== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 14 2010 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 14 2010 ==

Bug Fix Releases 8.4.3, 8.3.10, 8.2.16, 8.1.20, 8.0.24 and 7.4.28 will
be out soon. Get ready to upgrade!

SFPUG is leading a world-wide Test Fest for PostgreSQL 9 on April 3,
2010. Whether you're in the San Francisco Bay Area or not, see below
for details.
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/database-soup/april-3-postgresql-testfest-day-37458

PostgreSQLfr will have a booth at SolutionsLinux 2010 in Paris,
France March 16-18, 2010. Volunteers, please contact Stephane
Schildknecht at sas AT postgresql DOT fr, or the general PostgreSQLfr
address at bureau AT postgresql DOT fr. More information on the
conference at:
http://www.solutionslinux.fr

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Archiveopteryx 3.1.3, a PostgreSQL-based email handler, released.
http://www.archiveopteryx.org/3.1.3

pgAdmin 1.10.2, a GUI management tool for PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/pgadmin3/release/v1.10.2/

PostGIS 1.4.2 and 1.5.1 released.
http://postgis.org/download

== PostgreSQL 9.0 Feature of the Week ==

In PL/pgsql, MOVE now works comprehensively with CURSORs.

== PostgreSQL Tip of the Week ==

== PostgreSQL Jobs for March ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-03/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The German Language PostgreSQL User Group has a booth at Chemnitz Linuxdays
2010 on March 13 and 14, 2010 in Chemnitz, Germany. Andreas (ads)
Scherbaum will be giving a talk on PostgreSQL 9.0 and a workshop on
tuning PostgreSQL.
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/652-PostgreSQL-stand-at-Chemnitz-Linux-Days-2010.html
http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2010/vortraege/plan.html

JDCon East will take place March 25-28, 2010 in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/2010/east

The San Francisco PostgreSQL Users' Group will be having a Test Fest
Saturday April 3, 11am to 6pm. There will be live video. Help make
this a world-wide event!
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/SFPUG_Beta_Test_Day

Linuxfest Northwest 2010 will take place in Bellingham, Washington,
USA on April 24 and 25. Session, Booth and Sponsorship are available.
http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/

Andreas (ads) Scherbaum will be teaching a "PostgreSQL for Corporate
Use" course at the adult education center in Magdeburg, Germany May
3-7, 2010. Details below:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/650-PostgreSQL-Schulung-als-Bildungsurlaub-03.-07.05.2010-in-Magdeburg.html

PgCon 2010 will be held May 20-21 2010 in Ottawa with tutorials before
on the 18th and 19th.
http://www.pgcon.org/2010/registration.php

The CfP for OSBridge is open! OSBridge will be June 1-4, 2010 in
Portland, Oregon.
http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2010/proposals/

OSCON will take place in Portland, Oregon July 19-23, 2010.
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

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

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 ==

Magnus Hagander committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/hba.c, disallow gssapi authentication on
local connections, since it requires a hostname to function. Noted
by Zdenek Kotala.

- In pgsql/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-auth.c, require hostname to be set
when using GSSAPI authentication. Without it, the GSSAPI libraries
crash. Noted by Zdenek Kotala.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml, add missing space in
example. Tim Landscheidt.

Michael Meskes committed:

- In pgsql/src/interfaces/ecpg/ecpglib/error.c, better test the
content of the SQLSTATE string in ecpglib than the pointer.

- In pgsql/src/interfaces/ecpg/ecpglib/error.c, backport fix from HEAD
that makes ecpglib give the right SQLSTATE if the connection
disappears.

- Ecpg now adds a unique counter to its varchar struct definitions to
make these definitions unique, too. It used to use the linenumber
but in the rare case of two definitions in one line this was not
unique.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/command.c, return proper exit code (3) from
psql when ON_ERROR_STOP=on and --single-transaction are both used
and the failure happens in commit, e.g. failed deferred trigger.
Also properly free BEGIN/COMMIT result structures from
--single-transaction. Per report from Dominic Bevacqua

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, remove unnecessary comma in
documentation.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, re-add comma, oops.

- In pgsql/src/timezone/zic.c, small adjustment by pgindent.

- In pgsql/src/backend/tsearch/wparser_def.c, allow underscores in
tsearch email addressses, per RFC 5322 and report by Dan O'Hara.
Patch by Teodor Sigaev

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/textsearch.sgml, document what user name email
symbols are supported by tsearch.

- Add libpq warning message if the .pgpass-retrieved password fails.
Add ERRCODE_INVALID_PASSWORD sqlstate error code.

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/pqcomm.c, move TCP keepalive macro
definition. Jaime Casanova

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/pqcomm.c, move more tcp keepalive macros
to be consistent.

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/pqcomm.c, revert all keepalive moves,
reevaluate.

Andrew Dunstan committed:

- In pgsql/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c, add checks for valid encoding of
query strings passed to SPI by plperl.

Alvaro Herrera committed:

- Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010e: DST law changes
in Fiji, Samoa, Chile; corrections to recent changes in Paraguay and
Bangladesh.

- Improve PL/Perl documentation of database access functions.
(Backpatch to 8.4 of a patch previously applied by Bruce Momjian to
CVS HEAD) Alexey Klyukin.

Tom Lane committed:

- In pgsql/src/pl/plperl/plperl.c, use SvROK(sv) rather than directly
checking SvTYPE(sv) == SVt_RV in plperl. The latter is considered
unwarranted chumminess with the implementation, and can lead to
crashes with recent Perl versions. Report and fix by Tim Bunce.
Back-patch to all versions containing the questionable coding
pattern.

- Preliminary release notes for releases 8.4.3, 8.3.10, 8.2.16,
8.1.20, 8.0.24, 7.4.28.

- In pgsql/src/include/catalog/pg_constraint.h, update comment for
pg_constraint.conindid to mention that it's used for exclusion
constraints. Not sure how we managed to update the comment for it
in catalogs.sgml but miss this one.

- Simplify a couple of pg_dump and psql \d queries about index
constraints by joining to pg_constraint.conindid, instead of the
former technique of joining indirectly through pg_depend. This is
much more straightforward and probably faster as well. I had
originally desisted from changing these queries when conindid was
added because I was worried about losing performance, but if we join
on conrelid as well as conindid then the index on conrelid can be
used when pg_constraint is large.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, modify psql's \d printout to fold
exclusion constraints in with regular indexes, rather than printing
them twice. Per my gripe when the exclusion constraint feature was
committed.

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/common/reloptions.c, add missing reset
of need_initialization in reloptions code. This resulted in useless
extra work during every call of parseRelOptions, but no bad effects
other than that. Noted by Alvaro Herrera.

- In pgsql/src/timezone/pgtz.c, fix a commented-out block of code that
pgindent didn't understand properly; it's been making that comment
uglier with each run.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/pgstat.c, add some logging code for
unexpected cases, particularly being unable to read a stats file for
reasons other than ENOENT, and having to reset last_statrequest
because it's later than current time in the collector. Not clear if
this will shed any light on the "pgstat wait timeout" business, but
it seems like a good idea in general. In passing, do some
message-style-police work on recently-added
pgstat_reset_shared_counters code.

- Update oidjoins regression test for 9.0.

ITAGAKI Takahiro committed:

- pg_start_backup() can use a share lock to lock ControlFileLock
instead of an exclusive lock. The change is almost for code
cleanup. Since there seems to be no performance benefits from it,
backports should not be needed. Fujii Masao

Robert Haas committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/tablecmds.c, fix incorrect comment
about permissions checking being done in utility.c. Noted while
reviewing a patch from KaiGai Kohei.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/storage/ipc/standby.c, fix comment which was
apparently copy-pasted from another function.

- In pgsql/src/backend/storage/ipc/procarray.c, fix bug in
KnownAssignedXidsMany(). I saw this when looking at the assertion
failure reported by Erik Rijkers, but this alone doesn't explain the
failure.

Marc Fournier committed:

- Tag 8.4.3, 8.3.10, 8.2.16, 8.1.20, 8.0.24, and 7.4.28.

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml, update shared memory
configuration information for Linux In particular, the assertion
that shmall is sufficiently sized by default is slowly becoming
untrue.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plpython.sgml, add some more structure and
bits of information to PL/Python documentation

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

Dag-Erling Smorgrav's patch to address build issues on Windows XP with
the MinGW toolkit. The actual fix will be to de-support --disable-shared.

== Pending Patches ==

Fujii Masao sent in a patch which adds a new function
pg_last_checkpoint_start_location() that reports the XLOG location
where the last checkpoint or restartpoint started, i.e. the REDO
starting location.

Pavel Stehule sent in two revisions of a patch for 9.1 which adds a
some string functions including format(), sprintf() and concat_*().

Fujii Masao sent in a patch which makes it possible to interrupt
walreceiver on win32.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to disallow
renaming system-initialized objects such as the "columns" in
sequences.