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+<!-- BEGIN page_title_block -->
+Weekly News - November 15 2009
+<!-- END page_title_block -->
+
+<h1>PostgreSQL Weekly News - November 15 2009</h1>
+
+<p>
+Commitfest for November, 2009 has begun. Start reviewing other
+people's patches!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New Survey: Which 8.5 Alpha 2 feature have you tried?
+<a href="http://www.postgresql.org/community/">http://www.postgresql.org/community/</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Jobs for November</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-11/threads.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-11/threads.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Local</h2>
+<p>
+OpenSQL Camp will be November 14-15, 2009 in Portland, OR
+<a href="http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2009/07/29/opensql-camp-comes-to-portland-november-14-15-2009/">http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2009/07/29/opensql-camp-comes-to-portland-november-14-15-2009/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JPUG 10th Anniversary Conference is November 20-21, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan.
+<a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-announce/2009-05/msg00018.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-announce/2009-05/msg00018.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+<a href="http://www.gis.hsr.ch/wiki/Agenda">http://www.gis.hsr.ch/wiki/Agenda</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+FOSDEM 2010 will be in Brussels, Belgium on February 6-7, 2010.
+<a href="http://www.fosdem.org/">http://www.fosdem.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chemnitzer Linuxtage will be in Chemnitz, Germany on March 13-14, 2010.
+<a href="http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/">http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL in the News</h2>
+<p>
+Planet PostgreSQL: <a href="http://planet.postgresql.org/">http://planet.postgresql.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter
+and Josh Berkus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
+Please send English language ones to david@fetter.org, German language
+to pwn@pgug.de, Italian language to pwn@itpug.org.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Applied Patches</h2>
+<p>
+Tom Lane committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Re-refactor the core scanner's API, in order to get out from under
+ the problem of different parsers having different YYSTYPE unions
+ that they want to use with it. I defined a new union core_YYSTYPE
+ that is just the (very short) list of semantic values returned by
+ the core scanner. I had originally worried that this would require
+ an extra interface layer, but actually we can have parser.c's
+ base_yylex (formerly filtered_base_yylex) take care of that at no
+ extra cost. Names associated with the core scanner are now
+ "core_yy_foo", with "base_yy_foo" being used in the core Bison
+ parser and the parser.c interface layer. This solves the last
+ serious stumbling block to eliminating plpgsql's separate lexer.
+ One restriction that will still be present is that plpgsql and the>
+ core will have to agree on the token numbers assigned to tokens that
+ can be returned by the core lexer. Since Bison doesn't seem willing
+ to accept external assignments of those numbers, we'll have to live
+ with decreeing that core and plpgsql grammars declare these tokens
+ first and in the same order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- More incremental refactoring in plpgsql: get rid of gram.y
+ dependencies on yytext. This is a necessary change if we're going
+ to have a lexer interface layer that does lookahead, since yytext
+ won't necessarily be in step with what the grammar thinks is the
+ current token. yylval and yylloc should be the only side-variables
+ that we need to manage when doing lookahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/tablespace.c, revert the temporary
+ patch to work around Snow Leopard readdir() bug. Apple has fixed
+ that bug in 10.6.2, and we should encourage users to update to that
+ version rather than trusting this cosmetic patch. As was recently
+ noted by Stephen Tyler, this patch was only masking the problem in
+ the context of DROP TABLESPACE, but the failure could occur in other
+ places such as pg_xlog cleanup.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Do not build psql's flex module on its own, but instead include it
+ in mainloop.c. This ensures that postgres_fe.h is read before
+ including any system headers, which is necessary to avoid problems
+ on some platforms where we make nondefault selections of feature
+ macros for stdio.h or other headers. We have had this policy for
+ flex modules in the backend for many years, but for some reason it
+ was not applied to psql. Per trouble report from Alexandra Roy and
+ diagnosis by Albe Laurenz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Remove plpgsql's separate lexer (finally!), in favor of using the
+ core lexer directly. This was a lot of trouble, but should be worth
+ it in terms of not having to keep the plpgsql lexer in step with
+ core anymore. In addition the handling of keywords is significantly
+ better-structured, allowing us to de-reserve a number of words that
+ plpgsql formerly treated as reserved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Remove pg_parse_string_token() --- not needed anymore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Make initdb behave sanely when the selected locale has codeset
+ "US-ASCII". Per discussion, this should result in defaulting to
+ SQL_ASCII encoding. The original coding could not support that
+ because it conflated selection of SQL_ASCII encoding with not being
+ able to determine the encoding. Adjust pg_get_encoding_from_locale()'s
+ API to distinguish these cases, and fix callers appropriately. Only
+ initdb actually changes behavior, since the other callers were
+ perfectly content to consider these cases equivalent. Per bug #5178
+ from Boh Yap. Not going to bother back-patching, since no one has
+ complained before and there's an easy workaround (namely, specify
+ the encoding you want).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/port/chklocale.c, check for C/POSIX before assuming
+ that nl_langinfo or win32_langinfo will work. Per buildfarm
+ results.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/guc-file.l, the recent patch to log
+ changes in postgresql.conf settings dumped core if the initial value
+ of a string variable was NULL, which is entirely possible. Noted
+ while experimenting with custom_variable_classes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add control knobs for plpgsql's variable resolution behavior, and
+ make the default be "throw error on conflict", as per discussions.
+ The GUC variable is plpgsql.variable_conflict, with values "error",
+ "use_variable", "use_column". The behavior can also be specified
+ per-function by inserting one of #variable_conflict error,
+ #variable_conflict use_variable, #variable_conflict use_column at
+ the start of the function body. The 8.5 release notes will need to
+ mention using "use_variable" to retain backward-compatible behavior,
+ although we should encourage people to migrate to the much less
+ mistake-prone "error" setting. Update the plpgsql documentation to
+ match this and other recent changes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/include/nodes/parsenodes.h, avoid assuming that enum
+ CreateStmtLikeOption is unsigned. Zdenek Kotala
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/parser/parse_utilcmd.c, clean up a couple of
+ bizarre code formatting choices in recent CREATE LIKE patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Make unaccent's install/uninstall scripts look more like all the
+ others. Set search_path explicitly, don't use IF EXISTS, etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Improve planning of Materialize nodes inserted atop the inner input
+ of a mergejoin to shield it from doing mark/restore and refetches.
+ Put an explicit flag in MergePath so we can centralize the logic
+ that knows about this, and add costing logic that considers using
+ Materialize even when it's not forced by the previously-existing
+ considerations. This is in response to a discussion back in August
+ that suggested that materializing an inner indexscan can be helpful
+ when the refetch percentage is high enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bruce Momjian committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml: PL/pgSQL FOUND, document that
+ GET DIAGNOSTICS is affected by EXECUTE, while FOUND is not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml: PL/pgSQL FOUND, update wording
+ of GET DIAGNOSTICS/FOUND, per David Fetter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/timestamp.c, add C comment about why
+ there is no interval_abs(): it is unclear what value to return.
+ <a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2009-10/msg01031.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2009-10/msg01031.php</a>
+ <a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2009-11/msg00041.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2009-11/msg00041.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvaro Herrera committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Fix longstanding problems in VACUUM caused by untimely
+ interruptions. In VACUUM FULL, an interrupt after the initial
+ transaction has been recorded as committed can cause postmaster to
+ restart with the following error message: PANIC: cannot abort
+ transaction NNNN, it was already committed This problem has been
+ reported many times. In lazy VACUUM, an interrupt after the table
+ has been truncated by lazy_truncate_heap causes other backends'
+ relcache to still point to the removed pages; this can cause future
+ INSERT and UPDATE queries to error out with the following error
+ message: could not read block XX of relation 1663/NNN/MMMM: read
+ only 0 of 8192 bytes The window to this race condition is extremely
+ narrow, but it has been seen in the wild involving a cancelled
+ autovacuum process. The solution for both problems is to inhibit
+ interrupts in both operations until after the respective
+ transactions have been committed. It's not a complete solution,
+ because the transaction could theoretically be aborted by some other
+ error, but at least fixes the most common causes of both problems.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Support optional FROM/IN in FETCH and MOVE. The main motivation for
+ this is that it's required for Informix compatibility in ECPG. This
+ patch makes the ECPG and core grammars a bit closer to one another
+ for these productions. Zoltan Boszormenyi
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Document the previous FETCH and MOVE changes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Change "name" nonterminal in cursor-related productions to
+ cursor_name. This is a preparatory patch for allowing a dynamic
+ cursor name be used in the ECPG grammar. Zoltan Boszormenyi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, in psql \du, separate the role
+ attributes by comma instead of newline, for an arguably more
+ pleasant display.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/tsearch/wparser_def.c, make text search parser
+ accept underscores in XML attributes (bug #5075).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Teodor Sigaev committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/access/gin/ginget.c, fix multicolumn GIN's
+ wrong results with fastupdate enabled. User-defined consistent
+ functions believes the check array contains at least one true
+ element which was not a true for scanning pending list. Per report
+ from Yury Don.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/parser/parse_expr.c, when you do
+ "ARRAY[...]::domain", where domain is a domain over an array type,
+ we need to check domain constraints. We used to do it correctly, but
+ 8.4 introduced a separate code path for the "ARRAY[]::arraytype"
+ case to infer the type of an empty ARRAY construct from the cast
+ target, and forgot to take domains into account. Per report from
+ Florian G. Pflug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/parser/parse_expr.c, a better fix for the
+ "ARRAY[...]::domain" problem. The previous patch worked, but the
+ transformed ArrayExpr claimed to have a return type of "domain",
+ even though the domain constraint was only checked by the enclosing
+ CoerceToDomain node. With this fix, the ArrayExpr is correctly
+ labeled with the base type of the domain. Per gripe by Tom Lane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Magnus Hagander committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add inheritable ACE when creating a restricted token for execution
+ on Win32. Also refactor the code around it to be more clear. Jesse
+ Morris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Backpatch the inheritable-ACE patch for Win32 to 8.2 as well, except
+ for the pg_regress part which did not support admin execution in
+ 8.2.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Rejected Patches (for now)</h2>
+<p>
+No one was disappointed this week :-)
+</p>
+
+<h2>Pending Patches</h2>
+<p>
+Josh Tolley sent in another revision of the patch to add in-line (DO)
+functions to PL/Perl[U]. Brendan Jurd sent some cleanups for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of the Hot Standby patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emmanuel Cecchet sent in two more revisions of the patch to add
+partitioning support to COPY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Joachim Wieland sent in a patch to add a payload to LISTEN/NOTIFY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in another revision of the table partitioning
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut sent in another revision of the patch for PL/PythonU
+array support.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to add Python 3.1 to PL/PythonU.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in an update version of the TRIGGER with WHEN
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andres Freund sent in another revision of the application name logging
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in another revision of the VACUUM FULL
+refactoring patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of his SE-PostgreSQL patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andrew (RhodiumToad) Gierth sent in a patch to add ORDER BY to the
+inside of aggregates for the non-WINDOW context.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to add ACLs for
+large objects.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zdenek Kotala sent in a patch to add dtrace probes for memory
+management.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zdenek Kotala sent in another revision of that patch to add dtrace
+probe groups for executor and slru.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andrew (RhodiumToad) Gierth sent in a doc patch for the aggregate
+ORDER BY patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hitoshi Harada sent in a patch to add more frame types (ROWS n
+PRECEDING/FOLLOWING) to windowing frames.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George Gensure sent in a patch intended to report the schema along
+with the table name on errors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas sent in a patch to allow you to set random_page_cost
+and seq_page_cost at the granularity of tablespace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marko (johto) Tiikkaja sent in another revision of the Writeable CTE
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of the Hot Standby patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Florian Pflug sent in a patch to allow inspection of rowtypes in SQL
+and PL/pgsql.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of the function typmod patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in another revision of the VACUUM refactoring
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeff Davis sent in another revision of the operator exclusion
+constraints patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger Leigh sent in three more revisions of the Unicode formatting
+patch for psql output.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pavel Stehule sent in a patch to allow using psql variables as actual
+query parameters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a review of Greg Sabino Mullane's patch to
+add YAML output as an option for EXPLAIN [ANALYZE].
+
+</p>
+
projects / pgweb-old.git / commitdiff