July 8, 1996: The Launch of PostgreSQL and Its Origins

Today, PostgreSQL is one of the world’s most widely used database management systems. PostgreSQL itself, along with its forks and compatible databases, powers roughly a third of the Internet. According to many developer surveys, it is also the database of choice for starting new projects.

But PostgreSQL did not begin in 1996. Its roots go back much further.

Like many of the most influential software projects of the 20th century, PostgreSQL was born at a university. In 1986, Professor Michael Stonebraker launched the POSTGRES research project at the University of California, Berkeley. The original design proposed a new generation of relational database systems that would preserve the strengths of the relational model while making it extensible enough to handle complex data types.

Over the next decade, several versions of POSTGRES were released with different storage engines and query executors. Although it was still a research project, its source code was effectively open, allowing POSTGRES to be used in a variety of real-world applications, including financial analytics, asteroid tracking, medical systems, and geographic information systems.

In 1994, SQL support was added to the project. The following year, this version was released under a new name—Postgres95—and presented as the descendant of the original POSTGRES.

In 1996, Postgres95 got a new name. Not Postgres96, as you might expect, but PostgreSQL.

On July 8, 1996, Marc Fournier, one of the key community organizers behind PostgreSQL, set up the first public control version system (CVS) for collaborative PostgreSQL development. That same day, he sent a message to the mailing list announcing the start of community-driven development.

Date: Mon, 08 Jul 1996 22:12:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: “Marc G. Fournier” <[email protected]>
Subject: [PG95]: Developers interested in improving PG95?

Personally, I think that both Jolly and Andrew have done a fantastic job of bringing it to its currently level, but they, like most of the ppl on this list, have full time jobs that sap alot of their time…

…so, unless someone out there has already done this, and unless Jolly/Andrew tell me I can’t (guys?)…I’m going to go ahead with what I wanted to do a few months ago…setup a development site similar to what is done with FreeBSD…

First stage will be to get a cvs archive of postgres 1.01 online tonight, with a sup server so that everyone has access to the source code.

If anyone has any patches they wish to submit based off of 1.01, please send them to [email protected] and I’ll commit those in as soon as cvs is up and running.

Unless there are any disagreements with this (or someone else has done this that I missed in mail…sorry if I did…)…I’ll send out further data on this as soon as its up and running…

One interesting detail is that Fournier refers to version 1.01 in this email. The developers actually released PostgreSQL versions 1.0 through 1.09. Later, however, they decided to continue the version numbering of the original academic POSTGRES project to emphasize continuity rather than present PostgreSQL as an entirely new database. As a result, version 6.0.0 followed 1.09, skipping directly to the numbering inherited from POSTGRES.

Sources

• The Design of POSTGRES — M. Stonebraker et al., UC Berkeley (1985)
• A Brief History of PostgreSQL — PostgreSQL Docs
• An Illustrated History of PostgreSQL — PgConf.EU 2017 (slides)
• PostgreSQL Release History