Welcome to PostgreSQL 8.1.

The new release includes performance improvements and advanced SQL
features which will support bigger data warehouses, higher-volume
transaction processing, and more complex distributed enterprise
software.

Major new features in this release include:

      Roles:
           PostgreSQL now supports database roles, which simplify the
           management of large numbers of users with complex
           overlapping database rights.

      IN/OUT Parameters:
           PostgreSQL functions now support IN, OUT and INOUT
           parameters, which substantially improves support of complex
           business logic for J2EE and .NET applications.

      Two-Phase Commit (2PC):
           Long in demand for WAN applications and heterogeneous data
           centers using PostgreSQL, this feature allows
           ACID-compliant transactions across widely separated
           servers.

Some Performance Enhancements found in this release include:

      Improved Multiprocessor (SMP) Performance:
           The buffer manager for 8.1 has been enhanced to scale almost
           linearly with the number of processors, leading to significant
           performance gains on 8-way, 16-way, dual-core, and multi-core
           CPU servers.

      Bitmap Scan:
           Indexes will be dynamically converted to bitmaps in memory when
           appropriate, giving up to twenty times faster index performance
           on complex queries against very large tables.

      Table Partitioning:
           The query planner is now able to avoid scanning whole sections
           of a large table using a technique known as Constraint
           Exclusion.

       Shared Row Locking:
           PostgreSQL's "better than row-level locking" now supports even
           higher levels of concurrency through the addition of shared
           row locks for foreign keys.

For a more complete listing of changes in this release, please see the
Release Notes visible at:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/release.html#RELEASE-8-1

databases/Makefile

@@ -313,6 +313,8 @@
     SUBDIR += postgresql74-server
     SUBDIR += postgresql80-client
     SUBDIR += postgresql80-server
+    SUBDIR += postgresql81-client
+    SUBDIR += postgresql81-server
     SUBDIR += postgresql_autodoc
     SUBDIR += puredb
     SUBDIR += pxtools