PostgreSQL Weekly News - May 28th 2003

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - May 28th 2003 ==

By now I'm sure you're all running 7.3.3 right? :-) The official
announcement went out Monday night, and all of the ftp mirrors should
have the latest distribution by this point. You can find a list of ftp
mirrors at http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html. I should also
mention that each release is also available through the sourceforge
project page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgsql/. Be sure to read
the HISTORY file included with the distribution for a detailed list of
changes.

With 7.3.3 released, we are now getting into the "home stretch" for
7.4. A number of miscellaneous improvements went in this week, some
large and some small. A core dump in pg_get_triggerdef was fixed, we now
ensure function names are schema-qualified when needed,
argument-printing code has been simplified, pl_funcs now have support
for plpgsql PERFORM statements, our static cbrt() implementation in
float.c was cleaned up, compilation on Cygwin was fixed, and we now
make sure printtup() always sends the number of columns previously
advertised in RowDescription message. A very remote case of incorrect
computation of StartUpID was fixed, based on a report from Rao Kumar.

There were also some nice enhancements made in the back end.
Information schema saw some minor improvements, and yes/no interactive
responses have now been internationalized. The implementation of
btrim/ltrim/rtrim were all improved. The changes were made in
preparation for using rtrim1() as the bpchar-to-text cast operator, but
these changes stand on there own as a performance improvement even if we
decide not to do that. CHAR(n) to TEXT/VARCHAR conversion was also
modified to automatically strip trailing blanks along with removal of
some redundant operators for VARCHAR. There was also some clean up on
resolution of ambiguous operators/functions to avoid surprising choices
for domains (domains are treated as equivalent to their base types and
binary-coercibility is no longer considered a preference item when
choosing among multiple operators/functions). And lastly, some marginal
cleanup was done that includes merging the (essentially) duplicate
resolution code in parse_func.c and parse_oper.c as well as
restructuring "special operator" handling to fetch operators via index
opclasses rather than hardwiring assumptions about names (cleans up the
pattern_ops stuff a little).

There were a number of improvements to ecpg this week; fixes include
ecpg now recognizing named structs/unions (so you don't have to list the
whole definition every time you declare a variable anymore), ecpg now
accepts array elements as arguments, it now allows input from stdin and
output to stdout, a fix for incorrect output for some structs, and a
segfault fix when detecting undefined cursors.

And rounding things out this week are some error handling and logging
changes that will be new in 7.4. Error-handling logic in libpq was
adjusted so that for the first time, libpq copes sanely with running out
of memory for a query result. The log_ GUC settings are now controllable
only by super-users, so non-super users can't turn them off, and debug_
GUC variables output DEBUG1 rather than LOG.

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

phpPgAdmin 3.0 enters beta phase
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=279039

Aqua Data Studio, version 3.0 Released
http://www.databasejournal.com/news/article.php/2210571

== PostgreSQL In the News ==

PostgreSQL 7.3.3 Released
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3660

IBM to Release 'Express' Database for SMBs
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/2211551

== Upcoming Events ==

Fenasoft Brasil Software Week: Sao Paulo, Brazil: May 27-30
dbExperts will have a PostgreSQL demonstration
http://www.dbexperts.com.br/noticias/mostraNoticia?id=55

Open Source Conference: Portland, Oregon: July 7-11
A PostgreSQL track is available this year
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2003

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - May 28th 2003 ==

Don't forget to read Elein Mustain's Weekly Summary of the PostgreSQL
General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org
http://advocacy.postgresql.org