[HACKERS] Another try at the press release

Sorry, had to take my shot at it... :)
This is based on David's last posting.  I just reworded a lot of it,
added a few things I thought should be in there, and added a paragraph
about where PostgreSQL is headed.  Feel free to use whatever you like
from here, or ignore it altogether. :)

- -Brandon :)
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TORONTO, Ontario.  (June 8, 1997) -- The PostgreSQL Development Team
is pleased to announce the release of PostgreSQL version 6.1.
PostgreSQL is a client/server Object-Relational DataBase Management
System (ORDBMS), and is available at no charge.

Originating as a research project to explore object-orientation and
extensibility concepts in relational databases, the Postgres project
lasted for 8 years at the University of California, Berkeley.  The
project was officially terminated in 1992, but in late 1995, two
students at UCB, working with the last official release of Postgres,
trimmed the system down and cleaned it up, releasing it as Postgres95.
Renamed PostgreSQL, both to remove the date reference and to emphasize
the system's support for the SQL92 standard query language, it is now
being maintained by a talented team of volunteers.  The result is an
RDBMS that offers many of the most important features offered by major
commercial systems, most of which carry multi-thousand dollar price
tags.

Because of its unique object-oriented features, extensibility, and
source code accessibility, PostgreSQL has become quite popular in
the scientific community.  It has also gained fairly wide use as a
database server for Web-based applications (a number of web tools now
offer PostgreSQL interfaces).  With the release of version 6.0,
PostgreSQL offered increased reliability and better support of the
ANSI/ISO SQL92 standard.  Version 6.1 adds major improvements in
execution speed, reliability and platform support.

While PostgreSQL is not yet fully ANSI-compliant, it does support
several features not found in ANSI SQL, such as inheritance.  It also
supports declarative queries in SQL, query optimization, concurrency
control, transactions, multi-user support and a number of security
features.  Extensibility features include user defined operators,
types, functions and access methods.  Application programmer
interfaces (APIs) exist for C, C++, Java, Perl4, Perl5, Python, SQL
and Tcl.  ODBC and JDBC drivers are available from commercial sources
and free versions are under development.  The system supports at least
15 different Unix platforms, including Linux, Solaris, Digital Unix,
and BSD variants.

The future also looks bright for PostgreSQL as it continues its
transition from research system to commercially-viable production
database system.  While some of the more esoteric features that
Postgres supported as a research system are being replaced with many
of the same features found in modern commercial systems, PostgreSQL
will continue to offer its unique, extensible, object-oriented
architecture.

PostgreSQL should be a serious consideration of anyone requiring a
database server for their Unix system, whether for scientific data
storage and analysis, administrative tasks, web-based applications, or
any custom database application.  A feature list, the software and
additional information may be found on the world wide web at
http://www.postgresql.org/.

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