== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 5th 2004 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 5th 2004 ==

There is nothing like a few hurricanes and power outages to inspire a weekly
news vacation. Of course when you are a global distributed development
project, weather doesn't tend to slow you down, so while I was out bundling
up sticks and tree limbs, the PostgreSQL developers were busy bundling up
PostgreSQL 8.0 Beta 3. Those who have not upgraded yet are strongly
encouraged to do so, packages are available in all the usual places. Those
interested in seeing what items we still have left can check out the open
items list at http://candle.pha.pa.us/cgi-bin/pgopenitems.

So with a couple of weeks and a new beta package, we certainly have a good
list of changes to go through. The TAS assembly code for Solaris/386 was
fixed. A corner case where libpq would sometimes think a failed command had
succeeded was also fixed. Some overflow conditions in integer arithmetic
operators are now properly detected. An optimization for hash joins where the
inner relation is completely empty was put in. ALTER TABLE OWNER was adjusted
to update the ownership of dependent sequences along with indexes. The index
locking code was tweaked a bit, and the inherited-table update query code was
updated. Finally, the volatility labeling of the timestamp related function
was reviewed and adjusted as needed.

Another area that saw a whole slew of improvements was the psql program. Some
of the additions include added tab support for ALTER SEQUENCE, adding "RENAME
TO" for ALTER TRIGGER xx ON yy, support for Alter USER xxx, support for ALTER
LANGUAGE, and improved support for ALTER TABLE xxx ALTER COLUMN xxx. Fixes
included picking the proper table for ALTER TRIGGER xx ON ..., ALTER GROUP
xxx DROP..., ALTER DOMAIN xxx DROP ..., and ALTER DOMAIN xx SET DEFAULT.
Thanks to Greg Sabino-Mullane for this extensive reworking.

One last area to remind folks of was the continuing improvements to the
documentation that have been occurring. Recent areas that have been worked on
include the CREATE TABLE AS command, PL/Python installation, libpq SSL
support, the use of PERFORM in plpgsql, the upgrade procedure, and several
new index entries. If you haven't had a chance, please take a swing through
the new documentation and send in suggestions you might have.

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

EMS PostgreSQL Manager for Windows 2.5 released
http://www.databasejournal.com/news/article.php/3414051

Servoy 2.1: over 50 new or improved features
http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/09/23/servoy/index.php

Whitebeam 0.9.30 Release
http://www.postgresql.org/news/228.html

== PostgreSQL In The News ==

Open Source Hero Proves The Power Of Tux
http://www.cxotoday.com/cxo/jsp/showstory.jsp?storyid=1523

Mail Cruncher Brings Business Trust Ratings to Anti-Spam
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/9/emw161107.htm

PostgreSQL Needs to Find Its Way (blog)
http://cuppett.blogspot.com/2004/09/postgresql-needs-to-find-its-way.html

== PostgreSQL Events ==

Swiss Open Systems Workshop: Zurich, Switzerland: Oct 5-7
Bruce Momjian will be presenting at the three-day ch/open conference
http://www.ch-open.ch/wstage/index.html

4D Summit: New Orleans, Louisiana: October 19-22
The 4D Summit will have sessions on making cross platform applications with
PostgreSQL.
http://www.4d.com/summit/

LinuxWorld Conferance: Frankfurt, Germany: October 26-28
PostgreSQL will once again have a booth at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo.
http://www.linuxworldexpo.de/

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 5th 2004 ==
On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org