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<sect1 id="history">
<productname>Postgres</productname> has undergone several major releases since
then. The first <quote>demoware</quote> system became operational
in 1987 and was shown at the 1988 <acronym>ACM-SIGMOD</acronym>
- Conference. We released Version 1, described in
- <xref linkend="STON90a">,
+ Conference. Version 1, described in
+ <xref linkend="STON90a">, was released
to a few external users in June 1989. In response to a
critique of the first rule system
(<xref linkend="STON89">),
released in June 1990 with the new rule system.
Version 3 appeared in 1991 and added support for multiple
storage managers, an improved query executor, and a
- rewritten rewrite rule system. For the most part,
+ rewritten rewrite rule system. For the most part, subsequent
releases until <productname>Postgres95</productname> (see below)
focused on portability and reliability.
</para>
obvious that maintenance of the prototype code and
support was taking up large amounts of time that should
have been devoted to database research. In an effort
- to reduce this support burden, the project officially
+ to reduce this support burden, the Berkeley
+ <productname>Postgres</productname> project officially
ended with Version 4.2.
</para>
</sect2>
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<preface id="preface">
processing applications.
The relational model successfully replaced previous
models in part because of its <quote>Spartan simplicity</quote>.
- However, as mentioned, this simplicity often makes the
+ However, this simplicity makes the
implementation of certain applications very difficult.
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> offers substantial additional
power by incorporating the following additional
category of databases referred to as
<firstterm>object-relational</firstterm>. Note that this is distinct
from those referred to as <firstterm>object-oriented</firstterm>,
- which in general are not as well suited to supporting the
+ which in general are not as well suited to supporting
traditional relational database languages.
So, although <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> has some
object-oriented features, it is firmly in the relational database
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<sect1 id="notation">
Anything in braces
(<literal>{</literal> and <literal>}</literal>) and containing vertical bars
(<literal>|</literal>)
- indicates that you must choose one.
+ indicates that you must choose one alternative.
</para>
<para>