== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 13 2009 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 13 2009 ==

Point Releases 8.4.2, 8.3.9, 8.2.15, 8.1.19, 8.0.23 and 7.4.27 will be
out soon. Get ready to upgrade!

Robert Haas, ITAGAKI Takahiro, Simon Riggs, and Greg Stark now have
commit bits in CVS. Kudos!

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

pgpool-II 2.3, a connection pooler and more, and pgpoolAdmin 2.3, a
GUI administration tool for it, released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/

== PostgreSQL 8.5 Feature of the Week ==

Exclusion Constraints (by Jeff Davis) allow you to specify as "unique"
data which covers a range, such as a geometric area, a period of time,
or an array. Test 8.5 now
http://www.postgresql.org/developer/testing

== PostgreSQL Tip of the Week ==

pgPool2 is better for load balancing used with a replication system
like Slony or Bucardo, and pgBouncer is better for scalable connection
pooling.
== PostgreSQL Jobs for December ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-12/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The New York Capital District PUG's first meeting will be January 7,
2010.
http://nycdpug.x10hosting.com/

Stefan Keller will be teach a course called, "Introducion to
PostGIS/PostgreSQL" at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil
(HSR) on January 14, 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland.
http://www.gis.hsr.ch/wiki/Agenda

PGDay-Cuba 2010 will be held 4-6 February 2010, in La Havana at the
University of Science Informatic. Attendees from Cuba, the Dominican
Republic and Venezuela are invited.

FOSDEM 2010 will be in Brussels, Belgium on February 6-7, 2010.
http://www.fosdem.org/

Chemnitzer Linuxtage will be in Chemnitz, Germany on March 13-14, 2010.
http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/

PgCon 2010 will be held May 20-21 2010 in Ottawa with tutorials before
on the 18th and 19th. The RfP is open!
http://www.pgcon.org/2010/papers.php

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

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

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter
and Josh Berkus.

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)

== Reviews ==

Greg Smith reviewed the ACL patch for large objects.

Euler Taveira de Oliveira reviewed the EXPLAIN BUFFERS patch.

Jaime Casanova reviewed Zoltan Boszormenyi's ECPG patch to add SQLDA
support.

Jaime Casanova reviewed Jeff Janes's XLogInsert patch and said he'd
mark it, "ready for committer." Greg Smith's review was less
positive.

ITAGAKI Takahiro reviewed Michael Paquier's patch to allow launching
shell commands from pgbench.

Greg Smith reviewed the documentation in Zdenek Kotala's patch to add
"init" as a pg_ctl option.

== Applied Patches ==

Tom Lane committed:

- Add exclusion constraints, which generalize the concept of
uniqueness to support any indexable commutative operator, not just
equality. Two rows violate the exclusion constraint if "row1.col OP
row2.col" is TRUE for each of the columns in the constraint. Jeff
Davis, reviewed by Robert Haas.

- Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009s: DST law changes
in Antarctica, Argentina, Bangladesh, Fiji, Novokuznetsk, Pakistan,
Palestine, Samoa, Syria. Also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

- Update release notes for releases 8.4.2, 8.3.9, 8.2.15, 8.1.19,
8.0.23, 7.4.27.

- In pgsql/src/backend/executor/execMain.c, ensure that the result
tuple of an EvalPlanQual cycle gets materialized before we zap the
input tuple. Otherwise, pass-by-reference columns of the result
slot are likely to contain just references to the input tuple,
leading to big trouble if the pfree'd space is reused. Per trouble
report from Jaime Casanova. This is a new bug in the recent rewrite
of EvalPlanQual, so nothing to back-patch.

- In pgsql/contrib/pgbench/pgbench.c, arrange to generate different
random sequences in the different child processes of a pgbench run,
when we are using -j > 1 and are emulating threads via fork().
Otherwise the children all inherit the same random sequence state
and produce the same random-number sequence. In the threaded case
the different threads will share one RNG state, so they will produce
different subsets of one sequence, which is maybe more correlated
than a purist would like but will not be "the same". So we leave
that case alone. First noticed by Takahiro Itagaki, and is also
part of the explanation for the pgbench misbehavior recently
reported by Jaime Casanova.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/varbit.c, fix integer-to-bit-string
conversions to handle the first fractional byte correctly when the
output bit width is wider than the given integer by something other
than a multiple of 8 bits. This has been wrong since I first wrote
that code for 8.0 :-(. Kudos to Roman Kononov for being the first
to notice, though I didn't use his patch. Per bug #5237.

- Fix a bug introduced when set-returning SQL functions were made
inline-able: we have to cope with the possibility that the declared
result rowtype contains dropped columns. This fails in 8.4, as per
bug #5240. While at it, be more paranoid about inserting binary
coercions when inlining. The pre-8.4 code did not really need to
worry about that because it could not inline at all in any case
where an added coercion could change the behavior of the function's
statement. However, when inlining a SRF we allow sorting, grouping,
and set-ops such as UNION. In these cases, modifying one of the
targetlist entries that the sort/group/setop depends on could
conceivably change the behavior of the function's statement --- so
don't inline when such a case applies.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- Update CVS documentation to be more current and add documentation
about git mirror. Remove information about cvsup and documentation
that's more about cvs than our use of cvs. Backpatch to 8.4 so we
get the git information up on the website as soon as possible.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/installation.sgml, replace broken link to
custom local gettext package with one to the main GNU site for
gettext.

- Fix a couple of broken links to third-party sites.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/installation.sgml, update size references in
installation instructions to be a bit more up-to-date with current
versions.

- In pgsql/src/tools/RELEASE_CHANGES, add notes about updating disk
and shared memory size information in the documentation when doing
new major release.

- Allow LDAP authentication to operate in search+bind mode, meaning it
does a search for the user in the directory first, and then binds
with the DN found for this user. This allows for LDAP logins in
scenarios where the DN of the user cannot be determined simply by
prefix and suffix, such as the case where different users are
located in different containers. The old way of authentication can
be significantly faster, so it's kept as an option. Robert Fleming
and Magnus Hagander

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- Translation updates.

- Add init[db] option to pg_ctl. pg_ctl gets a new mode that runs
initdb. Adjust the documentation a bit to not assume that initdb is
the only way to run database cluster initialization. But don't
replace initdb as the canonical way. Zdenek Kotala.

- PL/Python array support. Support arrays as parameters and return
values of PL/Python functions.

Robert Haas committed:

- In pgsql/contrib/fuzzystrmatch/fuzzystrmatch.c, fix levenshtein with
costs. The previous code multiplied by the cost in only 3 of the 7
relevant locations. Marcin Mank, slightly adjusted by Robert Haas.

- Export ExplainBeginOutput() and ExplainEndOutput() for auto_explain.
Without these functions, anyone outside of explain.c can't actually
use ExplainPrintPlan, because the ExplainState won't be initialized
properly. The user-visible result of this was a crash when using
auto_explain with the JSON output format. Report by Euler Taveira
de Oliveira. Analysis by Tom Lane. Patch by Robert Haas.

Marc Fournier committed:

- Tag 8.4.2, 8.3.9, 8.2.15, 8.1.19, 8.0.23, 7.4.27.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- Add YAML to list of EXPLAIN formats. Greg Sabino Mullane, reviewed
by Takahiro Itagaki.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- Properly define ENABLE_THREAD_SAFETY in conflgure, per suggestion
from Peter Eisentraut.

ITAGAKI Takahiro committed:

- Add large object access control. A new system catalog
pg_largeobject_metadata manages ownership and access privileges of
large objects. KaiGai Kohei, reviewed by Jaime Casanova.

- Additional fixes for large object access control. Use
pg_largeobject_metadata.oid instead of pg_largeobject.loid to
enumerate existing large objects in pg_dump, pg_restore, and contrib
modules.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

KaiGai Kohei sent in three more revision of the ACL patch for large
objects per feedback from Greg Smith and ITAGAKI Takahiro. ITAGAKI
Takahiro sent in two patches atop them to fix some issues with
pg_restore and contrib.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in two more revisions of the VACUUM FULL patch.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to fix a bug in the auto_explain
patch.

Michael Paquier sent in two more revisions of the patch to add shell
commands to pgbench, per review from Greg Smith. ITAGAKI Takahiro
sent in another one.

Magnus Hagander sent in a doc patch for CVS and git.

Zdenek Kotala sent in two more revisions of the pg_ctl init extension
per review from Greg Smith.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in three more revisions of the EXPLAIN BUFFERS
patch per feedback from Euler Taveira de Oliveira. Robert Haas sent
in some doc and idiom changes atop those, then ITAGAKI Takahiro sent
in yet another revision.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch for the January 2010 commitfest which
adds XLOG UNLOGGED to how WALs are handled.

Marcin Mank sent in and Robert Haas reviewed and fixed a patch to fix
a bug in Levenshtein distance calculation in contrib/fuzzystrmatch.

Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to install PL/pgsql by default. Tom
Lane reviewed same.

Joachim Wieland sent in another revision of the patch to add payloads
to LISTEN and NOTIFY.

Zdenek Kotala sent in a WIP patch to add dtrace probes for the memory
manager. Bernd Helmle sent in an updated revision which splits it
into executor and slru parts.

Robert Haas sent in a patch to fix an issue where ALTER TABLE ...
RENAME COLUMN can change a VIEW.

Andreas Freund sent in another revision of the patch to make tsearch's
parser more efficient.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a WIP patch for PL/Python3.

Robert Haas sent in a fix atop the EXPLAIN YAML patch.

Simon Riggs sent in another revision of the Hot Standby patch.

KaiGai Kohei sent in two reworked patched for an ACE (Access Control
Extension) framework.

James Pye sent in another revision of the PL/Python3 patch.