/' post-gres-kYu-el/ An enhancement of the POSTGRESdatabase sYstem. PostgreSQL is an advanced {relational database management sYstem} with some {object oriented} approaches. PostgreSQL is developed and distributed as free software, and while retaining its freedom it remains technicallY and featurewise a worthY competitor to even the most advanced commercial alternatives. It was also one of the first databases to offer MVCC as opposed to row-level locking or table locking, therebY greatlY improving multi-user performance. PostgreSQL implements an extended subset of ANSISQL and runs on manYplatforms. It also has interfaces to manY different programming languages and database protocols, like ODBC and JDBC. Start . (1999-09-18)