== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 12 2009 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 12 2009 ==

There are still places open for PgDay San Jose on Sunday, July 19.
Register now!
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PgDaySanJose2009

There is a new tool for Commitfests. Thanks to Robert Haas, Brendan
Jurd, et al.
http://commitfest.postgresql.org/

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

check_postgres 2.9.2, a Nagios plugin for monitoring PostgreSQL, released.
http://bucardo.org/check_postgres/

PostgreSQL RPM Building Project released PostgreSQL 8.4 Live CD:
http://www.pglivecd.org

pgbouncer 1.3.1, a connection pooler for PostgreSQL, released.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgbouncer/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for July ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-07/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

pgDay San Jose is Sunday, July 19th 2009 immediately before OSCON.
Sign up below:
http://postgresql.meetup.com/1/calendar/10626647

OpenSQL Camp will take place August 22-23, 2009 in St. Augustin,
Germany, close to Bonn and Cologne. Deadline for the CfP is July 19,
2009. Get your proposals in!
http://opensqlcamp.org/Events/2009/Call_for_Participation

The German PostgreSQL User Group will have a dev-room at FrOSCon on
Sunday, August 23, 2009. The Call for Papers is open:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/573-Call-for-Papers-fuer-den-PostgreSQL-Devroom-auf-der-FrOSCon-2009.html

The CfP for PyCon Argentina is open until June 29th, 2009 23:59 ART.
The conference itself will be in Beunos Aires on September 4-5 2009.
http://ar.pycon.org/2009/rfp/

Andreas (ads) Scherbaum will be teaching a "PostgreSQL for Corporate
Use" course at the adult education center in Magdeburg, Germany on
September 7-11, 2009. Details below:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/574-PostgreSQL-als-Bildungsurlaub.html

There will be a conference in Athens, Georgia, USA on September 19,
2009. The CfP is open.
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/2009/pgday/athens

There will be a conference in Seattle, Washington, USA October 16-18,
2009. The CfP is open.
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/2009/west

PGCon Brazil will be take place October 23-24 2009 at Unicamp in
Campinas, Sao Paulo state. The CfP is open!
http://pgcon.postgresql.org.br/2009/chamadas.en.php

PGDay.EU 2009 will be at Telecom ParisTech in Paris, France on
November 6-7, 2009. The CfP is out. Submit!
http://www.pgday.eu/

JPUG 10th Anniversary Conference has started its Request for
Proposals. The conference is November 20-21, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-announce/2009-05/msg00018.php

== 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 ==

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, show definition of index columns
in \d on index. This adds a column called "Definition" to the
output of psql \d on an index, which shows the full expression
behind the index column. For indexes on plain columns, this is
redundant, but for expression indexes, this reveals the real
expression. Author: Khee Chin.

- More sensible character_octet_length. For character types with
typmod, character_octet_length columns in the information schema now
show the maximum character length times the maximum length of a
character in the server encoding, instead of some huge value as
before.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, sort child tables by name instead
of OID in \d+ display. This was an oversight in the recent patch.
Found by Tom Lane.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, psql backward compatibility fix.
For servers older than 8.3, sort display of child tables by relname
instead of oid::regclass::text, because the cast from regclass to
text did not work back then. The older display may be slightly
worse when different schemas are involved, but that should be rare
enough.

- In pgsql/src/makefiles/pgxs.mk, when calling unsupported "make
check" with a pgxs module, return a nonzero exit code.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/acronyms.sgml, correct what ISO stands for.

- Alter some gratuitous uses of "ANSI" when "SQL standard" might have
been meant or the reference to a standard was unnecessary.

Tom Lane committed:

- Fix set_append_rel_pathlist() to deal intelligently with cases where
substituting a child rel's output expressions into the appendrel's
restriction clauses yields a pseudoconstant restriction. We might
be able to skip scanning that child rel entirely (if we get constant
FALSE), or generate a one-time filter. 8.3 more or less
accidentally generated plans that weren't completely stupid in these
cases, but that was only because an extra recursive level of
subquery_planner() always occurred and allowed const-simplification
to happen. 8.4's ability to pull up appendrel members with non-Var
outputs exposes the fact that we need to work harder here. Per
gripe from Sergey Burladyan.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/timestamp.c, use floor() not rint()
when reducing precision of fractional seconds in timestamp_trunc,
timestamptz_trunc, and interval_trunc(). This change only affects
the float-datetime case; the integer-datetime case already behaved
like truncation instead of rounding. Per gripe from Mario Splivalo.
This is a pre-existing issue but I'm choosing not to backpatch,
because it's such a corner case and there have not been prior
complaints. The issue is largely moot anyway given the trend
towards integer datetimes.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, code review for patch to show
definition of index columns in \d on index. Safely schema-qualify
the pg_get_indexdef call, make the query a bit prettier in -E mode,
remove useless join to pg_index, make it more obvious that the
header[] array is not overrun.

- In pgsql/src/include/catalog/pg_proc.h, fix typo in comment.

- In pgsql/src/backend/catalog/information_schema.sql, query in SQL
function still not schema-safe; add a couple more pg_catalog.
qualifications.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/mb/mbutils.c, don't use 'return' where
you should use 'PG_RETURN_xxx'.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, just a little more
schema-qualification ...

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml, add missing HOUR TO SECOND
option to list of possible INTERVAL field sets, as noted by
Sebastien Flaesch. Also update the claim that we simply throw away
fields outside this set --- that got changed later to only discard
less-significant fields.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c, remove
no-longer-necessary transmission of postmaster's LC_COLLATE and
LC_CTYPE settings to children via BackendParameters. Per
discussion, the postmaster is now just using system defaults anyway,
so we might as well save a few cycles during backend startup.

- In pgsql/contrib/xml2/xslt_proc.c, fix xslt_process() to ensure that
it inserts a NULL terminator after the last pair of parameter
name/value strings, even when there are MAXPARAMS of them.
Aboriginal bug in contrib/xml2, noted while studying bug #4912
(though I'm not sure whether there's something else involved in that
report). This might be thought a security issue, since it's a
potential backend crash; but considering that untrustworthy users
shouldn't be allowed to get their hands on xslt_process() anyway,
it's probably not worth getting excited about.

- In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/path/costsize.c, fix set_rel_width()
to do something reasonable with non-Var items in a RelOptInfo
targetlist. It used to be that the only possibility other than a
Var was a RowExpr representing a whole-row child Var, but as of
8.4's expanded ability to flatten appendrel members, we can get
arbitrary expressions in there. Use the expression's type info and
get_typavgwidth() to produce an at-least-marginally-sane result.
Note that get_typavgwidth()'s fallback estimate (32 bytes) is the
same as what was here before, so there will be no behavioral change
for RowExprs. Noted while looking at recent gripe about constant
quals pushed down to FunctionScan appendrel members ... not only
were we failing to recognize the constant qual, we were getting the
width estimate wrong :-(

- Move some declarations in the raw-parser header files to create a
clearer distinction between the external API (parser.h) and
declarations that only need to be visible within the raw parser code
(gramparse.h, which now is only included by parser.c, gram.y,
scan.l, and keywords.c). This is in preparation for the upcoming
change to a reentrant lexer, which will require referencing YYSTYPE
in the declarations of base_yylex and filtered_base_yylex, hence
gram.h will have to be included by gramparse.h. We don't want any
more files than absolutely necessary to depend on gram.h, so some
cleanup is called for.

- Fix up PGDLLIMPORT marking for standard_conforming_strings. Moving
it into a header file that plpgsql's scan.l can see broke the
previous kluge. Per buildfarm results.

- Advance the minimum required version of "flex" from 2.5.4 to 2.5.31,
and update documentation accordingly. This is required in order to
have support for a reentrant scanner. I'm committing this bit
separately in order to have an easy reference if we later decide to
make the minimum something different (like 2.5.33).

- Convert the core lexer and parser into fully reentrant code, by
making use of features added to flex and bison since this code was
originally written. This change doesn't in itself offer any new
capability, but it's needed infrastructure for planned improvements
in plpgsql. Another feature now available in flex is the ability to
make it use palloc instead of malloc, so do that to avoid possible
memory leaks. (We should at some point change the other lexers
likewise, but this commit doesn't touch them.)

- In pgsql/src/backend/parser/scan.l, although the flex documentation
avers that yyalloc and yyrealloc take size_t arguments, the emitted
scanner actually prototypes them with type yy_size_t, which is
sometimes not the same thing depending on flex version and platform.
Easiest fix seems to be to use yy_size_t. Per buildfarm results.

- Make the configure messages rejecting old bison and flex versions
include the full path and version of the program being rejected.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/formatting.c, fix ancient bug in
handling of to_char modifier 'TH', when used with Hitoshi Harada.
In what seems like an oversight, we used to treat 'TH' the same as
lowercase 'th', but only with HH/HH12.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/init/postinit.c, need to use
pg_perm_setlocale when setting LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE at startup.
Otherwise, the LC_CTYPE/COLLATE setting gets reverted when using
plperl, which leads to incorrect query results and index corruption.
This was accidentally broken in the per-database locale patch in
8.4. Pointed out by Andrew (RhodiumToad) Gierth.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- Stamp minor library version numbers for 8.5; sorry for the delay.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Fujii Masao sent a WIP patch to introduce a new value,
sync_file_range, to wal_sync_method.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a WIP patch to set client_encoding
automatically from locale in libpq.

Pavel Stehule sent in a patch to fix BUG #4907: stored procedures and
changed tables.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in two patches to parallelize pgbench.

Robert Haas sent in three patches to help fix the issue around the
*_collapse_limit GUC parameters.

Josh Tolley sent in a patch against the Commitfest code to keep
Perl::Critic quiet.

Peter Eisentraut sent in two revisions of a patch to allow byteas to
be escaped for input and output as hex.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of his SE-PostgreSQL patches.

Brendan Jurd sent in another revision of the patch to add scientific
notation to to_char().

Bernd Helmle sent in another revision of a patch to allow for dropping
columns and constraints conditionally.

Tom Lane sent in a patch to increase the minimum flex version in order
to enable a reentrant parser.

Dean Rasheed sent in two WIP patches to allow deferrable unique
constraints.

Marko (johto) Tiikkaja sent in a patch to allow INSERT...RETURNING
inside a CTE.

Andrew (RhodiumToad) Gierth sent in a patch to update hstore to CVS
TIP.

Teodor Sigaev sent in a patch to fix wrong algorithms for "contains"
and "overlaps" operations over polygons, including regression tests
for same.

Jaime Casanova sent in an update to Mark Kirkwood's patch which adds
lock wait statistics to the pg_catalog, including a new view.