Procedural Languages in PostgreSQL 8.5: The One That Works!

While much of the PostgreSQL hacker world is abuzz over two-letter acronyms (HS, SR, VF), I will second Andrew's post and will generalize this to say, partially tooting my own horn, of course, that the next PostgreSQL release will be a great one for procedural languages. Behold:

• PL/pgSQL is installed by default.
• New DO statement allows ad hoc execution of PL code.
• PL/pgSQL finally got a sane parser.
• PL/Perl got a shot in the arm.
• PL/Python got saner data type handling, Unicode support, and Py3k support.
• Not directly related, but the coming PL/Proxy features are looking promising as well.
• (Meanwhile, language historians will be interested to know that PL/Tcl has received exactly zero feature or bug-fix commits since 8.4.)

This will be a great boost for PostgreSQL the development platform.