== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 8th 2004 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 8th 2004 ==

Even with the releases this week, we saw some very promising
contributions toward the 7.5 tree, and a lot of ground work being laid out
for features such as table spaces and point-in-time recovery. Still, the
focus was on releases, and there is news on both of them this week. Focusing
on 7.3.6 for just a minute, there were some problems in the packaging of the
release that were not worked out initially, which may result in improper man
page installations. Nothing else in the package was effected, but if you
need the proper man pages you might want grab the code again from ftp. The
fixed package will also be available soon on our sourceforge page. Meanwhile,
7.4.2 has been bundled up and is being double and triple checked as we speak,
so expect the official announcement shortly.

Back in the 7.5 branch of the world, we have a couple of commits to
mention. The optimizer function is_distinct_query() was improved to recognize
that GROUP BY forces a subquery's output to be distinct when all GROUP BY
column appear in the output. We also saw the addition of internal functions
SPI_getargtypeid, SPI_getargcount, and SPI_is_cursor_plan into the backend
for use by PL/Java (and possibly other PL's). Inputing an empty string into
oid, float4, and float8 types will now emit a warning in an effort to begin
deprecation of the feature; it will produce an error starting in 7.6. The
built in date_trunc function was given support for 'week' as one of it's
inputs. The pg_dump program was given some modifications to help make more
consistent dump output from database that are logically the same but have
different DDL histories. Lastly, the dblink contrib module also saw a bit of
work, with newer versions of dblink, dblink_exec, dblink_open, dblink_close,
and dblink_fetch added in. Also some documentation for previously deprecated,
now removed, functions was eliminated.

Speaking of contrib modules, John Gray submitted a very overhauled
version of the XPath integration code found in contrib. New features include
XPath set-returning functions allowing multiple results from several XPath
queries to be used as a virtual table, and using libxslt to support XSLT
transformations. Because of the amount of changes, some of which introduce
backwards incompatibilities, and potential security ramifications of the new
code, it has been placed in contrib under the xml2 directory. Thanks again to
John and the folks at Torchbox who helped support John's work.

On the documentation front, several FAQ's were updated to coincide with
the new releases, and there was also increased documentation on RULES, the
trim function, the virtual_host parameter, and many cross-references were
added between various sections that touch on similar topics.

Some news on another important front was passed on this week regarding
Jan Wieck's SLONY-I replication project.He now has configuration working on
Red Hat Linux and FreeBsd 4.9 and the engine is capable of hot install, hot
subscribe with catch up and cascaded slaves. The full posting with project
URL and some information on what is needed next is available at
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2004-03/msg00146.php.

And finally this week, I want to make special mention of an oversight
in last week's weekly news. The guys working on the DBD::Pg project released
version 1.32, which should now be available via CPAN. This version fixes a
whole slew of issues; see the original announcement for more information at
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-interfaces/2004-02/msg00079.php. Good
work guys!



== PostgreSQL Product News ==

PgSqlCLient .net Data Provider 1.0 Beta 6 released
http://pgsqlclient.sourceforge.net/?q=node/view/18



== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Library of Congress plans new film, video portal
http://gcn.com/23_5/tech-report/25133-1.html

PostgreSQL Ported to GameCube, Linux Progressing
http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/03/07/0519240.shtml

Study: Open-source databases going mainstream
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5171543.html

>From code war to Cold War
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3537165.stm

Creative Commons Search, useful to me (blog)
http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2004/03/02/creative-commons-search-useful-to-me/



== Upcoming Events ==

eGovOs: Washington, DC. USA: March 15-17
Bruce Momjian will give a brief talk
http://www.egovos.org/Conferences/



== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 8th 2004 ==
Don't forget to read Elein Mustain's Weekly Summary of the PostgreSQL
General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org
http://advocacy.postgresql.org