== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 25 2010 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 25 2010 ==

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Another PostgreSQL Diff Tool 2.0 Beta 2, a tool for database diffs, released.
https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/apgdiff/

JASPA 0.1RC1, a Java GIS which can use PostgreSQL, released.
http://forge.osor.eu/projects/jaspa/

MyJSQLView 3.22, a GUI tool that can be used with PostgreSQL, released.
http://dandymadeproductions.com/projects/MyJSQLView/index.html

Simpycity 0.3.1, a python mapping system for PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.commandprompt.com/blogs/aurynn_shaw/2010/07/announcement_simpycity_031_released/

tail_n_mail 1.15.0, a Perl program for searching log files and mailing
the results, released.
http://bucardo.org/wiki/Tail_n_mail

== PostgreSQL Jobs for July ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-07/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

Reuven Lerner will be teaching a 5-day course in PostgreSQL August
1-5, 2010 at the Hi-Tech College in Herzliya, Israel.
http://www.hi-tech.co.il/college/default.asp?PageID=12&CourseNum=4288

FrOSCon 2010 will take place in St. Augustin, Germany on August 21-22,
2010. The German PostgreSQL User Group got his own devroom and is
looking for talks. More info:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/711-FrOSCon-2010-PostgreSQL-devroom-Call-for-papers.html

The Call for Papers for West is open until September 5, 2010. Details at:
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/

== 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
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== Reviews ==

KaiGai Kohei reviewed Robert Haas's patch to add get_whatever_oid
functionality.
== Applied Patches ==

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c, portability fixes for
Solaris for requirepeer feature patch per report from Dave Page

- Add more checks against altering typed tables. 1. Prohibit altering
column type. 2. Prohibit changing inheritance. 3. Move checks from
Exec to Prep phases in ALTER TABLE code. Backpatched to 9.0

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, remove tab from SGML file

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml, tidy up boolean data type page.
Thom Brown.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml, fix typo.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/xfunc.sgml, add INSERT statement to example so
that it can be reproduced from John Gage

Robert Haas committed:

- Change the default value of standard_conforming_strings to on. This
change should be publicized to driver maintainers at once and
release-noted as an incompatibility with previous releases.

- Add restart_after_crash GUC. Normally, we automatically restart
after a backend crash, but in some cases when PostgreSQL is invoked
by clusterware it may be desirable to suppress this behavior, so we
provide an option which does this. Since no existing GUC group
quite fits, create a new group called "error handling options" for
this and the previously undocumented GUC exit_on_error, which is now
documented. Review by Fujii Masao.

- Make hstore regression tests independent of
standard_conforming_strings. Per buildfarm.

- Make ECPG regression tests independent of
standard_conforming_strings. Per buildfarm, again.

- Add \conninfo command to psql, to show current connection info.
David Christensen. Reviewed by Steve Singer. Some further changes
by me.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/command.c, have \conninfo mention the port
even for local sockets. Per discussion with David Christensen,
there can be multiple instances of PG accessible via local sockets,
and you need the port to see which one you're actually connected to.
David's original patch worked this way, but I inadvertently ripped
it out during commit.

- Centralize DML permissions-checking logic. Remove bespoke code in
DoCopy and RI_Initial_Check, which now instead fabricate call
ExecCheckRTPerms with a manufactured RangeTblEntry. This is
intended to make it feasible for an enhanced security provider to
actually make use of ExecutorCheckPerms_hook, but also has the
advantage that RI_Initial_Check can allow use of the fast-path when
column-level but not table-level permissions are present. KaiGai
Kohei. Reviewed (in an earlier version) by Stephen Frost, and by
me. Some further changes to the comments by me.

- Add options to force quoting of all identifiers. I've added a
quote_all_identifiers GUC which affects the behavior of the backend,
and a --quote-all-identifiers argument to pg_dump and pg_dumpall
which sets the GUC and also affects the quoting done internally by
those applications. Design by Tom Lane; review by Alex Hunsaker; in
response to bug #5488 filed by Hartmut Goebel.

- In pgsql/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dumpall.c, fix bogus server version in
pg_dumpall --quote-all-identifiers.

- In pgsql/src/backend/replication/walsender.c, add missing function
prototype. Fujii Masao.

- In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xact.c, avoid deep recursion
when assigning XIDs to multiple levels of subxacts. Backpatch to
8.0. Andres Freund, with cleanup and adjustment for older branches
by me.

- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/command.c, have psql avoid describing local
sockets as host names. We now use the phrase 'via local socket in'
rather than 'on host' in both \c and \conninfo output, when
applicable. Fujii Masao, with some kibitzing by me.

- CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS. Reviewed by Bernd Helmle.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- Properly replay CREATE TABLESPACE during crash recovery by deleting
directory/symlink before creation. Report from Tom Lane. Backpatch
to 9.0.

- Prevent pg_upgrade from migrating databases that use reg* data types
where the oid is not preserved by pg_upgrade (everything but
pg_type). Update documentation. Per bug report from
depstein(at)alliedtesting(dot)com(dot)

- In contrib/pg_upgrade, adjust check_for_isn_and_int8_passing_mismatch()
so it is called for all migrations. Backpatch to 9.0.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml, remove tabs from sgml
file.

Magnus Hagander committed:

- Backpatch reservation of shared memory region during backend startup
on Windows, so that memory allocated by starting third party DLLs
doesn't end up conflicting. The same functionality has been in 8.3
and 8.4 for almost a year, and seems to have solved some of the more
common shared memory errors on Windows.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to rework DML
permisssion checks.

ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in another revision of the patch to implement
more of SQL/MED.

Pavel Stehule sent in two more revisions of the patch to implement
to_string() and to_array().

Etienne Dube sent in a patch to fix a "could not attach to shared
memory" issue on Windows in the 8.2 branch.

ITAGAKI Takahiro and Pavel Stehule traded revisions of the string
functions patch.

Marc Cousin sent in a patch to correct a cursor declaration in the
"migrating from Oracle" section of the PL/pgsql docs.

Daniele Varrazzo sent in a patch to make more links from the libpq
docs. This came from actual usage in psycopg.

Satoshi Nagayasu sent in another revision of the patch to redo the
ECPG docs.

Alexander Korotkov sent in two more revisions of the patch to make
levenshtein functions multibyte-aware.

Leonardo Francalanci sent in another revision of the patch to improve
the CLUSTER implentation.

Pavel Stehule sent in two more revisions of the patch to enhance \ef
and add \sf (show function) in psql.

Fujii Masao sent in another revision of the patch to do synchronous
replication.

Teodor Sigaev sent in another flock of patches implementing
K-Nearest-Neighbor for GiST indexes.

Alex Hunsaker sent in two more revisions of the patch to add
functional depency inference to GROUP BY.

Kevin Grittner sent in another revision of the patch to make a more
correct implementation of hypotenuse.

Joseph Adams sent in a patch to implement the JSON data type.

Mike Fowler sent in another revision of the patch to add XMLEXISTS to
the grammar.

Joseph Adams sent in a patch to add a utf8_to_unicode() function,
similar to the corresponding unicode_to_utf8() function. Among other
things, this smooths the way for the upcoming JSON data type.