== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 21 2008 ==

Happy Solstice/Channukah/Christmas/Yule/etc. from the PostgreSQL
Weekly News :)

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 21 2008 ==

PGCon 2009 will be held 21-22 May 2009, in Ottawa at the University of
Ottawa. It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 19-20 May
2009.
http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php

PostgreSQL RPMs Team released new RPM sets compiled with
--enable-integer-datetimes.
http://yum.pgsqlrpms.org/howtoyum.php#idsupporthowto

PostgreSQL Live CD Project started a mailing list to build a live CD
with comments from community:
http://www.pglivecd.org/community.php

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Npgsql2 2.0.2 released.
http://www.npgsql.org

PostgreSQL RPM Building Project released 3rd version of The PostgreSQL
Live CD:
http://www.pglivecd.org

PostGIS 1.3.5 released.
http://postgis.refractions.net/

PostgreDAC ver. 2.5.0 released.
http://microolap.com/products/connectivity/postgresdac/download/

Database Designer for PostgreSQL 1.2.7 released.
http://microolap.com/products/database/postgresql-designer/download/

phpPgAdmin security update 4.2.2 released.
http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for December ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2008-12/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The Call for Papers for FOSDEM 2009 has begun. PostgreSQL will have a
booth and will share a developer room with the BSD groups. Please
submit your talks to fosdem (at) postgresql (dot) eu. The deadline is
2009-01-02.

SYDPUG will be meeting February 3, 2009 at 6:30pm. Watch this space
for details.
http://archives.postgresql.org/sydpug/

Melbourne PUG is starting up. Watch for meeting details.
http://archives.postgresql.org/melbourne-au-pug/

PGCon Brazil will be take place October 23-24 2009 at Unicamp in
Campinas, Sao Paulo state.

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter
and Devrim GUNDUZ.

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:

- Support specifying filename for SSL certificate, key, root
certificate store and certificate revokation list by using
connection parameters or environment variables. Original patch by
Mark Woodward, heavily reworked by Alvaro Herrera and Magnus
Hagander.

- In pgsql/src/tools/msvc/Mkvcbuild.pm, teach MSVC build system about
building foreign data wrappers. Should fix recent buildfarm
breakage.

Tom Lane committed:

- Remove our dependencies on MB_CUR_MAX in favor of believing that
pg_database_encoding_max_length() predicts the maximum character
length returned by wchar2char(). Per Hiroshi Inoue, MB_CUR_MAX
isn't usable on Windows because we allow encoding = UTF8 when the
locale says differently; and getting rid of it seems a good idea on
general principles because it narrows our dependence on libc's
locale API just a little bit more. Also install a check for
overflow of the buffer size computation.

- Reduce the scaling factor for attstattarget to number-of-lexemes
from 100 to 10, to compensate for the recent change in default
statistics target. The original number was pulled out of the air
anyway :-(, but it was picked in the context of the old default, so
holding the default size of the MCELEM array constant seems the best
thing. Per discussion.

- Remove newly-added regression test cases that referenced pg_stats.
The proposed fix for this is a behavioral change that probably
shouldn't get back-patched, and it doesn't seem worth putting a
workaround into a back branch.

- Arrange for the pg_foo_is_visible and has_foo_privilege families of
functions to return NULL, instead of erroring out, if the target
object is specified by OID and we can't find that OID in the
catalogs. Since these functions operate internally on SnapshotNow
rules, there is a race condition when using them in user queries:
the query's MVCC snapshot might "see" a catalog row that's already
committed dead, leading to a failure when the inquiry function is
applied. Returning NULL should generally provide more convenient
behavior. This issue has been complained of before, and in
particular we are now seeing it in the regression tests due to
another recent patch.

- In pgsql/src/interfaces/ecpg/ecpglib/misc.c, fix cast-away-const
problem as well as bogus calculation of required buffer size.

- Code review for CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW patch. Do things in a saner
order to result in hopefully-less-confusing error messages when the
new definition isn't compatible with the old; minor other cleanup.

- Department of second thoughts: further experimentation with CREATE
OR REPLACE VIEW suggests that it'd be worth spelling the error
messages out in a little more detail. This seems to help with
localizing the problem.

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/heap/heapam.c, make heap_update() set
newtup->t_tableOid correctly, for consistency with the other major
heapam.c functions. The only known consequence of this omission is
that UPDATE RETURNING failed to return the correct value for
"tableoid", as per report from KaiGai Kohei. Back-patch to 8.2.
Arguably it's wrong all the way back; but without evidence of
visible breakage before RETURNING was added, I'll desist from
patching the older branches.

- Code review for function default parameters patch. Fix numerous
problems as per recent discussions. In passing this also fixes a
couple of bugs in the previous variadic-parameters patch.

- In pgsql/src/backend/executor/execQual.c, fix oversight in my recent
patch to allow ExecMakeFunctionResult to handle materialize-mode set
results. Since it now uses the ReturnSetInfo node to hold internal
state, we need to be sure to set up the node even when the
immediately called function doesn't return set (but does have a
set-valued argument). Per report from Anupama Aherrao.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml, add a couple of
cross-references to the docs about enum types, per a recent gripe
that the info is hard to find.

- When we added the ability to have zero-element ARRAY[] constructs by
adding an explicit cast to show the intended array type, we forgot
to teach ruleutils.c to print out such constructs properly. Found
by noting bogus output from recent changes in polymorphism
regression test.

- Add a new column proiswindow to pg_proc. It doesn't actually do
anything useful yet, but I'm tired of re-merging this aspect of the
window functions patch.

- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/foreigncmds.c, fix various confusions
of pointers and OIDs, unsafe assumptions about nulls, etc. I think
this will fix the current buildfarm issues ...

- In pgsql/src/backend/parser/gram.y, add missing semicolon, per
buildfarm results. Martin Pihlak

Michael Meskes committed:

- Do not try to change a const variable.

- Applied patch by ITAGAKI Takahiro to fix segfault in ecpg on
non-glibc systems.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- In pgsql/contrib/pg_standby/pg_standby.c, add missing 'break' in
Win32 switch statement, reported by Martin Zaun

- In pgsql/contrib/pg_standby/pg_standby.c, add comment about
GNUWin32's cp not having the file system problem.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/pgstandby.sgml, add documentation that
pg_standby sleeps on Win32 because of 'copy' behavior.

- In pgsql/contrib/pg_standby/pg_standby.c, improve comment about why
sleep is used by pg_standby to handle 'copy' file size problem.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/rules.sgml, fix wording of section comparing
triggers and rules; old wording as confusing.

- The attached patch contains a couple of fixes in the existing probes
and includes a few new ones: Fixed compilation errors on OS X for
probes that use typedefs. Fixed a number of probes to pass
ForkNumber per the relation forks patch. The new probes are those
that were taken out from the previous submitted patch and required
simple fixes. Will submit the other probes that may require more
discussion in a separate patch. Robert Lor.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, update documentation table
describing how shared memory is used by various facilities.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml, clarify documentation that
journaling is not required for WAL or data files.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml, add "not" to wal journaling text.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- In pgsql/src/tools/msvc/Solution.pm, attempt to fix MSVC breakage
from Major Version patch.

Alvaro Herrera committed:

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, add note to the shared memory
sizing table about needing to use page count in shared_buffers and
wal_buffers, not size in bytes. Per discussion.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, have psql's \d+ print reloptions.
Extracted from Euler Taveira de Oliveira's reloptions patch for
autovacuum and revised by me. Note that there doesn't seem to be a
way to display an index's reloptions.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- Don't reset pg_class.reltuples and relpages in VACUUM, if any pages
were skipped. We could update relpages anyway, but it seems better
to only update it together with reltuples, because we use the
reltuples/relpages ratio in the planner. Also don't update
n_live_tuples in pgstat. ANALYZE in VACUUM ANALYZE now needs to
update pg_class, if the VACUUM-phase didn't do so. Added some
boolean-passing to let analyze_rel know if it should update pg_class
or not. I also moved the relcache invalidation (to update
rd_targblock) from vac_update_relstats to where RelationTruncate is
called, because vac_update_relstats is not called for partial
vacuums anymore. It's more obvious to send the invalidation close to
the truncation that requires it. Per report by Ned T. Crigler.

- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/foreigncmds.c, don't use OidIsValid to
check the return value of transformGenericOptions, because
transformGenericOptions returns an array, not an Oid. I'm not sure
if this fixes the crashes seen in buildfarm, but it should be fixed
anyway.

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/truncate.sgml, add note that TRUNCATE uses
an access exclusive lock. This apparently surprised/confused some
users.

- SQL/MED catalog manipulation facilities. This doesn't do any remote
or external things yet, but it gives modules like plproxy and dblink
a standardized and future-proof system for managing their connection
information. Martin Pihlak and Peter Eisentraut

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Zdenek Kotala sent in a patch as infrastructure for pg_upgrade to
reserve space for the upgrade.

Pavel Stehule sent in a patch to allow for mixed notation with named
parameters.

Robert Treat sent in a patch to fix PL/Perl's treatment of bytea.

Emmanuel Cecchet sent in another revision of his auto-partitioning
patch.

Fujii Masao sent in another revision of his patch to implement
synchronous replication.

Emmanuel Cecchet sent in two more revisions of his patch to give temp
tables better transaction behavior.

Zdenek Kotala sent in another version of his patch to reserve pages
before in-place upgrades.

Simon Riggs sent in another revision of his rmgr hooks patch.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of his SE-PostgreSQL patch.

Muhammad Asif sent in another revision of his plugin patch.

Alvaro Herrera sent in two patches to improve the reloptions
mechanism.

Teodor Sigaev sent in another revision of his patch to implement
B-Tree emulation for GIN indexes.

Abhijit Menon-Sen sent in a revised version of the pg_dump_role patch.

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum sent in a patch which adds storage information
to psql's \l+

Tom Lane sent in a patch to implement some of the grammar structures
for the OLAP functions.

Jeff Davis sent in an updated patch for Teodor Sigaev's GIN
improvements.