Among the many "headline" features scheduled for the upcoming PostgreSQL 8.0 release, such as the Windows version, there is a whole bunch of less glamourous additions which might not blow the PHB's mind, but make life that little bit easier for the humble DBA / developer. Some of these involve PostgreSQL's SERIAL type.
The latest version of phpPgAdmin - PostgreSQL's equivalent of phpMyAdmin - now includes support for the soon-to-be-released PostgreSQL 8.0. New features supported include tablespaces, named function arguments and enhanced ALTER / ADD column syntax. Other enhancements include a context-sensitive online help system and syntax highlighting for PL/SQL, PL/PgSQL, PL/PHP, PL/Ruby, PL/Java, PL/J, PL/Python and PL/Perl functions.
If you've ever needed a particular sequence of numbers in PostgreSQL, for example for a pivot table, the only way to generate these has been either to create a temporary sequence or to work with a temporary table generated by your application. Beginning with 8.0, PostgreSQL provides the built-in function generate_series(), a set-returning function which can generate any sequence of numbers.
Added in PostgreSQL 7.4, the information schema is a facility to provide a standardized description of PostgreSQL metadata: definitions of tables, views etc. The information schema is defined in the SQL standard and should remain stable between PostgreSQL versions (unlike the system catalogues, PostgreSQL's "data dictionary") and should also be compatible with other database systems offering the same feature.
The most visible new feature of PostgreSQL's upcoming 8.0 release is the native Windows version, the first time it has been ported specifically to the Microsoft platform. However, it is only available for the most recent Windows generation, for users of older Windows installation via the Cygwin emulation layer is the only option. The following table provides an overview of which installation options are available for which Windows versions.