== PostgreSQL Weekly News - November 09 2008 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - November 09 2008 ==

PostgreSQL 8.3.5, 8.2.11, 8.1.15, 8.0.19 and 7.4.23 released. Upgrade!
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/release.html

The Beijing PostgreSQL and Perl Workshop was a giant success, with
over 180 attendees. Thanks to He (laser) Weiping, Li (James) Qiang
and many others in the Chinese PostgreSQL community for making this
possible.
http://conference.perlchina.org/bjpw2008

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

dumbofs 0.01 released.
http://yiannnos.com/dumbofs

epqa 1.2 released.
http://epqa.sourceforge.net/

Navicat 8.0.28 released.
http://pgsql.navicat.com/

Npgsql2 2.0.1 released.
http://www.npgsql.org

Archiveopteryx 2.12 and 3.0.3 released.
http://www.archiveopteryx.org/2.12
http://www.archiveopteryx.org/3.0.3

== PostgreSQL Jobs for November ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2008-11/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

PgDay Rio de la Plata is looking for sponsors. Interested parties
should contact admin AT postgres-arg DOT org.

Dickson Guedes is looking for volunteers to help with a PgMeeting in
Florianópolis. Write to guediz AT gmail DOT com if you want to help.

David Fetter will be speaking at PGDay Rio de la Plata Buenos Aires
November 22.
http://pgday.postgres-arg.org/

David Fetter will be speaking at OSDC Sydney December 3-5.
http://www.osdc.com.au/2008/index.html

== 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)

== Applied Patches ==

Magnus Hagander committed:

- In pgsql/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c, fix incorrect comment in
SSL code.

Alvaro Herrera committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlogutils.c, fix mistakes in
comment headers

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/docguide.sgml, update URL to Docbook DSSSL
stylesheets, per Gabriele Bartolini.

- Reduce the acceptable staleness of pgstat data for autovacuum, per
the longstanding note in the source that this patch removes.

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/clog.c, fix
TransactionIdSetStatusBit so that it doesn't try to change a
transaction from COMMITTED to SUBCOMMITTED during recovery. This
wasn't previously possible, but it is now due to the recent changes
on clog commit protocol for subtransactions. Simon Riggs.

- Fix silly typo in previous commit.

- In pgsql/src/pl/plpgsql/src/plpgsql.h, remove unused rfno from
PLpgSQL_recfield. Jonah Harris.

- In pgsql/src/pl/plpgsql/src/plpgsql.h, revert unwanted patch, per
Tom Lane.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- In pgsql/src/tools/pgindent/pgindent, small shell syntax
improvement.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/func.sgml, remove tabs from SGML file.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, add missing colon to docs.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/libpq.sgml, document that 'sslmode' is ignored
for Unix domain socket communication; backpatch to 8.3.X.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, document that SSL is only
possible on tcp/ip connections in the postgresql.conf 'ssl' section.

Tom Lane committed:

- Add pg_typeof() function. Brendan Jurd.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, fix two error-recovery bugs in
describeOneTableDetails(), and make the code to dump sequence values
cope with sequences outside the search path and/or having names that
need quoting. No back-patch needed because these are new problems
in 8.4. Kris Jurka (also a little bit of code beautification by
tgl)

- Clean up the messy semantics (not to mention inefficiency) of
PageGetTempPage by splitting it into three functions with
better-defined behaviors. Zdenek Kotala

- In pgsql/src/include/catalog/pg_proc.h, dept of second thoughts:
seems it'd be safer if pg_typeof is marked stable not immutable,
since it depends on system catalog contents.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/uuid.c, use bool for a boolean flag.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/trigfuncs.c, fix compiler warnings
(including a seriously bogus elog call); minor code beautification.

- Disallow LOCK TABLE outside a transaction block (or function), since
this case almost certainly represents user error. Per a gripe from
Sebastian Boehm and subsequent discussion.

- In pgsql/src/pl/plpython/plpython.c, fix bug introduced in recent
patch to make plpython cope with OUT arguments: the proc->argnames
array has to be initialized to zero immediately on creation, since
the error recovery path will try to free its elements.

- Rename several aliases for PLpgSQL_datum.dno to also be called dno.
Hopefully this will forestall future confusion about their roles.
Jonah Harris

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/trigfuncs.c, this maneuver really
requires a comment ...

- Improve psql's \dC command to take a pattern parameter. Casts are
shown if their source or target types match the pattern (using the
same definition of "match" as \dT does). Per recent discussion.

- Improve bulk-insert performance by keeping the current target buffer
pinned (but not locked, as that would risk deadlocks). Also, make
it work in a small ring of buffers to avoid having bulk inserts
trash the whole buffer arena. Robert Haas, after an idea of Simon
Riggs'.

- Implement ALTER DATABASE SET TABLESPACE to move a whole database (or
at least as much of it as lives in its default tablespace) to a new
tablespace. Guillaume Lelarge, with some help from Bernd Helmle and
Tom Lane

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/func.sgml, improve documentation of pg_typeof,
per gripe from David Wheeler.

- Add some more citext test cases, per David Wheeler. Also remove the
citext-to-and-from-xml tests, since those caused variation between
installations with or without libxml without really proving much.
Instead repurpose citext_1.out as the expected results in glibc
en_US (and probably other) locales.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/datetime.c, fix recently added code
for SQL years-months interval syntax so that it behaves correctly
for a leading minus sign, zero year value, and nonzero month value.
Per discussion with Ron Mayer.

- Add a new GUC variable called "IntervalStyle" that decouples
interval output from DateStyle, and create a new interval style that
produces output matching the SQL standard (at least for interval
values that fall within the standard's restrictions). IntervalStyle
is also used to resolve the conflict between the standard and
traditional Postgres rules for interpreting negative interval input.
Ron Mayer

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml, add some documentation about
handling of fractions in interval input. (It's always worked like
this, but we never documented it before.)

- Add a startup check that pg_xlog and pg_xlog/archive_status exist.
If the latter doesn't exist, automatically recreate it. (We don't
do this for pg_xlog, though, per discussion.) Jonah Harris.

- Replace pg_class.reltriggers with relhastriggers, which is just a
boolean hint ("there might be triggers") rather than an exact count.
This is necessary catalog infrastructure for the upcoming patch to
reduce the strength of locking needed for trigger addition/removal.
Split out and committed separately for ease of reviewing/testing.
In passing, also get rid of the unused pg_class columns relukeys,
relfkeys, and relrefs, which haven't been maintained in many years
and now have no chance of ever being maintained (because of wishing
to avoid locking). Simon Riggs.

- Make relhasrules and relhastriggers work like relhasindex, namely we
let VACUUM reset them to false rather than trying to clean 'em up
during DROP.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- suppress_redundant_updates_trigger function.

- Fix suppress_redundant_updates_trigger() where relation has Oids,
per gripe from KaiGai Kohei.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/trigfuncs.c, change fix for
suppress_redundant_updates_trigger() where relation has Oids, to
only apply if present Oid is invalid, per second thought from TGL

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- Allow uuid_in() to parse a wider variety of variant input formats
for the UUID data type. This patch takes the approach of allowing
an optional hyphen after each group of four hex digits. Robert
Haas.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/pgstat.c, fix compiler warning about
uninitialized variable.

- ADD array_ndims function. Author: Robert Haas

- Experimental new support for building man pages via docbook2x, an
XSL-based tool chain. With some polishing, this might help us get
rid of our ancient and crufty man page build mechanism.

- A few additional test cases for array functionality

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/index/genam.c, the logic in
systable_beginscan to translate heap attribute numbers to index
column numbers needs to handle the case where you have more than one
scankey on the same index column. toast_fetch_datum_slice() needs
it.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Bernd Helmle sent in another revision of his updateable views patch.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch in aid of synchronous replication which
does the signal handling.

Kenneth Marshall sent in a patch to improve hash indexing.

Bruce Momjian sent in another revision of his SSL patch.

Martin Pihlak sent in another revision of his patch to implement an
SQL/MED-compatible connection manager.

Bryce Cutt sent in a revision of Ramon Lawrence's patch to improve the
performance of multi-batch hash joins on skewed data sets.

Jeff Davis sent in two revisions of a documentation patch atop Peter
Eisentraut's patch to implement SQL:2008 distinct types.

Simon Riggs sent in another revision of his patch that implements
infrastructure changes for hot standby and recovery.

Greg Smith sent in two revisions of a python program that generates a
postgresql.conf.

Hitoshi Harada sent in four more revisions of his windowing functions
patch.

David Rowley sent in a patch atop Hitoshi Harada's windowing functions
patch to quiet some compiler warnings.

Per feedback from Ibrar Ahmed, Benedek Laszlo sent in a revised patch
for pg_dump roles support.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch to start and manage a WAL-sender process
as part of synchronous replication.

Kenneth Marshall sent in a patch to test citext.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a patch to fix an infelicity in index
creation pursuant to the relation forks patch.

Charlie Savage sent in two revisions of a patch to correct compilation
problems in 8.3.5 on Windows Vista using MingW and msys.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch which adds his patches for
auto-explain and pg_stat_statement and Martin Pihlak's querydesc
patch.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another set of patches for SE-PostgreSQL.

Alvaro Herrera sent in a patch to ensure that the PD_PAGE_FULL bit is
restored after replaying a heap_update WAL record.

Michael Meskes sent in two revisions of a patch to automate generation
of the ecpg grammar.

Greg Sabino Mullane sent in two revisions of a patch to make psql's
\d commands consistent by requiring an additional S to show the
system objects.

Zdenek Kotala sent in a patch to add a parameter to allow storage
hints on DDL.

Robert Haas sent in two revisions of a patch which re-implements Jim
Nasby's array_length() function in C.

Emmanuel Cecchet sent in another revision of his patch to improve
transactions involving temporary tables.

Alvaro Herrera sent in another revision of his patch to add
block-level CRC checks.

Jeff Davis sent in two revisions version of ITAGAKI Takahiro's
auto-explain contrib module with contributions from Martin Pihlak.