== Postgres Weekly News - December 16 2007 ==

== Postgres Weekly News - December 16 2007 ==

ruby-pg is now the official rubyforge project for the "postgres" ruby gem.
http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-pg

== Postgres Product News ==

DBI-Link has been packaged for debian.
http://packages.debian.org/dbi-link

PL/Proxy has been packaged for debian.
http://packages.debian.org/postgresql-8.2-plproxy

PostgreSQL Maestro 7.12 released.
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/postgresql/maestro/

PgBouncer 1.1.2 released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgbouncer/

Continuent uni/cluster for PostgreSQL 2007.1 released.
http://www.continuent.com

Viewalyzer 1.0.0 released.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211124

== Postgres Jobs for December ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2007-12/threads.php

== Postgres Local ==

PGCon 2008 Call for Papers starts December 19. Start your papers now.
http://www.pgcon.org/2008/papers.php

The BSD and PostgreSQL teams share a developer room at FOSDEM 2008 in
Brussels February 23-34, 2008. If you want to give a talk or help
managing the dev room, contact fosdem(at)pgug(dot)eu(dot) For more information,
see:
http://fosdem.org/2008/schedule/devroom/bsdpostgresql

PostgreSQL Conference East '08 talks are March 28 and 29.
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/

FISL 9.0 will be happening April 17-19, 2008 at PUCRS in Porto Alegre,
Brazil. Talk proposals are due by November 1, 2007.
https://fisl.softwarelivre.org/9.0/

== 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
and Fernando Ike de Oliveira.

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 ==

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- Fix example archive_command for standalone backups so it doesn't
return spurious non-zero.

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/pgarch.c, provide a more accurate,
detailed log message when the archive command fails.

- Clarify log messages in pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c
and pgsql/src/backend/storage/file/fd.c

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/Makefile, make error message more accurate.

Alvaro Herrera committed:

- Extend the format of CSV logs to include the additional information
supplied with the logged event. CSV logs are now a first-class
citizen along plain text logs in that they carry much of the same
information. Per complaint from depesz on bug #3799.

- Correct result type of convert_to, per Pavel Stehule.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- Use _USE_32BIT_TIME_T when building with MSVC. Also, enforce that
it's used when building addons. Dave Page

- Typo pointed out by Erwin Brandstetter. Remove the whole makes it
even better, per JD.

- In pgsql/src/bin/pgevent/Makefile, get dllwrap name from variable
instead of hardcoded. Per complaint from Richard Evans.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- Document how to turn off disk write cache on popular operating
systems.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml, write cache doc cleanups. Greg
Smith.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml, wording improvement for write-cache
disabling instructions.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release.sgml, Mention Stefan Kaltenbrunner as
contributor for text search because of psql work.

- Add release note introduction.

- Remove Stefan Kaltenbrunner mention from full text release note
item.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release.sgml, adjust release notes for
HISTORY.html generation.

- Remove item "Allow free-behind capability for large sequential scans
to avoid kernel cache spoiling" from TODO. Fixed in a different
way.

- Add random I/O URL to TODO.

- Mark items needing updating for beta stamping.

- Add default error rules for making postgres.pdf and postgres.ps,
suggesting proper target names.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/Makefile, use clearer error message for gmake
postgres.pdf: "Makefile:171: *** Invalid target; use
postgres-A4.pdf or postgres-US.pdf as targets. Stop."

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release.sgml, mark 8.3 as likely now January,
2008 in release notes.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, update pgpool-II
mention.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, mention pg_ctl kill for Win32 in
docs.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, add docs about OOM killer.
lst_hoe01 AT kwsoft.de

- Update OOM wording.

- Mention that HOT helps with DELETE space reuse.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml, update write-cache docs to mention
windows behavior for various fsync_methods. Magnus Hagander.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml, Windows write-cache wording
improvement.

- In TODO, update item description to read: "Consider having the
background writer update the transaction status hint bits before
writing out the page. Implementing this requires the background
writer to have access to system catalogs and the transaction status
log."

- In pgsql/src/tools/pgindent/README, mention installing /contrib
libraries for pgindent.

- In pgsql/src/tools/pgindent/README, mention use all configure
options when getting pgindent typedefs.

Tom Lane committed:

- Make an editorial pass over the newly SGML-ified contrib
documentation. Fix lots of bad markup, bad English, bad
explanations. Second round of commits. pgcrypto and pgstandby
still to go...

- In pgsql/contrib/vacuumlo/vacuumlo.c, make vacuumlo prompt for
password when needed, thus making its -W switch optional, as is the
case for every other one of our programs. I had already documented
its -W as being optional, so this is bringing the code into line
with the docs ...

- Remove the -P options of oid2name and pgbench, as they are security
hazards. Instead teach these programs to prompt for a password when
necessary, just like all our other programs. I did not bother to
invent -W switches for them, since the return on investment seems so
low.

- Remove the long-deprecated -u option from psql, since it does
nothing very useful and confuses people who think it is the same as
-U. (Eventually we might want to re-introduce it as being an alias
for -U, but that should not happen until the switch has actually not
been there for a few releases.) Likewise in pg_dump and pg_restore.
Per gripe from Robert Treat and subsequent discussion.

- Make documentation of -W options more accurate and uniform.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/arch-dev.sgml, change 'merge sort join', a
phrase we use nowhere else, to the more usual 'merge join'.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/pgarch.c, clean up unportable
attempt to use #if inside a macro call, also faulty code in third
arm of #if. Per buildfarm reports.

- Improve the method of localizing column names and other fixed
strings in psql's \d commands and other uses of printQuery().
Previously we would pass these strings through gettext() and then
send them to the server as literals in the SQL query. But the code
was not set up to handle doubling of quotes in the strings, causing
failure if a translation attempted to use the wrong kind of quote
marks, as indeed is now the case for (at least) the French
translation of \dFp. Another hazard was that gettext() would
translate to whatever encoding was implied by the client's LC_CTYPE
setting, which might be different from the client_encoding setting,
which would probably cause the server to reject the query as
mis-encoded. The new arrangement is to send the untranslated ASCII
strings to the server, and do the translations inside printQuery()
after the query results come back. Per report from Guillaume
Lelarge and subsequent discussion.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/textsearch.sgml, change a couple of examples
to say ALTER MAPPING instead of ADD MAPPING, per Oleg.

- Improve documentation about Julian dates; in particular, point out
the difference between Julian and Gregorian reckoning of when JD 0
was.

- Make an editorial pass over the newly SGML-ified contrib
documentation. Fix lots of bad markup, bad English, bad
explanations. Last ones ... whew. Man, that was tedious.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

Mark Kirkwood's patch to create tablespaces automatically. This
feature was previously removed on grounds of foot-gun-itude.

== Pending Patches ==

Alvaro Herrera sent in a patch to fix the CSV logging gap from Bug
#3799.

Dave Page sent in a patch to introduce a delay between client
connection setup and the start of the benchmark itself in pgbenchmark.

Tom Lane sent in a patch which disallows sending passwords in libpq.

Zdenek Kotala sent in a patch to pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml which
explains how write cache works on Solaris.

Tom Lane sent in a patch which chagnes the way psql deals with
localization of column names and other fixed strings in the output of
\d and related commands, per gripe from Guillaume LeLarge.

Simon Riggs sent in a patch which changes the display of the archiver
under ps so that it can be monitored during archiving.