== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 22 2009 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 22 2009 ==

Security Updates 8.3.7, 8.2.13, 8.1.17, 8.0.21 and 7.4.25 released.
This release fixes a denial of service issue with encoding conversion,
and all users should update their installations at the next reasonable
opportunity.

Code snippets now have a home on the wiki.
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Snippets

Fernando Ike de Oliveira has created an identica group for PostgreSQL.
http://identi.ca/group/postgresql

pgCon Schedule is up: http://www.pgcon.org/2009/schedule/

PgDay Brasilia will be April 17. Contact fernando.ike AT gmail DOT
com or eduardo DOT santos AT planejamento DOT gov DOT br to
participate.

CfP is open for PgDay Sao Paulo, which will be April 24. Contact
marins DOT consultoria AT gmail DOT com or marcelojscosta AT gmail DOT
com to participate.

There will also be PgDays on April 29 in Porto Velho, RO and on April
30 in Ji-Parana, RO. Contact Luis Fernando Bueno: proflfbueno AT
gmail DOT com to participate.

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Benetl 2.6, an ETL tool for files using PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.benetl.net

dataPro 1.6, a visual database management, development and conversion
program, released.
http://www.vive.net/products/datapro.htm

Simpycity 0.2.0a9, a python mapping system for PostgreSQL, released.
https://projects.commandprompt.com/public/simpycity/repo/trunk/dist/Simpycity-0.2.0a9-py2.6.egg

== PostgreSQL 8.4 Feature of the Week ==

Function Editing: psql will allow you to edit functions in-place with
\ef using your favorite command-line editor.

== PostgreSQL Tip of the Week ==

bonnie++, dd, and iozone are all good tools to do a quick test of your
filesystem's I/O performance. If your database is larger than RAM, it
can't go any faster than the storage subsystem can!

== PostgreSQL Jobs for March ==

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

== PostgreSQL Local ==

PostgreSQLFr will have a booth at Solutions Linux 2009 March 31-April
2 in Paris. Sign up with sas AT postgresql DOT fr or at the
French-language wiki:
http://postgresql.fr/sl2009:start

PostgreSQL Conference (JDCon) East 2009 registration is now open.
http://www.postgresql.us/purchase

Kevin Kempter will be speaking about backup and recover at Denver
PUG's first meeting on April 8, 2009.
http://www.diapug.org/Meeting.html

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

Michael Renner will be giving a PostgreSQL replication workshop at
Netways OSDC 2009 on April 29 and 30 in Nuremberg, Germany.
http://www.netways.de/english/osdc/y2009/programm/w/michael_renner_postgresql_repliziert_ein_ueberblick/

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/

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
and Josh Berkus.

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 ==

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c, add -w option to --help output.
It was apparently forgotten when -w was implemented.

- Rename pg_restore -m to -j, and add documentation about what good
numbers are. Per discussion on -hackers.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/datetime.c, document that datetime
year '0' is considered in a recent century, not just '00'.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/datetime.c, improve zero-year
comments.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/client-auth.sgml, clarify 'cert'
authentication documention.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/libpq.sgml, clarify libpq 'sslverify'
documentation wording.

Tom Lane committed:

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release.sgml, add just-assigned CVE number to
release notes for recent security issue.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/intarray.sgml, be more clear about when to use
gist__int_ops vs. gist__intbig_ops. Per suggestion from Ron Mayer.

- Optimize multi-batch hash joins when the outer relation has a
nonuniform distribution, by creating a special fast path for the
(first few) most common values of the outer relation. Tuples having
hashvalues matching the MCVs are effectively forced to be in the
first batch, so that we never write them out to the batch temp
files. Bryce Cutt and Ramon Lawrence, with some editorialization by
me.

- Remove the datetime keywords ABSTIME and RELTIME, which we'd been
treating as noise words for the last twelve years, for compatibility
with Berkeley-era output formatting of the special INVALID values
for those datatypes. Considering that the datatypes themselves have
been deprecated for awhile, this is taking backwards compatibility a
little far. Per gripe from Josh Berkus.

- Remove the -d and -D options of pg_dump and pg_dumpall. The
functionality is still available, but you must now write the long
equivalent --inserts or --column-inserts. This change is made to
eliminate confusion with the use of -d to specify a database name in
most other Postgres client programs. Original patch by Greg Sabino
Mullane, modified per subsequent discussion.

- Clean up pg_SSPI_error() coding a little bit: make the messages more
consistent, translate where intended, const-ify declarations.
Resolves a gripe from Alvaro Herrera as well as some stuff I didn't
like.

- Add isExtend to the parameters of the buffer_read_start and
buffer_read_done DTrace probes, so that ordinary reads can be
distinguished from relation extension operations. Move
buffer_read_start probe to before the smgrnblocks() call that's
needed in the isExtend case, since really that step should be
charged as part of the time needed for the extension operation.
(This makes it slightly harder to match the read_start with the
associated read_done, since now you can't match them on blockNumber,
but it should still be possible since isExtend operations on the
same relation can never be interleaved.) Per recent discussion. In
passing, add the page identity (forkNum/blockNum) to the parameters
of the buffer_flush_start/buffer_flush_done probes, which were
unaccountably lacking the info.

- More fixes for 8.4 DTrace probes. Remove useless
BUFFER_HIT/BUFFER_MISS probes --- the BUFFER_READ_DONE probe
provides the same information and more besides. Expand the
LOCK_WAIT_START/DONE probe arguments so that there's actually some
chance of telling what is being waited for. Update and clean up the
documentation.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster, fix Windows-specific race condition
in syslogger. This could've been the cause of the "could not write
to log file: Bad file descriptor" errors reported at
http://archives.postgresql.org//pgsql-general/2008-06/msg00193.php
Backpatch to 8.3, the race condition was introduced by the CSV
logging patch. Analysis and patch by Gurjeet Singh.

- Add seven kanji characters defined in the Windows 950 codepage to
our big5/win950 <-> UTF8 conversion tables. Per report by Roger
Chang.

- Fix case of the just resurrected UCS_to_BIG5.pl script, and update
Makefile to use it.

- In pgsql/contrib/pg_standby/pg_standby.c, don't intercept SIGQUIT as
a signal to trigger failover; that's what postmaster uses for
immediate shutdown. Trap SIGUSR1 as the preferred signal for that.
Per report by Fujii Masao and subsequent discussion on -hackers.

- In pgsql/contrib/pg_standby/pg_standby.c, don't set the signal
handler for SIGQUIT on Windows. Buildfarm shows that reinstalling
the default signal handler doesn't work as it is on Windows.
Presumably core dumps on SIGQUIT are not a problem on Windows, so
rather than figure out what header files or other changes are
required to make it work, just don't bother.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Koichi Suzuki sent in another revision of the PITR performance
improvement patch.

Magnus Hagander sent in a patch which changes the path separator for
files on windows to a backslash unconditionally.

Teodor Sigaev sent in another revision of the patch to add B-Tree
emulation to GIN indexes.

Shrish Purohit sent in another revision of the Thick Index patch.

Michael Renner sent in a doc patch to clarify between redo and
checkpoint records.

Pavel Stehule sent in a WIP patch to add transformationHook.

Sergey Burladyan sent in a patch to check for ngettext in configure,
add some new macros for ngettext, and change psql's "(1 row)" messages
to _P(...) macros.

Tom Lane sent in a patch which fixes some libxml incompatibilities.