== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 01 2009 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 01 2009 ==

Denver PUG will be meeting March 27. Stay tuned for details.

Michael Renner will be giving a PostgreSQL replication workshop at
Netways OSDC 2009 in Nuremberg, Germany.
http://www.netways.de/english/osdc/y2009/programm/w/michael_renner_postgresql_repliziert_ein_ueberblick/

PostgreSQLFr will have a booth at Solutions Linux 2009 in Paris.
Sign up with sas AT postgresql DOT fr or at the French-language wiki:
http://postgresql.fr/sl2009:start

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Npgsql2 2.0.3, a .NET data provider for PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.npgsql.org

pgpool-II 2.2, a connection pooler and more, and pgpoolAdmin 2.2, a
GUI front ent for pgpool-II, released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/

Simpycity, a python mapping system for PostgreSQL, released.
https://projects.commandprompt.com/public/simpycity/

== PostgreSQL 8.4 Feature of the Week ==

pg_stat_statements. This contrib module by Itagaki Takahiro will give
you pg_fouine-like "Top 25 queries" reporting on your database
activity in near-real time.

== PostgreSQL Tip of the Week ==

Autovacuum should be on for most database applications, but should be
turned off for large bulk loads of data, such as ETL or restoring a
database.

== PostgreSQL Jobs for March ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-03/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The German PostgreSQL User Group will have a booth, 2 talks and a
workshop on the Linuxdays Chemnitz on March 14 and 15, 2009. More
information in German here:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/525-PostgreSQL-auf-den-Chemnitzer-Linuxtagen.html

PostgreSQL Conference, U.S. will be holding a PgDay at LinuxFest
Northwest (April 25/26th). The call for papers is out at
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/

PGCon 2009 will be held 21-22 May 2009, in Ottawa at the University of
Ottawa. It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 19-20 May
2009.
http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php

Save The Date: pgDay San Jose. Sunday, July 19th 2009 immediately
before OSCON. CfP, more info TBA!

PGCon Brazil will be take place October 23-24 2009 at Unicamp in
Campinas, Sao Paulo state.

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter,
Josh Berkus and Devrim GUNDUZ.

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:

- Change the signaling of end-of-recovery. Startup process now
indicates end of recovery by exiting with exit code 0, like in
previous releases. Per Tom's suggestion.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c, put back a "continue"
that went missing in the changes to start background writer in WAL
recovery.

- In pgsql/src/pl/plpgsql/src/pl_exec.c, set isnull for errm and
sqlstate local variables when they're free'd. Because they are out
of scope for any code after that anyway, leaving isnull true should
be harmless. However, PL/pgSQL Debugger doesn't seem to care about
the scoping and crashed, per report by Robert Walker (bug #4635).
And it's good to be tidy for debugging purposes too. Fix in 8.3,
8.2 and 8.1 branches, CVS HEAD was fixed earlier already. Analysis
and fix by Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page.

- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/conversioncmds.c, in CREATE
CONVERSION, test that the given function is a valid conversion
function for the specified source and destination encodings. We do
that by calling the function with an empty string. If it can't
perform the requested conversion, it will throw an error. Backport
to 7.4 - 8.3. Per bug report #4680 by Denis Afonin.

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/pl/plpgsql/src/pl_exec.c, add quotes to message.

- Add the possibility to specify an explicit validator function for
foreign-data wrappers (similar to procedural languages). This way
we don't need to retain the nearly empty libraries, and we are more
free in how to implement the wrapper API in the future.

- Don't append epoch to log_filename if no format specifier is given.
Robert Haas

- Sort the output of --help mostly alphabetical, make it align better,
make help of pg_dump and pg_dumpall more similar.

- Remove feof(stdin) calls related to when to prompt for a password,
leftovers from when the password was read from stdin.

- In pgsql/contrib/vacuumlo/vacuumlo.c, clean up help (-?) output.

- In pgsql/src/bin/pg_config/pg_config.c, use the same style in the
help synopsis that other programs are using.

- Add a -w/--no-password option that prevents all password prompts to
all programs that have a -W/--password option. In passing, remove
the ancient PSQL_ALWAYS_GET_PASSWORDS compile option.

- Final removal of -q options, which haven't done anything since 8.3
and were marked for removal in 8.4.

- Fix the inconsistent and wrong claims that the option value in
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER/SERVER/USER MAPPING is optional.

- Equip the programs installed by contrib with proper --help and
--version options and normally formatted help output.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/help.c, add the long options to the psql
--help display, where they were curiously missing. Since this
touches most lines of the help output, also change the mix of puts
and printf calls to printf everywhere, for easier code editing and
reviewing.

Tom Lane committed:

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, fix psql's \dD to show only one
row per domain, even when the domain has multiple check constraints.

- Repair a longstanding bug in CLUSTER and the rewriting variants of
ALTER TABLE: if the command is executed by someone other than the
table owner (eg, a superuser) and the table has a toast table, the
toast table's pg_type row ends up with the wrong typowner, ie, the
command issuer not the table owner. This is quite harmless for most
purposes, since no interesting permissions checks consult the
pg_type row. However, it could lead to unexpected failures if one
later tries to drop the role that issued the command (in 8.1 or
8.2), or strange warnings from pg_dump afterwards (in 8.3 and up,
which will allow the DROP ROLE because we don't create a "redundant"
owner dependency for table rowtypes). Problem identified by Cott
Lang. Back-patch to 8.1. The problem is actually far older --- the
CLUSTER variant can be demonstrated in 7.0 --- but it's mostly
cosmetic before 8.1 because we didn't track ownership dependencies
before 8.1. Also, fixing it before 8.1 would require changing the
call signature of heap_create_with_catalog(), which seems to carry a
nontrivial risk of breaking add-on modules.

- Get rid of the rather fuzzily defined FlattenedSubLink node type in
favor of making pull_up_sublinks() construct a full-blown JoinExpr
tree representation of IN/EXISTS SubLinks that it is able to convert
to semi or anti joins. This makes pull_up_sublinks() a shade more
complex, but the gain in semantic clarity is worth it. I still have
more to do in this area to address the previously-discussed
problems, but this commit in itself fixes at least one bug in HEAD,
as shown by added regression test case.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/ruleutils.c, fix an old problem in
decompilation of CASE constructs: the ruleutils.c code looks for a
CaseTestExpr to figure out what the parser did, but it failed to
consider the possibility that an implicit coercion might be inserted
above the CaseTestExpr. This could result in an Assert failure in
some cases (but correct results if Asserts weren't enabled), or an
"unexpected CASE WHEN clause" error in other cases. Per report from
Alan Li. Back-patch to 8.1; problem doesn't exist before that
because CASE was implemented differently.

- Remove outdated join_1.out regression test comparison file. This
has been broken for more than a month, so evidently it's not needed,
at least not for any configuration in the buildfarm. We can correct
it and replace it later if we find something that still needs it.

- In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/util/pathnode.c, improve
create_unique_path to not be fooled by unrelated clauses that happen
to be syntactically part of a semijoin clause. For example given
WHERE EXISTS(SELECT ... WHERE upper.var = lower.var AND
some-condition) where some-condition is just a restriction on the
lower relation, we can use unique-ification on lower.var after
having applied some-condition within the scan on lower.

- Tighten up join ordering rules to account for recent more-careful
analysis of the associativity of antijoins. Also improve
optimizer/README discussion of outer join ordering rules.

- In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/prep/prepjointree.c, temporarily (I
hope) disable flattening of IN/EXISTS sublinks that are within the
ON clause of an outer join. Doing so is semantically correct but
results in de-optimizing queries that were structured to take
advantage of the sublink style of execution, as seen in recent
complaint from Kevin Grittner. Since the user can get the other
behavior by reorganizing his query, having the flattening happen
automatically is just a convenience, and that doesn't justify
breaking existing applications. Eventually it would be nice to
re-enable this, but that seems to require a significantly different
approach to outer joins in the executor.

- Reduce the maximum value of vacuum_cost_delay and autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay
to 100ms (from 1000). This still seems to be comfortably larger
than the useful range of the parameter, and it should help
discourage people from picking uselessly large values. Tweak the
documentation to recommend small values, too. Per discussion of a
couple weeks ago.

- In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/path/pathkeys.c, shave a few cycles
in compare_pathkeys() by checking for pointer-identical input lists
before we grovel through the lists. This doesn't save much, but
testing shows that the case of both inputs NIL is common enough that
it saves something. And this is used enough to be a hotspot.

- Fix buffer allocations in encoding conversion routines so that they
won't fail on zero-length inputs. This isn't an issue in normal use
because the conversion infrastructure skips calling the converters
for empty strings. However a problem was created by yesterday's
patch to check whether the right conversion function is supplied in
CREATE CONVERSION. The most future-proof fix seems to be to make
the converters safe for this corner case.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- In pgsql/src/tools/msvc/Mkvcbuild.pm, remove references to foreign
data wrapper libraries, since they have been removed. This should
unbreak the msvc build again.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/xml.c, don't mangle xml and xpath
unless xml is not in fact a well-formed document, in xpath(). If
mangling xpath, make a saner attempt where xpath expression does not
begin with '/'.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

James Pye's patch which changes the behavior of xpath processing to
account for fragments. Returned for review as it changes a
functionality in a non-bug-fixing way.

Sushint Sinhas's patch to add space when FragmentDelimiter is
specified in tsearch2. Functionality is available via less invasive
means.

Pavel Stehule's patch to support a mix of named parameters and default
values for functions. Too much ambiguity in interpretation.

== Pending Patches ==

KaiGai Kohei sent in two more revisions of his SE-PostgreSQL patches.

Alan Li sent in a patch to fix a back-end assertion failure which can
be triggered by defining a VIEW with CASE on a table.

Martin Pihlak sent in a patch to have the \d commands treat
information schema as system objects, making them invisible by
default. They are still visible via the \d*S commands.

Damien Clochard sent in a patch to psql which shows tables which inherit
a given table when invoking \d table.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a WIP patch for Hot Standby showing how
transaction tracking could work using "unobserved xids," now actually
all master transactions, alone.

Robert Lor sent in a doc patch for the recently added DTrace probes.

Dave Page sent in a patch from Ashesh Vashi which fixes a PL/PgSQL bug
in 8.3 where after setting state_var->value and errm_var->value to
null, state_var->isnull and errm_var->isnull are not set
correspondingly.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to add SQL:2008 error codes for LIMIT
and OFFSET values.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch which prevents PostgreSQL from
violating the system limit of maximum open files.