Re: Small Release Notes Comment

Gregory Stark wrote:
>
> I think the change to the hash functions needs to be called out in the release
> notes.
>
> If anyone stored any results of hashintN, hashfloat8, etc in their database or
> outside the database those results will have changed. It's fairly unlikely but
> there could be someone out there doing that.
>
> No intervention is required for normal expression indexes using those
> functions or hash indexes which will be rebuilt during a database upgrade
> anyways. I don't think hash_any itself changed so this wouldn't affect
> hashtext or any hash function which was already using hash_any.

Agreed. Added to the Migration section of the 8.3 release notes:

<listitem>
<para>
Internal hashing functions are now more uniformly-distributed (Tom)
</para>

<para>
If application code was calling and storing hash values using
internal <productname>PostgreSQL</> hashing functions, the hash
values must be regenerated.
</para>
</listitem>

I assume people will realize this does _not_ affect md5(), or should I
add a mention of that too.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://postgres.enterprisedb.com

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