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From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: POSTGRES
Message-ID: <1989Dec21.170645.29158@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 89 17:06:45 GMT
References: <331@ssc.UUCP>
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In article <331@ssc.UUCP> fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes:
#>I hate to seem uninformed but what is POSTGRES?
#>-- 
#>Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155  (206)FOR-UNIX

I don't work on POSTGRES and hopefully someone who does will
respond to these questions, but until then, I'll post a bit of
the way they describe it in the research summary published by
the EECS department here at Berkeley. PLEASE DON'T SEND ME
EMAIL ASKING ME QUESTIONS ABOUT POSTGRES. I post this information
to give you some idea of what POSTGRES is about; you'll have to
get further details from those who designed and built it.

"In 1985, the INGRES
project embarked on the design and implementation of a new
database management system called POSTGRES (for "after INGRES")
and a new application development environment called PICASSO to
provide support for these applications." The principal objectives
of POSTGRES (the PI is Prof. M. R. Stonebraker), which is
described as a "next-generation database management system," are:

"(1) Simplify crash recovery code and provide access to
out-of-date data by keeping old data in the database rather than
in a separate long-term audit trail;

(2) Construct an implementation for the multiple, closely coupled
processors that will be prevalent on next-generation
workstations;

(3) Provide efficient support for versions;

(4) Provide support for extensible data types and extendable
indices;

(5) Support procedures as 'first-class' objects;

(6) Support triggers and inference."

More detailed project descriptions discuss a query optimizer,
which takes advantage of rapid increases in available main memory
and of parallel, shared-memory, multiprocessor computers; rule
management

Steve Goldfield
Industrial Liaison Program
College of Engineering, UC Berkeley