== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 06 2008 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 06 2008 ==

The July CommitFest has begun. Start reviewing :)
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:2008-07

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

MicroOLAP Database Designer 1.2.4 for PostgreSQL released.
http://microolap.com/products/database/postgresql-designer/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for July ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2008-07/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

pgDay Portland is July 20, just before OSCON.
http://pugs.postgresql.org/node/400

PGCon Brazil 2008 will be on September 26-27 at Unicamp in Campinas.
http://pgcon.postgresql.org.br/index.en.html

PGDay.IT 2008 will be October 17 and 18 in Prato.
http://www.pgday.org/it/

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://www.planetpostgresql.org/

General Bits, Archives and occasional new articles:
http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

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 ==

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- Turn PGBE_ACTIVITY_SIZE into a GUC variable, track_activity_query_size.
As the buffer could now be a lot larger than before, and copying it
could thus be a lot more expensive than before, use strcpy instead
of memcpy to copy the query string, as was already suggested in
comments. Also, only copy the PgBackendStatus struct and string if
the slot is in use. Patch by Thomas Lee, with some changes by me.

- Extend VacAttrStats to allow typanalyze functions to store statistic
values of different types than the underlying column. The capability
isn't yet used for anything, but will be required by upcoming patch
to analyze tsvector columns. Jan Urbanski

- In pgsql/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c, move volatility, language, etc.
modifiers before function body in the pg_dump output for CREATE
FUNCTION. This makes it easier to read especially if the function
body is long. Original idea and patch by Greg Sabino Mullane,
though this is a stripped down version of that.

Teodor Sigaev committed:

- ltree support for multibyte encodings. Patch was made by Weiping
(laser) He, with some editorization by me.

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/gin/ginscan.c, fix initialization of
GinScanEntryData.partialMatch

Bruce Momjian committed:

- Add psql TODO item: "Add option to wrap column values at whitespace
boundaries, rather than chopping them at a fixed width. Currently,
'wrapped' format chops values into fixed widths. Perhaps the word
wrapping could use the same algorithm documented in the W3C
specification."

- Add psql TODO item: "Add 'auto' expanded mode that outputs in
expanded format if "wrapped" mode can't wrap the output to the
screen width."

- Fix recovery.conf boolean variables to take the same range of string
values as postgresql.conf.

- Issue psql connection warnings on connection start and via \c, per
observation by David Fetter.

- Add to TODO: "Fix TRUNCATE ... RESTART IDENTITY so its affect on
sequences is rolled back on transaction abort."

- Add URL for TODO: "Add database and transaction-level triggers."

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, documentation patch by Kevin L.
McBride explaining GUC lock variables, which are available if
LOCK_DEBUG is defined.

- In pgsql/src/include/c.h, update source code comment about when to
use gettext_noop().

Tom Lane committed:

- Teach autovacuum how to determine whether a temp table belongs to a
crashed backend. If so, send a LOG message to the postmaster log,
and if the table is beyond the vacuum-for-wraparound horizon,
forcibly drop it. Per recent discussions. Perhaps we ought to
back-patch this, but it probably needs to age a bit in HEAD first.

- In pgsql/src/timezone/pgtz.c, fix identify_system_timezone() so that
it tests the behavior of the system timezone setting in the current
year and for 100 years back, rather than always examining years
1904-2004. The original coding would have problems distinguishing
zones whose behavior diverged only after 2004; which is a situation
we will surely face sometime, if it's not out there already. In
passing, also prevent selection of the dummy "Factory" timezone,
even if that's exactly what the system is using. Reporting time as
GMT seems better than that.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/guc.c, remove GUC extra_desc strings
that are redundant with the enum value lists.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/xml.c, fix transaction-lifespan
memory leak in xpath(). Report by Matt Magoffin, fix by Kris Jurka.

- Fix psql's \d and allied commands to work with all server versions
back to 7.4. Guillaume Lelarge, with some additional fixes by me.

- Add a function pg_get_keywords() to let clients find out the set of
keywords known to the SQL parser. Dave Page

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/guc.c, prevent integer overflows
during units conversion when displaying a GUC variable that has
units. Per report from Stefan Kaltenbrunner. Backport to 8.2. I
also backported my patch of 2007-06-21 that prevented comparable
overflows on the input side, since that now seems to have enough
field track record to be back-patched safely. That patch included
addition of hints listing the available unit names, which I did not
bother to strip out of it --- this will make a little more work for
the translators, but they can copy the translation from 8.3, and
anyway an untranslated hint is better than no hint.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/guc.c, split apart message_level_options
into one set for server-side settings and one for client-side,
restoring the previous behaviour with different sort order for the
'log' level. Also, remove redundant list of available options, since
the enum code will output it automatically.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/guc.c, "debug" level was supposed to
be hidden, since it's just an alias for debug2.

- In pgsql/src/backend/port/win32_shmem.c, fix a couple of bugs in
win32 shmem name generation: 1. Don't cut off the prefix. With this
fix, it's again readable. 2. Properly store it in the Global
namespace as intended.

Joe Conway committed:

- When an ERROR happens on a dblink remote connection, take pains to
pass the ERROR message components locally, including using the
passed SQLSTATE. Also wrap the passed info in an appropriate
CONTEXT message. Addresses complaint by Henry Combrinck. Joe
Conway, with much good advice from Tom Lane.

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/test/regress/expected/prepare.out, clean up weird
whitespace. Separate patch to simplifiy the next change.

- Don't print the name of the database in psql \z.

- Don't refer to the database name "regression" inside the regression
test scripts, to allow running the test successfully with another
database name.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Simon Riggs sent in a patch which introduces a distinction between
hint bit setting and block dirtying, when such a distinction can
safely be made.

Simon Riggs sent in a patch which adds planner statistic hooks.

Tom Raney sent in another revision of his patch to allow EXPLAIN to
output XML.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to let people set the name of the
regression test database on the command line.

Teodor Sigaev sent in revisions to the multicolumn and fast-insert
patches to GIN.

Dean Rasheed sent in a patch to add a debug_explain_plan GUC variable
which, when set to on, dumps the output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE to the
appropriate logging level.

Zdenek Kotala sent in three more revisions of his page macros cleanup
patch.

Garick Hamlin sent in a patch to support ident authentication when
using unix domain sockets on Solaris.

Simon Riggs sent in a bug fix for pg_standby per note from Ferenc
Felhoffer.

Simon Riggs sent in two revisions of a patch to document the
toggliness of certain psql commands.

Simon Riggs sent in a patch to pgbench which restricts vacuuming to
pgbench tables and changes a DELETE/VACUUM to a TRUNCATE.