== PostgreSQL Weekly News - June 14 2015 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - June 14 2015 ==

Bug fix releases 9.4.4, 9.3.9, 9.2.13, 9.1.18, and 9.0.22 released.
Upgrade!
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/release.html

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Consistent State PostgreSQL Admin Class will be held in Dallas, TX,
USA on September 21-24, 2015.
http://www.consistentstate.com/store/p8/PostgreSQL_Admin_Class%3B_Dallas.html

Gianni Ciolli will be giving a keynote at the Dynamic Languages
Conference on June 20 in Manchester, UK.
http://www.dynamiclanguages.co.uk/

tds_fdw 1.0.3, a foreign data wrapper for MS-SQL Server and Sybase, released.
https://github.com/GeoffMontee/tds_fdw/releases

== PostgreSQL Jobs for June ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2015-06/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

PGCon 2015 is June 16-20 in Ottawa, Canada.
http://www.pgcon.org/2015/

The second Swiss Postgres Conference will be held June 25-26, 2015 at
HSR Rapperswil.
http://www.postgres-conference.ch/

PGDay UK, Conference will be taking place on 7th July 2015 – it is aimed at
the UK PostgreSQL Community. The CfP is open until 13 April 2015.
http://www.postgresqlusergroup.org.uk

PGDay Campinas 2015 will take place in Campinas on August 7.
The CfP is open through May 31.
http://pgdaycampinas.com.br/english/

The Call For Papers for PostgresOpen 2015, being held in Dallas, Texas
from September 16th to 18th, is now open.
http://2015.postgresopen.org/callforpapers/

The CfP for PostgreSQL Session #7, September 24th, 2015 in Paris,
France, is open until June 15, 2015. call-for-paper <AT>
postgresql-sessions <DOT> org.
http://www.postgresql-sessions.org/7/about

PostgreSQL Conference Europe 2015 will be held on October 27-30 in the
Vienna Marriott Hotel, in Vienna, Austria. The CfP is open until
August 7.
http://2015.pgconf.eu/

PGConf Silicon Valley 2015 is November 17-18 at the South San
Francisco Convention Center. The CfP is open through June 15.
http://www.pgconfsv.com

== 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:

- doc: Fix broken links in FOP build. FOP doesn't handle links to
table rows, so put the link to a cell instead.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/d23a3a603b8eed5e8e34b193d43e9ca5f380ef3f

- doc: Call xmllint for validity also in the fop build. This was
somehow missed in commit 5d93ce2d0c619ba1b408eb749715e7223e23f6ae.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/75a49ba550bae7a44bc1c4b2b7413a1768f70829

- Fix typo
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/385522c7dc6351a57e459b17cc66912daf4ab90e

- doc: Fix typo
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/28d17269a1fff9fa9c4dd2c588a586a028fa4798

- doc: Use "connections" instead of "slots" to avoid confusion. The
text was written before replication slots existed, but now "slot" is
best not used for anything else in the space of replication.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e80f619acf018a9f79dc6188472ac94ba6742ab5

- Remove stray character
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/340c74dfdfb91d521fbdb20e5601973266da3428

- doc: Add note to pg_dump man page about pg_dumpall. suggested by
Joshua Drake
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/a85054181b3e60d44d896168127b7f7e204ea9f4

Andrew Dunstan pushed:

- Desupport jsonb subscript deletion on objects. Supporting deletion
of JSON pairs within jsonb objects using an array-style integer
subscript allowed for surprising outcomes. This was mostly due to
the implementation-defined ordering of pairs within objects for
jsonb. It also seems desirable to make jsonb integer subscript
deletion consistent with the 9.4 era general purpose integer
subscripting operator for jsonb (although that operator returns NULL
when an object is encountered, while we prefer here to throw an
error). Peter Geoghegan, following discussion on -hackers.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b81c7b4098f52e64df89efe1461ba00a54649a10

- Clarify documentation of jsonb - text. Peter Geoghegan
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/94d6727dbe61117addd9c24eea28440a2151ccf4

- Rename jsonb - text[] operator to #- to avoid ambiguity. Following
recent discussion on -hackers. The underlying function is also
renamed to jsonb_delete_path. The regression tests now don't need
ugly type casts to avoid the ambiguity, so they are also removed.
Catalog version bumped.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/908e234733574545866045c7d5f93d4dd50ef66d

- Fix "path" infrastructure bug affecting jsonb_set(). jsonb_set()
and other clients of the setPathArray() utility function could get
spurious results when an array integer subscript is provided that is
not within the range of int. To fix, ensure that the value returned
by strtol() within setPathArray() is within the range of int; when
it isn't, assume an invalid input in line with existing, similar
cases. The path-orientated operators that appeared in PostgreSQL
9.3 and 9.4 do not call setPathArray(), and already independently
take this precaution, so no change there. Peter Geoghegan
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2271d002d5c305441398e8f7a295f18ec3c132a9

Andres Freund pushed:

- Allow HotStandbyActiveInReplay() to be called in single user mode.
HotStandbyActiveInReplay, introduced in 061b079f, only allowed WAL
replay to happen in the startup process, missing the single user
case. This buglet is fairly harmless as it only causes problems
when single user mode in an assertion enabled build is used to
replay a btree vacuum record. Backpatch to 9.2. 061b079f was
backpatched further, but the assertion was not.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/d1b958218ac183d0e88348341ff6ba31397086ad

Fujii Masao pushed:

- Refactor WAL segment copying code. * Remove unused argument
"dstfname" and related code from XLogFileCopy(). * Previously
XLogFileCopy() returned a pstrdup'd string so that
InstallXLogFileSegment() used it later. Since the pstrdup'd string
was never free'd, there could be a risk of memory leak. It was
almost harmless because the startup process exited just after
calling XLogFileCopy(), it existed. This commit changes
XLogFileCopy() so that it directly calls InstallXLogFileSegment()
and doesn't call pstrdup() at all. Which fixes that memory leak
problem. * Extend InstallXLogFileSegment() so that the caller can
specify the log level. Which allows us to emit an error when
InstallXLogFileSegment() fails a disk file access like link() and
rename(). Previously it was always logged with LOG level and
additionally needed to be logged with ERROR when we wanted to treat
it as an error. Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7abc68597436da1475b4d9b08f4fa9f3c5ed6185

- Fix typo in comment. David Rowley
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ea9c4c1e4a7a9b602d867dcb02e07ef1fe51f6ec

- Fix some issues in pg_rewind. * Remove invalid option character "N"
from the third argument (valid option string) of getopt_long(). *
Use pg_free() or pfree() to free the memory allocated by pg_malloc()
or palloc() instead of always using free(). * Assume problem is no
disk space if write() fails but doesn't set errno. * Fix several
typos. Patch by me. Review by Michael Paquier.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/966c37fdb5ed9b87f3e91eace4dbbed7909f6769

- Clean up useless mention of RMGRDESCSOURCES in pg_rewind Makefile.
RMGRDESCSOURCES is defined and used only in pg_xlogdump Makefile,
but pg_rewind Makefile mentioned it as extra files to remove in
"make clean". This patch removes that useless mention from
pg_rewind Makefile. Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/cd3cff4778e011c584e1481a6803dec5d4756a6e

- Fix alphabetization in catalogs.sgml. System catalogs and views
should be listed alphabetically in catalog.sgml, but only
pg_file_settings view not. This patch also fixes typos in
pg_file_settings comments.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/091c02a958fd0ae02b96492d9728efe8526385e6

- Make postmaster restart archiver soon after it dies, even during
recovery. After the archiver dies, postmaster tries to start a new
one immediately. But previously this could happen only while server
was running normally even though archiving was enabled always (i.e.,
archive_mode was set to always). So the archiver running during
recovery could not restart soon after it died. This is an oversight
in commit ffd3774. This commit changes reaper(), postmaster's
signal handler to cleanup after a child process dies, so that it
tries to a new archiver even during recovery if necessary. Patch by
me. Review by Alvaro Herrera.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b5fe62038f49f92c4a4f189c7cdacf3739effcdc

Álvaro Herrera pushed:

- Fix typos. tablesapce -> tablespace, there -> their. These were
introduced in 72d422a52, so no need to backpatch.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/94232c909da4e39273efd66fc7c9c4a3fd9ef51a

Tom Lane pushed:

- First-draft release notes for 9.4.4, 9.3.9, 9.2.13, 9.1.18, 9.0.22.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/21187cfc7dfd82461db9119377a76366c00d27c3

- Report more information if pg_perm_setlocale() fails at startup. We
don't know why a few Windows users have seen this fail, but the
taciturnity of the error message certainly isn't helping debug it.
Let's at least find out which LC category isn't working.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f6e9cbfd9153958226b27e31d658e7b64351c71f

- Release notes for 9.4.4, 9.3.9, 9.2.13, 9.1.18, 9.0.22.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b94085920b016e64ee40a0f6c50199889565cc56

- Improve error message and hint for ALTER COLUMN TYPE can't-cast
failure. We already tried to improve this once, but the "improved"
text was rather off-target if you had provided a USING clause.
Also, it seems helpful to provide the exact text of a suggested
USING clause, so users can just copy-and-paste it when needed. Per
complaint from Keith Rarick and a suggestion from Merlin Moncure.
Back-patch to 9.2 where the current wording was adopted.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b00982344a73d9cb626430dd17a6da84c15c9980

- Fix failure to cover scalar-vs-rowtype cases in exec_stmt_return().
In commit 9e3ad1aac52454569393a947c06be0d301749362 I modified
plpgsql to use exec_stmt_return's simple-variables fast path in more
cases. However, I overlooked that there are really two different
return conventions in use here, depending on whether
estate->retistuple is true, and the existing fast-path code had only
bothered to handle one of them. So trying to return a scalar in a
function returning composite, or vice versa, could lead to
unexpected error messages (typically "cache lookup failed for type
0") or to a null-pointer-dereference crash. In the DTYPE_VAR case,
we can just throw error if retistuple is true, corresponding to what
happens in the general-expression code path that was being used
previously. (Perhaps someday both of these code paths should
attempt a coercion, but today is not that day.) In the REC and ROW
cases, just hand the problem to exec_eval_datum() when not
retistuple. Also clean up the ROW coding slightly so it looks more
like exec_eval_datum(). The previous commit also caused
exec_stmt_return_next() to be used in more cases, but that code
seems to be OK as-is. Per off-list report from Serge Rielau. This
bug is new in 9.5 so no need to back-patch.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ae58f1430abb4b0c309c40b377f91bf9d080334b

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- docs: update release note regex suggestions
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/1e87d4d0680b950eabf3e050071559a6f04fa07a

- First draft of 9.5 release notes
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/aacb8b9277ec63ee848442ccc1aa4b3f6eab1893

- release notes: update for pg_basebackup in tar format. Report by
Amit Kapila
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/5a4ea8e2004db269497ef18048ed5238c2c6e5cb

- release notes: explain meaning of pg_stat_get_snapshot_timestamp().
Report by Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/1cc9f8ccd9b7406c52fb85e48435cb6d265d006e

- release notes: implement suggestions. Report by Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/bab74070b325704f7b7a86c4bd72f9a6b3318ed7

- release notes: move pg_buffercache item to the right section.
Report by Amit Langote
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7b7be78a12ea98c7cb9653d78c156a83d322df6e

- release notes: update hash item. Report by Tomas Vondra
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/778fed04cd175510e9e75509033e2b985cf49e30

- release notes: add links to doc sections
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/66447916f719130212c7930c47e902586a4bf054

- release notes: add two optimizer items. Report by Tom Lane
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/89fe9bfc4ed3b5dc8e02119cc1fd39c975ffdea0

- release notes: split apart hash items. Report by Tom Lane, Robert
Haas
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8bf51ad0cc26e80cbd082c111f45428db7a2f73b

- release notes: reorder sort performance authors. Report by Peter
Geoghegan
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/51b47c5c095c53be4cda81e322b428167c81c6f2

- release notes: reorder hash performance authors, again. Report by
Robert Haas
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/644ac3e678f43402da3fbcbd6aa8e6c5915ad9c0

- release notes: fixes from Fujii Masao. Report by Fujii Masao
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/230ff9383c63ebfef11bfd6ba89aed7329b96c7e

- release notes: add Petr Jelinek to JSON function item. Report by
Petr Jelinek
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/29d80d5fa8c61e635e5be4c0be859438e4209117

- release notes: remove mention of pg_basebackup non-compat. Report
by Amit Kapila
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/31cda8bf3c3209e0740dd2c8fa5aa1d0319f7292

- release notes: add accent to Petr Jelínek's last name. Report by
Alvaro Herrera
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/305f815ccd059fb31193939a060fc524ddd5a0ea

- release notes: move/remove/adjust items. Report by Alvaro Herrera
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/62331ef3f67ec9ad16a26dec276b634f704de8d4

- release notes: consistently name "Alexander Shulgin". Report by
Alvaro Herrera
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/74cb688525e347121978a502368c76cd6af1bdd6

- release notes: fix Petr's name typos. Report by Alvaro Herrera
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2bed1cd7519fb9f017a8e2ce9881086f14a31d7c

Kevin Grittner pushed:

- Fix typo in comment. Backpatch to 9.4 to minimize possible
conflicts.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/870681017a9e39e25aca14a2426cdbc57e3ce2af

Michael Meskes pushed:

- Fix intoasc() in Informix compat lib. This function used to be a
noop. Patch by Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/82be1bf5099c0f6d1ef482ba3ca9cf1741db1eb3

- Fixed some memory leaks in ECPG. Patch by Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/96ad72d1c00fa6526eb4d5e9c2a747b44752b4ee

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Michael Paquier sent in two more revisions of a patch to fix some
memory leaks in pg_dump, initdb and pg_upgrade.

Abhijit Menon-Sen sent in another revision of a patch to skip files in
pg_log during basebackup.

Thomas Munro sent in two revisions of a patch to fix bogus truncation
errors.

Dean Rasheed sent in a patch to fix an incompatibility between RLS and
WHERE CURRENT OF.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to restrict visibility of SSL
information in pg_stat_ssl.

Andres Freund sent in a patch to improve multixact emergency
autovacuum logic.

Jeevan Chalke sent in a patch to remove dead code in
Create/RenameRole() after RoleSpec changes related to
CURRENT/SESSION_USER.

Jeevan Chalke sent in another revision of a patch to add \ev and \sv
(edit- and show-view) functionality to psql.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to expand the use of xlog_internal.h's
macros.

Alexander Shulgin sent in a patch to fix a problem where logical
decoding sendtime update was always set to zero.

Gurjeet Singh sent in three revisions of a patch to initialize
restart_lsn when the replication slot is created.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to refactor speculative insertion with
unique indexes.

Amit Kapila sent in another revision of a patch to remove only
symlinks during recovery.

Etsuro Fujita sent in a patch to fix some comments in table
inheritance.

Etsuro Fujita sent in a patch to fix a typo in comment in setrefs.c.

Jan Wieck sent in a patch to change some of the s_lock parameters with
the aim of improving performance on modern NUMA machines.

Kaigai Kouhei sent in another revision of a patch to implement
custom-join children.

Kaigai Kouhei sent in a patch to fix an issue where DBT-3 with SF=20
failed.

Naoya Anzai sent in a patch to make finding the backend PID a
shortcut, \bid.

Andrew Dunstan sent in a patch to add json_count_array().

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to remove dead code for jsonb
subscript deletion.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to fully remove heap_formtuple() and
friends.

Pavel Stehule sent in a patch to lower the log level for success in
(un)registering background workers from LOG to DEBUG1.

Petr Jelínek sent in a patch to add tab completion for TABLESAMPLE to
psql.

Dean Rasheed sent in a patch to add documentation for CREATE FUNCTION
.. LEAKPROOF.

Álvaro Herrera sent in a patch to add a pg_get_multixact_range()
function.

Petr Jelinek send in a flock of patches which: splits out pg_resetxlog
into some reusable pieces and the calls to same, adds pg_resetsysid
utility which changes the system id to newly generated one, adds -s
option to pg_resetxlog to change the system id to the one specified,
and adds fall-back implementation of the two functions based on very
slightly modified code from OpenBSD.

Jeff Davis sent in another revision of a patch to implement memory
accounting by tracking memory usage (at the block level) for all
memory contexts.