PostgreSQL 7.4 Features Interest Zawodny

Jeremy Zawodny's blog: PostgreSQL 7.4 Release Thoughts

Very interesting feature set on the new PostgreSQL 7.4 release. That Jeremy likes what he sees is even more interesting. The right tool for the right job and all that is applicable, but the wonderful thing about free databases is the entry cost is so low. I like the improved text search features and full support for IPv6 is fascinating.
I'm intrigued by the Opteron optimizations which must have Intel and Microsoft a little concerned, Microsoft because they are slow to sell a 64 bit aware OS (last I read 2H 2004) and Intel because they put so much effort into the Itanium:
Choice is king in the promised land of 64-bit computing

Don't forget that Opteron is everything Itanium is not. You can run 32-bit or 64-bit code at speed, there is no need to do massive recompiles for EPIC and the price is as low as it gets for this class of chip. Itanium has enjoyed seven years of marketing and three years of sales. Opteron just went up for grabs this year.

The Apache performance looks very nice on the Opteron:
See Apache 64 & 32 bit benchmarks on the Quad Opteron

64 bit Apache is about 9.5% faster than it's identical (As far as I could see) configured 32 bit Apache. That is not bad at all, considering that Apache is very memory intensive.