--- /dev/null
+<!-- BEGIN page_title_block -->
+Weekly News - January 31 2010
+<!-- END page_title_block -->
+
+<h1>PostgreSQL Weekly News - January 31 2010</h1>
+
+<p>
+Google Summer of Code applications are due March 9, but don't wait
+until then to get in touch with Selena Deckelman at selena AT
+postgresql DOT org.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Seattle PostgreSQL Users' Group will be having their first meeting
+on February 9, 2010. Details below:
+<a href="http://www.seapug.org/talk.php?talk=1">http://www.seapug.org/talk.php?talk=1</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Product News</h2>
+<p>
+GNUmed EMR client 0.6.0 and GNUmed EMR server 12.0 released.
+<a href="http://wiki.gnumed.de/">http://wiki.gnumed.de/</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL 8.5 Feature of the Week</h2>
+<p>
+Uniqueness constraints can now be deferred until commit time.
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Jobs for January</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-01/threads.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-01/threads.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Local</h2>
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+FOSDEM 2010 will be in Brussels, Belgium on February 6-7, 2010.
+<a href="http://www.postgresql.eu/events/schedule/fosdem2010/">http://www.postgresql.eu/events/schedule/fosdem2010/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The German Speaking PostgreSQL User Group has a stand at the Project
+Lounge in hall 2 at Cebit 2010 from March 02 to March 06, 2010 in
+Hannover, Germany.
+<a href="http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/649-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Cebit-2010.html">http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/649-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Cebit-2010.html</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The German Language PostgreSQL User Group has a booth at Chemnitz Linuxdays
+2010 on March 13 and 14, 2010 in Chemnitz, Germany. Andreas (ads)
+Scherbaum will be giving a talk on PostgreSQL 9.0 and a workshop on
+tuning PostgreSQL.
+<a href="http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/652-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Chemnitz-Linux-Days-2010.html">http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/652-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Chemnitz-Linux-Days-2010.html</a>
+<a href="http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2010/vortraege/plan.html">http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2010/vortraege/plan.html</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linuxfest Northwest 2010 will take place in Bellingham, Washington,
+USA on April 24 and 25. Session, Booth and Sponsorship are available.
+<a href="http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/">http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andreas (ads) Scherbaum will be teaching a "PostgreSQL for Corporate
+Use" course at the adult education center in Magdeburg, Germany May
+3-7, 2010. Details below:
+<a href="http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/650-PostgreSQL-Schulung-als-Bildungsurlaub-03.-07.05.2010-in-Magdeburg.html">http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/650-PostgreSQL-Schulung-als-Bildungsurlaub-03.-07.05.2010-in-Magdeburg.html</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PgCon 2010 will be held May 20-21 2010 in Ottawa with tutorials before
+on the 18th and 19th. The RfP is open!
+<a href="http://www.pgcon.org/2010/papers.php">http://www.pgcon.org/2010/papers.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Call for Proposals for OSCON is open. OSCON will take place in
+Portland, Oregon July 19-23, 2010.
+<a href="http://post.oreilly.com/f2f/9z1zqmm5lhkab0uogt3avlvc4u59bro6f917re423d8">http://post.oreilly.com/f2f/9z1zqmm5lhkab0uogt3avlvc4u59bro6f917re423d8</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
+</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>Reviews</h2>
+<p>
+Jeff Davis reviewed Joachim Wieland's patch to fix the behavior of
+LISTEN/NOTIFY when the queue is full.
+== Applied Patches ==
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add note that PREPARE TRANSACTION is for transaction managers, not
+ regular applications. Also add a comment pointing out that
+ tab-completion for PREPARE TRANSACTION is missing on purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Make standby server continuously retry restoring the next WAL
+ segment with restore_command, if the connection to the primary
+ server is lost. This ensures that the standby can recover
+ automatically, if the connection is lost for a long time and standby
+ falls behind so much that the required WAL segments have been
+ archived and deleted in the master. This also makes standby_mode
+ useful without streaming replication; the server will keep retrying
+ restore_command every few seconds until the trigger file is found.
+ That's the same basic functionality pg_standby offers, but without
+ the bells and whistles. To implement that, refactor the
+ ReadRecord/FetchRecord functions. The FetchRecord() function
+ introduced in the original streaming replication patch is removed,
+ and all the retry logic is now in a new function called
+ XLogReadPage(). XLogReadPage() is now responsible for executing
+ restore_command, launching walreceiver, and waiting for new WAL to
+ arrive from primary, as required. This also changes the life cycle
+ of walreceiver. When launched, it now only tries to connect to the
+ master once, and exits if the connection fails, or is lost during
+ streaming for any reason. The startup process detects the death,
+ and re-launches walreceiver if necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Fix bug in wasender's xlogid boundary handling, reported by Erik
+ Rijkers. LogwrtRqst.Write can be set to non-existent FF log
+ segment, we mustn't try to send that in XLogSend(). Also fix
+ similar bug in ReadRecord(), which I just introduced in the
+ ReadRecord() refactoring patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Change a few remaining calls of XLogArchivingActive() to use
+ XLogIsNeeded() instead, to determine if an otherwise non-logged
+ operation needs to be logged in WAL for standby servers. Fujii
+ Masao.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, fix crashing bug at the
+ end of recovery in Streaming Replication, when restore_command is
+ not given. Fujii Masao.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom Lane committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add get_bit/set_bit functions for bit strings, paralleling those for
+ bytea, and implement OVERLAY() for bit strings and bytea. In
+ passing also convert text OVERLAY() to a true built-in, instead of
+ relying on a SQL function. Leonardo Francalanci, reviewed by Kevin
+ Grittner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/bin/initdb/initdb.c, un-break initdb logic for
+ commenting out IPv6 pg_hba.conf line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Remove the default_do_language parameter, instead making DO use a
+ hardwired default of "plpgsql". This is more reasonable than it was
+ when the DO patch was written, because we have since decided that
+ plpgsql should be installed by default. Per discussion, having a
+ parameter for this doesn't seem useful enough to justify the risk of
+ application breakage if the value is changed unexpectedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/regex/regcomp.c, fix some comments that got
+ mangled by pgindent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/print.c, fix memory leakage introduced into
+ print_aligned_text by 8.4 changes (failure to free col_lineptrs[]
+ array elements) and exacerbated in the current devel cycle (failure
+ to free "wrap"). This resulted in moderate bloat of psql over long
+ script runs. Noted while testing bug #5302, although what the
+ reporter was complaining of was backend-side leakage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/tcop/dest.c, avoid performing encoding
+ conversion on command tag strings during EndCommand. Since all
+ current and foreseeable future command tags will be pure ASCII,
+ there is no need to do conversion on them. This saves a few cycles
+ and also avoids polluting otherwise-pristine subtransaction memory
+ contexts, which is the cause of the backend memory leak exhibited in
+ bug #5302. (Someday we'll probably want to have a better method of
+ determining whether subtransaction contexts need to be kept around,
+ but today is not that day.) Backpatch to 8.0. The cycle-shaving
+ aspect of this would work in 7.4 too, but without subtransactions
+ the memory-leak aspect doesn't apply, so it doesn't seem worth
+ touching 7.4.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/auth.c, get rid of unportable use of
+ socklen_t --- we have a configure test for that, so use it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/include/port.h, parenthesize this macro, just in case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Fix memory leak created by deferrable-index-constraints patches. We
+ need to free the OID list returned by ExecInsertIndexTuples to avoid
+ a query-lifespan memory leak. When many rows require rechecking,
+ this can be a significant leak --- it's even more than the space
+ used for the queued trigger events. Dean Rasheed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/regex/regexec.c, change regexp engine's
+ ccondissect/crevdissect routines to perform DFA matching before
+ recursing instead of after. The DFA match eliminates unworkable
+ midpoint choices a lot faster than the recursive check, in most
+ cases, so doing it first can speed things up; particularly in
+ pathological cases such as recently exhibited by Michael Glaesemann.
+ In addition, apply some cosmetic changes that were applied upstream
+ (in the Tcl project) at the same time, in order to sync with
+ upstream version 1.15 of regexec.c. Upstream apparently intends to
+ backpatch this, so I will too. The pathological behavior could be
+ unpleasant if encountered in the field, which seems to justify any
+ risk of introducing new bugs. Tom Lane, reviewed by Donal K.
+ Fellows of Tcl project
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simon Riggs committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, fix longstanding gripe
+ that we check for 0000000001.history at start of archive recovery,
+ even when we know it is never present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/storage/lmgr/lock.c, use malloc() in
+ GetLockConflicts() when called InHotStandby to avoid repeated palloc
+ calls. Current code assumed this was already true, so this is a bug
+ fix.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Filter recovery conflicts based upon dboid from relfilenode of WAL
+ records for heap and btree. Minor change, mostly API changes to pass
+ through the required values. This is a simple change though also
+ provides the refactoring required for further enhancements to
+ conflict processing using the relOid. Changes only have effect
+ during Hot Standby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Augment WAL records for btree delete with GetOldestXmin() to reduce
+ false positives during Hot Standby conflict processing. Simple patch
+ to enhance conflict processing, following previous discussions.
+ Controlled by parameter minimize_standby_conflicts = on | off, with
+ default off allows measurement of performance impact to see whether
+ it should be set on all the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/storage/lmgr/lock.c, adjust GetLockConflicts()
+ so that it uses TopMemoryContext when executed InHotStandby. Cleaner
+ solution than using malloc or palloc depending upon situation, as
+ proposed by Tom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Detect early deadlock in Hot Standby when Startup is already
+ waiting. First stage of required deadlock detection to allow
+ re-enabling max_standby_delay setting of -1, which is now essential
+ in the absence of improved relation- specific conflict resoluton.
+ Requested by Greg Stark et al.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Make the default pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf align at 8-character
+ boundaries to make it easier to use with tabs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Reformat the comments in pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf. These files
+ have apparently been edited over the years by a dozen people with as
+ many different editor settings, which made the alignment of the
+ paragraphs quite inconsistent and ugly. I made a pass of M-q with
+ Emacs to straighten it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Type table feature. This adds the CREATE TABLE name OF type
+ command, per SQL standard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Michael Meskes committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Applied patch by Zoltan Boszormenyi to add out-of-scope cursor
+ support to native mode.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ecpg.sgml, finally applied patch by Zoltan
+ Boszormenyi to add the new features his patches added to the docs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Added test case that was part of Zoltan's ECPG patch but apparently
+ wasn't part of my commit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Fixed a few typos in ecpg. Two were in comments, the third made a
+ log output reverse yes and no.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Changed ECPG outofscope handling to always print out statements in
+ the same order so regression testing is possible. Zoltan
+ Boszormenyi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bruce Momjian committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ecpg.sgml, remove tabs in SGML.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andrew Dunstan committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Various small improvements and cleanups for PL/Perl. 1. Allow
+ (ineffective) use of 'require' in plperl If the required module is
+ not already loaded then it dies. So "use strict;" now works in
+ plperl. 2. Pre-load the feature module if perl >= 5.10. So "use
+ feature :5.10;" now works in plperl. 3. Stored procedure subs are
+ now given names. The names are not visible in ordinary use, but
+ they make tools like Devel::NYTProf and Devel::Cover much more
+ useful. 4. Simplified and generalized the subroutine creation code.
+ Now one code path for generating sub source code, not four. Can
+ generate multiple 'use' statements with specific imports (which
+ handles plperl.use_strict currently and can easily be extended to
+ handle a plperl.use_feature=':5.12' in future). 5. Disallows use of
+ Safe version 2.20 which is broken for PL/Perl.
+ <a href="http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=72068">http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=72068</a> 6. Assorted
+ minor optimizations by pre-growing data structures. Patch from Tim
+ Bunce, reviewed by Alex Hunsaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plperl.sgml, fix plperl.sgml errors from
+ recent commit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c, fix bug found by warning from
+ recent gcc. patch from Tim Bunce.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add new make targets "world", "install-world" and
+ "installcheck-world" to build, install and check just about
+ everything. In addition to everything built installed and tested by
+ all, install and installcheck targets, these build HTML Docs, build
+ and test contrib, and test PLs and ECPG.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/GNUmakefile.in, fix thinko in new installcheck-world target
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add plperl.on_perl_init setting to provide for initializing the perl
+ library on load. Also, handle END blocks in plperl. Database access
+ is disallowed during both these operations, although it might be
+ allowed in END blocks in future. Patch from Tim Bunce.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Magnus Hagander committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add support for RADIUS authentication.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/client-auth.sgml, fix typo. Noted by Thom
+ Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/include/port/solaris.h, define INADDR_NONE on Solaris
+ when it's missing. Per a couple of buildfarm members complaining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add functions to reset the statistics counter for a single
+ table/index or a single function.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/port/win32/signal.c, fix race condition in
+ win32 signal handling. There was a race condition where the
+ receiving pipe could be closed by the child thread if the main
+ thread was pre-empted before it got a chance to create a new one,
+ and the dispatch thread ran to completion during that time. One
+ symptom of this is that rows in pg_listener could be dropped under
+ heavy load. Analysis and original patch by Radu Ilie, with some
+ small modifications by Magnus Hagander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/port/kill.c, remove now unnecessary loop around
+ CallNamedPipe(). Radu Ilie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/pgstat.c, make checks for invalid
+ pgStatSock use PGINVALID_SOCKET.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Joe Conway committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Introduce two new libpq connection functions, PQconnectdbParams and
+ PQconnectStartParams. These are analogous to PQconnectdb and
+ PQconnectStart respectively. They differ from the legacy functions
+ in that they accept two NULL-terminated arrays, keywords and values,
+ rather than conninfo strings. This avoids the need to build the
+ conninfo string in cases where it might be inconvenient to do so.
+ Includes documentation. Also modify psql to utilize
+ PQconnectdbParams rather than PQsetdbLogin. This allows the new
+ config parameter application_name to be set, which in turn is
+ displayed in the pg_stat_activity view and included in CSV log
+ entries. This will also ensure both new functions get regularly
+ exercised. Patch by Guillaume Lelarge with review and minor
+ adjustments by Joe Conway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/tcop/utility.c, fix command tag for ALTER LARGE
+ OBJECT.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Add string_agg aggregate functions. The one argument version
+ concatenates the input values into a string. The two argument
+ version also does the same thing, but inserts delimiters between
+ elements. Original patch by Pavel Stehule, reviewed by David E.
+ Wheeler and me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Allow psql variables to be interpolated with literal or identifier
+ escaping. Loosely based on a patch by Pavel Stehule.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Rejected Patches (for now)</h2>
+<p>
+No one was disappointed this week :-)
+</p>
+
+<h2>Pending Patches</h2>
+<p>
+Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of the patch to add a
+string_agg() aggregate which concatenates the elements of aggregation
+with an internal separator.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of the patch to introduce
+quoting behavior to psql variables.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Selena Deckelmann sent in a patch to divide process from debugging
+information in pg_standby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut sent in another revision of the typed table patch per
+review from Hitoshi Harada.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim Bunce sent in another revision of the patch to clean up namespaces
+and Safe initialization for PL/perl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas sent in another revision of the patch to add red-black
+trees to GIN indexes. Mark Cave-Ayland sent another revision in
+response to this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zoltan Boszormenyi sent in three more revisions of the patch to fix
+out-of-scope cursor handling in ECPG.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+David Christensen sent in a patch to add a \whoami option to psql.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marko (johto) Tiikkaja sent in another revision of the patch to add
+general DML to CTEs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KaiGai Kohei sent in three more revisions of the patch to fix the
+behavior of ALTER TABLE...RENAME TO... in the case of multiple
+inheritance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to add access
+controls to large objects.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim Bunce sent in two more revisions of the patch to add
+plperl.on_[un]trusted_init.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leonardo Francalanci sent in another revision of the patch to improve
+CLUSTER's performance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas sent in another revision of the patch to add hash
+information to EXPLAIN.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas sent in a patch to remove contrib/xml2. Mike Rylander
+sent a smaller one to add the analogous functions to the core
+distribution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simon Riggs sent in two revisions of a patch to add relation-specific
+deferred conflict resolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fujii Masao sent in a patch to extend the format of the string
+returned by pg_last_xlog_receive/replay_location() to include the
+timeline ID, and teaches pg_xlogfile_name[_offset]() to accept that
+format, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alexey Klyukin sent in a patch to improve the documentation of PL/perl
+database access functions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zoltan Boszormenyi sent in another revision of the patch to fix NaN
+and Inf behaviors in ECPG.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simon Riggs sent in a patch to fix the behavior of VACUUM FULL in the
+streaming replication case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim Bunce sent in another revision of the patch to PL/Perl to move the
+internal function from namespace main:: to namespaces
+PostgreSQL::InServer[::safe], and restructure the Safe compartment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Guillaume Lelarge sent in a patch to make the PostgreSQL binaries use
+the new PQconnectdbParamss libpq functions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fujii Masao sent in a patch to shut down the server, including the
+startup process and walreceiver, as soon as all read-only connections
+have died. This fixes a corner case in streaming replication.
+
+</p>
+
projects / pgweb-old.git / commitdiff