--- /dev/null
+<!-- BEGIN page_title_block -->
+Weekly News - May 31 2010
+<!-- END page_title_block -->
+
+<h1>PostgreSQL Weekly News - May 31 2010</h1>
+
+<p>
+PostgreSQL EU Board election results are in.
+<a href="http://blog.hagander.net/archives/169-PostgreSQL-Europe-election-results.html">http://blog.hagander.net/archives/169-PostgreSQL-Europe-election-results.html</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Jobs for May</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-05/threads.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-05/threads.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Local</h2>
+<p>
+Registration for Open Source Bridge is open and talks are announced!
+June 1-4, 2010 in Portland, Oregon.
+<a href="http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2010/proposals/">http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2010/proposals/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Michael Renner will be speaking at AMOOCON, which goes from June 4-6, 2010.
+<a href="http://www.amoocon.de/speakers/214">http://www.amoocon.de/speakers/214</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+SouthEast LinuxFest 2010 will take place in Spartanburg, SC USA on
+June 11-13. PostgreSQL gurus Joshua Drake and Andrew Dunstan will be
+giving some must-see PostgreSQL-related presentations.
+<a href="http://southeastlinuxfest.org/">http://southeastlinuxfest.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Michael Renner will be speaking at Netways OSDC in Nuremberg, Germany,
+which will be June 23-24, 2010.
+<a href="http://www.netways.de/osdc/y2010/programm/">http://www.netways.de/osdc/y2010/programm/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+CHAR(10), the PostgreSQL Conference on Clustering, High Availability
+and Replication is now open for online registration and bookings.
+July 2-3 2010, Oriel College, Oxford University, UK
+<a href="http://www.char10.org/">http://www.char10.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PDXPUG Day will be July 18, 2010 at the Oregon Convention Center in
+Portland, OR. For more information, see:
+<a href="http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PDXPUGDay2010">http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PDXPUGDay2010</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+OSCON will take place in Portland, Oregon July 19-23, 2010.
+<a href="http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010">http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+
+== PostgreSQL in the News ==
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Planet PostgreSQL: <a href="http://planet.postgresql.org/">http://planet.postgresql.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
+Please send English language ones to david@fetter.org, German language
+to pwn@pgug.de, Italian language to pwn@itpug.org. Spanish language
+to pwn@arpug.com.ar.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Applied Patches</h2>
+<p>
+Bruce Momjian committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/contrib/pg_upgrade/option.c, split apart pg_upgrade user
+ lookup and root check so '--help' shows proper default username.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml, update pg_upgrade docs to show
+ options in alphabetical order, and improve 8.3 doc limitations
+ paragraph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/contrib/pg_upgrade/info.c, in pg_upgrade, test for
+ datallowconn instead of hardcoding template0.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/contrib/pg_upgrade/option.c, re-order pg_upgrade 'help'
+ options to be alphabetical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/contrib/pg_upgrade/IMPLEMENTATION.jp, add Japanese
+ Implementation file to CVS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In /doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml, add pg_upgrade docs about binary
+ compatibility, per Robert Haas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Modify pg_standby, pgbench, and pg_upgrade manual pages to be
+ consistent in their display of command-line options with other
+ client applications.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/contrib/pg_upgrade/IMPLEMENTATION, update pg_upgrade
+ IMPLEMENTATION doc file to match current 9.0 behavior.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Remove IMPLEMENTATION.jp file from pg_upgrade docs; still in
+ pgFoundry for pg_migrator, per suggestion from Magnus Hagander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml, document pgFouine and
+ check_postgres as log analysis options.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml, fix SGML markup.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/installation.sgml, document use of VPATH
+ builds. David Fetter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/executor/execUtils.c, add C comment that we
+ will have to remove an exclusion constraint check if we ever
+ implement '<>' index opclasses. Jeff Davis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_domain.sgml, document that NOT NULL
+ domain constraints are not always honored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Clarify the meaning of "trusted language" in the documentation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Michael Meskes committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Added a configure test for "long long" datatypes. So far this is
+ only used in ecpg and replaces the old test that was kind of
+ hackish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Replace self written 'long long int' configure test by standard
+ 'AC_TYPE_LONG_LONG_INT' macro call.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom Lane committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/optimizer/plan/createplan.c, fix oversight in
+ construction of sort/unique plans for UniquePaths. If the original
+ IN operator is cross-type, for example int8 = int4, we need to use
+ int4 < int4 to sort the inner data and int4 = int4 to unique-ify it.
+ We got the first part of that right, but tried to use the original
+ IN operator for the equality checks. Per bug #5472 from Vlad
+ Romascanu. Backpatch to 8.4, where the bug was introduced by the
+ patch that unified SortClause and GroupClause. I was able to take
+ out a whole lot of on-the-fly calls of get_equality_op_for_ordering_op(),
+ but failed to realize that I needed to put one back in right here :-(
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-secure.c, add missing newlines to
+ some SSL-related error messages. Noted while testing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/be-secure.c, tell openssl to include the
+ names of the root certs the server trusts in requests for client
+ certs. This lets a client with a keystore select the appropriate
+ client certificate to send. In particular, this is necessary to get
+ Java clients to work in all but the most trivial configurations.
+ Per discussion of bug #5468. Craig Ringer
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/be-secure.c, minor editorialization for
+ be-secure.c: fix comments and some formatting infelicities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/hba.c, the message style police pay a
+ visit to hba.c.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/auth.c, fix bogus error message for
+ SSL-cert authentication, due to lack of a uaCert entry in
+ auth_failed(). Put the switch entries into a sane order, namely the
+ one the enum is declared in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Rearrange libpq's SSL initialization to simplify it and make it
+ handle some additional cases correctly. The original coding failed
+ to load additional (chain) certificates from the client cert file,
+ meaning that indirectly signed client certificates didn't work
+ unless one hacked the server's root.crt file to include intermediate
+ CAs (not the desired approach). Another problem was that everything
+ got loaded into the shared SSL_context object, which meant that
+ concurrent connections trying to use different sslcert settings
+ could well fail due to conflicting over the single available slot
+ for a keyed certificate. To fix, get rid of the use of
+ SSL_CTX_set_client_cert_cb(), which is deprecated anyway in the
+ OpenSSL documentation, and instead just unconditionally load the
+ client cert and private key during connection initialization. This
+ lets us use SSL_CTX_use_certificate_chain_file(), which does the
+ right thing with additional certs, and is lots simpler than the
+ previous hacking about with BIO-level access. A small disadvantage
+ is that we have to load the primary client cert a second time with
+ SSL_use_certificate_file, so that that one ends up in the correct
+ slot within the connection's SSL object where it can get paired with
+ the key. Given the other overhead of making an SSL connection, that
+ doesn't seem worth worrying about. Per discussion ensuing from bug
+ #5468.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Improve SSL-related documentation. Explain how to deal with
+ certificate chains, do assorted wordsmithing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/indexcmds.c, make CREATE INDEX run
+ expression preprocessing on a proposed index expression before it
+ checks whether the expression is immutable. This covers two cases
+ that were previously handled poorly: 1. SQL function inlining could
+ reduce the apparent volatility of the expression, allowing an
+ expression to be accepted where it previously would not have been.
+ As an example, polymorphic functions must be marked with the
+ worst-case volatility they have for any argument type, but for
+ specific argument types they might not be so volatile, so indexing
+ could be allowed. (Since the planner will refuse to inline
+ functions in cases where the apparent volatility of the expression
+ would increase, this won't break any cases that were accepted
+ before.) 2. A nominally immutable function could have default
+ arguments that are volatile expressions. In such a case insertion
+ of the defaults will increase both the apparent and actual
+ volatility of the expression, so it is *necessary* to check this
+ before allowing the expression to be indexed. Back-patch to 8.4,
+ where default arguments were introduced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/include/catalog/pg_proc.h, fix the volatility marking
+ of textanycat() and anytextcat(): they were marked immutable, but
+ that is wrong in general because the cast from the polymorphic
+ argument to text could be stable or even volatile. Mark them
+ volatile for safety. In the typical case where the cast isn't
+ volatile, the planner will deduce the correct expression volatility
+ after inlining the function, so performance is not lost. The
+ just-committed fix in CREATE INDEX also ensures this won't break any
+ indexing cases that ought to be allowed. Per discussion, I'm not
+ bumping catversion for this change, as it doesn't seem critical
+ enough to force an initdb on beta testers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/misc/ps_status.c, change ps_status.c to
+ explicitly track the current logical length of ps_buffer. This
+ saves cycles in get_ps_display() on many popular platforms, and more
+ importantly ensures that get_ps_display() will correctly return an
+ empty string if init_ps_display() hasn't been called yet. Per
+ trouble report from Ray Stell, in which log_line_prefix %i produced
+ junk early in backend startup. Back-patch to 8.0. 7.4 doesn't have
+ %i and its version of get_ps_display() makes no pretense of avoiding
+ pad junk anyhow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/executor/nodeMergejoin.c, rejigger mergejoin
+ logic so that a tuple with a null in the first merge column is
+ treated like end-of-input, if nulls sort last in that column and we
+ are not doing outer-join filling for that input. In such a case,
+ the tuple cannot join to anything from the other input (because we
+ assume mergejoinable operators are strict), and neither can any
+ tuple following it in the sort order. If we're not interested in
+ doing outer-join filling we can just pretend the tuple and its
+ successors aren't there at all. This can save a great deal of time
+ in situations where there are many nulls in the join column, as in a
+ recent example from Scott Marlowe. Also, since the planner tends to
+ not count nulls in its mergejoin scan selectivity estimates, this is
+ an important fix to make the runtime behavior more like the
+ estimate. I regard this as an omission in the patch I wrote years
+ ago to teach mergejoin that tuples containing nulls aren't joinable,
+ so I'm back-patching it. But only to 8.3 --- in older versions, we
+ didn't have a solid notion of whether nulls sort high or low, so
+ attempting to apply this optimization could break things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Rewrite LIKE's %-followed-by-_ optimization so it really works (this
+ time for sure ;-)). It now also optimizes more cases, such as %_%_.
+ Improve comments too. Per bug #5478. In passing, also rename the
+ TCHAR macro to GETCHAR, because pgindent is messing with the
+ formatting of the former (apparently it now thinks TCHAR is a
+ typedef name). Back-patch to 8.3, where the bug was introduced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/like_match.c, fix oversight in the
+ previous patch that made LIKE throw error for \ at the end of the
+ pattern: the code path that handles \ just after % should throw
+ error too. As in the previous patch, not back-patching for fear of
+ breaking apps that worked before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/common.c, abort a FETCH_COUNT-controlled query
+ if we observe any I/O error on the output stream. This typically
+ indicates that the user quit out of $PAGER, or that we are writing
+ to a file and ran out of disk space. In either case we shouldn't
+ bother to continue fetching data. Stephen Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/perform.sgml, add text to "Populating a
+ Database" pointing out that bulk data load into a table with foreign
+ key constraints eats memory. Per off-line discussion of bug #5480
+ with its reporter. Also do some minor wordsmithing elsewhere in the
+ same section.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Change the notation for calling functions with named parameters from
+ "val AS name" to "name := val", as per recent discussion. This
+ patch catches everything in the original named-parameters patch, but
+ I'm not certain that no other dependencies snuck in later (grepping
+ the source tree for all uses of AS soon proved unworkable). In
+ passing I note that we've dropped the ball at least once on keeping
+ ecpg's lexer (as opposed to parser) in sync with the backend. It
+ would be a good idea to go through all of pgc.l and see if it's in
+ sync now. I didn't attempt that at the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/tsearch/ts_typanalyze.c, fix misuse of Lossy
+ Counting (LC) algorithm in compute_tsvector_stats(). We must filter
+ out hashtable entries with frequencies less than those specified by
+ the algorithm, else we risk emitting junk entries whose actual
+ frequency is much less than other lexemes that did not get
+ tabulated. This is bad enough by itself, but even worse is that
+ tsquerysel() believes that the minimum frequency seen in
+ pg_statistic is a hard upper bound for lexemes not included, and was
+ thus underestimating the frequency of non-MCEs. Also, set the
+ threshold frequency to something with a little bit of theory behind
+ it, to wit assume that the input distribution is approximately
+ Zipfian. This might need adjustment in future, but some preliminary
+ experiments suggest that it's not too unreasonable. Back-patch to
+ 8.4, where this code was introduced. Jan Urbanski, with some
+ editorialization by Tom Lane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c, more fixes for
+ shutdown during recovery. 1. If we receive a fast shutdown request
+ while in the PM_STARTUP state, process it just as we would in
+ PM_RECOVERY, PM_HOT_STANDBY, or PM_RUN. Without this change, an
+ early fast shutdown followed by Hot Standby causes the database to
+ get stuck in a state where a shutdown is pending (so no new
+ connections are allowed) but the shutdown request is never processed
+ unless we end Hot Standby and enter normal running. 2. Avoid
+ removing the backup label file when a smart or fast shutdown occurs
+ during recovery. It makes sense to do this once we've reached
+ normal running, since we must be taking a backup which now won't be
+ valid. But during recovery we must be recovering from a previously
+ taken backup, and any backup label file is needed to restart
+ recovery from the right place. Fujii Masao and Robert Haas
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/help.c, fix psql help: \da+ is same as \da,
+ but \daS is not. Noted by Stephen Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c, avoid starting
+ walreceiver in states where it shouldn't be running. In particular,
+ it's bad to start walreceiver when in state PM_WAIT_BACKENDS,
+ because we have no provision to kill walreceiver when in that state.
+ Fujii Masao.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simon Riggs committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Hot Standby Defer buffer pin deadlock check until deadlock_timeout
+ has expired. During Hot Standby we need to check for buffer pin
+ deadlocks when the Startup process begins to wait, in case it never
+ wakes up again. We previously made the deadlock check immediately
+ on the basis it was cheap, though clearer thinking and prima facie
+ evidence shows that was too simple. Refactor existing code to make
+ it easy to add in deferral of deadlock check until deadlock_timeout
+ allowing a good reduction in deadlock checks since far few buffer
+ pins are held for that duration. It's worth doing anyway, though
+ major goal is to prevent further reports of context switching with
+ high numbers of users on occasional tests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/replication/walsender.c, in walsender, don't
+ sleep if there's outstanding WAL waiting to be sent, otherwise we
+ effectively rate-limit the streaming as pointed out by Simon Riggs.
+ Also, send the WAL in smaller chunks, to respond to signals more
+ promptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/replication/walsender.c, thinko in previous
+ commit: ensure that MAX_SEND_SIZE is always greater than
+ XLOG_BLCKSZ, by defining it as 16 * XLOG_BLCKSZ rather than directly
+ as 128k bytes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c, adjust comment to
+ reflect that we now have Hot Standby. Pointed out by Robert Haas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/savepoint.sgml, make it more clear that
+ you need to release savepoint with RELEASE SAVEPOINT to make an
+ older savepoint with the same name accessible. It's also possible
+ to implicitly release the savepoint by rolling back to an earlier
+ savepoint, but mentioning that too would make the note just more
+ verbose and confusing. Florian Pflug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, update High
+ Availability docs. Clarify terms master/primary standby/slave,
+ move two paragraphs that apply to log shipping in general from the
+ "Alternative method for log shipping" section to the earlier
+ sections. Add varname tags where missing. Some small wording
+ changes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/high-availability.sgml, fix typos in recent
+ doc patch. Fujii Masao.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Mark PG_MODULE_MAGIC and PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1 with PGDLLEXPORT
+ independently from BUILDING_DLL. It is always __declspec(dllexport).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/include/port/cygwin.h and pgsql/src/include/port/win32.h
+ PGDLLEXPORT is __declspec (dllexport) only on MSVC, but is
+ __declspec (dllimport) on other compilers because cygwin and mingw
+ don't like dllexport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml, small correction/clarification in
+ discussion of Unicode literals.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Rejected Patches (for now)</h2>
+<p>
+Stephen Frost's in a patch to move a "long long" check to c.h. The
+actual problem, if it needs fixing, needs to be fixed in autoconf.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Pending Patches</h2>
+<p>
+KaiGai Kohei sent in six revisions of a patch to rework Robert Haas's
+patch to add an ExecutorCheckPerms() hook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fujii Masao sent in two more revisions of the patch to fix smart
+shutdown during recovery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Craig Ringer sent in two revisions of a patch to fix an issue with SSL
+certificates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simon Riggs sent in a patch to fix the sporadically reduced speed and
+context switch storm issues in Hot Standby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mike Fowler sent in three revisions of a patch to add XMLEXISTS from
+the SQL/XML section of the SQL standard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jonathan Leto and Josh Tolley traded patches to document the PL
+template handler better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stephen Frost sent in a patch to do regression tests on psql's
+backslash commands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to fix an issue where fillfactor in
+TOAST tables is set to 0, which is not always right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert Haas sent in a patch to add a get_whatever_oid() function.
+This factors out much code duplication.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simon Riggs sent in another revision of the patch to fix keepalive
+issues in max_standby_delay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch for 9.1 that adds functions
+pg_stat_get_backend_client_addr and pg_stat_get_backend_client_port.
+</p>
+
projects / pgweb-old.git / commitdiff