With significant new functionality and performance enhancements, this
release represents a major leap forward for PostgreSQL. This was made
possible by a growing community that has dramatically accelerated the
pace of development. This release adds the following major features:
* Full text search is integrated into the core database system
* Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an
XML data type
* Enumerated data types (ENUM)
* Arrays of composite types
* Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) data type
* Add control over whether NULLs sort first or last
* Updatable cursors
* Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function
basis
* User-defined types can now have type modifiers
* Automatically re-plan cached queries when table definitions change
or statistics are updated
* Numerous improvements in logging and statistics collection
* Support Security Service Provider Interface (SSPI) for
authentication on Windows
* Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes, and other
autovacuum improvements
* Allow the whole PostgreSQL distribution to be compiled with
Microsoft Visual C++
