EnterpriseDB, designer of enterprise PostgreSQL and Oracle compatibility products and services, has released the latest version of its Advanced Server platform, Postgres Plus 9.1. The latest update offers improvements in read performance and write scalability, as well as greater flexibility and reliability due to its transaction-level control over synchronous replication, an industry first. Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1 is also more secure than previous versions due to the addition of Virtual Private Database, and has expanded its Oracle-compatible features.
Database management is an industry that faces many challenges, not the least of which are "cost and skill set," says Karen Padir, executive vice president of products and engineering at EnterpriseDB. Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1, Padir explains, gives users "an open-source core database with Oracle-compatible features and enterprise-class security and performance features at a fraction of the cost of Oracle or other proprietary databases."
Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1 is a pioneering technology, as it becomes the first database to enable transaction-level control over synchronous replication. This greater flexibility and control allows a user "to specify a particular transaction to be replicated or not," states Padir. As a result, it provides greater data security and replication performance. The 9.1 release also allows users to maximize performance though the implementation of "unlogged" tables in which no write-ahead logging (WAL) records are stored.
One of EnterpriseDB's goals in releasing Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1 was to make it "run really well in a vertical scale," according to Padir. "As we get to more and more cores and you're running this database on higher-performing machines, how can we have it scale linearly?" The answers lie in Postgres Plus's new lock manager code, lock avoidance techniques, and shortened critical sections, which allow Postgres Plus 9.1 to more efficiently allocate system resources, making it more scalable than ever before.
In addition to enhanced write scalability, Postgres Plus 9.1 also improves read management performance, allowing databases to efficiently process greater numbers of queries. Enhanced security and greater Oracle compatibility has also come to fruition with the implementation of Virtual Private Database. This technology, states Padir, provides "row-level security."
EnterpriseDB seeks to capitalize on the momentum and energy behind Postgres by making the technology more user-friendly and leveraging its open source license to keep costs down. As Padir explains, "Postgres has always appealed to a very sophisticated user," but the challenge is to "bring it down to more novice users that don't have to know all of the internals of how databases work." This, the company contends, along with the Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1's open source nature, provides users with a viable database platform at an affordable price.
For more information, go to www.enterprisedb.com/.