== PostgreSQL Weekly News - September 08 2013 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - September 08 2013 ==

The London PostgreSQL Users' Group will meet on 11 September 2013 to
discuss the new PostgreSQL 9.3.
http://www.postgresql.org/about/event/1615/

The fourth edition of the Argentinian PostgreSQL Day will be held on
November 14 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The CfP is open.
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PGDay_Argentina_2013

PGDay Cuba will be in November, 2013.
http://postgresql.uci.cu/

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

barman 1.2.3, a backup and recovery manager for PostgreSQL, now with
support for the upcoming PostgreSQL 9.3, released.
http://www.pgbarman.org/

PG Commander, a GUI made specifically for PostgreSQL on OSX, released.
http://appstore.com/mac/pgcommander

PostGIS 2.0.4, the industry standard geographic information
system for PostgreSQL, released.
http://postgis.net/2013/09/06/postgis-2-0-4

"PostgreSQL Replication", a book, released.
http://www.cybertec.at/media/buecher/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for September ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2013-09/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

Postgres Open 2013 will be in Chicago, IL, USA, September 16-18.
The list of talks has been posted on the site.
http://postgresopen.org/

Open Source Software for Business" (OSS4B) 2013 will be held in Prato,
Tuscany, Italy on September 19 and 20. Registration is open.
http://www.oss4b.it/

The PostgreSQL Conference China for 2013 will be held October 26-27,
2013 in Hangzhou. Chinese language information here:
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Pgconf_cn2013
Registration:
http://bbs.pgsqldb.com/client/bm.php

The Italian PGDay (PGDay.IT) will be held on October the 25th in
Prato, Tuscany, Italy, at Monash University Center.
To register to the event or get information about the accepted talks
and schedule please see the official web site: http://2013.pgday.it

pgconf.EU 2013 will be held on Oct 29-Nov 1, 2013 at the Conrad Hotel
in downtown Dublin, Ireland. Registration is open.
http://2013.pgconf.eu/

PGConf.DE 2013 will be held November 8th, 2013, at the Rhineland
Industrial Museum in Oberhausen. The CfP is open through September
15, 2013.
http://2013.pgconf.de/

== 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)

== Applied Patches ==

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- Translation updates
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/6a007fa1ebf1da54b09963be565c122b1b938126

Andrew Dunstan pushed:

- Fix relfrozenxid query in docs to include TOAST tables. The
original query ignored TOAST tables which could result in tables
needing a vacuum not being reported. Backpatch to all live
branches.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f002dc3d4d6600a4095daf83a9584f19d0bd5844

Tom Lane pushed:

- Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013d. DST law
changes in Israel, Morocco, Palestine, Paraguay. Historical
corrections for Macquarie Island.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/79daaa3e812c7600ef30ef3e6ba5e75cab18f212

- Docs: wording improvements in discussion of timestamp arithmetic. I
started out just to fix the broken markup in commit
1c2085766187031eaeaae7db4785b9e1d4241988, but got distracted by
copy-editing. I see Bruce already fixed the markup, but I'll commit
the wordsmithing anyway.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7489eb4d3b7fef2c2eaeb66e3bcb3fb74385b44d

- Don't fail for bad GUCs in CREATE FUNCTION with
check_function_bodies off. The previous coding attempted to
activate all the GUC settings specified in SET clauses, so that the
function validator could operate in the GUC environment expected by
the function body. However, this is problematic when restoring a
dump, since the SET clauses might refer to database objects that
don't exist yet. We already have the parameter
check_function_bodies that's meant to prevent forward references in
function definitions from breaking dumps, so let's change CREATE
FUNCTION to not install the SET values if check_function_bodies is
off. Authors of function validators were already advised not to
make any "context sensitive" checks when check_function_bodies is
off, if indeed they're checking anything at all in that mode. But
extend the documentation to point out the GUC issue in particular.
(Note that we still check the SET clauses to some extent; the
behavior with !check_function_bodies is now approximately equivalent
to what ALTER DATABASE/ROLE have been doing for awhile with
context-dependent GUCs.) This problem can be demonstrated in all
active branches, so back-patch all the way.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/546f7c2e38531469eb3cff62256fde8606330c67

- Allow aggregate functions to be VARIADIC. There's no inherent
reason why an aggregate function can't be variadic (even VARIADIC
ANY) if its transition function can handle the case. Indeed, this
patch to add the feature touches none of the planner or executor,
and little of the parser; the main missing stuff was DDL and pg_dump
support. It is true that variadic aggregates can create the same
sort of ambiguity about parameters versus ORDER BY keys that was
complained of when we (briefly) had both one- and two-argument forms
of string_agg(). However, the policy formed in response to that
discussion only said that we'd not create any built-in aggregates
with varying numbers of arguments, not that we shouldn't allow users
to do it. So the logical extension of that is we can allow users to
make variadic aggregates as long as we're wary about shipping any
such in core. In passing, this patch allows aggregate function
arguments to be named, to the extent of remembering the names in
pg_proc and dumping them in pg_dump. You can't yet call an
aggregate using named-parameter notation. That seems like a likely
future extension, but it'll take some work, and it's not what this
patch is really about. Likewise, there's still some work needed to
make window functions handle VARIADIC fully, but I left that for
another day. initdb forced because of new aggvariadic field in
Aggref parse nodes.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0d3f4406dfa00d848711fdb4af53be663ffc7d0f

- Update comments concerning PGC_S_TEST. This GUC context value was
once only used by ALTER DATABASE SET and ALTER USER SET. That's not
true anymore, though, so rewrite the comments to be a bit more
general. Patch in HEAD only, since this is just an internal
documentation issue.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0c66a223774dec62edb5281a47e72fe480a8f7aa

Heikki Linnakangas pushed:

- Fix typo in comment. Also line-wrap an over-wide line in a comment
that's ignored by pgindent.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/a93bdfc711399716328ce0811d600411b1314306

- Keep heavily-contended fields in XLogCtlInsert on different cache
lines. Performance testing shows that if the insertpos_lck spinlock
and the fields that it protects are on the same cache line with
other variables that are frequently accessed, the false sharing can
hurt performance a lot. Keep them apart by adding some padding.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/375d8526f2900d0c377f44532f6d09ee06531f67

- Make catalog cache hash tables resizeable. If the hash table
backing a catalog cache becomes too full (fillfactor > 2), enlarge
it. A new buckets array, double the size of the old, is allocated,
and all entries in the old hash are moved to the right bucket in the
new hash. This has two benefits. First, cache lookups don't get so
expensive when there are lots of entries in a cache, like if you
access hundreds of thousands of tables. Second, we can make the
(initial) sizes of the caches much smaller, which saves memory.
This patch dials down the initial sizes of the catcaches. The new
sizes are chosen so that a backend that only runs a few basic
queries still won't need to enlarge any of them.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/20cb18db4668b016748fbb5fcb1422bc3e0d52d1

Gregory Stark pushed:

- Fix thinko in worker_spi, count(*) returns a bigint. Thanks
RhodiumToad
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/cfa1cd711c2648e0beab50448c5a71ef91a3e1cb

Robert Haas pushed:

- docs: Clarify that we also support Solaris versions greater than 10.
MauMau
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/9d323bda2ede5d4e42fdc6934188dd7a76a04d54

- Expose fsync_fname as a public API. Andres Freund
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/cc52d5b33ff5df29de57dcae9322214cfe9c8464

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- Docs: add paragraph about date/timestamp subtraction. per
suggestion from Francisco Olart
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/1c2085766187031eaeaae7db4785b9e1d4241988

- doc: Fix SGML markup for date patch
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b642bc55fa869160ba8d1b63dacf99e43fdadbb1

- Remove dead URL mention in OSX startup script. Backpatch to 9.3.
Per suggestion from Gavan Schneider
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/66d85c5356ac32d1bf1fe13ea36ef81e21de82c2

- Add GUC descriptions for compile-time postgresql.conf settings.
Previous text was "No description available". Tianyin Xu
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f5c2f5a8f6645a7da720a5f24efdbe8a1183a06c

- intarray: return empty zero-dimensional array for an empty array.
Previously a one-dimensional empty array was returned, but its text
representation matched a zero-dimensional array, and there is no way
to dump/reload a one-dimensional empty array. BACKWARD
INCOMPATIBILITY. Per report from Elein Mustain.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c155f654b4f755b4111bd9adb60559fe22526a10

Alvaro Herrera pushed:

- Update obsolete comment
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8b290f3115db5bbe85176160c7cabe0d927dcc37

Jeff Davis pushed:

- Revert WAL posix_fallocate() patches. This reverts commit
269e780822abb2e44189afaccd6b0ee7aefa7ddd and commit
5b571bb8c8d2bea610e01ae1ee7bc05adcfff528. Unfortunately, the
initial patch had insufficient performance testing, and resulted in
a regression. Per report by Thom Brown.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b1892aaeaaf34d8d1637221fc1cbda82ac3fcd71

- Improve Range Types and Exclusion Constraints example. Make the
examples self-contained to avoid confusion. Per bug report 8367 from
KOIZUMI Satoru.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/be6fcb671e4291654391fba475f4b555d2da74f3

Kevin Grittner pushed:

- Eliminate pg_rewrite.ev_attr column and related dead code. Commit
95ef6a344821655ce4d0a74999ac49dd6af6d342 removed the ability to
create rules on an individual column as of 7.3, but left some
residual code which has since been useless. This cleans up that
dead code without any change in behavior other than dropping the
useless column from the catalog.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/277607d600fb71e25082b94302ca1716403cd0bc

Noah Misch pushed:

- Don't VALGRIND_PRINTF() each query string. Doing so was helpful for
some Valgrind usage and distracting for other usage. One can
achieve the same effect by changing log_statement and pointing both
PostgreSQL and Valgrind logging to stderr. Per gripe from Andres
Freund.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b8104730c8eae1f81ccbc8673bbd2a3566e660ae

Michael Meskes pushed:

- Close file to no leak file descriptor memory. Found by Coverity.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/579dae5bc0b87dfa53d0caa0ac57f0f5e739544f

- Return error if allocation of new element was not possible. Found
by Coverity.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/9c68834bfc2ab6e782f56ee3dc7b4949857b8729

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Fabrízio de Royes Mello sent in another revision of a patch to add
SEQUENCES to the possible arguments of DISCARD.

Dimitri Fontaine sent in another revision of a patch to implement
extension templates.

Karl O. Pinc sent in another revision of a patch to clarify backup
instructions and concepts in the documentation.

Maksym Boguk sent in a patch to add a national character type.

Cedric Villemain sent in a patch to fix the way PGXS works for certain
extension builds.

Antonin Houska sent in another revision of a patch to allow throttling
pg_basebackup.

Takayuki Tsunakawa sent in a patch to clarify the recovery
documentation as it relates to preserving statistics.

Blake Smith sent in two more revisions of a patch intended to speed up
queries which use a GIN index.

Bruce Momjian sent in two more revisions of a patch to fix some NULL
handling.

Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to make a default effective_cache_size
based on the shared_buffers setting.

Zoltan Boszormenyi sent in two more revisions of a patch to use
readahead in ECPG FETCHes.

Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of a patch to improve NUMERIC
performance.

Hari Babu sent in a patch to optimize WAL updates on systems with
certain access profiles.

Andres Freund sent in another revision of a patch to speed up catalog
cache lookups.

Andres Freund, as part of the infrastructure for logical change
replication, sent in a pair of patches to: 1. Allow walsenders to
connect to a specific database, and 2. Log xl_running_xact's at a
higher frequency than checkpoints are done.

Andres Freund, as part of the infrastructure for logical change
replication, sent in a patch to add information about a table's
primary key to the RelationData struct.

Andres Freund, as part of the infrastructure for logical change
replication, sent in a patch to introduce the concept and usage of
InvalidCommandId.

Mitsumasa KONDO sent in a WIP patch to use the FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE
flag where appropriate.

KaiGai Kohei sent in a patch to create infrastructure for custom plan
nodes.

Satoshi Nagayasu sent in another revision of a patch to add statistics
tracking for dirty writes.

MauMau sent in a patch to set the codeset for libc catalog the same
as postgres catalog to ensure that errors don't appear in the form
'???', which is singularly unhelpful.

Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to correct the permissions used in
information_schema.schemata.

Alexander Korotkov sent in two revisions of a patch to fix how
picksplit works in the case of NaN values.