== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 19 2010 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 19 2010 ==

PostgreSQL 9.0.2, 8.4.6, 8.3.13, 8.2.19, 8.1.23 updates released. If
you are using Hot or Warm Standby, or PITR, you should upgrade as soon
as possible. The 8.1 series is now end-of-life, and users are
encouraged to upgrade to a newer major version as soon as possible.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/release.html

Submit a proposal for PGCon 2011.
http://lists.pgcon.org/pipermail/pgcon-announce/2010-December/000065.html

The Call for Papers for the fourth annual Prague PostgreSQL
Developers' Day is open. It will be held February 10, 2011 at Charles
University in Prague.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-announce/2010-12/msg00009.php

PostgreSQL Conference East 2011: NYC March 22nd - 25th
http://www.postgresqlconference.org

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

DBD::Pg 2.17.2, a Perl driver for PostgreSQL, released.
http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Pg/

devart dotConnect for PostgreSQL, an ADO.NET provider, released.
http://www.devart.com/dotconnect/postgresql/

MicroOLAP has release PaGoDump and PaGoRestore with PostgreSQL 9.0
support.
http://microolap.com/products/database/pagodump/download/

PGSI 1.5.0, a tool which reports overall impact of PostgreSQL queries
on a server, released:
http://bucardo.org/wiki/Pgsi

phpPgAdmin 5.0.1, a web-based administrative tool for PostgreSQL, released.
http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/

Printed versions of the PostgreSQL 9.0.1 manual are available.
http://www.network-theory.co.uk/postgresql9/

Data Visualization 0.9.2, which supports PostgreSQL, released.
http://sites.google.com/site/datavisualizationapplication/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for December ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-12/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The PostgreSQLFr Call for Projects has begun. Projects must target
PostgreSQL and the French-speaking community. Mail appel-projets-2010
AT postgresql DOT fr.
http://www.postgresql.fr/appel_a_projets_2010:call_for_projects

FOSDEM is one of the biggest Free and Open Source event held annually
in Brussels, Belgium, on February 5-6, 2011, and attended by around
4000 people. Send in your proposal to fosdem AT postgresql DOT eu.
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/749-PostgreSQLFOSDEM-2011-Call-for-talks.html

PGDay is scheduled at this year's Southern California Linux Exposition
(SCALE) held in the LAX Hilton Hotel in the city of Los Angeles,
California, on Friday February 25th, 2011. Post your talk submission
to pgday-submissions AT googlegroups DOT com.

PGCon will be May 19-20, 2011 at the University of Ottawa, preceded by
two days of tutorials on May 17-18. The Call for Papers is open!
http://www.pgcon.org/2011/

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter

Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
Please send English language ones to david(at)fetter(dot)org, German language
to pwn(at)pgug(dot)de, Italian language to pwn(at)itpug(dot)org(dot) Spanish language
to pwn(at)arpug(dot)com(dot)ar(dot)

== Reviews ==

== Applied Patches ==

Robert Haas pushed:

- Generalize concept of temporary relations to "relation persistence".
This commit replaces pg_class.relistemp with
pg_class.relpersistence; and also modifies the RangeVar node type to
carry relpersistence rather than istemp. It also removes removes
rd_istemp from RelationData and instead performs the correct
computation based on relpersistence. For clarity, we add three new
macros: RelationNeedsWAL(), RelationUsesLocalBuffers(), and
RelationUsesTempNamespace(), so that we can clarify the purpose of
each check that previous depended on rd_istemp. This is intended as
infrastructure for the upcoming unlogged tables patch, as well as
for future possible work on global temporary tables.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=5f7b58fad8f45c69bb67944779dce67e2f481995

- Document replacement of pg_class.relistemp with relpersistence.
Noted by Tom Lane.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=d26849ee26e46a689fb7c228f98e10fb46c1b2a8

- Allow plugins to suppress inlining and hook function
entry/exit/abort. This is intended as infrastructure to allow an
eventual SE-Linux plugin to support trusted procedures. KaiGai
Kohei.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=d368e1a2a7afad5a0fc711a2ab70a83c36fa57af

- Improved tab completion for views with triggers. Allow INSERT INTO,
UPDATE, and DELETE FROM to be completed with either the name of a
table (as before) or the name of a view with an appropriate INSTEAD
OF rule. Along the way, allow CREATE TRIGGER to be completed with
INSTEAD OF, as well as BEFORE and AFTER. David Fetter, reviewed by
Itagaki Takahiro
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=9878e295dc937c664367875dc001b7503df057f1

- Instrument checkpoint sync calls. Greg Smith, reviewed by Jeff
Janes.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=34c70c7ac4926495b7ab5ebfe748704313a4c822

- Document timestamptz a little better.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=afc8f47b5885716db716a2523c00f7465cb7f415

- Some copy editing of pg_read_binary_file() patch.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=290f1603b4208ca6a13776f744b586a958e98d74

- Waiting for complete startup is now a well-defined operation. Per
report from Fujii Masao, and subsequent discussion.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=df142bf82c84de5d0588ae7d52881501abb039ed

- Reset 'ps' display just once when resolving VXID conflicts. This
prevents the word "waiting" from briefly disappearing from the ps
status line when ResolveRecoveryConflictWithVirtualXIDs begins a new
iteration of the outer loop. Along the way, remove some useless
pgstat_report_waiting() calls; the startup process doesn't appear in
pg_stat_activity. Fujii Masao.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=611fed371227f430e71d0ff7fed037f1006b410d

- Try to save a kernel call in ResolveRecoveryConflictWithVirtualXIDs.
If there's no work to be done, just exit quickly, before initialization.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=8bd4b89e240cc6488f5e1523202cc2d27e9970c0

Tom Lane pushed:

- Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010o: DST law changes
in Fiji and Samoa. Historical corrections for Hong Kong.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f5e4f743e6a84884156ac86948277df4c672865c

- Update release notes for releases 9.0.2, 8.4.6, 8.3.13, 8.2.19, and
8.1.23.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f9224c8ec2f6dcfed6daa3f94597b870ec31c8d8

- Fix contrib/seg's GiST picksplit method. This patch replaces
Guttman's generalized split method with a simple
sort-by-center-points algorithm. Since the data is only
one-dimensional we don't really need the slow and none-too-stable
Guttman method. This is in part a bug fix, since seg has the same
size_alpha versus size_beta typo that was recently fixed in
contrib/cube. It seems prudent to apply this rather aggressive fix
only in HEAD, though. Back branches will just get the typo fix.
Alexander Korotkov, reviewed by Yeb Havinga.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=2a6ebe70fb2f7ec97a08dc07214fe2ca571d2780

- Fix up getopt() reset management so it works on recent mingw. The
mingw people don't appear to care about compatibility with non-GNU
versions of getopt, so force use of our own copy of getopt on
Windows. Also, ensure that we make use of optreset when using our
own copy. Per report from Andrew Dunstan. Back-patch to all
versions supported on Windows.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=5cdd65f3241ce10c66953228daef60df7b3966d1

- Remove optreset from src/port/ implementations of getopt and
getopt_long. We don't actually need optreset, because we can easily
fix the code to ensure that it's cleanly restartable after having
completed a scan over the argv array; which is the only case we need
to restart in. Getting rid of it avoids a class of interactions
with the system libraries and allows reversion of my change of
yesterday in postmaster.c and postgres.c. Back-patch to 8.4.
Before that the getopt code was a bit different anyway.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=61b53695fbbedb7fa9d394e71bf2affdc494e6b0

- Improve comments around startup_hacks() code. These comments were
not updated when we added the EXEC_BACKEND mechanism for Windows,
even though it rendered them inaccurate. Also unify two
unnecessarily-separate #ifdef __alpha code blocks.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=14ed7735f5bb5275da13891c4bb106c198d00b53

- Fix erroneous parsing of tsquery input "... & !(subexpression) |
..." After parsing a parenthesized subexpression, we must pop all
pending ANDs and NOTs off the stack, just like the case for a simple
operand. Per bug #5793. Also fix clones of this routine in
contrib/intarray and contrib/ltree, where input of types query_int
and ltxtquery had the same problem. Back-patch to all supported
versions.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=abc10262696e53773c9a8c9f279bbd464b464190

- Fix up handling of simple-form CASE with constant test expression.
eval_const_expressions() can replace CaseTestExprs with constants
when the surrounding CASE's test expression is a constant. This
confuses ruleutils.c's heuristic for deparsing simple-form CASEs,
leading to Assert failures or "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" errors.
I had put in a hack solution for that years ago (see commit
514ce7a331c5bea8e55b106d624e55732a002295 of 2006-10-01), but bug
#5794 from Peter Speck shows that that solution failed to cover all
cases. Fortunately, there's a much better way, which came to me
upon reflecting that Peter's "CASE TRUE WHEN" seemed pretty
redundant: we can "simplify" the simple-form CASE to the general
form of CASE, by simply omitting the constant test expression from
the rebuilt CASE construct. This is intuitively valid because there
is no need for the executor to evaluate the test expression at
runtime; it will never be referenced, because any CaseTestExprs that
would have referenced it are now replaced by constants. This won't
save a whole lot of cycles, since evaluating a Const is pretty
cheap, but a cycle saved is a cycle earned. In any case it beats
kluging ruleutils.c still further. So this patch improves
const-simplification and reverts the previous change in ruleutils.c.
Back-patch to all supported branches. The bug exists in 8.1 too,
but it's out of warranty.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=1b19e2c0baedb959650a27f25bd8537bd51d60b0

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- Translation updates for 9.0.2, 8.4.6, 8.3.13, 8.2.19, 8.1.23.

- Remove recently reintroduced CVS keyword
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=843a490f0aeccd5b61a30c37d2ffaae26d192329

Marc Fournier pushed:

- Tag 9.0.2, 8.4.6, 8.3.13, 8.2.19, 8.1.23.

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- Use "upgrade" in preference over "migrate" in pg_upgrade messages
and documentation. (Many were left over from the old pg_migrator
naming.)
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=16b5e08decc8207ae35589add387dce9b62669de

- Fix crash caused by NULL lookup when reporting IP address of failed
libpq connection, per report from Magnus. This happens only on GIT
master and only on Win32 because that is the platform where "" maps
to an IP address (localhost).
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=48da2b87e3f292534a26d3bacc2a13f7b62a34c8

- Properly print the IP number and "localhost" for failed localhost
connections when the server is down, on Win32.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=7e95337d586185c91f8af3fbcb0a6b380b4ba1c7

ITAGAKI Takahiro pushed:

- Add pg_read_binary_file() and whole-file-at-once versions of
pg_read_file(). One of the usages of the binary version is to read
files in a different encoding from the server encoding. Dimitri
Fontaine and Itagaki Takahiro.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=03db44eae3e065174d5e29888b8d98c39b1f520b

Alvaro Herrera pushed:

- Add some minor missing error checks.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=e359b8496d11befb63d4734874d997909c44ad83

- Simplify SignalSomeChildren(BACKEND_TYPE_ALL) to SignalChildren().
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=16ca75baebc56cebc6590691a0b474ee1922519c

- Fix inconsequential FILE pointer leakage.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=83c759ea0ea8ffe07c45e6fd2c489cebce2caad6

- Avoid clobbering errno, per comment from Tom Lane.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=cd1fefa973968ff4e3760a9593f70fe2da0def48

- Remove unnecessary definition for autovacuum in SignalSomeChildren.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=b68193c0c7a7cfbc4aead3910cd492be63c0cd8b

- set_ps_display when calling functions via fastpath. This improves
tag output by log_line_prefix.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=3026027ec3a795745e8e80fc9f204bebc97be58e

Andrew Dunstan pushed:

- Backpatch plperl GNUmakefile fixes to allow building release 8.2 on
Mingw with a modern perl.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f2f63551cdafcdec4169557122522229aa2530e8

- Work around make changes on modern Mingw to allow release 8.2
regression tests to work.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=43a7206fcca3f77503be481565b2a855b9044550

Magnus Hagander pushed:

- Make GUC variables for syslog and SSL always visible. Make the
variables visible (but not used) even when support is not compiled in.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=4754dbf4c3f857a496b0d29af74786c73d1a8401

- Document unavailable parameters in some configurations. Add a note
to user-facing parameters that can be removed completely (and not
just empty) by #ifdef's depending on build configuration.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=8b4d3d44dc7d64aaafd2269d3da8d2873137c691

- Support for collecting crash dumps on Windows. Add support for
collecting "minidump" style crash dumps on Windows, by setting up an
exception handling filter. Crash dumps will be generated in
PGDATA/crashdumps if the directory is created (the existance of the
directory is used as on/off switch for the generation of the dumps).
Craig Ringer and Magnus Hagander.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=dcb09b595f88a3bca6097a6acc17bf2ec935d55f

- Remove thread dumping constant that requires newer Platform SDK.
Since we're not multithreaded it only provides marginally useful
information, and it does require a newer version of the Platform SDK
than we target. We may want to reconsider this in the future along
with a fix for MinGW.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=d382828f6ed1edc0f123934d53c52065ecc425c9

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Gurjeet Singh sent in a patch with an improved syntax for adding a
primary key using an existing index.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of the patch to rewrite
how GiST inserts work.

Shigeru HANADA sent in two more revisions of the core functionality
for FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, part of the SQL/MED specification.

Marko (johto) Tiikkaja sent in a patch which allows advisory locks to
be released automatically when the transaction ends.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to export some functions from copy.c,
which will be useful for SQL/MED file operations, among other things.

Florian Pflug sent in another revision of the serializable lock
consistency patch. Heikki Linnakangas sent in some typo fixes for
same.

Florian Pflug sent in two revisions of a fix for the serializable lock
consistency patch.

Shigeru HANADA sent in another revision of the patch to implement a
file foreign data wrapper.

Shigeru HANADA sent in a patch to use the exported COPY functions in
the above file_fdw patch.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of the patch to fix the
GiST insert algorithm.

Alex Hunsaker sent in two revisions of a patch to fix an issue with
PL/PerlU's treatment of utf8.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to add pg_read_binary_file().

Dimitri Fontaine sent in three more revisions of the patch to add
extensions.

Magnus Hagander sent in a patch to allow libpq to check its version.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to fix an issue with localtimestamp
inside certain queries.

Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of the patch to add
FOREACH...IN ARRAY to PL/pgsql.

Robert Haas sent in a patch to fix an issue with unlogged tables vs.
xlog.

Pavel Stehule sent in a patch to factor out some redundant code from
pl_exec.c.

Robert Haas sent in another revision of the patch to relax synchronous
commit behavior when no WAL is written.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to allow casting a table's row type
to the table's supertype if it is a typed table.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a WIP patch which would switch psql from
normal to expanded and vice versa depending on the width of the
terminal window it's in.

Tomas Vondra sent in another revision of the patch to keep a timestamp
of the last stats reset by database, table and function.