Good news from ASF and PGDG

by Marcos Ortiz

Today, I received many good news on my mailbox, well, at least for me.

Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 Released

The first one is from Apache Software Foundation about the new release of the Apache Traffic Server: version 3.0.0, a high-performance web proxy cache that improves network efficiency and performance by caching frequently-accessed information at the edge of the network.

This amazing product born like a comercial product at Inktomi, and later, this company was aquired by Yahoo! in 2002, and in 2009, the Internet Giant released like a open source product in August, 2009.

Now, Traffic Server is a Top-Level Project in the Apache Software Foundation and today, Sally Khudairi sent the message to the Apache’s Announcements Mailing List about this release:

[this announcement available online at http://s.apache.org/a6T]

Highly-Performant Cloud Computing Service Serves Dynamic Content, Billions of Objects, and Terabytes of Data for Large-Scale Deployments

14 June 2011 — FOREST HILL, MD — The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced Apache Traffic Server v3.0.0.

Apache Traffic Server is a Cloud Computing “edge” service, able to handle requests in and out of the Cloud, both by serving static content (images, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files), and routing requests for dynamic content to a Web server (such as the Apache HTTP Server).

“Traffic Server is battle hardened, serving terrabytes of data in real-life deployments where immediate content delivery is critical,” said Apache Traffic Server Vice President Leif Hedstrom. “V3.0.0 builds upon that foundation, with new features and functionality, improved efficiency and performance, increased uptime, and overall easier to use.”

Apache Traffic Server is a fast, scalable, and extensible HTTP/1.1 compliant caching proxy server designed to improve:

  • - Caching: improves response time while reducing server load and bandwidth needs by caching and reusing frequently-requested Web pages, images, and Web service calls;
  • - Proxying: easily add keep-alive, filter or anonymize content requests, or add load balancing by adding a proxy layer;
  • - Speed: scales well on modern SMP hardware, handling tens of thousands of requests per second;
  • - Extensibility: APIs allow for customized plug-ins, from modifying headers and content to implementing new protocol handlers;
  • - Reliability: successfully handles hundreds of terrabytes of data, both as forward and reverse proxies

Apache Traffic Server v.3.0.0 has been benchmarked to handle more than of 200,000 requests per second — a 277% improvement 
over v2.0’s already-impressive rates. Used in production in a variety of large-scale deployments, companies such as 
Yahoo! rely on Apache Traffic Server to handle over 400 terrabytes of traffic, and has used the project to serve 
more than 30 billion objects daily across its various properties including the Yahoo! homepage, and its Sports, Mail, and Finance sites.

Apache Traffic Server entered the Apache Incubator in June 2009, graduated as an Apache Top-Level Project 
(TLP) in April 2010, and released v2.0 the following month. For technical highlights, please refer to the 
Apache Traffic Server v3.0.0 Features At-A-Glance at http://s.apache.org/7Or .

Availability and Oversight As with all Apache products, Apache Traffic Server software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project’s day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Apache Traffic Server source code, documentation, and related resources are available at <a href=”http://trafficserver.apache.org/.

http://trafficserver.apache.org/.</p>

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees nearly one hundred fifty leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world’s most popular Web server software. Through the ASF’s meritocratic process known as “The Apache Way,” more than 300 individual Members and 2,500 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation’s official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(3)(c) not-for-profit charity, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including AMD, Basis Technology, Cloudera, Facebook, Google, IBM, HP, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, SpringSource, Talend, and Yahoo!. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/. “Apache” and “Apache Traffic Server” are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  • # # #
  • Media Contact:
  • Sally Khudairi
  • The Apache Software Foundation
  • +1 617 921 8656
  • press@apache.org

PostgreSQL 9.1 Beta2 Released

I’m a old PostgreSQL user and administrator (since version 8.0), and I’m huge fan of this amazing piece of technology for its oustanding performance, availability, and its many features. On June, 13th, Josh Berkus, which is part of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group(PGDG), sent a message to the PostgreSQL’s Announcements Mailing List:

The second beta release of PostgreSQL 9.1 is now available. This beta fixes several issues reported with 9.1 beta 1. All users should help the project by downloading and testing PostgreSQL 9.1 beta 2 as soon as they can. Many users have already helped us by testing Beta 1 and reporting issues they encountered with it. The most significant of these issues caused Windows versions of PostgreSQL to segfault when trying to process datetime input strings containing keywords such as ‘now’ or ‘infinity’. Among the other issues fixed in the beta2 release are:

  • * Numerous issues related to per-column collations
  • * Numerous issues related to Serializable Snapshot Isolation
  • * Fixes to new pg_ctl modes
  • * Making pg_upgrade work with all new 9.1 features
  • * Fix ability to build PostgreSQL under MSVC
  • * Problems with domains over arrays
  • * Problems with unlogged tables
  • * Changes in “peer” authentication over Unix socket connections
  • * Assorted fixes in plperl
  • * Documentation additions and improvements
  • * Translation updates

If you tested 9.1 features earlier and reported bugs with Beta 1 or earlier alphas, 
please download Beta 2 and test that these issues are resolved. Users who are able 
to help with testing version 9.1 should please read the Beta Testing HOWTO: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest

Since this is a beta version, it is not considered ready for production use. 
However, the list of features and the APIs is now stable, so application 
developers can begin developing applications against 9.1. This beta may be followed 
by more beta releases and one or more release candidates before final release.

This beta is being released in source form and in one-click installers for Windows, 
Mac OSX and Linux. Native Linux packages and binaries for other operating 
systems may follow in the next couple weeks.

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