
	                     POSTGRES95 version 1.01

About Postgres95
----------------
Postgres95 is a derivative of the last official release of Postgres (version
4.2). The code has been ANSI-fied and trimmed by 25%. There are a lot of
internal changes that improve performance and code maintainability. Postgres95
runs about 30-50% faster on the Wisconsin Benchmark compared to v4.2. Apart
from bug fixes, these are the major enhancements:

  *  The query language POSTQUEL has been replaced with SQL (implemented in 
     the server). We do not support subqueries at the moment. (However,
     subqueries can be imitated with user defined SQL functions.) Aggregates 
     have been re-implemented. We also added support for GROUP BY. The libpq 
     interface is still available for C programs.  

  *  In addition to the monitor program, we provide a new program (psql)
     which supports GNU readline.
  
  *  We added a new front-end library, libpgtcl, that supports Tcl-based
     clients.  A sample shell, pgtclsh, provides four new Tcl commands 
     to interface tcl programs with the Postgres95 backend.

  *  The large object interface has been overhauled. We kept Inversion large 
     objects as the only mechanism for storing large objects. (This is
     not to be confused with the Inversion file system which has been
     removed.)

  *  The instance-level rule system has been removed. Rules are still 
     available as rewrite rules.

  *  A short tutorial introducing regular SQL features as well as those
     of ours is distributed with the source code.

  *  gmake (instead of BSD make) is used for the build. Also, Postgres95 can 
     be compiled with an unpatched gcc (data alignment of doubles has been 
     fixed).

Postgres95 is free and the complete source is available. It is subjected to
the copyright terms described in an accompanying file named "COPYRIGHT".
 
Platforms
---------
Postgres95 has been compiled and tested on Alpha (OSF 3.2), DECStation
(Ultrix 4.4), SPARC (SunOS 4.1.3), SPARC (Solaris 2.4), and HP 9000/700 
(HP-UX 9.0), Linux (Intel x86, 1.2 kernel running ELF), BSD44_derived
OS's (NetBSD, FreeBSD), and SGI MIPS running IRIX 5.3.

Ports are also available for BSD/OS 2.0 and AIX 3.2.5.

Some ports are contributed efforts and have not been tested at
Berkeley by the authors due to unavailability of platforms.

Support
-------
The POSTGRES project has officially ended in 1994 and the POSTGRES group
no longer exist at Berkeley. Hence, there is no official support for
Postgres95. 

With the generosity of the Jason Wright and others at Vnet, the
postgres95 mailing list now has a new home --
postgres95@postgres95.vnet.net.  It is available for
discussion of matters pertaining to Postgres95, including but
not limited to bug reports and fixes. For info on how to
subscribe, send a mail with the lines in the body (not the
subject line):
	help
        info postgres95
to
        majordomo@postgres95.vnet.net

There is also a digest list available.  To subscribe to this list,
send email to majordomo@postgres95.vnet.net with a BODY of:
       subscribe postgres95-digest
Digests are sent out to members of this list whenever the main list has
received around 30k of messages.

Jolly and Andrew monitor postgres95 mailing lists closely but since 
postgres95 development is a volunteer effort, we cannot guarantee
timely responses to bug reports and questions.  

Information about postgres95 can also be found on our WWW home page:
	http://s2k-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu:8000/postgres95

If support is critical, you should consider a commercial product such as
Illustra (which is the commercial version of Postgres).

Contact
-------
If you have any other questions, please contact Jolly Chen
(jolly@CS.Berkeley.edu) or Andrew Yu (andrew@CS.Berkeley.edu).
