function. I've tried using cursors but it didn't work=(. This is the answer to that problem.
But with a beta release, is that something you would use on your production server?😃

[Sxooter]

I used the release candidate betas of 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2 with no serious problems. I'd wait until the postgresql-7.3.rc1 rolls out, test it, and be sure it works under load before rolling it out though.

I found that 7.0.rc1 was more stable than 6.5.3, and 7.1.rc1 was more stable than 7.0.x and the same was true for 7.2.rc1 over 7.1.x

By the time rc versions roll off the assembly line, they're usually about 99% done.

[chriskl]

I suggest using 7.3-beta as a TEST platform to get ready when the final comes out, but don't use it on production as there's often a small chance that we may force an initdb during the beta stage. (Which is something we try not to do, but is occasionally necessary...)

Chris