== PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 20 2014 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 20 2014 ==

PostgreSQL Conference Europe 2014 will be held on October 21-24 in
Madrid, Spain, at the Hotel Miguel Angel.
http://2014.pgconf.eu/

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

barman 1.3.1, a backup and recovery manager for PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.pgbarman.org/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for April ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2014-04/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

PGCon 2014, the world-wide developer conference for PostgreSQL, will
be in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada May 20-24, 2014.
http://www.pgcon.org/2014/

The sixth PGDay Cubano be held on 13 and 14 October 2014 in Habana.
https://postgresql.uci.cu/?p=380

Postgres Open 2014 will be in Chicago, IL, USA, September 17-19. The
CfP is open!
http://postgresopen.org/2014/callforpapers/

== 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 ==

Heikki Linnakangas pushed:

- GIN entry pages follow the standard page layout - tell XLogInsert.
The entry B-tree pages all follow the standard page layout. The 9.3
code has this right. I inadvertently changed this at some point
during the big refactorings in git master.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/1bd3842163f2b44e29938b5ab158bb6a589ff10c

- Remove dead checks for invalid left page in ginDeletePage. In some
places, the function assumes the left page is valid, and in others,
it checks if it is valid. Remove all the checks.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e3e6e3af560116adc20cc9d6e75bfe82a45def60

- Set pd_lower on internal GIN posting tree pages. This allows
squeezing out the unused space in full-page writes. And more
importantly, it can be a useful debugging aid. In hindsight we
should've done this back when GIN was added - we wouldn't need the
'maxoff' field in the page opaque struct if we had used pd_lower and
pd_upper like on normal pages. But as long as there can be pages in
the index that have been binary-upgraded from pre-9.4 versions, we
can't rely on that, and have to continue using 'maxoff'. Most of
the code churn comes from renaming some macros, now that they're
used on internal pages, too. This change is completely
backwards-compatible, no effect on pg_upgrade.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f1dadd34fa9fccc72800ed206b8c274073dfd039

- Use correctly-sized buffer when zero-filling a WAL file. I mixed up
BLCKSZ and XLOG_BLCKSZ when I changed the way the buffer is
allocated a couple of weeks ago. With the default settings, they are
both 8k, but they can be changed at compile-time.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/848b9f05ab283724dd063d936a92568c1fdf422b

- Set the all-visible flag on heap page before writing WAL record, not
after. If we set the all-visible flag after writing WAL record, and
XLogInsert takes a full-page image of the page, the image would not
include the flag. We will then proceed to set the VM bit, which
would then be set without the corresponding all-visible flag on the
heap page. Found by comparing page images on master and standby,
after writing/replaying each WAL record. (There is still a
discrepancy: the all-visible flag won't be set after replaying the
HEAP_CLEAN record, even though it is set in the master. However, it
will be set when replaying the HEAP2_VISIBLE record and setting the
VM bit, so the all-visible flag and VM bit are always consistent on
the standby, even though they are momentarily out-of-sync with
master) Backpatch to 9.3 where this code was introduced.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2a8e1ac598c864ac2775f33da21a117c363c6c7f

Robert Haas pushed:

- Tab completion for event triggers. Ian Barwick
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7b979524afb21c969234f7a0a9b1c97ceec4629d

- Update list of relation types on which ALTER TABLE RENAME/OWNER
work. Etsuro Fujita
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0c953540d285a94684b0c0dc7a2c338cb1d65ef0

- Correct description of constraint_name in ALTER TABLE documentation.
Apparently, the old text was written at a time when the only use of
constraint_name here was for a constraint to be dropped, but that's
no longer true. Etsuro Fujita
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f0aa6c06d4e114ecb7ed81a2168238bbcfd54878

- doc: Update yet another place that didn't get the memo about
matviews. Etsuro Fujita
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c050b2aae3b2f745ef61b379087cf9a67deea293

- doc: Suggesting clearing pg_replslot from a hot filesystem backup.
Maybe we'll settle on another way of solving this problem, but for
now this is the recommended procedure. Per discussion with Michael
Paquier.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/69671ab548459814d489315bf5cd421f84e984a4

- Try to fix spurious DSM failures on Windows. Apparently, Windows
can sometimes return an error code even when the operation actually
worked just fine. Rearrange the order of checks according to what
appear to be the best practices in this area. Amit Kapila
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/1a81daab8be9a0b3769a2660db44a56a6035e34a

- Add to_regprocedure() and to_regoperator(). These are natural
complements to the functions added by commit
0886fc6a5c75b294544263ea979b9cf6195407d9, but they weren't included
in the original patch for some reason. Add them. Patch by me, per
a complaint by Tom Lane. Review by Tatsuo Ishii.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/dfc0219f649d5450a5e4d491dab1eeb23ac5530a

- Fix typo. Etsuro Fujita
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/fab6170cabbd5af8ffabd2fcbf53e30287f11a41

- Fix another typo. Etsuro Fujita
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/602b27ab8e45fbb07cf5b275b0593b38190232e4

Tom Lane pushed:

- Fix bogus handling of bad strategy number in GIST consistent()
functions. Make sure we throw an error instead of silently doing
the wrong thing when fed a strategy number we don't recognize.
Also, in the places that did already throw an error, spell the error
message in a way more consistent with our message style guidelines.
Per report from Paul Jones. Although this is a bug, it won't occur
unless a superuser tries to do something he shouldn't, so it doesn't
seem worth back-patching.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4dfb065b3ab662dcc96d07ee7fc9dadf6975a0cb

- Use AF_UNSPEC not PF_UNSPEC in getaddrinfo calls. According to the
Single Unix Spec and assorted man pages, you're supposed to use the
constants named AF_xxx when setting ai_family for a getaddrinfo
call. In a few places we were using PF_xxx instead. Use of PF_xxx
appears to be an ancient BSD convention that was not adopted by
later standardization. On BSD and most later Unixen, it doesn't
matter much because those constants have equivalent values anyway;
but nonetheless this code is not per spec. In the same vein,
replace PF_INET by AF_INET in one socket() call, which wasn't even
consistent with the other socket() call in the same function let
alone the remainder of our code. Per investigation of a Cygwin
trouble report from Marco Atzeri. It's probably a long shot that
this will fix his issue, but it's wrong in any case.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/cad4fe6455bdc9ef1026b4a247eeb588ab3a8bd6

- Update oidjoins regression test for 9.4. Now that we're pretty much
feature-frozen, it's time to update the checks on system catalog
foreign-key references. (It looks like we missed doing this
altogether for 9.3. Sigh.)
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/cbb5e23bfa92973bddf11935448a9d42c32f7d42

- Fix contrib/postgres_fdw's remote-estimate representation of array
Params. We were emitting "(SELECT null::typename)", which is
usually interpreted as a scalar subselect, but not so much in the
context "x = ANY(...)". This led to remote-side parsing failures
when remote_estimate is enabled. A quick and ugly fix is to stick
in an extra cast step, "((SELECT null::typename)::typename)". The
cast will be thrown away as redundant by parse analysis, but not
before it's done its job of making sure the grammar sees the ANY
argument as an a_expr rather than a select_with_parens. Per an
example from Hannu Krosing.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/5b68d81697bcb0d16136bd037e454ee53c521185

- Rename EXPLAIN ANALYZE's "total runtime" output to "execution time".
Now that EXPLAIN also outputs a "planning time" measurement, the use
of "total" here seems rather confusing: it sounds like it might
include the planning time which of course it doesn't. Majority
opinion was that "execution time" is a better label, so we'll call
it that. This should be noted as a backwards incompatibility for
tools that examine EXPLAIN ANALYZE output. In passing, I failed to
resist the temptation to do a little editing on the
materialized-view example affected by this change.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/5f86cbd714c9d43c0fbb43a7b172f77ebf429548

- Fix unused-variable warning on Windows. Introduced in 585bca39:
msgid is not used in the Windows code path. Also adjust comments a
tad (mostly to keep pgindent from messing it up). David Rowley
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/01563158235f5650743fd9b1dfa80c3d8faf89bb

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- Fix whitespace
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7b5a9d61a8202c46f4cc02878eafa8367080c59a

- Add TAP tests for client programs. Reviewed-by: Pavel Stěhule
<pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> Reviewed-by: Erik Rijkers <er(at)xs4all(dot)nl>
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7d0f493f19607774fdccb1a1ea06fdd96a3d9698

- Add @configure_input@ marker to Makefile.global.in. That way, when
looking at Makefile.global, we don't get confused by the comment
that claims that this is Makefile.global.in.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e3fd9327384abc1cd252ddd8ce9429ab7bef48b5

- Have lcov call the right gcov. By default, lcov will call whatever
gcov it can find in the path. But if the user has specified a
different gcov to configure, this could be incompatible. So tell
lcov explicitly with an option which gcov program to call.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0d3b2b80aa6aee753f372bb0300a131691e9f55c

- vacuumdb: Add option --analyze-in-stages. Add vacuumdb option
--analyze-in-stages which runs ANALYZE three times with different
configuration settings, adopting the logic from the
analyze_new_cluster.sh script that pg_upgrade generates. That way,
users of pg_dump/pg_restore can also use that functionality. Change
pg_upgrade to create the script so that it calls vacuumdb instead of
implementing the logic itself.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c92c3d50d7fbe7391b5fc864b444346b2db29ffe

- Create function prototype as part of PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1 macro
Because of gcc -Wmissing-prototypes, all functions in dynamically
loadable modules must have a separate prototype declaration. This
is meant to detect global functions that are not declared in header
files, but in cases where the function is called via dfmgr, this is
redundant. Besides filling up space with boilerplate, this is a
frequent source of compiler warnings in extension modules. We can
fix that by creating the function prototype as part of the
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1 macro, which such modules have to use anyway.
That makes the code of modules cleaner, because there is one less
place where the entry points have to be listed, and creates an
additional check that functions have the right prototype. Remove
now redundant prototypes from contrib and other modules.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e7128e8dbb305059c30ec085461297e619bcbff4

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- contrib/test_decoding: fix regression test for psql oid display
changes. Missed in previous commit
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ab76d8e9d672c661fe8ce4d9405dc8956b8ece9d

- psql: conditionally display oids and replication identity. In psql
\d+, display oids only when they exist, and display replication
identity only when it is non-default. Also document the defaults
for replication identity for system and non-system tables. Update
regression output.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4168c00a5d9c0c0c17cdfc902587b6d22ea1720f

- check socket creation errors against PGINVALID_SOCKET. Previously,
in some places, socket creation errors were checked for negative
values, which is not true for Windows because sockets are unsigned.
This masked socket creation errors on Windows. Backpatch through
9.0. 8.4 doesn't have the infrastructure to fix this.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/41809346518a2b57530b22148609a346a718adc9

- doc: fix json_extract_path_text() typo by adding jsonb. Report from
rudolf <stu3(dot)1(at)eq(dot)cz>
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ed4a26260c6ebd7948eacc42eddae1e898239f6e

- pg_upgrade: remove redundant include files. The files were already
included by pg_upgrade.h.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/95cb917297ebe77add3cef4f01cca1004031fa9a

- docs: make max_wal_senders higher to handle disconnects. Document
abrupt streaming client disconnection might leave slots in use, so
max_wal_senders should be slightly higher than needed to allow for
immediate reconnection. Per mention by Magnus
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/9c5334650085d441324e0f4fd9f8db12657b25c7

- psql: update --help output for unaligned mode params. Previously
it wasn't clear from --help that -F, -R, -z, -0 only controlled psql
unaligned output. Initial patch from Jov <amutu(at)amutu(dot)com>,
adjustments by me
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8c349ba5c04c3b5fdceb13c35996e7ff4b69585f

- doc: move min_recovery_apply_delay into the right section. Patch
by Fujii Masao
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/be5f7fff470066dc3ee655b25840733eb9006426

- libpq: use pgsocket for socket values, for portability.
Previously, 'int' was used for socket values in libpq, but socket
values are unsigned on Windows. This is a style correction.
Initial patch and previous PGINVALID_SOCKET initial patch by Joel
Jacobson, modified by me Report from PVS-Studio
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/5d305d86bd917723f09ab4f15c075d90586a210a

- docs: properly document psql auto encoding mode. In psql, both
stdin and stdout must be terminals to get a client encoding of
'auto'. Patch by Albe Laurenz Backpatch to 9.3.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e183d11262f4e04ce7f191a9655aeeaa4682a7f5

- docs: adjustments for streaming standbys that disconnect frequently.
Document problems when disconnection causes loss of
hot_standby_feedback and suggest adjusting max_standby_archive_delay
and max_standby_streaming_delay. Initial patch by Marko Tiikkaja,
adjustments by me
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/52e757420fa98a76015c2c88432db94269f3e8f4

- pg_upgrade: throw an error for non-existent tablespace directories.
Non-existent tablespace directory references can occur if user
tablespaces are created inside data directories and the data
directory is renamed in preparation for running pg_upgrade, and the
symbolic links are not updated. Backpatch to 9.3.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c1275cf74172cd0ed478dbc31e34e2ffffc6e789

- report stat() error in trigger file check. Permissions might
prevent the existence of the trigger file from being checked. Per
report from Andres Freund
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/83defef8c794e7772e4099a7efa2ebac3c62742c

- pgcrypto: fix memset() calls that might be optimized away.
Specifically, on-stack memset() might be removed, so: Replace
memset() with px_memset(). Add px_memset to copy_crlf(). Add
px_memset to pgp-s2k.c. Patch by Marko Kreen Report by PVS-Studio
Backpatch through 8.4.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/9fe55259fd61fd9199907623f974caa7af66e780

- libpq: have PQconnectdbParams() and PQpingParams accept "" as
default. Previously, these functions treated "" optin values as
defaults in some ways, but not in others, like when comparing to
.pgpass. Also, add documentation to clarify that now "" and NULL
use defaults, like PQsetdbLogin() has always done. BACKWARD
INCOMPATIBILITY Patch by Adrian Vondendriesch, docs by me Report by
Jeff Janes
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/13ecb822e8da5668133b706474c25bc908ae370a

- docs: tablespaces cannot be accessed independently. Mention
impossibility of moving tablespaces, backing them up independently,
or the inadvisability of placing them on temporary file systems.
Patch by Craig Ringer, adjustments by Ian Lawrence Warwick and me
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4353d1809f6d10845be76dda1dad45013d0b14b8

- doc: mention archive_command and recovery_command are exec'ed
locally. Report by Craig Ringer
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0e8beed515b78d5a987c04ec047b7c9bee69ac83

- doc: CREATE DATABASE doesn't copy template database-level config
params. Report by Alexey Bashtanov
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/012025f9ae20e174b81f71af45b467f9a62fe478

Magnus Hagander pushed:

- Fix timeout in LDAP lookup of libpq connection parameters. Bind
attempts to an LDAP server should time out after two seconds,
allowing additional lines in the service control file to be parsed
(which provide a fall back to a secondary LDAP server or default
options). The existing code failed to enforce that timeout during
TCP connect, resulting in a hang far longer than two seconds if the
LDAP server does not respond. Laurenz Albe
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/585bca393640b609c54159e1bedd30a89fec5ea8

- Fix typo. Amit Langote
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/66b1084e2ccf1f5b8cb57ebb41f54f76850a2b5d

Andrew Dunstan pushed:

- Attempt to get plpython regression tests working again for MSVC
builds. This has probably been broken for quite a long time.
Buildfarm member currawong's current results suggest that it's been
broken since 9.1, so backpatch this to that branch. This only
supports Python 2 - I will handle Python 3 separately, but this is a
fairly simple fix.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ef158312e96960bfbc802ceda58f432f6fd845eb

Alvaro Herrera pushed:

- Fix object identities for text search objects. We were neglecting
to schema-qualify them. Backpatch to 9.3, where object identities
were introduced as a concept by commit f8348ea32ec8.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/83ab8e32f24542e3ab1f73b24c57cdbed6a4c9e4

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum's patch to change iff to if. The former is
actually correct.

== Pending Patches ==

David Rowley sent in another revision of a patch to optimize window
functions by allowing pushdowns of items matching PARTITION BY
clauses.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a patch to fix a race condition between
PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT PREPARED.

Fabrízio de Royes Mello sent in another revision of a patch to
implement CINE functionality for sequences.

Stephen Frost sent in another revision of a patch to implement
row-level access controls.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to improve on the current clock sweep
algorithm for B-tree leaf pages.

Amit Kapila sent in a patch to fix a dsm invalid errcode issue.

Zoltan Boszormenyi sent in another rebased revision of the ECPG FETCH
patch.

Nicholas White sent in another revision of a patch to make it possible
for lag and lead window functions to ignore nulls.

Dmitri Voronin sent in a patch to add a new sslinfo extension which
includes: ssl_get_count_of_extensions(), ssl_get_extension_names(),
ssl_get_extension_value(text), and ssl_is_critical_extension(text).

Michael Paquier and Fabrízio de Royes Mello traded patches to make it
possible for the verbose output of pg_dump to include schema names for
everything dumped.

MauMau sent in another revision of a patch to fix an issue where
pg_ctl always uses the same event source on Windows.

Tom Lane sent in two more revisions of a patch to detoast composite
array elements.

Mohammad Alhashash sent in a patch to allow empty targets in the
unaccent dictionary.

Christian Ullrich sent in a patch to arrange things so on Windows,
PostgreSQL silently ignores control-C and control-break when started
via pg_ctl.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to remove a dependency on wsock32.lib
when compiling code on Windows.