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-{%extends "base/page.html"%}
-{%block title%}History{%endblock%}
-{%block contents%}
-<h1>History</h1>
-<p>Given its powerful and advanced features, you may wonder how such a
-valuable piece of software came to be both free and open source. As with
-many other key open source projects, the answer starts at the University of
-California at Berkeley (UCB).</p>
-<p>PostgreSQL, originally called Postgres, was created at
-UCB by a computer science professor named Michael Stonebraker,
-who went on to become the CTO of Informix Corporation. Stonebraker
-started Postgres in 1986 as a followup project to its predecessor, Ingres, now
-owned by Computer Associates. The name Postgres thus plays off of its predecessor (as
-in "after Ingres"). Ingres, developed from 1977 to 1985, had been an exercise in
-creating a database system according to classic RDBMS theory. Postgres,
-developed between 1986-1994, was a project meant to break new ground in database
-concepts such as exploration of "object relational" technologies.</p>
-<p>Stonebraker and his graduate students actively developed Postgres for
-eight years. During that time, Postgres introduced rules, procedures, time
-travel, extensible types with indices and object-relational concepts. Postgres
-was later commercialized to become Illustra which was later bought by Informix
-and integrated into its Universal Server. Informix was purchased by IBM in 2001
-for <a href="http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2428/IDG010424informix/">one billion
-dollars</a>.</p>
-<p>In 1995, two Ph.D. students from Stonebraker's lab, Andrew Yu and Jolly
-Chen, replaced Postgres' POSTQUEL query language with an extended subset of
-SQL. They renamed the system to Postgres95.</p>
-<p>In 1996, Postgres95 departed from academia and started a new life in the
-open source world when a group of dedicated developers outside of Berkeley saw
-the promise of the system, and devoted themselves to its continued
-development. Contributing enormous amounts of time, skill, labor, and technical
-expertise, this global development group radically transformed Postgres. Over
-the next eight years, they brought consistency and uniformity to the code base,
-created detailed regression tests for quality assurance, set up mailing lists
-for bug reports, fixed innumerable bugs, added incredible new features, and
-rounded out the system by filling various gaps such as documentation for
-developers and users.</p>
-<p>The fruition of their labor was a new database that garnered a
-reputation for rock solid stability. With the start of its new life in the open
-source world, with many new features and enhancements, the database system took
-its current name: PostgreSQL. ("Postgres" is still used as an easy-to-pronounce
-nick-name.)</p>
-<p>PostgreSQL began at version 6.0, giving credit to its many years of prior
-development. With the help of hundreds of developers from around the world,
-the system was changed and improved in almost every area. Over the next four years
-(versions 6.0 - 7.0), major improvements and new features were made such as:
-</p>
-<div class="itemizedlist"><ul><li><p><tt class="prompt">Multiversion Concurrency Control (MVCC).</tt>
- Table-level locking was replaced with a sophisticated multiversion concurrency
- control system, which allows readers to continue reading consistent data
- during writer activity and enables online (hot) backups while the database is
- running.</p></li><li><p><tt class="prompt">Important SQL features.</tt> Many SQL enhancements
- were made including subselects, defaults, constraints, primary keys, foreign
- keys, quoted identifiers, literal string type coercion, type casting, and
- binary and hexadecimal integer input among others.</p></li><li><p><tt class="prompt">Improved built-in types.</tt> New native types
- were added including a wide-range of date/time types and additional geometric
- types.</p></li><li><p><tt class="prompt">Speed.</tt> Major speed and performance increases
- in the order of 20-40% were made, and backend start-up time was decreased by
- 80%.</p></li></ul></div>
-
-<p>The four years following (versions 7.0 to 7.4) brought the Write-Ahead Log
-(WAL), SQL schemas, prepared queries, outer joins, complex queries, SQL92 join
-syntax, TOAST, IPv6 support, SQL-standard information schema, full-text
-indexing, auto-vacuum, Perl/Python/TCL procedural languages, improved SSL
-support, an optimizer overhaul, database statistics information, added security,
-table functions, and logging enhancements and significant speed improvements, among
-other things. A small measure of PostgreSQL's intensive development is reflected
-in its <a href="/docs/current/static/release.html">release notes</a>.
-</p><p>Today, PostgreSQL's user base is larger than ever and includes a sizeable
-group of large corporations who use it in demanding environments. Some of these
-companies such as Afilias and Fujitsu have made <a href="http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/37163">significant
-contributions</a> to PostgreSQL's development. And, true to its roots, it
-continues to improve in both sophistication and performance, now more than
-ever. Version 8.0 is PostgreSQL's long awaited debut into the enterprise
-database market, bringing features such as tablespaces, Java stored procedures,
-point in time recovery, and nested transactions (savepoints).
-With it came a long awaited feature --- a native Windows port.</p>
-<p>
-Many organizations, government agencies and companies use PostgreSQL.
-You will find installations in ADP, CISCO, NTT Data, NOAA, Research In
-Motion, The US Forestry Service and The American Chemical Society.
-Today, it's rare to find a large corporation or government agency which
-isn't using PostgreSQL in at least one department.
-</p><p>If there were ever a time for you to seriously consider using PostgreSQL
-to power your application or business, it would be now.
-</p>
-{%endblock%}
projects / pgweb.git / commitdiff