This release really packs a punch for improved scalability/performance in large enterprises and further expands the breadth of Oracle applications that can be satisfied with a much less expensive but equally performant Postgres Plus Advanced Server.  Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.2 is now generally available and can be downloaded from the Advanced Server downloads page.

If you have used Advanced Server over the years, you may have noticed that it is shipping closer and closer to the community GA dates for PostgreSQL.  Customers have asked that we shorten this lag time and we have been working really hard to streamline and align our development of Advanced Server with the community as much as possible.  We don’t anticipate releasing at exactly the same time since we add our own features (some rolled back into the community) which require additional development and testing, the most obvious of which is Oracle compatibility, security, performance features, and programming features like packages.

Another reason for the lag from the community release is the additional development we do on our tools and the integration testing needed with the database server.  Speaking of tools, they are really beginning to pick up steam.  Large enterprises have liked our Oracle compatibility or simply Oracle-like features but are finding that our compliment of tools is really enabling them to optimize and expand their use of  Advanced Server for even greater savings.  Postgres Enterprise Manager and xDB Replication Server are cases in point.

Enterprise Manager 3.0 has really matured over the last year and incorporated the types of features needed by large enterprises to monitor, manage, and tune large scale deployments of databases easily from a professional console – the most recent additions include a web based client and Log Manager.  Gone are the days of cobbling together a multitude of tools, tips, and scripts from various sources, trying to stay up to date with them all, and hand cranking changes repeatedly.  You can download Postgres Enterprise Manager here.

And xDB Replication Server is really opening up options when it comes to replication and the many solutions it provides to common business issues like safeguarding data, enhancing failover/standby capabilities, optimizing online transaction processing, offloading reporting, backup/restore, and migrating systems, all at lower costs.  xDB 5.0 introduces multi-master replication complete with automatic conflict detection and resolution.  Large enterprises with geo-dispersed locations can now enter data simultaneously with better performance and continuous consolidation of their data for viewing and reporting.  xDB has been through the beta test wringer since early summer – expect to see it GA soon.

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