PostreSQL 8.0 released

PostgreSQL 8.0 is out. Lots of new features. We’re pretty heavy MySQL and PostgreSQL users at the Genome Sciences Centre, and I just finished running our in-house regression tests against an 8.0 install. Everything passed, so I’ll be upgrading the first of 3 Postgres servers to 8.0 (from 7.4.2) tonight. The biggest news in 8.0 is without a doubt the native Windows port. It’s of no signficance to me personally (since we’re all Linux / Solaris on the servers) but it’s a HUGE milestone for the PostgreSQL project as it ought to go a long ways in helping PostgreSQL gain more widespread adoption. Even if it’s probably not ready for prime-time on Windows, it will give those developers and DBAs a taste of what they can do with a free RDBMS, and it’s a pretty low-resistance path for even a traditional Windows sysadmin to deploy a Linux box to run Postgres these days.

With PostgreSQL and MySQL/InnoDB, we’re truly sitting pretty in the open source RDBMS world. If I were Larry Ellison, I’d be looking for more Peoplesofts to buy, because the days of the RDBMS as a massive revenue stream are coming to an end.