== PostgreSQL Weekly News - Februrary 2nd 2004 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 2nd 2004 ==

This week saw a little bit of everything going on, with new features
and bug squashing taking the lions share. However, I think the most exciting
news of the week was the implementation of a new search engine on the
PostgreSQL website. The new search engine is based on a (currently
unreleased) port of ASPSeek which runs on PostgreSQL, and replaces the old,
often complained about, mnogo based search engine. <pause for rejoicing>
This, coupled with the new tsearch2 based PostgreSQL search engine available
at http://www.pgsql.ru, should make it a whole lot easier to find your
favorite PostgreSQL related information.

On the bug squashing front, we saw a handful of errors fixed and
backpatched into 7.4 this week. An incorrect order of operations bug that
can prevent proper database startup in some rare corner cases involving
running out of disk space was fixed. The fix was based on a trouble report by
Christopher Kings-Lynne on the -hackers list. Another problem involving
improper evaluation of functions returning composite types was fixed, and an
oversight in the checking of complex grouping expressions was fixed.

Work on 7.5 also continued at a good clip. The USING and WITH clauses
were made optional for \copy, which happens to coincide nicely with what the
documentation states on the matter. The length() function now disregards
trailing spaces in char(n) values, per discussion on -hackers some time ago.
A read of uninitialized memory in the internal next_token function() of hba.c
was spotted using valgrind and subsequently fixed. Based on a suggestion from
Michael Brusser, we now use Tcl_PutEnv() in place of putenv() in libpgtcl, as
the latter can apparently corrupt the Tcl runtime. Some additional
documentation was added for libpq explaining how to handle memory management
for char pointers returned by libpq functions.

We saw a number of improvements to ecpg this week, including issuing a
warning if a cursor is declared but not opened, fixing the prototype for
ECPGprepared_statement to not moan about "const char", and fixing the parsing
of nested structures while adding an option to parse header files.

On the win32 front, some heavy reorganizing of the backend dealing with fork,
exec, process, and signal handling went in. One specific change was the
changing of PG_USLEEP to use SleepEx() to add signal interruptibility. Other
win32 oriented changes include some configure and Makefile changes, shared
memory attaching in EXEC_BACKEND case, and adding a win32 rand function which
had been missing. It's worth noting that at times this past week we have
actually had a compilable and quasi-runnable server for win32. It's
certainly too green for the average user to really even be testing, but if
you are interested in some low level hacking it should be much easier now to
get involved.

One final note, Simon Riggs posted a very nice summary of development done so
far in the PostgreSQL 7.5 branch. You can view it in the archives at
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2004-01/msg00723.php. (Just a
note, it took me 0.084 seconds to find that using the new search engine :-)
Simon has indicated plans to keep this summary updated, and the web team is
looking for a nice permanent place to give it a home. Once it has settled I
will be sure to post the information here.

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Linux Labs Releases Clustered PostgreSQL Database for Enterprise Computing
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040129/lath071_1.html

pljava now is now ready for download
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pljava/news/newsfull.php?news_id=149

New PostgreSQL Import and Export Utilities Available
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pgimport/news/newsfull.php?news_id=151

== PostgreSQL In the News ==

SourceBeat Launches Site and Open Source Dynamic Publishing Model
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK3.story&STORY=/www/story/02-02-2004/0002101112&EDATE=MON+Feb+02+2004,+01:00+PM

== Upcoming Events ==

Linux Solutions 2004: Paris, France: February 3-5
Bruce Momjian will be presenting
http://www.solutionslinux.fr/en/index.php

Chemnitzer Linux-Tag: Chemnitz, Germany: March 6-7
Peter Eisentraut will organize a table and will make a presentation
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/linux/tag/2004/allgemeines/

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 2nd 2004 ==
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