== Postgres Weekly News - November 04 2007 ==

== Postgres Weekly News - November 04 2007 ==

8.3 beta 2 is out. Test!
http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/v8.3beta

Which new PostgreSQL feature are you most excited about?
http://www.postgresql.org/community

== Postgres Product News ==

Cybercluster, a PgCluster-based replication system, released under the BSDL.
http://www.postgresql.at/english/downloads_e.html

PgPool II 2.0 beta released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/

PostgreSQL PHP Generator 7.10 released.
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/postgresql/phpgenerator/

Whitebeam 1.1.5 released.
http://www.whitebeam.org

== Postgres Jobs for November ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2007-11/threads.php

== Postgres Local ==

New Zealand PUG's first meeting will take place in Wellington
November 6, 2007. Details below.
http://pgug.org.nz

Check out the new German-language Postgres job board.
http://www.pg-forum.de/jobboerse-marktplatz/

== Postgres in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://www.planetpostgresql.org/

General Bits, Archives and occasional new articles:
http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

Postgres 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)

== Applied Patches ==

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/history.sgml, add note on PostgreSQL vs.
Postgres.

- More precise error message in pgsql/src/bin/pg_ctl/pg_ctl.c.

Marc Fournier committed:

- Simple script to pull together a very small (<500k) tar file that
builds *just* libpq...its not perfect, as it pulls in more files
then is necessarily required to build, but as it is, it requires one
simple patch to configure.in in order to work... Tested on
FreeBSD...patch for configure.in hasn't been applied, but putting
the script in place so that it doesn't get lost...

- Remove pgsql/src/tools/make_libpq.sh from CVS.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- Clarify restart is of the "database" server, in FAQ.

- Update Russian FAQ. Viktor Vislobokov.

- Documentation wording fixes. Guillaume Lelarge.

- Add to TODO: "Prevent long-lived temporary tables from causing
frozen-Xid advancement starvation."

- Add acronym section to our documentation.

- Add documentation mention that FSM == Free Space Map, so the config
parameter name makes more sense.

- Acronym spelling fix.

- Update Czech FAQ. Pavel Stehule

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release.sgml, mention that internal hash
functions changed in 8.3 release notes.

- Document that configure --with-libxslt controls just /contrib/xml2.
Nikolay Samokhvalov

- Update wording for xsl configure option.

- Mention "replication" in the title of the high availability and load
balancing chapter because some people were looking for 'replication'
and didn't realize that chapter addressed it.

- Properly indent tablespace SGML section.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/manage-ag.sgml, document possible problems
with NFS tablespaces.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, add link to NFS section from
"creating a database cluster.

- Wording improvement to pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml.

Teodor Sigaev committed:

- Fix coredump during replay WAL after crash. Change entrySplitPage()
to prevent usage of any information from system catalog, because it
could be called during replay of WAL. Per bug report from Craig
McElroy. Patch doesn't change on-disk storage.

- Add check of already changed page while replay WAL. This touches
only ginRedoInsert(), because other ginRedo* functions rewrite whole
page or make changes which could be applied several times without
consistent's loss. Remove check of identifying of corresponding
split record: it's possible that replaying of WAL starts after
actual page split, but before removing of that split from incomplete
splits list. In this case, that check cause FATAL error. Per
stress test which reproduces bug reported by Craig McElroy

Magnus Hagander committed:

- New versions of mingw have gettimeofday(), so add an autoconf test
for this.

- Add compat file for dynamically loading the functions that MinGW is
missing the imports for. Add RegisterWaitForSingleObject() to the
list of such functions, which should take care of the current
buildfarm breakage.

- In pgsql/src/backend/port/win32/mingwcompat.c, make variable static,
per Tom.

Tom Lane committed:

- Remove claim that ts_headline knows how to generate multiple
ellipsis-separated excerpts of a document. That's clearly
desirable, but the functionality is not there yet.

- Remove the hack in the grammar that "optimized away" DEFAULT NULL
clauses. Instead put in a test to drop a NULL default at the last
moment before storing the catalog entry. This changes the behavior
in a couple of ways: 1. Specifying DEFAULT NULL when creating an
inheritance child table will successfully suppress inheritance of
any default expression from the parent's column, where formerly it
failed to do so. 2. Specifying DEFAULT NULL for a column of a
domain type will correctly override any default belonging to the
domain; likewise for a sub-domain. The latter change happens
because by the time the clause is checked, it won't be a simple null
Const but a CoerceToDomain expression. Personally I think this
should be back-patched, but there doesn't seem to be consensus for
that on pgsql-hackers, so refraining.

- Mention the index name in 'could not create unique index' errors,
per suggestion from Rene Gollent.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/func.sgml, add a note pointing out that some
other databases make GREATEST and LEAST handle NULL arguments
differently than we do. Per a discussion on 30-Jun that somehow
didn't get done.

- Update some obsolete stuff in the GRANT and REVOKE reference pages:
simplify the syntax examples by unifying user and group cases, and
fix no-longer-correct example of psql \z output. Per Erwin
Brandstetter.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, update discussion of shared
memory sizing for 8.3: adjust multipliers, mention
autovacuum_max_workers. Minor copy-editing too.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, update shared-memory-size info
for 8.2 branch.

- Some corrections/improvements to new acronym list.

- Ensure that EquivalenceClasses generated from ORDER BY keys contain
proper RelabelType nodes when the sort key is binary-compatible with
the sort operator rather than having exactly its input type. We did
this correctly for index columns but not sort keys, leading to
failure to notice that a varchar index matches an ORDER BY request.
This requires a bit more work in make_sort_from_pathkeys, but not
anyplace else that I can find. Per bug report and subsequent
discussion.

- Teach CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER to convert old-style foreign key
trigger definitions into regular foreign key constraints. This
seems necessary given that some people evidently never did get
around to running adddepend on their schemas, and without some sort
of hack the old definitions will no longer work. Per report from
Olivier Prenant and subsequent investigation.

- In pgsql/src/backend/storage/ipc/ipc.c, prevent continuing
disk-space bloat when profiling (with PROFILE_PID_DIR enabled) and
autovacuum is on. Since there will be a steady stream of autovac
worker processes exiting and dropping gmon.out files, allowing them
to make separate subdirectories results in serious bloat; and it
seems unlikely that anyone will care about those profiles anyway.
Limit the damage by forcing all autovac workers to dump in one
subdirectory, PGDATA/gprof/avworker/. Per report from Joerg Beyer
and subsequent discussion.

- Minor improvements to code for converting legacy CREATE CONSTRAINT
TRIGGER commands into proper foreign-key constraints. Believe the
constraint name given in the trigger arguments in preference to the
trigger name --- to judge from Olivier Prenant's example, pg_dump
must at some time have used the autogenerated trigger name there,
though AFAICT no current release branch tip does. Improve the
emitted NOTICEs to provide more detail (PK table's name and column
names). Handle the case where pg_dump forgot to provide the FROM
table (a bug that never did get fixed in 7.0.x apparently). This
commit doesn't do anything about the question of what to do with
incomplete trigger groups.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Pavel Stehule sent in a Czech-language version of the FAQ.

Mark Kirkwood sent in a patch intended to fix the "Cache lookup failed
for relation X" problem.

Magnus Hagander sent in a patch to implement krb_match_realm for krb5,
gssapi and sspi.

Gevik Babakhani sent in a patch to implement named parameters in SQL
functions.

Greg Sabino Mullane sent in a patch to improve the consistency of
psql.