PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 30th 2003

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 30th 2003 ==

PostgreSQL 7.3.4 rolled out without too many issues; by now it should
be available from your local ftp mirror (full list at
http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html) in both source and rpm
formats. The upgrade is critical for 7.3.3 users, and recommended for
all others. If you would like to view the full release notes, they are
available at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/734.html.

Meanwhile prep work for 7.4 beta is continuing. As there are still
issues being worked through, it hasn't been packaged yet, since there is
no sense packages a product with known problems. Incidentally this works
well for me as it gives me a good cliff hanger for each weeks
newsletter. :-) Seriously though the first beta package should be
available within the next week; in the mean time lets review this past
weeks development.

Another (and perhaps final) round of error message editing was
committed, thanks to the efforts of Tom Lane and Joe Conway. Areas that
were finished up include the contrib modules, the utils, storage, and
optimizer sections of the back end, and the various procedural
languages. It's been noted that users of the various pieces of
PostgreSQL should keep an eye on the error messages they receive once in
beta to help ensure that the messages you receive are appropriate for
the errors you trigger.

SSL client negotiation now has four different methods it can support;
unencrypted non-SSL only, negotiated connection that prefer non-SSL,
negotiated connections that prefer SSL, and SSL only connections. These
changes work in conjunction with pg_hba.conf specific settings that can
limit connections to the appropriate negotiated connection style. This
work is thanks to Jon Jensen. Another SSL fix that went in was SSL text
now printing only when SSL mode is enabled.

A number of time oriented fixes went in this week; timestamp_date for
the HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP case was fixed, date_trunc('quarter',...) and
it's ilk were corrected,and date/time input now follows along the lines
of DateStyle rather than attempting to determine dates heuristically.
Timetravel functionality also received some work, it now operates
properly with "CREATE UNIQUE INDEX ixxx on table xxx", timetravel
triggers no longer change the oid of the active record, and a
get_timetravel(tablename) function was created to check timetravel
status, along with some general cleanup of compile warnings.

In ecpg, the mdy function were fixed to use the correct offset, we now
use yyless in place of the string_unput function, and some explicit
casts for date, interval, and timestamp were added. JDBC received a few
patches as well, fixing several sql injection attacks, thanks to Oliver
Jowett and Dmitry Tkach.

A problem with pg_dumps handling of dropped columns was fixed, pg_dump
now uses the same layout for types as it does for tables, and grant
option dumping and some related cross-version compatibility issues in
pg_dump where addressed. Psql now prints out a list of parent tables
along with the standard table information display, thanks to Nick Barr,
and psql's VERBOSE variable has been renamed to VERBOSITY.

While an official win32 build wont be coming in 7.4, there is still
some work being done to improve windows support. The static library
libpq.a did not work with psql, which is now fixed. Also password
echoing has been disabled and 8bit characters are now properly displayed
and interpreted. These fixes were all thanks to Christoph Dalitz.

Rounding out the weeks code changes are a slew of miscellaneous fixes
including a number of outstanding portability issues with the new IPv6
code were tackled including using a more robust definition of struct
sockaddr_storage, fixing the configure test to see if ss_len exists, no
longer assuming getnameinfo() will handle AF_UNIX sockets, and more.
Unknown-literal-constant default values will now be coerced to the
column type during CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE SET DEFAULT, rather than
postponing it to the time the default values is inserted into an INSERT
command. The ERRCODE_XXX macros were moved to their own header file.
Memory usage in the start-up process was tightened a little bit. A
duplicate array in help_config.c was removed. Some general cleanup of
the recent GUC changes. We now use a process-specific temp file name
(based on suggestion by Andreas Haumer). An error in _bt_search was
fixed. We now wait for the postmaster to actually exit when shutting
down the postmaster after 'make check'. The --with-threads option was
renamed to --enable-thread-safeness. The linux startup scripts were
tweaked by Slawomir Sudnik. The initcap function has been made
compatible with Oracle 9i. Error stack traceback support for was added
for SQL-language functions. Pg_settings now displays the source of its
information (default/user/session). And finally, the regression test for
foreign key was improved to work with the deferred trigger code.

Next week we will round out the final code changes from feature freeze,
and have more information on the start of beta testing.

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Mammoth PostgreSQL 7.3.3 Released
http://www.commandprompt.com/entry.lxp?lxpe=147

FUDforum 2.5.1 (Stable) released
http://freshmeat.net/releases/131044/

pyPgSQL 2.4 released
http://pypgsql.sourceforge.net/

== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Gambling on Linux pays off in Nevada
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/07/23/1646215.shtml?tid=23

PostgreSQL 7.3.4 Now Available For Download
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4155

rjjm.net blog entry with links to postgresql/jdbc information
http://www.rjjm.net/archive/2003_07_01_archive.html

== Upcoming Events ==

Tcl'2003 BoF with PgAccess: Ann Arbor, Michigan: July 31 - Aug 2
A BoF will be held Friday night for PostgreSQL based tcl/tk projects
http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2003/?sc_format=wider

Linux World Expo: San Francisco, California: Aug 6-7
A BoF with the SF PostgreSQL Users group will take place Wednesday
http://www.postgresql.org/events/155.html

PostgreSQL training at the Big Nerd Ranch: Atlanta, Georgia: Aug 18-22
Bruce Momjian will provide a one week training class.
http://www.bignerdranch.com/Classes/Postgresql.html

1-day PostgreSQL Workshop: Turkey / Istanbul'da: August 23
FrontSITE & TDM is offering 1-day course on PostgreSQL
http://www.frontsite.com.tr
http://www.tdmsoft.com/egitim_ayrinti.php?id=1

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 30th 2003 ==
Don't forget to read Elein Mustain's Weekly Summary of the PostgreSQL
General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org
http://advocacy.postgresql.org