== PostgreSQL Weekly News - January 02 2011 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - January 02 2011 ==

PostgreSQL 9.1alpha3 released! Get it here:
http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/release-9-1-alpha.html
Here's how to test it:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

check_postgres 2.15.2, a Nagios plugin for monitoring PostgreSQL, released.
http://bucardo.org/check_postgres/

tail_n_mail 1.17.4, a a Postgres log watcher program, released.
http://bucardo.org/wiki/Tail_n_mail

== PostgreSQL Local ==

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

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

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

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.

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

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 ==

Alvaro Herrera pushed:

- Break up long line, per Leslie S Satenstein.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=c7f0038d73d82ac64e19191ff94d59208534a4ea

- Avoid unnecessary public struct declaration in slru.h. Instead,
declare a public wrapper of the sole function using it for external
callers, so that they don't have to always pass a NULL argument.
Author: Kevin Grittner.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=55573990cac93d9f17a5c3ef19946415f8244903

Tom Lane pushed:

- Fix ill-chosen use of "private" as an argument and struct field
name. "private" is a keyword in C++, so this breaks the
poorly-enforced policy that header files should be include-able in
C++ code. Per report from Craig Ringer and some investigation with
cpluspluscheck.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=275411912d96c160547a219cb3223efa3737f90d

- Tweak cpluspluscheck to avoid directly #include'ing gram.h. gram.h
has ordering dependencies, which are satisfied when it's included
from gramparse.h, but might not be if it's pulled in directly.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=a977db6f1c3f399e5eaeb2514c72f38bdb8319e8

- Fix failure of executor/hashjoin.h to compile standalone. Noted
while experimenting with cpluspluscheck.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=37b61a69f30e0aefcb49a4ad64d6884cd96fe397

- Rearrange cpluspluscheck to check just one .h file at a time. This
is slower than the original coding but avoids the problem of
including files in an unpredictable order. Aside from being more
trustworthy, we can get rid of some exclusions that were formerly
made for what turn out to be ordering or re-inclusion problems. I
also modified it to include libpq's exported files in the check.
ecpg should be included as well, but I'm unclear on which ecpg .h
files are meant to be included by clients.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=8c61f81b3196fe9757901e90e3fc1b30283d3995

- Rename the C functions bitand(), bitor() to bit_and(), bit_or().
This is to avoid use of the C++ keywords "bitand" and "bitor" in the
header file utils/varbit.h. Note the functions' SQL-level names are
not changed, only their C-level names. In passing, make some
comments in varbit.c conform to project-standard layout.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=84fc571395f6986d912cda6c09826cb10caee7f0

- Remove -fno-operator-names switch from cpluspluscheck. No longer
needed now that bitand() and bitor() have been renamed.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f79136439f250f3eab6792870353a83ad993e71f

- Fix ill-advised placement of PGRES_COPY_BOTH enum value. It must be
added at the end of the ExecStatusType enum to avoid ABI breakage
compared to previous libpq versions. Noted by Magnus Hagander.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=81a530a65eb867a366828daa7a8757727214ecad

- Reclassify DEFAULT as a column_constraint item in the CREATE TABLE
syntax. This is how it was documented originally, but several years
ago somebody decided that DEFAULT isn't a type of constraint. Well,
the grammar thinks it is. The documentation was wrong in two ways:
it alleged that DEFAULT had to appear before any other kind of
constraint, and it alleged that you can't prefix a DEFAULT clause
with a "CONSTRAINT name" clause, when in fact you can. (The latter
behavior probably isn't SQL-standard, but our grammar has always
allowed it.) This patch responds to Fujii Masao's observation that
the ALTER TABLE documentation mistakenly implied that you couldn't
include DEFAULT in ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN; though this isn't the way
he proposed fixing it.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=31d2efaef507f280f4df895e1730a9ec8c31aa12

- Ooops, no DATE_IS_NOBEGIN/DATE_IS_NOEND in 8.3 or 8.2 ... I heard
the siren call of git cherry-pick, but should have lashed myself to
the mast.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=5f588805c882883fdb26f43ddb10ac5088517e72

- Avoid unexpected conversion overflow in planner for distant date
values. The "date" type supports a wider range of dates than int64
timestamps do. However, there is pre-int64-timestamp code in the
planner that assumes that all date values can be converted to
timestamp with impunity. Fortunately, what we really need out of
the conversion is always a double (float8) value; so even when the
date is out of timestamp's range it's possible to produce a sane
answer. All we need is a code path that doesn't try to force the
result into int64. Per trouble report from David Rericha.
Back-patch to all supported versions. Although this is surely a
corner case, there's not much point in advertising a date range
wider than timestamp's if we will choke on such values in unexpected
places.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f2ba1e994c4d17dc3d4b8d48d3933c96d09127e1

- Improve pg_upgrade's checks for required executables. Don't insist
on pg_dumpall and psql being present in the old cluster, since they
are not needed. Do insist on pg_resetxlog being present (in both
old and new), since we need it. Also check for pg_config, but only
in the new cluster. Remove the useless attempt to call pg_config in
the old cluster; we don't need to know the old value of --pkglibdir.
(In the case of a stripped-down migration installation there might
be nothing there to look at anyway, so any future change that might
reintroduce that need would have to be considered carefully.) Per my
attempts to build a minimal previous-version installation to support
pg_upgrade.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=88c803457a53d2f83168519f0651e6dc258003b5

- Support RIGHT and FULL OUTER JOIN in hash joins. This is
advantageous first because it allows us to hash the smaller table
regardless of the outer-join type, and second because hash join can
be more flexible than merge join in dealing with arbitrary join
quals in a FULL join. For merge join all the join quals have to be
mergejoinable, but hash join will work so long as there's at least
one hashjoinable qual --- the others can be any condition. (This is
true essentially because we don't keep per-inner-tuple match flags
in merge join, while hash join can do so.) To do this, we need a
has-it-been-matched flag for each tuple in the hashtable, not just
one for the current outer tuple. The key idea that makes this
practical is that we can store the match flag in the tuple's
infomask, since there are lots of bits there that are of no interest
for a MinimalTuple. So we aren't increasing the size of the
hashtable at all for the feature. To write this without turning the
hash code into even more of a pile of spaghetti than it already was,
I rewrote ExecHashJoin in a state-machine style, similar to
ExecMergeJoin. Other than that decision, it was pretty
straightforward.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f4e4b3274317d9ce30de7e7e5b04dece7c4e1791

- Move symbols for ExecMergeJoin's state machine into nodeMergejoin.c.
There's no reason for these values to be known anywhere else. After
doing this, executor/execdefs.h is vestigial and can be removed.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=7b464015577e6e7544a7aacf19ca55b271e740ac

- Invert and rename flag variable to improve code readability. No
change in functionality. Per discussion with Robert Haas.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=39c8dd66204ebfea9c1c6a7a9ca38b7419dbe8a1

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- Update SGML docs describing the contents of the postmaster.pid file,
per change to the file for pg_ctl.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=0a023a14fc8df6edf7734763da3870897b9c1dd8

- Mark unaccent functions as STABLE, rather than defaulting to
VOLATILE.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=c0577c92a84cc477a88fe6868c16c4a7e3348b11

- Fix code to properly pull out shared memory key now that the
postmaster.pid file is larger than in previous major versions. This
is a bug introduced when I added lines to the file recently.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=bada44a2a2ac6f33bd355c9acc0dfaa3d4890e54

- Another fix for larger postmaster.pid files.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=b4d3792daa6032016325ae50e80dfae12eb95820

- Doc wording improvement: taken -> accepted.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=0be88f8739813067207314b3f88424ee8568d206

- Include the first valid listen address in pg_ctl to improve server
start "wait" detection and add postmaster start time to help
determine if the postmaster is actually using the specified data
directory.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=30aeda439456d14e713a5693461bcd62035f1d9d

- In pg_upgrade, rename "CLUSTERNAME" to "CLUSTER_NAME".
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f82b3e58f8876c330927b0e6562936c184a7bc6f

- In pg_upgrade, remove use of whichCluster, and just pass old/new
cluster pointers, which simplifies the code. This was not possible
in 9.0 because everything was in a single nested struct, but is
possible now. Per suggestion from Tom Lane.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=6e6bee987ff4b6d650eec9f20fd477269d95e295

- Furter pg_upgrade optimizations to reduce function call argument
count.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=67c9e4442f2521ff2ad62aa4d409269ea684ac0a

- Stamp copyrights for year 2011.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=5d950e3b0c75d65dd09f8ca5f76cd429a0aabbdc

- Add #include <time.h> to pg_ctl.c to fix compiler warning.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=92a73d219052ab4d393ebe7b5362aa7d414156e7

Magnus Hagander pushed:

- Fix list of functions that are restricted to superusers. Move the
list of what's restricted to superusers into the table itself, so it
doesn't get missed again.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=06004319be74709ae8684260f0f130e86128a9ed

- Add REPLICATION privilege for ROLEs. This privilege is required to
do Streaming Replication, instead of superuser, making it possible
to set up a Streaming Replication slave that doesn't have write
permissions on the master. Superuser privileges do NOT override
this check, so in order to use the default superuser account for
replication it must be explicitly granted the REPLICATION
permissions. This is backwards incompatible change, in the interest
of higher default security.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=9b8aff8c192e2f313f90395d114c58a9ef84f97f

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- No release notes update, just advance the date.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=a5f96409fd748e519d4a061d678e4552e66f0019

- Remove tabs in SGML.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=17cb9e8c984746d3bbdf0d94367a0c5a6e2b6aee

- Allow casting a table's row type to the table's supertype if it's a
typed table. This is analogous to the existing facility that allows
casting a row type to a supertable's row type.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=6a208aa40438652e2f3129a63af5d08ae53d9398

- Implement remaining fields of information_schema.sequences view.
Add new function pg_sequence_parameters that returns a sequence's
start, minimum, maximum, increment, and cycle values, and use that
in the view. (bug #5662; design suggestion by Tom Lane) Also
slightly adjust the view's column order and permissions after review
of SQL standard.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=39b88432968a2f4c01c20948f12bf9c8e388474d

Robert Haas pushed:

- Support unlogged tables. The contents of an unlogged table aren't
WAL-logged; thus, they are not available on standby servers and are
truncated whenever the database system enters recovery. Indexes on
unlogged tables are also unlogged. Unlogged GiST indexes are not
currently supported.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=53dbc27c62d8e1b6c5253feba04a5094cb8fe046

- Bump XLOG_PAGE_MAGIC. The unlogged tables patch (commit
53dbc27c62d8e1b6c5253feba04a5094cb8fe046, 2010-12-29) should have
done this, since it changes the format of an XLOG_SMGR_CREATE
record.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=d2bc1c9907115f5773927febf823c8d7ae92155b

- Minor wordsmithing. As suggested by Tom Lane, in response to a
gripe from Leslie S Satenstein.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=6600d5e91c754789002ed794c18cb856c190f58f

- Fix pg_dump support for security labels on columns. Along the way,
correct an erroneous comment.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=d7acf6cc4a1ae53fcd5b4a8a702c43a267f33ba3

- Basic foreign table support. Foreign tables are a core component of
SQL/MED. This commit does not provide a working SQL/MED
infrastructure, because foreign tables cannot yet be queried.
Support for foreign table scans will need to be added in a future
patch. However, this patch creates the necessary system catalog
structure, syntax support, and support for ancillary operations such
as COMMENT and SECURITY LABEL. Shigeru Hanada, heavily revised by
Robert Haas.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=0d692a0dc9f0e532c67c577187fe5d7d323cb95b

- Fix typo. Noted by Magnus Hagander.
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=e657b55e661577cf664949bce78068e2922f594f

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Simon Riggs sent in a WIP patch to reduce the lock levels for ADD and
DROP COLUMN.

Robert Haas sent in another patch implementing core SQL/MED
functionality.

Magnus Hagander sent another revision of the patch to monitor recovery
conflict.

Robert Haas sent in two revisions of a patch to rationalize the error
reporting for unsupported operations on various types of database
object.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to change the canonical name of CTEs
to CTE rather than "WITH queries."

Teodor Sigaev sent in a patch which reworks btree_gist to have a new
API.

Jan Urbanski sent some Perl programs to generate error codes and
documentation for same from a single source.

Karl Lehenbauer sent in three revisions of a patch to add table
function support to PL/Tcl.

Joel Jacobson sent in three revisions of a patch to add a --split
option to pg_dump.

Mark Kirkwood sent in two revisions of a patch intended to fix some
infelicities in cmd_standby.

Robert Haas sent in another revision of the patch to future-proof
relkind tests.

Jan Urbanski sent in a patch which prevents PL/PythonU from removing a
function's arguments from its globals dict after calling it.

Dimitri Fontaine sent in a patch to implement extension upgrades and a
follow-on patch to fix some infelicities in it.

Kevin Grittner sent in a patch to make use the SLRU infrastructure in
SSI. SSI is how truly SERIALIZABLE isolation will be implemented.

Tatsuo Ishii sent in two more revisions of a patch to fix
pg_terminate_backend().

Jan Urbanski sent in another flock of patches to refactor PL/PythonU.

Hannu Valtonen sent in a patch to support negative index values when
fetching arrays.