== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 27 2009 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 27 2009 ==

PostgreSQL 8.5alpha3 is out. New features include Hot Standby,
Exclusion Constraints, ORDER BY in aggregates, ACLs for large objects,
improved regexes, PL/pgsql by default, various improvements in
PL/pgsql, PL/Perl and PL/Python. Test!
http://www.postgresql.org/developer/alpha

The German PostgreSQL User Group has a stand at the Open Source Park
at Cebit 2010 from march 02 to march 06, 2010 in Hannover, Germany.
http://www.cebit.de/

The Call for Proposals for OSCON is open. OSCON will take place in
Portland, Oregon July 19-23, 2010.
http://post.oreilly.com/f2f/9z1zqmm5lhkab0uogt3avlvc4u59bro6f917re423d8

The video archive for the December 8, 2009 SFPUG meeting, "Operator
Exclusion Constraints," is now available:
http://thebuild.com/blog/2009/12/23/sfpug-operator-exclusion-constraints/

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

MicroOLAP Database Designer 1.2.9 for PostgreSQL released.
http://microolap.com/products/database/postgresql-designer/

PostgreSQL PHP Generator 9.12, a GUI frontend to generate PHP from
select PostgreSQL objects, released.
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/postgresql/phpgenerator/

PostERP 2.6, an ERP software system running atop PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.sitig.com

PostgreDAC 2.5.4, a Delphi/C++ builder for PostgreSQL, released.
http://microolap.com/products/connectivity/postgresdac/download/

== PostgreSQL 8.5 Feature of the Week ==

Hot Standby. After 1.5 years of development, you can at last run
read-only queries against PITR slaves. Thanks to Simon Riggs, Heikki
Linnakangas, any many others for unceasing efforts. Learn more about
Hot Standby at: <http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Hot_Standby>, and try
it in 8.5Alpha3 soon.

== 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, "Introduction to
PostGIS/PostgreSQL" at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil
(HSR) on January 14, 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland. Details on this and
other upcoming events below.
http://www.gis.hsr.ch/wiki/Agenda

Seeking booth staffers for Open Day Linux Conf AU in Wellington, NZ
January 23, 2010, 11-2pm, Contact selena -at- postgresql.org to
volunteer.

The Call for Papers for East is open until January 30, 2010. Details at:
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/

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

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/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.ck, in CREATE SEQUENCE dump, put
MINVALUE before MAXVALUE so it reads better.

- In pgsql/Makefile, replace target list by a wildcard, so that this
workaround makefile also works transparently for lesser used
targets.

- In pgsql/Makefile,revert brainfart: Of course the wildcard only
works in GNU make itself. Instead, add a few targets that were
missing.

Tom Lane committed:

- Disallow comments on columns of relation types other than tables,
views, and composite types, which are the only relkinds for which
pg_dump support exists for dumping column comments. There is no
obvious usefulness for comments on columns of sequences or toast
tables; and while comments on index columns might have some value,
it's not worth the risk of compatibility problems due to possible
changes in the algorithm for assigning names to index columns. Per
discussion. In consequence, remove now-dead code for copying such
comments in CREATE TABLE LIKE.

- Adjust naming of indexes and their columns per recent discussion.
Index expression columns are now named after the FigureColname
result for their expressions, rather than always being
"pg_expression_N". Digits are appended to this name if needed to
make the column name unique within the index. (That happens for
regular columns too, thus fixing the old problem that CREATE INDEX
fooi ON foo (f1, f1) fails. Before exclusion indexes there was no
real reason to do such a thing, but now maybe there is.) Default
names for indexes and associated constraints now include the column
names of all their columns, not only the first one as in previous
practice. (Of course, this will be truncated as needed to fit in
NAMEDATALEN. Also, pkey indexes retain the historical behavior of
not naming specific columns at all.)

- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/tablecmds.c, remove code that
attempted to rename index columns to keep them in sync with their
underlying table columns. That code was not bright enough to cope
with collision situations (ie, new name conflicts with some other
column of the index). Since there is no functional reason to do
this at all, trying to upgrade the logic to be bulletproof doesn't
seem worth the trouble. This change means that both the index name
and the column names of an index are set when it's created, and
won't be automatically changed when the underlying table columns are
renamed. Neatnik DBAs are still free to rename them manually, of
course.

- Allow the index name to be omitted in CREATE INDEX, causing the
system to choose an index name the same as it would do for an
unnamed index constraint. (My recent changes to the index naming
logic have helped to ensure that this will be a reasonable choice.)
Per a suggestion from Peter. A necessary side-effect is to promote
CONCURRENTLY to type_func_name_keyword status, ie, it can't be a
table/column/index name anymore unless quoted. This is not all bad,
since we have heard more than once of people typing CREATE INDEX
CONCURRENTLY ON foo (...) and getting a normal index build of an
index named "concurrently", which was not what they wanted. Now
this syntax will result in a concurrent build of an index with
system-chosen name; which they can rename afterwards if they want
something else.

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/gist/gistxlog.c, fix wrong WAL info
value generated when gistContinueInsert() performs an index page
split. This would result in index corruption, or even more likely
an error during WAL replay, if we were unlucky enough to crash
during end-of-recovery cleanup after having completed an incomplete
GIST insertion. Yoichi Hirai.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml, try to improve the clarity
of the psql documentation for the \d family of commands, as per
recent discussion. Includes suggestions from Adrian Klaver and
Filip Rembialkowski.

- In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/path/joinpath.c, fix brain fade in
join-removal patch: a pushed-down clause in the outer join's
restrict list is not just something to ignore, it's actually grounds
to abandon the optimization entirely. Per bug #5255 from Matteo
Beccati.

- Remove a couple of unnecessary calls of CreateCacheMemoryContext.
These probably got there via blind copy-and-paste from one of the
legitimate callers, so rearrange and comment that code a bit to make
it clearer that this isn't a necessary prerequisite to hash_create.
Per observation from Robert Haas.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/pgstat.c, avoid memory leak if
pgstat_vacuum_stat is interrupted partway through. The temporary
hash tables made by pgstat_collect_oids should be allocated in a
short-term memory context, which is not the default behavior of
hash_create. Noted while looking through hash_create calls in
connection with Robert Haas' recent complaint. This is a
pre-existing bug, but it doesn't seem important enough to
back-patch. The hash table is not so large that it would matter
unless this happened many times within a session, which seems quite
unlikely.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- In pgsql/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c, rename pg_dump.c TypeInfo
variable tinfo to tyinfo, for clarity.

- Binary upgrade: Modify pg_dump --binary-upgrade and add backend
support routines to support the preservation of pg_type oids when
doing a binary upgrade. This allows user-defined composite types
and arrays to be binary upgraded.

- In pgsql/src/backend/catalog/pg_enum.c, rename EnumValuesCreate()
single-letter variable names to useful variable names.

- Zero-label enums: Allow enums to be created with zero labels, for
use during binary upgrade.

- Add backend and pg_dump code to allow preservation of pg_enum oids,
for use in binary upgrades. Bump catalog version for detection by
pg_migrator of new backend API.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- Always pass catalog id to the options validator function specified
in CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER. Arguably it wasn't a bug because
the documentation said that it's passed the catalog ID or zero, but
surely we should provide it when it's known. And there isn't
currently any scenario where it's not known, and I can't imagine
having one in the future either, so better remove the "or zero"
escape hatch and always pass a valid catalog ID. Backpatch to 8.4.
Martin Pihlak.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- Add basic build support for Visual Studio 2008, without resorting to
generating the build files for 2005 and then converting them.

- In pgsql/src/port/win32env.c, if the MSVCRT module is not found in
the current binary, proceed to update system and local environments
anyway, instead of aborting. (This will happen in a MSVC build with
no or very few external libraries linked in)

- In pgsql/src/port/win32env.c, remove now unreferenced variable.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- In pgsql/src/pl/plperl/ppport.h, upgrade to latest ppport.h. Patch
from Tim Bunce.

Robert Haas committed:

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, add missing
<indexterm><primary>...</primary>...</indexterm> tags for a couple
of HS-related parameters. Fujii Masao.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Tim Bunce sent in another revision of the patch to refactor PL/Perl.

Tim Bunce sent in a patch to update ppport.h in PL/Perl in preparation
for further patches.

Tim Bunce sent in a patch atop the ppport.h patch, adding new GUCs
plperl.on_perl_init, plperl.on_trusted_init, plperl.on_untrusted_init.

Fujii Masao sent in a doc patch for Hot Standby.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to add ACLs to
large objects (lo).

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to add usage columns to
pg_stat_statements.

Martin Pihlak sent in a patch to fix the foreign data wrapper code,
which is part of SQL/MED.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a patch to make tuplestores store the
context in which they are created.

Magnus Hagander sent in a patch to fix a Windows issue where a
non-essential library, msvcrt.dll, is sometimes not detected, which
caused incorrect behavior at runtime.

Robert Haas sent in a WIP patch atop the automatic index name creation
patch which tries to keep CONCURRENTLY a non-reserved word.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch to support streaming replication.

Joachim Wieland sent in a WIP patch which exposes "<IDLE> in
transaction" connections to SIGINT.

Pavel Stehule sent in a WIP patch to create a listagg() aggregate.

Andreas Freund sent in a patch to kill sessions connected to a dropped
database for hot standby.