== PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 14 2010 ==

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== PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 14 2010 ==

Happy Year of the Tiger from the PostgreSQL Global Development Group!

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

pgpool-II 2.3.2.1 a connection pooler and more, released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/

Skytools 2.1.11, a Python-based replication system, released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/skytools/

== PostgreSQL 9.0 Feature of the Week ==

Uniqueness violations now raise more detailed error messages.

== PostgreSQL Jobs for February ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-02/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The German Speaking PostgreSQL User Group has a stand at the Project
Lounge in hall 2 at Cebit 2010 from March 02 to March 06, 2010 in
Hannover, Germany.
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/649-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Cebit-2010.html

The German Language PostgreSQL User Group has a booth at Chemnitz Linuxdays
2010 on March 13 and 14, 2010 in Chemnitz, Germany. Andreas (ads)
Scherbaum will be giving a talk on PostgreSQL 9.0 and a workshop on
tuning PostgreSQL.
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/652-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Chemnitz-Linux-Days-2010.html
http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2010/vortraege/plan.html

Linuxfest Northwest 2010 will take place in Bellingham, Washington,
USA on April 24 and 25. Session, Booth and Sponsorship are available.
http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/

Andreas (ads) Scherbaum will be teaching a "PostgreSQL for Corporate
Use" course at the adult education center in Magdeburg, Germany May
3-7, 2010. Details below:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/650-PostgreSQL-Schulung-als-Bildungsurlaub-03.-07.05.2010-in-Magdeburg.html

PgCon 2010 will be held May 20-21 2010 in Ottawa with tutorials before
on the 18th and 19th.
http://www.pgcon.org/2010/registration.php

The Call for Proposals for OSCON is open. OSCON will take place in
Portland, Oregon July 19-23, 2010.
http://post.oreilly.com/f2f/9z1zqmm5lhkab0uogt3avlvc4u59bro6f917re423d8

== 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)

== Reviews ==

== Applied Patches ==

Simon Riggs committed:

- - Revoke augmentation of WAL records for btree delete, per discussion.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/storage/ipc/standby.c, fix typo bug in Hot
Standby from recent refactoring. Bug introduced into code recently
patched by Andres Freund, so quickly fixed by him when bug report
from Tatsuo Ishii arrived.

- - Introduce WAL records to log reuse of btree pages, allowing conflict
resolution during Hot Standby. Page reuse interlock requested by
Tom. Analysis and patch by me.

- - Re-enable max_standby_delay = -1 using deadlock detection on startup
process. If startup waits on a buffer pin we send a request to all
backends to cancel themselves if they are holding the buffer pin
required and they are also waiting on a lock. If not, startup waits
until max_standby_delay before cancelling any backend waiting for
the requested buffer pin.

- - Fix relcache init file invalidation during Hot Standby for the case
where a database has a non-default tablespaceid. Pass thru
MyDatabaseId and MyDatabaseTableSpace to allow file path to be
re-created in standby and correct invalidation to take place in all
cases. Update and rework xact_commit_desc() debug messages. Bug
report from Tom by code inspection. Fix by me.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/storage/ipc/standby.c, improvements to ps
message of startup process during Hot Standby. Message is reset
earlier and potential bug avoided. Andres Freund

Robert Haas committed:

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/func.sgml, minor documentation improvements
for new string_agg aggregate.

- - Augment EXPLAIN output with more details on Hash nodes. We show the
number of buckets, the number of batches (and also the original
number if it has changed), and the peak space used by the hash
table. Minor executor changes to track peak space used.

- - Tighten integrity checks on ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN ... RENAME.
When a column is renamed, we recursively rename the same column in
all descendent tables. But if one of those tables also inherits
that column from a table outside the inheritance hierarchy rooted at
the named table, we must throw an error. The previous coding
correctly prohibited the rename when the parent had inherited the
column from elsewhere, but overlooked the case where the parent was
OK but a child table also inherited the same column from a second,
unrelated parent. For now, not backpatched due to lack of
complaints from the field. KaiGai Kohei, with further changes by
me. Reviewed by Bernd Helme and Tom Lane.

- - Fold FindConversion() into FindConversionByName() and remove ACL
check. All callers of FindConversionByName() already do suitable
permissions checking already apart from this function, but this is
not just dead code removal: the unnecessary permissions check can
actually lead to spurious failures - there's no reason why inability
to execute the underlying function should prohibit renaming the
conversion, for example. (The error messages in these cases were
also rather poor: FindConversion would return InvalidOid, eventually
leading to a complaint that the conversion "did not exist", which
was not correct.) KaiGai Kohei.

- - Wrap calls to SearchSysCache and related functions using macros.
The purpose of this change is to eliminate the need for every caller
of SearchSysCache, SearchSysCacheCopy, SearchSysCacheExists,
GetSysCacheOid, and SearchSysCacheList to know the maximum number of
allowable keys for a syscache entry (currently 4). This will make
it far easier to increase the maximum number of keys in a future
release should we choose to do so, and it makes the code shorter,
too. Design and review by Tom Lane.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plperl.sgml, remove tabs in sgml.

- - Proofreading improvements for the Administration documentation book.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml, mention "unquoted" identifiers
are case-insensitive.

- - In pgsql/contrib/intagg/Makefile, rewrite intagg/Makefile from
scratch, to avoid copyright mention.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/Makefile, add SGML 'check-tabs' Makefile rule
to check for tabs.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, update high
availability/replication documentation chart for new hot standby
featureset.

- - Add C comments that HEAP_MOVED_* define usage is only for pre-9.0
binary upgrades.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/tcop/pquery.c, improve C comment about why we
return "0 0" for some tags.

Michael Meskes committed:

- - Fixed NaN/Infinity problems in ECPG for float/double/numeric/decimal
by making it OS independant. Patch done by Zoltán Böszörményi.

- - Fixed some typos in ECPG regression test suite that resulted in
regression test failures on some architectures. Fix by Zoltan
Boszormenyi

- - Streamlined array handling code in libecpg a little bit, in the
process fixing yet another incorrect log output.

- - Usage of isnan() in ECPG regression tests probably needs '#include
<float.h>' as well.

- - First try to make this one ecpg regression test work on Windows too.
I'm just trying to figure out the minimal amount of defines needed.

Tom Lane committed:

- - The particular table names used in the new inheritance regression
test are prone to sort differently in different locales, as seen in
buildfarm results. Let's cast to name not text to avoid that.

- - CLUSTER specified the wrong namespace when renaming toast tables of
temporary relations (they don't live in pg_toast). This caused an
Assert failure in assert-enabled builds. So far as I can see, in a
non-assert build it would only have messed up the checks for
conflicting names, so a failure would be quite improbable but
perhaps not impossible.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/storage/ipc/standby.c, fix assorted
poorly-thought-out message strings: use %u not %d for printing OIDs,
avoid random line breaks in strings somebody might grep for.

- - Assorted cleanups in preparation for using a map file to support
altering the relfilenode of currently-not-relocatable system
catalogs. 1. Get rid of inval.c's dependency on relfilenode, by not
having it emit smgr invalidations as a result of relcache flushes.
Instead, smgr sinval messages are sent directly from smgr.c when an
actual relation delete or truncate is done. This makes considerably
more structural sense and allows elimination of a large number of
useless smgr inval messages that were formerly sent even in cases
where nothing was changing at the physical-relation level. Note
that this reintroduces the concept of nontransactional inval
messages, but that's okay --- because the messages are sent by
smgr.c, they will be sent in Hot Standby slaves, just from a lower
logical level than before. 2. Move setNewRelfilenode out of
catalog/index.c, where it never logically belonged, into relcache.c;
which is a somewhat debatable choice as well but better than before.
(I considered catalog/storage.c, but that seemed too low level.)
Rename to RelationSetNewRelfilenode. 3. Cosmetic cleanups of some
other relfilenode manipulations.

- - Fix timing-sensitive regression test result I just created :-( ---
the DROP USER at the end of the cluster.sql test could fail, if the
temp table created in the previous session hadn't finished getting
dropped. Unluckily, I didn't see this in several repetitions of the
parallel regression tests, but it's popping up on quite a few
buildfarm machines.

- - In pgsql/src/interfaces/ecpg/ecpglib/execute.c, add #include
<float.h> --- guessing the lack of this is why Windows machines are
all rejecting isinf() calls in this file.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/parser/parse_utilcmd.c, fix unwarranted
assumption that a cached rowtype would stick around for the lifespan
of the CreateStmt. Per buildfarm member jaguar.

- - Forgot to back-patch CLUSTER test fix to 8.4.

- - Restructure CLUSTER/newstyle VACUUM FULL/ALTER TABLE support so that
swapping of old and new toast tables can be done either at the
logical level (by swapping the heaps' reltoastrelid links) or at the
physical level (by swapping the relfilenodes of the toast tables and
their indexes). This is necessary infrastructure for upcoming
changes to support CLUSTER/VAC FULL on shared system catalogs, where
we cannot change reltoastrelid. The physical swap saves a few
catalog updates too. We unfortunately have to keep the
logical-level swap logic because in some cases we will be adding or
deleting a toast table, so there's no possibility of a physical
swap. However, that only happens as a consequence of schema changes
in the table, which we do not need to support for system catalogs,
so such cases aren't an obstacle for that. In passing, refactor the
cluster support functions a little bit to eliminate
unnecessarily-duplicated code; and fix the problem that while
CLUSTER had been taught to rename the final toast table at need,
ALTER TABLE had not.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml, three out of four of us like this
phrasing better.

- - In pgsql/src/port/rint.c, avoid changing the sign of zero. Per
buildfarm failures.

- - Create a "relation mapping" infrastructure to support changing the
relfilenodes of shared or nailed system catalogs. This has two key
benefits: 1. The new CLUSTER-based VACUUM FULL can be applied safely
to all catalogs. 2. We no longer have to use an unsafe
reindex-in-place approach for reindexing shared catalogs. CLUSTER
on nailed catalogs now works too, although I left it disabled on
shared catalogs because the resulting pg_index.indisclustered update
would only be visible in one database. Since reindexing shared
system catalogs is now fully transactional and crash-safe, the
former special cases in REINDEX behavior have been removed; shared
catalogs are treated the same as non-shared. This commit does not
do anything about the recently-discussed problem of deadlocks
between VACUUM FULL/CLUSTER on a system catalog and other concurrent
queries; will address that in a separate patch. As a stopgap,
parallel_schedule has been tweaked to run vacuum.sql by itself, to
avoid such failures during the regression tests.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/utils/cache/relmapper.c, looks like we need
#include <sys/stat.h> here on some platforms. Per buildfarm.

- - Work around deadlock problems with VACUUM FULL/CLUSTER on system
catalogs, as per my recent proposal. First, teach
IndexBuildHeapScan to not wait for INSERT_IN_PROGRESS or
DELETE_IN_PROGRESS tuples to commit unless the index build is
checking uniqueness/exclusion constraints. If it isn't, there's no
harm in just indexing the in-doubt tuple. Second, modify VACUUM
FULL/CLUSTER to suppress reverifying uniqueness/exclusion constraint
properties while rebuilding indexes of the target relation. This is
reasonable because these commands aren't meant to deal with
corrupted-data situations. Constraint properties will still be
rechecked when an index is rebuilt by a REINDEX command. This gets
us out of the problem that new-style VACUUM FULL would often wait
for other transactions while holding exclusive lock on a system
catalog, leading to probable deadlock because those other
transactions need to look at the catalogs too. Although the real
ultimate cause of the problem is a debatable choice to release locks
early after modifying system catalogs, changing that choice would
require pretty serious analysis and is not something to be
undertaken lightly or on a tight schedule. The present patch fixes
the problem in a fairly reasonable way and should also improve the
speed of VACUUM FULL/CLUSTER a little bit.

- - Remove old-style VACUUM FULL (which was known for a little while as
VACUUM FULL INPLACE), along with a boatload of subsidiary code and
complexity. Per discussion, the use case for this method of
vacuuming is no longer large enough to justify maintaining it; not
to mention that we don't wish to invest the work that would be
needed to make it play nicely with Hot Standby. Aside from the code
directly related to old-style VACUUM FULL, this commit removes
support for certain WAL record types that could only be generated
within VACUUM FULL, redirect-pointer removal in heap_page_prune, and
nontransactional generation of cache invalidation sinval messages
(the last being the sticking point for Hot Standby). We still have
to retain all code that copes with finding HEAP_MOVED_OFF and
HEAP_MOVED_IN flag bits on existing tuples. This can't be removed
as long as we want to support in-place update from pre-9.0
databases.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/gist/gistvacuum.c, remove some more dead
VACUUM-FULL-only code.

- - Remove CatalogCacheFlushRelation, and the reloidattr infrastructure
that was needed by nothing else. The restructuring I just finished
doing on cache management exposed to me how silly this routine was.
Its function was to go into the catcache and blow away all entries
related to a given relation when there was a relcache flush on that
relation. However, there is no point in removing a catcache entry
if the catalog row it represents is still valid --- and if it isn't
valid, there must have been a catcache entry flush on it, because
that's triggered directly by heap_update or heap_delete on the
catalog row. So this routine accomplished nothing except to blow
away valid cache entries that we'd very likely be wanting in the
near future to help reconstruct the relcache entry. Dumb. On top
of which, it required a subtle and easy-to-get-wrong attribute in
syscache definitions, ie, the column containing the OID of the
related relation if any. Removing that is a very useful maintenance
simplification.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/commands/vacuum.c, fix serious performance bug
in new implementation of VACUUM FULL: cluster_rel necessarily builds
an all-new toast table, so it's useless to then go and VACUUM FULL
the toast table.

- - Create an official API function for C functions to use to check if
they are being called as aggregates, and to get the aggregate
transition state memory context if needed. Use it instead of poking
directly into AggState and WindowAggState in places that shouldn't
know so much. We should have done this in 8.4, probably, but better
late than never. Revised version of a patch by Hitoshi Harada.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/commands/vacuumlazy.c, rearrange lazy-vacuum
code a little bit to reduce the window between truncating the table
and transaction commit. This isn't really making it safe, but at
least there is no good reason to do free space map cleanup within
the risk window. Don't lock out cancel interrupts until we have to,
either.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/storage/freespace/freespace.c, allow free space
map vacuuming to be interrupted.

- - Fix up rickety handling of relation-truncation interlocks. Move
rd_targblock, rd_fsm_nblocks, and rd_vm_nblocks from relcache to the
smgr relation entries, so that they will get reset to
InvalidBlockNumber whenever an smgr-level flush happens. Because we
now send smgr invalidation messages immediately (not at end of
transaction) when a relation truncation occurs, this ensures that
other backends will reset their values before they next access the
relation. We no longer need the unreliable assumption that a VACUUM
that's doing a truncation will hold its AccessExclusive lock until
commit --- in fact, we can intentionally release that lock as soon
as we've completed the truncation. This patch therefore reverts
(most of) Alvaro's patch of 2009-11-10, as well as my marginal
hacking on it yesterday. We can also get rid of assorted
no-longer-needed relcache flushes, which are far more expensive than
an smgr flush because they kill a lot more state. In passing this
patch fixes smgr_redo's failure to perform visibility-map
truncation, and cleans up some rather dubious assumptions in
freespace.c and visibilitymap.c about when rd_fsm_nblocks and
rd_vm_nblocks can be out of date.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/plan/planner.c, improve planner's
choices about when to use hashing vs sorting for DISTINCT. The
previous coding missed a bet by sometimes picking the "sorted" path
from query_planner even though hashing would be preferable. To fix,
we have to be willing to make the choice sooner. This contorts
things a little bit, but I thought of a factorization that makes it
not too awful.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/rbtree.c, suppress
uninitialized-variable warning.

- - Extend the set of frame options supported for window functions.
This patch allows the frame to start from CURRENT ROW (in either
RANGE or ROWS mode), and it also adds support for ROWS n PRECEDING
and ROWS n FOLLOWING start and end points. (RANGE value
PRECEDING/FOLLOWING isn't there yet --- the grammar works, but
that's all.) Hitoshi Harada, reviewed by Pavel Stehule

- - In pgsql/src/pl/plpgsql/src/pl_exec.c, don't choke when
exec_move_row assigns a synthesized null to a column that happens to
be composite itself. Per bug #5314 from Oleg Serov. Backpatch to
8.0 --- 7.4 has got too many other shortcomings in composite-type
support to make this worth worrying about in that branch.

- - Tweak the order of processing of WITH clauses so that they are
processed before we start analyzing the parent statement. This is
to make it more clear that the WITH isn't affected by anything in
the parent. I don't believe there's any actual bug here, because
the stuff that was being done before WITH didn't affect subqueries;
but it's certainly a potential for error (and apparently misled
Marko into committing some real errors...).

- - Support inlining various small performance-critical functions on
non-GCC compilers, by applying a configure check to see if the
compiler will accept an unreferenced "static inline foo ..."
function without warnings. It is believed that such warnings are
the only reason not to declare inlined functions in headers, if the
compiler understands "inline" at all. Kurt Harriman

- - In pgsql/src/include/utils/palloc.h, don't expose the inline
definition of MemoryContextSwitchTo when FRONTEND is defined. Its
reference to CurrentMemoryContext causes link failures on some
platforms, evidently because the inline function gets compiled
despite lack of use. Per buildfarm member warthog.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_function.sgml, document the
behavior of STRICT VARIADIC functions.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_function.sgml, ooops, let's get the
non-null vs null bit right ...

Bruce Momjian committed:

- - In pgsql/src/tutorial/basics.source, remove copyright mention of
Andrew Yu, per author's permission. Backpatch to 8.4.X.

- - In pgsql/src/port/rint.c, rewrite rint() to enable removal of
copyright mention; patch from Nathan Wagner. Function is simpler
too.

- - Remove /contrib/isn copyright mention for German Mendez Bravo, with
author's permission.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plperl.sgml, improve PL/Perl documentation of
database access functions. Alexey Klyukin.

- - Have tab checking as part of gmake check.

- - Properly document that OVER and WINDOW are Postgres reserved words.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/utils/init/postinit.c, add C comment about
process_settings() setting order.

- - Document that archive_timeout will force new WAL files even if a
single checkpoint has happened, and recommend adjusting
checkpoint_timeout to reduce the impact of this.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, mention warm and now
"hot" standby servers in the high availability docs.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, remove tabs from sgml.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- - Make RADIUS authentication use pg_getaddrinfo_all() to get address
of the server. Gets rid of a fairly ugly hack for Solaris, and also
provides hostname and IPV6 support.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/port/win32/mingwcompat.c, define the value for
in6addr_any on MingW, since it provides the struct only in the
header files and not in any libraries, yet declare it as an extern.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/port/win32/mingwcompat.c, typo fix, per Thom
Brown.

- - In pgsql/src/tools/msvc/Mkvcbuild.pm, make the msvc build system ask
python about details of version and installation prefix, instead of
assuming it will always be following the default layout. All
information we need is not available on Windows, but the number of
assumptions are at least fewer this way than before. Based on
suggestions from James William Pye.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- - Add a message type header to the CopyData messages sent from primary
to standby in streaming replication. While we only have one message
type at the moment, adding a message type header makes this easier
to extend.

- - Move the responsibility of writing a "unlogged WAL operation" record
from heap_sync() to the callers, because heap_sync() is sometimes
called even if the operation itself is WAL-logged. This eliminates
the bogus unlogged records from CLUSTER that Simon Riggs reported,
patch by Fujii Masao.

- - Add a note to the documentation of pg_standby that it's important
that the postgres process has permissions to delete the trigger
file, per suggestion by Mason Hale. Also fix pg_standby to do a
more predictable exit(200) instead of the current exit(-1) when the
unlink of the trigger file fails anyway. This only affects 8.3
branch. Older versions didn't have pg_standby, and in 8.4 upwards
pg_standby is no longer responsible for deleting the trigger file;
it's supposed to be done by recovery_end_command instead.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, remove piece of code to
zero out minRecoveryPoint when starting crash recovery. It's zeroed
out whenever a checkpoint is written, so the only scenario where the
removed code did anything is when you kill archive recovery, remove
recovery.conf, and start up the server, so that it goes into crash
recovery instead. That's a "don't do that" scenario, but it seems
better to not clear minRecoveryPoint but instead update it like we
do in archive recovery, which is what will now happen.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/catalog/storage.c, remove obsolete comment
about 'fsm' argument, which isn't an argument anymore.

- - Move "Warm Standby Servers for High Availability" and "Hot Standby"
sections under "High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication"
chapter. Streaming replication chapter needs a lot more work, but
this commit just moves things around.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/gin/ginxlog.c, fix bug in GIN WAL redo
cleanup function: don't free fake relcache entry while it's still
being used. Backpatch to 8.4, where the fake relcache method was
introduced.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, now that streaming
replication switches between streaming mode and restoring from
archive, the last WAL segment is not necessarily open at the end of
recovery. Fix assertion that assumed that. Fujii Masao, fixing the
assertion failure reported by Martin Pihlak.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, check for partial WAL
files in standby mode. If restore_command restores a partial WAL
file, assume it's because the file is just being copied to the
archive and treat it the same as "file not found" in standby mode.
pg_standby has a similar check, so it seems reasonable to have the
same level of protection in the built-in standby mode.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, if primary_conninfo is
not set, don't try to establish streaming connection.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, clean up Streaming
Replication documentation a little bit. A lot more needs to be
done, but it's a step forward.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, reduce the chatter to
the log when starting a standby server. Don't echo all the
recovery.conf options. Don't emit the "initializing recovery
connections" message, which doesn't mean anything to a user. Remove
the "starting archive recovery" message and replace the "automatic
recovery in progress" message with a more informative message saying
whether the server is doing PITR, normal archive recovery, or
standby mode.

- - In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, update Hot Standby
documentation to reflect the change in the LOG messages printed at
startup. As pointed out by Simon Riggs.

Joe Conway committed:

- - Check to ensure the number of primary key fields supplied does not
exceed the total number of non-dropped source table fields for
dblink_build_sql_*(). Addresses bug report from Rushabh Lathia.
Backpatch all the way to the 7.3 branch.

- - Modify recently added PQconnectdbParams() with new argument,
expand_dbname. If expand_dbname is non-zero and dbname contains an
= sign, it is taken as a conninfo string in exactly the same way as
if it had been passed to PQconnectdb. This is equivalent to the way
PQsetdbLogin() works, allowing PQconnectdbParams() to be a complete
alternative. Also improve the way the new function is called from
psql and replace a previously missed call to PQsetdbLogin() in psql.
Additionally use PQconnectdbParams() for pg_dump and friends, and
the bin/scripts command line utilities such as vacuumdb, createdb,
etc. Finally, update the documentation for the new parameter, as
well as the nuances of precedence in cases where key words are
repeated or duplicated in the conninfo string.

Teodor Sigaev committed:

- - Generic implementation of red-black binary tree. It's planned to use
in several places, but for now only GIN uses it during index
creation. Using self-balanced tree greatly speeds up index creation
in corner cases with preordered data.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- - Free reference in correct Perl context. Backpatch to release 8.2.
Patch from Tim Bunce.

- - Add plperl.on_plperl_init and plperl.on_plperlu_init settings for
language-specific startup. Rename recently added plperl.on_perl_init
to plperl.on_init. Also, code cleanup for utf8 hack. Patch from Tim
Bunce, reviewed by Alex Hunsaker.

- - Add regression test files inadvertantly omitted in
plperl.on_plperl{u}_init patch.

Gregory Stark committed:

- - In pgsql/src/port/copydir.c, make CREATE DATABASE safe against
losing whole files by fsyncing the directory and not just the
individual files. Back-patch to 8.1 -- before that we just called
"cp -r" and never fsynced anything anyways.

- - Speed up CREATE DATABASE by deferring the fsyncs until after copying
all the data and using posix_fadvise to nudge the OS into flushing
it earlier. This also hopefully makes CREATE DATABASE avoid spamming
the cache. Tests show a big speedup on Linux at least on some
filesystems. Idea and patch from Andres Freund.

- - In pgsql/src/backend/commands/explain.c, display explain buffers
measurements in memory units rather than blocks. Also show "Total
Buffer Usage" to hint that these are totals not averages per loop.

ITAGAKI Takahiro committed:

- - Add psql tab completion for DO blocks. Also adjust documentation of
DO. Patch from David Fetter and subsequent discussion.

- - In pgsql/src/port/copydir.c, remove an unused variable 'dirfd'.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Leonardo Francalanci sent in another revision of the patch to speed up
CLUSTER.

Robert Haas sent in a patch to let psql use Zoltan Boszormenyi's patch
to provide a rowcount utility for SELECTs.

Simon Riggs sent in another revision of the patch to fix deadlock
detection in hot standby.

Jesper Krogh sent in a patch to enable per-table configuration of
TOAST_TUPLES_PER_PAGE.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to fix the behavior of the new VACUUM
FULL with temp relations.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch to write an XLOG UNLOGGED record if WAL
logging was skipped.

Joachim Wieland sent in four more revisions of the patch fixing
LISTEN/NOTIFY behavior when the queue is full.

Zoltan Boszormenyi sent in four more revisions of the patch to provide
a rowcount utility for SELECTs.

Leonardo Francalanci sent in two more revisions of the patch to fix
CLUSTER behavior.

KaiGai Kohei sent in four more revisions of a patch to help fix large
object access controls.

Marko (johto) Tiikkaja sent in six more revisions of the patch to add
write operations to CTEs.

Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to fix the repeated banner issue in
psql.

Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to control the behavior of FM in
formatting strings.

Fujii Masao and Thom Brown sent in doc patches for Streaming
Replication.

Marko (johto) Tiikkaja and Tom Lane sent patches (2 and 1
respectively) to fix writeable CTE behavior with empty relations.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to add the TRUNCATE+COPY optimization
and --jobs=1 to pg_restore.

Simon Riggs sent in a patch to implement pg_standby for use as an
archive_cleanup_command with a new -a option to do so.

Robert Haas sent in two revisions of a patch to support
K-Nearest-Neighbor GiST search.

Arie Bikker sent in three more revisions of a patch to improve xpath
support.

Andreas Freund sent in a patch to change FATAL to ERROR in cancelling
an "<IDLE> in transaction" connection.

Simon Riggs sent in a patch to optimize GetConflictingVirtualXIDs() in
roughly the same manner currently used in TransactionIdIsInProgress().

Andreas Freund sent in a patch to fix subtransaction cancellation in
Hot Standby.

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