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<title>Overview</title>
<para>
- This release represents a major leap forward by adding significant
- new functionality and performance enhancements to
- <productname>PostgreSQL</>. Many complex ideas that normally take
- years to implement were added rapidly to this release by our
- development team. This release starts <productname>PostgreSQL</> on
- a trajectory moving beyond feature-parity with other database
- systems to a time when <productname>PostgreSQL</> will be a
- technology leader in the database field. Major new capabilities
- in this release include:
+ This release represents a major leap forward for
+ <productname>PostgreSQL</> by adding significant new functionality
+ and performance enhancements. This was made possible by a growing
+ community that has dramatically accelerated the pace of
+ development. This release adds the follow major capabilities:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support for the SQL/XML standard, including a new <type>XML</type> builtin
- data type
+ Support for the SQL/XML standard, including a operators and a
+ new <type>XML</type> builtin
</para>
</listitem>
<para>
Enumerated (<type>ENUM</>) data type support
</para>
-
- <para>
- This is accomplished by creating a new data type with an
- <literal>ENUM</> clause, e.g.
- <literal>CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy')</>.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) data type, similar to that
- defined by RFC 4122
+ Universally Unique Identifier (<type>UUID</>) data type, similar
+ to that defined by RFC 4122
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Control of whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last, using
+ Control over whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last, using
<literal>ORDER BY ... NULLS FIRST/LAST</>
</para>
</listitem>
<para>
Updatable cursors using <literal>UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF</>
</para>
-
- <para>
- This eliminates the need to reference a primary key to update or
- delete rows returned by a cursor.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
User-defined types can now have type modifiers
</para>
-
- <para>
- This allows a user type to take a modifier when
- being referenced, e.g. <type>SSNUM(7)</>. Previously only
- predefined system data types would allow this, e.g.
- <type>CHAR(4)</>.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Automatically invalidate cached function code when table
- definitions change
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously PL/PgSQL functions that referenced temporary tables
- would fail if the temporary table was dropped and recreated
- between function invocations, unless <literal>EXECUTE</> was
- used.
+ definitions change or statistics are updated
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- SSPI/GSSAPI authentication support
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This adds native Security Service Provider Interface (SSPI) for
- Windows.
+ Support Security Service Provider Interface (SSPI) on
+ authentication for Windows and GSSAPI
</para>
</listitem>
<para>
Multiple autovacuum worker processes, and other autovacuum improvements
</para>
-
- <para>
- This allows multiple vacuums to run concurrently, meaning
- vacuuming of a large table will not prevent smaller tables from
- being vacuumed at the same time. Autovacuum is now considered
- mature and thus enabled by default.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Asynchronous commit option allows transactions to be committed
but on-disk changes to be delayed
</para>
-
- <para>
- This feature dramatically increases performance for data
- modification queries. The disadvantage is that because on-disk
- changes are delayed, if the operating system crashes before data
- is written to the disk, committed data will be lost. This is
- useful only for applications that can accept some data loss.
- Unlike <varname>fsync</varname>, asynchronous commit does not
- risk database corruption; the worst case is that after an
- operating system crash the last few reportedly-committed
- transactions will be missing.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<quote>Distributed</> checkpoints prevent I/O spikes during
checkpoints
</para>
-
- <para>
- Previously all modified buffers were forced to disk at
- checkpoint time, causing an I/O spike and decreasing server
- performance. This new capability spreads checkpoint activity out
- between checkpoints, reducing peak I/O usage.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Heap-Only Tuples (<acronym>HOT</>) improves <command>UPDATE</>
space usage
</para>
-
- <para>
- To allow high concurrency <productname>PostgreSQL</> retains old
- versions of updated rows. Previously only <command>VACUUM</>
- could reuse space taken by dead rows. With <acronym>HOT</> dead
- row space can be reused at the time of <command>UPDATE</> or
- <command>INSERT</>. This allows for more consistent performance.
- <acronym>HOT</> also improved deleted row space reuse.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Just-in-time background writer strategy to improve disk write
efficiency
</para>
-
- <para>
- This basically makes the background writer self-tuning.
- </para>
-
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Reduction of both per-field and per-row storage requirements
</para>
-
- <para>
- Variable-length data types with data values less then 128 bytes
- will see a decrease of 3-6 bytes. For example, two
- <type>CHAR(1)</type> fields now take 4 bytes instead of 16. Rows
- are also 4 bytes shorter.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Allow large sequential scans to use cached pages from other
concurrent sequential scans
</para>
-
- <para>
- This is accomplished by starting the new sequential scan in the
- middle of the table (where the other sequential scan is already
- in-progress) and wrapping around to the beginning to finish.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Allow <literal>ORDER BY ... LIMIT</> to be done without sorting
</para>
-
- <para>
- This is done by scanning the table and using a filter to find
- the few requested rows, rather than sorting the entire table.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Use pseudo-transaction ids in read-only transactions
</para>
-
- <para>
- This reduces transaction overhead for read-only transactions,
- and reduces the need for vacuuming for transaction id
- wrap-around.
- </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
Queries that previously automatically cast values to
<type>TEXT</type> might now need explicit casts
</para>
-
- <para>
- Data types other than <type>CHAR</> and <type>VARCHAR</> no
- longer automatically cast to <type>TEXT</>, except in the
- limited case of concatenation (<literal>||</>) where the other
- input is textual. While this change will require additional
- casts for some queries it also eliminates some unusual
- behavior.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<varname>track_activities</>.
<varname>stats_block_level</> and <varname>stats_row_level</>
are merged into <varname>track_counts</>.
- Previously <varname>archive_command</> controlled whether
- archiving was performed. Now a new boolean configuration
- parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>, controls this. Autovacuum's
- default settings have changed.
+ A new boolean configuration parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>,
+ controls archiving. Autovacuum's default settings have changed.
</para>
</listitem>
Commenting out a parameter in <filename>postgresql.conf</> now
causes it to revert to its default value
</para>
-
- <para>
- Previously commenting out a value kept the value unchanged until
- the next server restart.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
The array name for a base data type is no longer required to
be the data type name with an underscore prefix
</para>
-
- <para>
- The old naming convention is still honored when possible, but
- client code should no longer depending on it.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Non-superuser database owners now have privileges to add trusted
procedural languages in their databases by default
</para>
-
- <para>
- While this is reasonably safe, some administrators may wish to
- revoke the privilege. It is controlled by
- <structname>pg_pltemplate</>.<structfield>tmpldbacreate</>.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
the end of the top-most transaction, unless rolled back
</para>
- <para>
- Previously <command>SET LOCAL</command>'s effects reverted
- during subtransaction commit and <command>RELEASE</>.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Commands that are disallowed in transaction blocks are now also
disallowed in multiple-statement query strings
</para>
-
- <para>
- For example, <literal>BEGIN; DROP DATABASE; COMMIT</> will now be
- rejected even if submitted as a single query message.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
Restrict object size functions to users who have reasonable
permissions to view such information
</para>
-
- <para>
- For example, database size now requires <literal>CONNECT</>
- permission, and tablespaces size requires <literal>CREATE</>
- permission.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
New C macros for handling variable-length data values
</para>
-
- <para>
- The new <function>SET_VARSIZE()</> macro <emphasis>must</> be
- used to set the length of generated values. Also, it might be
- necessary to expand (<quote>de-TOAST</quote>) input values in
- additional places.
- </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
- Implement an optional asynchronous commit mode (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- When <varname>synchronous_commit</varname> is off, we don't flush
- WAL before reporting a transaction committed. Data consistency is
- still guaranteed (unlike turning <varname>fsync</varname> off), but
- a crash may lose the effects of the last few transactions. In many
- applications this is an acceptable tradeoff for improved
- performance.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Implement <quote>distributed</> checkpoints (Itagaki Takahiro and
- Heikki Linnakangas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The I/O needed for a checkpoint is now spread over a fairly long
- period of time, rather than being spat out in a burst. (This happens
- only for background checkpoints carried out by the bgwriter; other
- cases, such as a shutdown checkpoint, are still done at full speed.)
- This reduces the impact of checkpoints on query processing.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Heap-Only Tuples (Pavan Deolasee, with ideas from many others)
+ Asynchronous commit option allows transactions to be committed
+ but on-disk changes to be delayed (Simon)
</para>
<para>
- When we update a tuple without changing any of its indexed columns,
- and the new version can be stored on the same heap page, we no longer
- generate extra index entries for the new version. Instead, index
- searches follow the HOT-chain links to ensure they find the correct
- tuple version. In addition, this patch introduces the ability to
- <quote>prune</quote> dead tuples on a per-page basis, without having
- to do a complete <command>VACUUM</command> pass to recover space.
- <command>VACUUM</command> is still needed to clean up dead index
- entries, however.
+ This feature dramatically increases performance for data
+ modification queries. The disadvantage is that because on-disk
+ changes are delayed, if the operating system crashes before data
+ is written to the disk, committed data will be lost. This is
+ useful only for applications that can accept some data loss.
+ Unlike <varname>fsync</varname>, asynchronous commit does not
+ risk database corruption; the worst case is that after an
+ operating system crash the last few reportedly-committed
+ transactions will be missing.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Just-in-time background writing strategy (Greg Smith, Itagaki
- Takahiro)
+ <quote>Distributed</> checkpoints prevent I/O spikes during
+ checkpoints (Itagaki Takahiro and Heikki Linnakangas)
</para>
<para>
- This patch avoids re-scanning buffers that cannot possibly need to
- be cleaned, and estimates how many buffers it should try to clean
- based on moving averages of recent allocation requests and density
- of reusable buffers.
+ Previously all modified buffers were forced to disk at
+ checkpoint time, causing an I/O spike and decreasing server
+ performance. This new capability spreads checkpoint activity out
+ between checkpoints, reducing peak I/O usage. (User-requested
+ and shutdown checkpoints are still immediately written to disk.)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support varlena fields with single-byte headers and unaligned
- storage (Greg Stark)
+ Heap-Only Tuples (<acronym>HOT</>) improves <command>UPDATE</>
+ space usage (Pavan Deolasee, with ideas from many others)
</para>
<para>
- This significantly reduces the on-disk size of short
- character-string fields.
+ To allow high concurrency <productname>PostgreSQL</> retains old
+ versions of updated rows. Previously only <command>VACUUM</>
+ could reuse space taken by dead rows. With <acronym>HOT</> dead
+ row space can be reused at the time of <command>UPDATE</> or
+ <command>INSERT</>. This allows for more consistent performance.
+ <acronym>HOT</> even allows deleted row space reuse.
+ <command>UPDATE</> space reuse is only possible if no modified
+ columns are indexed.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Combine cmin and cmax fields of HeapTupleHeaders into a single field
- (Heikki)
+ Just-in-time background writer strategy to improve disk write
+ efficiency (Greg Smith, Itagaki Takahiro)
</para>
<para>
- We do this by keeping private state in each backend that has
- inserted and deleted the same tuple during its current top-level
- transaction. This is sufficient since there is no need to be able
- to determine the cmin/cmax from any other transaction. This gets us
- back down to 23-byte tuple headers, removing a space penalty paid in
- 8.0 to support subtransactions.
+ This basically makes the background writer self-tuning.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Lazy XID allocation (Florian Pflug)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Formerly, every transaction obtained a transaction ID (XID). Now,
- transactions that do not modify any database rows will typically
- never obtain an XID at all. We already did things this way for
- subtransactions, but this patch extends the concept to top-level
- transactions. In applications where there are lots of short
- read-only transactions, this should improve performance noticeably;
- not so much from removal of the actual XID-assignments, as from
- reduction of overhead that's driven by the rate of XID consumption.
- We add a concept of a <quote>virtual transaction ID</> so that active
- transactions can be uniquely identified even if they don't have a
- regular XID. This is a much lighter-weight concept: uniqueness of
- VXIDs is only guaranteed over the short term, and no on-disk record
- is made about them.
+ Reduction of both per-field and per-row storage requirements
+ (Greg Stark)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Reduce contention for the ProcArrayLock (Florian Pflug, Heikki)
+ Variable-length data types with data values less then 128 bytes
+ will see a decrease of 3-6 bytes. For example, two
+ <type>CHAR(1)</type> fields now take 4 bytes instead of 16. Rows
+ are also 4 bytes shorter.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Improve interlocking between checkpoint start and transaction commit
- (Heikki)
+ Use pseudo-transaction ids in read-only transactions (Florian Pflug)
</para>
<para>
- The new method both speeds up commit (less for it to do) and
- prevents the problem of checkpoint being delayed indefinitely when
- there's a constant flow of commits.
+ This reduces transaction overhead for read-only transactions,
+ and reduces the necessity of vacuuming for transaction id
+ wrap-around. Other transaction performance improvements were
+ also made that should improve concurrency.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Create a dedicated <quote>wal writer</quote> process to offload
+ Create a dedicated <acronym>WAL</> writer process to off-load
WAL-writing work from backends (Simon)
</para>
-
- <para>
- This process is also responsible for guaranteeing a maximum delay
- before asynchronously-committed transactions will be flushed to
- disk.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Skip writing WAL in <command>CLUSTER</command> and
- <command>COPY</command> in cases where it's not needed (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If WAL archiving is not enabled, it's possible to ensure
- transactional safety by fsync'ing the destination table before
- commit, rather than emitting WAL records for all inserted tuples.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid rewriting <filename>pg_control</filename> at every WAL segment
- switch (Simon)
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Reduce WAL output size for page splits in btree indexes (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid unnecessary disk reads during WAL recovery (Heikki)
+ Skip unnecessary WAL writes for <command>CLUSTER</command> and
+ <command>COPY</command> (Simon)
</para>
<para>
- Aside from speeding up recovery, this change eliminates a potential
- data loss risk when restoring a WAL log that was written with
- full_page_writes off.
+ Unless WAL archiving is enabled, it is possible to just
+ <function>fsync()</> the table at the end of the command,
+ increasing performance. Additional WAL efficiencies were also
+ added.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make large sequential scans and <command>VACUUM</command>s work in a
- limited-size <quote>ring</quote> of buffers (Simon, Heikki, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Aside from avoiding cache spoliation, this fixes the problem that
- <command>VACUUM</command> formerly tended to cause a WAL flush for
- every page it modified, because we had it hacked to use only a
- single buffer. Those flushes will now occur only once per ring-ful.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Synchronize sequential scans (Jeff Davis)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Large sequential scans now synchronize with each other, so that when
- multiple backends are scanning the same relation concurrently, each
- page is (ideally) read only once. Note that a backend joining such
- a scan starts in the middle of the relation and <quote>wraps
- around</quote> to cover all blocks; this may affect the order in which
- rows are returned.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Suppress useless searches for unused line pointers in PageAddItem
- (Heikki, improving on an idea from Hiroki Kataoka)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Put a rate limit on messages sent by backends to the stats collector
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This reduces the overhead for short transactions by combining
- reports for successive short transactions.
+ Prevent large sequential scans from forcing out more frequently
+ used cached pages (Simon, Heikki, Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Implement <quote>top N</quote> sorting in <literal>ORDER BY
- ... LIMIT</literal> queries (Greg Stark)
+ Allow large sequential scans to use cached pages from other
+ concurrent sequential scans (Jeff Davis)
</para>
<para>
- We keep a heap of the current best N tuples and sift-up new tuples
- into it as we scan the input. For M input tuples this means only
- about M*log(N) comparisons instead of M*log(M), not to mention a lot
- less workspace when N is small — avoiding spill-to-disk for large
- M is actually the most attractive thing about it.
+ This is accomplished by starting the new sequential scan in the
+ middle of the table (where the other sequential scan is already
+ in-progress) and wrapping around to the beginning to finish.
+ This may affect the order in which rows are returned in a
+ non-<literal>ORDER BY</> query.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Improve hash join performance for cases with many input NULLs (Tom)
+ Reduce overhead of populating the statistics tables. (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Improve performance of mergejoin with a large sort operation as
- inner input (Greg Stark)
+ Allow <literal>ORDER BY ... LIMIT</> to be done without sorting
+ (Greg Stark)
</para>
<para>
- This change uses a Materialize node between the mergejoin and the
- sort to prevent the sort from having to <quote>back up</>, which
- allows a more efficient sort. The Materialize node keeps a circular
- buffer of only the prior tuples that the mergejoin may actually
- need again, so it usually won't need to spill to disk, resulting
- in net I/O savings.
+ This is done by scanning the table and using a filter to save
+ the few requested rows, rather than sorting the entire table.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Avoid computing X^2 at each row in <function>avg(bigint)</function>
- and <function>avg(numeric)</function> (Mark Kirkwood)
+ Improve hash join performance for cases with many NULLs (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Autovacuum is now enabled by default (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Considerable work was done to make autovacuum less intrusive,
- allowing this to become a reasonable default.
+ Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes (Alvaro, Itagaki
+ Takahiro)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes (Alvaro, Itagaki
- Takahiro)
+ This allows multiple vacuums to run concurrently, meaning
+ vacuuming of a large table will not prevent smaller tables from
+ being vacuumed at the same time. Autovacuum is now considered
+ mature and thus enabled by default. Several autovacuum
+ default parameter values were also updated.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Set the default autovacuum <varname>vacuum_cost_delay</varname>
- value to 20ms, and reduce the default autovacuum vacuum and analyze
- threshold values to 50 tuples (Alvaro)
+ Autovacuum is now enabled by default (Alvaro)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Make autovacuum report the start time of its current activity in
+ Also, autovacuum now reports its activity start time in
<literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make configuration parameters fall back to their default values when
- they are removed from the configuration file (Joachim Wieland)
+ Commenting out a parameter in <filename>postgresql.conf</> now
+ causes it to revert to its default value (Joachim Wieland)
</para>
+
<para>
- This fixes an ancient gotcha that returning a configuration file
- line to its original commented-out state did not undo the change.
+ Previously commenting out a value kept the value unchanged until
+ the next server restart.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Invalidate and rebuild cached plans whenever there is a schema
- change or statistics update to referenced relations (Tom)
+ Automatically invalidate cached function code when table
+ definitions change or statistics are updated (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- Aside from improving performance (for example, by being able to make
- use of newly-added indexes), this finally fixes the problem that you
- couldn't drop and recreate a temp table that's used by a PL/PgSQL
- function, unless you used <literal>EXECUTE</literal> for all
- references to it. A statement that depends on a temp table will now
- be replanned automatically if the temp table has been recreated.
+ Previously PL/PgSQL functions that referenced temporary tables
+ would fail if the temporary table was dropped and recreated
+ between function invocations, unless <literal>EXECUTE</> was
+ used.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add support for GSSAPI authentication (Henry Hotz, Magnus)
+ Support Security Service Provider Interface (SSPI)
+ authentication on Windows (Magnus)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support SSPI authentication on Windows (Magnus)
+ Add support for GSSAPI authentication (Henry Hotz, Magnus)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <varname>ssl_ciphers</> parameter to control allowed ciphers
+ Add <varname>ssl_ciphers</> parameter to control accepted SSL ciphers
(Victor Wagner)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Add new encodings EUC_JIS_2004 and SHIFT_JIS_2004, along with new
- conversions among EUC_JIS_2004, SHIFT_JIS_2004 and UTF-8 (Tatsuo)
+ conversions between EUC_JIS_2004, SHIFT_JIS_2004 and UTF-8 (Tatsuo)
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- It was found that JOHAB does not meet the assumptions needed to be
- used safely as a server-side encoding.
+ JOHAB cannot safely be used as a server-side encoding.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Provide for logfiles in machine readable CSV format (Arul Shaji,
- Greg Smith, Andrew Dunstan)
+ Allow logfile creation in CSV format (Arul Shaji, Greg Smith,
+ Andrew Dunstan)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- <literal>%s</literal> and <literal>%c</literal> escapes in
- <varname>log_line_prefix</varname> can now be used in all processes
+ <varname>log_line_prefix</varname> escapes <literal>%s</literal>
+ and <literal>%c</literal> can now be used in all processes
(Andrew)
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- This avoids Windows-specific problems with localized time zone names
- that are in the wrong encoding. There is a new
- <varname>log_timezone</> parameter that controls the timezone used
- in log messages, separately from the client-visible
+ This avoids Windows-specific problems with localized time zone
+ names that are in the wrong encoding. There is a new
+ <varname>log_timezone</> parameter that controls the timezone
+ used in log messages, independent of the client-visible
<varname>timezone</> parameter.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Change the timestamps recorded in transaction commit/abort xlog
- records from time_t to TimestampTz representation (Tom)
+ Change the timestamps recorded in transaction WAL records from
+ time_t to TimestampTz representation (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This provides full gettimeofday() resolution for the timestamps,
- which might be useful when attempting to do point-in-time recovery
- — previously it was not possible to specify the stop point with
- sub-second resolution.
+ This provides sub-second resolution in WAL, which can be useful for
+ point-in-time recovery.
</para>
</listitem>
-
<listitem>
<para>
- Split the <varname>archive_command</> parameter into separate
- <varname>archive_mode</> and <varname>archive_command</> parameters
- (Simon)
+ New boolean configuration parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>,
+ controls archiving (Simon)
</para>
<para>
- This avoids some problems that occur if the user wishes to stop
- archiving temporarily.
+ Previously setting <varname>archive_command</> to an empty
+ string turned off archiving. Now <varname>archive_mode</> turns
+ archiving on and off. This is useful for stopping archiving
+ temporarily.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add a <literal>%r</> option in <filename>recovery.conf</filename> to
- provide last restartpoint to <varname>restore_command</varname>
+ Improve ability to create warm standby servers using archiving
(Simon)
</para>
+
+ <para>
+ Allow the warm standby server to pass the earliest needed WAL
+ file to the recovery script to allow automatic removal of
+ unneeded WAL files. This is done using
+ <varname>restore_command</varname> <literal>%r</> in
+ <filename>recovery.conf</filename>.
+ </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <varname>log_restartpoints</varname> recovery option to emit a
- log message at each restartpoint (Simon)
+ Add <varname>log_restartpoints</varname> archive recovery option
+ to emit a log message at each recovery restart point (Simon)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Last transaction end time is now logged at end of recovery and at
- each logged restartpoint (Simon)
+ each logged restart point (Simon)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Create a <varname>temp_tablespaces</varname> parameter to allow
- selection of one or more tablespaces in which to store temp tables
- and temporary files (Jaime Casanova, Albert Cervera, Bernd Helmle)
+ Add a <varname>temp_tablespaces</varname> parameter to control
+ the tablespaces for temporary tables and files (Jaime Casanova,
+ Albert Cervera, Bernd Helmle)
</para>
<para>
- This is a list to allow spreading the load across multiple
- tablespaces; a random list element is chosen each time a temp object
- is to be created. Temp files are not stored in per-database
- <filename>pgsql_tmp/</filename> directories anymore, but in
- per-tablespace directories.
+ This parameters allows a list of tablespaces to be specified
+ which enables spreading the I/O load across multiple
+ tablespaces. A random tablespace is chosen each time a temporary
+ object is created. Temporary files are not stored in
+ per-database <filename>pgsql_tmp/</filename> directories anymore
+ but in per-tablespace directories.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
New system view <literal>pg_stat_bgwriter</literal> displays
- statistics about the background writer process's performance
- (Magnus)
+ statistics about the background writer activity (Magnus)
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- This seemed useless in view of the availability of
- <function>pg_stat_reset()</function>.
+ This was removed because <function>pg_stat_reset()</function>
+ can be used for this purpose.
</para>
</listitem>
<para>
Merge <varname>stats_block_level</> and <varname>stats_row_level</>
parameters into a single parameter <varname>track_counts</>,
- which controls all reports sent to the collector process (Tom)
+ which controls all messages sent to the collector process (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- This allows low-level code such as the relcache to recognize that
- these tables are indeed temporary, which enables various
- optimizations such as not WAL-logging changes and using local rather
- than shared buffers for access. Aside from obvious performance
- benefits, this provides a solution to bug #3483, in which other
- backends unexpectedly held open file references to temporary tables.
+ This allows low-level code to recognize that these tables are
+ temporary, which enables various optimizations such as not
+ WAL-logging changes and using local rather than shared buffers
+ for access. This also fixes a bug where backends unexpectedly
+ held open file references to temporary tables.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow <command>CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY</command> to disregard
+ Allow <command>CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY</command> to ignore
transactions in other databases (Simon)
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- The features previously provided by <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>
- have been improved and moved into the standard server.
+ This features was previously in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>.
+ It has been improved, moved into the server, and is now installed
+ by default.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support <literal>ORDER BY ... NULLS FIRST/LAST</literal> (Teodor, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Users can now control whether nulls sort before or after
- other values.
+ Control over whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last, using
+ <literal>ORDER BY ... NULLS FIRST/LAST</> (Teodor, Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add ASC/DESC and NULLS FIRST/NULLS LAST per-column options for btree
- indexes (Teodor, Tom)
+ Allow ascending/descending (<literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</>)
+ control during index creation (Teodor, Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This is primarily useful for customizing multicolumn indexes to match
- the ordering needed by a specific query.
+ Previously a query using <literal>ORDER BY</> with mixed
+ <literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</> specifiers could not fully use
+ an index. Now an index can be fully used in such cases if the
+ index was created with matching
+ <literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</> specifictions.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support <literal>UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF</>
- <replaceable>cursor_name</>
- (Arul Shaji, Tom)
+ Updatable cursors using <literal>UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT
+ OF</> (Arul Shaji, Tom)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This eliminates the need to reference a primary key to update or
+ delete rows returned by a cursor.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Downgrade implicit casts to text to be assignment-only, except for
- the ones from the other string-category types (Peter, Tom)
+ Queries that previously automatically cast values to
+ <type>TEXT</type> might now need explicit casts (Peter, Tom)
</para>
+
<para>
- This change eliminates a lot of surprising interpretations that the
- parser could formerly make in cases when there was no directly
- applicable operator. The <literal>||</> (concatenation) operator
- has been generalized so that it will still accept non-textual
- inputs, thus preserving the main useful case for implicit text
- coercion. In other cases, if you want something to be treated
- as text you'll need to say so.
+ Data types other than <type>CHAR</> and <type>VARCHAR</> no
+ longer automatically cast to <type>TEXT</>, except in the
+ limited case of concatenation (<literal>||</>) where the other
+ input is textual. While this change will require additional
+ casts for some queries it also eliminates some unusual
+ behavior.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Create a general mechanism that supports casts to and from the
- standard string types (<type>text</type>, <type>varchar</type>,
- <type>bpchar</type>) for <emphasis>every</emphasis> datatype, by
+ standard string types (<type>TEXT</type>, <type>VARCHAR</type>,
+ <type>CHAR</type>) for <emphasis>every</emphasis> datatype, by
invoking the datatype's I/O functions (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- These new casts are assignment-only in the to-string direction,
+ XXX? bjm These new casts are assignment-only in the to-string direction,
explicit-only in the other, and therefore should create no
surprising behavior. Remove a bunch of thereby-obsoleted
datatype-specific casting functions.
<listitem>
<para>
- Make <literal>ARRAY(SELECT ...)</literal> return an empty array,
- rather than a NULL, when the sub-select returns zero rows (Tom)
+ <literal>ARRAY(SELECT ...)</literal>, where <command>SELECT</>
+ returns no rows, now returns an empty array, rather than NULL
+ (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make 'col IS NULL' clauses be btree-indexable conditions (Teodor)
+ Allow <literal>col IS NULL</> to use an index (Teodor)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add support for cross-type hashing (Tom)
+ Allow limited hashing when using two different data types (Tom)
</para>
<para>
This allows hash joins, hash indexes, hashed subplans, and hash
aggregation to be used in situations involving cross-data-type
- comparisons, if the data types have compatible hash functions. That
- is currently the case for
- <type>smallint</type>/<type>integer</type>/<type>bigint</type>, and
- also for <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of <quote>equivalence classes</quote> of variables
- that are constrained to be equal within a query's <literal>WHERE</>
- clause (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Among other things, this change allows mergejoins to work with
- descending sort orders, and improves recognition of redundant sort
- columns.
+ comparisons, if the data types have compatible hash functions.
+ Current cross-data-type hashing support exists for
+ <type>SMALLINT</type>/<type>INTEGER</type>/<type>BIGINT</type>,
+ and for <type>FLOAT4</type>/<type>FLOAT8</type>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Improve performance for planning large inheritance trees that are
- mostly excluded by constraints (Tom)
+ Improve optimizer logic for detecting when variables are equal
+ in a <literal>WHERE</> clause (Tom)
</para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix problems with selectivity estimation for partial indexes (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Fix cost estimates for <literal>EXISTS</literal> subqueries that are
- evaluated as initPlans (Tom)
+ This allows mergejoins to work with descending sort orders, and
+ improves recognition of redundant sort columns.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Fix some issues with user tables and views that are named similarly
- to system catalogs (Tom)
+ Improve performance when planning large inheritance trees when
+ most tables are excluded by constraints (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- This operator was obsoleted long ago by <literal>IN (SELECT
- ...)</literal> queries.
+ <literal>NOT IN (SELECT ...)</literal> is the proper way to
+ perform this operation.
</para>
</listitem>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
+
<para>
- Support arrays of composite types, including the rowtypes of regular
- tables and views (but not system catalogs, nor sequences or toast
- tables) (David Fetter, Andrew, Tom)
+ Support arrays of composite types (David Fetter, Andrew, Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This change also removes the hardwired convention that a type's
- array type is named exactly <quote>_type</quote>, instead using a
- new column <literal>pg_type.typarray</literal> to provide the
- linkage. (It still will be named <quote>_type</quote>, though,
- except in odd corner cases such as maximum-length type names or
- collisions with a pre-existing type named with a leading
- underscore.)
+ Arrays of rowtypes of regular tables and views are now
+ supported, but not for system catalogs, sequences, or TOAST
+ tables.
</para>
+
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support per-function GUC parameter settings (Tom)
+ The array name for a base data type is no longer required to
+ be the data type name with an underscore prefix
</para>
<para>
- This provides a simple solution for functions that need local
- settings for parameters; in particular, security definer functions
- that must set <varname>search_path</varname> to avoid security
- loopholes.
+ The old naming convention is still honored when possible, but
+ client code should no longer depending on it. Application code
+ should use the new <literal>pg_type.typarray</literal> column to
+ determine the array data type.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <literal>COST</literal> and <literal>ROWS</literal> options to
- <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command> (Tom)
+ Support per-function GUC parameter settings (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This change allows simple user adjustment of the estimated cost of a
- function call, as well as control of the estimated number of rows
- returned by a set-returning function. We might eventually wish to
- extend this to allow function-specific estimation routines, but
- there seems to be consensus that we should try a simple constant
- estimate first.
+ This provides a simple way for functions to set local
+ parameters. In particular, security definer functions should set
+ <varname>search_path</varname> to avoid security loopholes.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow triggers and rules to be defined with different, per session
- controllable, behaviors for replication purposes (Jan)
+ Add <literal>COST</literal> and <literal>ROWS</literal> options to
+ <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command> (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This will allow replication systems to control the firing mechanism
- of triggers and rewrite rules without modifying the system catalogs
- directly. The behavior is controlled by a new superuser-only
- parameter <varname>session_replication_role</varname>.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <application>psql</application>'s <literal>\d</literal> command as
- well as <application>pg_dump</application> are extended in a
- backward compatible fashion.
+ This allows simple control of the estimated cost of a function
+ call and control over the estimated number of rows returned by a
+ set-returning function.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support type modifiers for user-defined types (Teodor, Tom)
+ Allow triggers and rules to be deactivated in groups using a
+ session variable, for replication purposes (Jan)
</para>
<para>
- User-defined types can now use parameters, similar to the maximum
- length and precision parameters used by some built-in types. Any
- simple constant (numeric or string) or identifier can be used as a
- parameter value. A type-specific function must be provided to
- validate this information and pack it into a 32-bit <quote>typmod</>
- value for storage.
+ This allows replication systems to disable triggers and rewrite
+ rules as a group without modifying the system catalogs directly.
+ The behavior is controlled by <command>ALTER TABLE</> and a new
+ parameter <varname>session_replication_role</varname>.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ <application>psql</application>'s <literal>\d</literal> command
+ and <application>pg_dump</application> have been enhanced
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Invent <quote>operator families</quote> to allow improved handling
- of cross-data-type operators (Tom)
+ User-defined types can now have type modifiers (Teodor, Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This change allows significantly better planning of queries
- involving cross-data-type comparisons.
+ This allows a user type to take a modifier when
+ being created, e.g. <type>SSNUM(7)</>. Previously only
+ predefined system data types would allow this, e.g.
+ <type>CHAR(4)</>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Clean up semantic assumptions for foreign keys (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- There is now a sound semantic basis for the equality checks applied
- by foreign-key constraints; formerly the system tended to assume
- that any operator named <literal>=</> was the right thing. The equality
- operators will now be selected from the opfamily of the unique index
- that the FK constraint depends on to enforce uniqueness of the
- referenced columns; therefore they are certain to be consistent with
- that index's notion of equality. Among other things this should fix
- the problem noted awhile back that pg_dump may fail for foreign-key
- constraints on user-defined types when the required operators aren't
- in the search path. This also means that the former warning
- condition about <quote>foreign key constraint will require costly
- sequential scans</quote> is gone: if the comparison condition isn't
- indexable then we'll reject the constraint entirely.
+ Foreign keys now must match indexable conditions for
+ cross-data-type references (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow non-superuser database owners to create procedural languages
- (Jeremy Drake)
+ Non-superuser database owners now have privileges to add trusted
+ procedural languages in their databases by default (Jeremy Drake)
</para>
+
<para>
- A database owner is now allowed to create a language in his database
- if it's marked <structfield>tmpldbacreate</> in
- <structname>pg_pltemplate</>. The factory default is that this is set
- for all standard trusted languages, but of course a superuser may
- adjust the settings. In service of this, add the long-foreseen owner
- column to <structname>pg_language</>; renaming, dropping, and altering
- owner of a PL now follow normal ownership rules instead of being
- superuser-only.
+ While this is reasonably safe, some administrators may wish to
+ revoke the privilege. It is controlled by
+ <structname>pg_pltemplate</>.<structfield>tmpldbacreate</>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Arrange for <command>SET LOCAL</command>'s effects to persist until
- the end of the current top transaction, unless rolled back or
- overridden by a SET clause for the same variable attached to a
- surrounding function call (Tom)
+ <command>SET LOCAL</command> changes now persist until
+ the end of the top-most transaction, unless rolled back (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This is an incompatible change: in 8.0 through 8.2, <command>SET
- LOCAL</command>'s effects disappeared at subtransaction commit
- (leading to behavior that made little sense at the SQL level).
+ Previously <command>SET LOCAL</command>'s effects reverted
+ during subtransaction commit and <command>RELEASE</>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support <literal>SET ... FROM CURRENT</literal> in
- <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command>, <command>ALTER DATABASE</command>,
- <command>ALTER ROLE</command> (Tom)
+ Allow a session's current parameter setting to be used as the
+ default for future sessions (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This provides a convenient way of applying a session's current
- parameter setting as the default for future sessions or function
- calls.
+ This is done with <literal>SET ... FROM CURRENT</literal> in
+ <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command>, <command>ALTER
+ DATABASE</command>, or <command>ALTER ROLE</command>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Implement new commands <command>DISCARD ALL</command>,
- <command>DISCARD PLANS</command>, <command>DISCARD TEMP</command>,
- <command>CLOSE ALL</command>, and <command>DEALLOCATE ALL</command>
- (Marko Kreen, Neil)
+ <command>DISCARD PLANS</command>, <command>DISCARD
+ TEMPORARY</command>, <command>CLOSE ALL</command>, and
+ <command>DEALLOCATE ALL</command> (Marko Kreen, Neil)
</para>
<para>
These commands simplify resetting a database session to its initial
- state, and are particularly handy for connection-pooling software.
+ state, and are particularly useful for connection-pooling software.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <command>ALTER VIEW ... RENAME TO</command> and <command>ALTER
+ Allow <command>ALTER VIEW ... RENAME TO</command> and <command>ALTER
SEQUENCE ... RENAME TO</command> (David Fetter, Neil)
</para>
<para>
- While it has long been possible to perform these operations using
- <command>ALTER TABLE</command>, users were often surprised that they
- couldn't say <command>ALTER VIEW</command> or <command>ALTER
- SEQUENCE</command> as appropriate.
+ Previously this could only be done via <command>ALTER TABLE ...
+ RENAME TO</command>.
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- Formerly, a <command>CLUSTER</command> command would discard all
- tuples that were committed dead, even if there were still
- transactions that should be able to see them under the MVCC snapshot
- rules.
+ Formerly, <command>CLUSTER</command> would discard all tuples
+ that were committed dead, even if there were still transactions
+ that should be able to see them under the visibility rules.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support new syntax for <command>CLUSTER</command>: <literal>CLUSTER
+ Add new syntax for <command>CLUSTER</command>: <literal>CLUSTER
<replaceable>table</> USING <replaceable>index</></literal>
(Holger Schurig)
</para>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make <command>CLUSTER</command> freeze tuples where possible
- (Heikki, Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is nearly free and may avoid the need for a subsequent
- <command>VACUUM</command> of the table.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>CLUSTER</command> and <command>TRUNCATE</command>
- advance the table's <literal>relfrozenxid</literal> to
- <literal>RecentXmin</literal> (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This may avoid the need for a subsequent <command>VACUUM</command>
- of the table. The table-rewriting variants of <command>ALTER
- TABLE</command> do it too.
+ Fix <command>EXPLAIN</command> so it can show more complex plans (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Fix <command>EXPLAIN</command> so it can always print the correct
- referent of an upper plan level expression (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This fix banishes the old hack of showing
- <literal>?column<replaceable>N</>?</literal>
- when things got too complicated.
+ Commands that are disallowed in transaction blocks are now also
+ disallowed in multiple-statement query strings (Tom)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make PreventTransactionChain reject commands submitted as part of a
- multi-statement simple-Query message (Tom)
- </para>
<para>
For example, <literal>BEGIN; DROP DATABASE; COMMIT</> will now be
- rejected even if submitted as a single Query message. This is a
- potential incompatibility since some clients expected such strings to
- work; but it was always unsafe.
+ rejected even if submitted as a single query message.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE wait a little bit to see if other
- backends will exit before failing because of conflicting DB usage
- (Tom)
+ Make CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE wait briefly for other backends
+ to exit before failing (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This helps mask the fact that backend exit takes nonzero time.
+ This increases the likelihood that these commands will succeed.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make
- <command>NOTIFY</command>/<command>LISTEN</command>/<command>UNLISTEN</command>
- only accept identifiers without a schema qualifier (Bruce)
+ Prevent <command>NOTIFY</command>/<command>LISTEN</command>/<command>UNLISTEN</command>
+ from accepting schema-qualified names (Bruce)
</para>
<para>
- Formerly, these commands accepted <quote>schema.relation</> but then
- ignored the schema part, leading to confusion.
+ Formerly, these commands accepted <quote>schema.relation</> but
+ ignored the schema part, which was confusing.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- SQL/XML support (Nikolay Samokhvalov, Peter)
+ Support for the SQL/XML standard, including a operators and a
+ new <type>XML</type> builtin (Nikolay Samokhvalov, Peter)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Enumerated (<type>ENUM</>) data type support (Tom Dunstan)
</para>
<para>
- There is now an <type>xml</> data type and standard operations
- on it.
+ This is accomplished by creating a new data type with an
+ <literal>ENUM</> clause, e.g.
+ <literal>CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy')</>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support enum data types
- (Tom Dunstan)
+ Universally Unique Identifier (<type>UUID</>) data type, similar
+ to that defined by RFC 4122 (Gevik Babakhani, Neil)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add a <type>uuid</type> data type similar to that defined in RFC
- 4122 (Gevik Babakhani, Neil)
+ Widen the <type>MONEY</type> data type to 64 bits (D'Arcy Cain)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Widen the <type>money</type> data type to 64 bits (D'Arcy Cain)
+ This greatly increases the range of supported <type>MONEY</>
+ values.
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- These functions provide access to the capture groups resulting from
- a POSIX regular expression match, and provide the ability to split a
- string on a POSIX regular expression.
+ These functions provide access to the regex groups,
+ <literal>\(.*\)</> , and allows splitting a string on a POSIX
+ regular expression.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add a function <function>pg_stat_clear_snapshot()</function> that
- discards any statistics snapshot already collected in the current
- transaction (Tom)
+ Add <function>pg_stat_clear_snapshot()</function> to discard
+ statistics snapshots collected during the current transaction
+ (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This allows PL/PgSQL functions to watch for stats updates even
- though they are confined to a single transaction.
+ The first request for statistics in a transaction takes a
+ statistics snapshot that doesn't change during the transaction.
+ This function allows the snapshot to be discarded and a new
+ snapshot loaded during the next statistics query. This is
+ particularly useful for PL/PgSQL functions which are confined to
+ a single transaction.
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- This is day of the week, with Sunday = 7.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add ID (ISO day of week) and IDDD (ISO day of year) format types for
- to_char(), to_date() and to_timestamp() (Brendan Jurd)
+ This is the day of the week, with Sunday as seven.
+ (<literal>dow</> returns Sunday as zero.)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Check for overflow when converting far-future date values to
- timestamp (Tom)
+ Add <literal>ID</> (ISO day of week) and <literal>IDDD</> (ISO
+ day of year) format types for <function>to_char()</>,
+ <function>to_date()</> and <function>to_timestamp()</> (Brendan
+ Jurd)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Make <function>to_timestamp()</> and <function>to_date()</> assume
- <quote>TM</quote> for potentially variable-width fields (Bruce)
+ Make <function>to_timestamp()</> and <function>to_date()</>
+ assume <quote>TM</quote> (trim) for potentially variable-width
+ fields (Bruce)
</para>
<para>
<listitem>
<para>
- Fix <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type> to handle Infinity and
- Nan consistently (Bruce)
+ Fix <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type> to handle
+ <literal>Infinity</> and <literal>NAN</> (not a number)
+ consistently (Bruce)
</para>
<para>
- The code formerly was not consistent about distinguishing Infinity
- symbols from overflow conditions.
+ The code formerly was not consistent about distinguishing
+ <literal>Infinity</> from overflow conditions.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add a hash function for <type>numeric</type> (Neil)
+ Add a hash function for <type>NUMERIC</type> (Neil)
</para>
<para>
This allows hash indexes and hash-based plans to be used with
- the <type>numeric</type> datatype.
+ <type>NUMERIC</type>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Improve efficiency of
- <literal>LIKE</literal>/<literal>ILIKE</literal> code, especially
- for multi-byte charsets, and most especially for UTF8 (Andrew,
- Itagaki Takahiro)
+ <literal>LIKE</literal>/<literal>ILIKE</literal>, especially for
+ multi-byte character sets like UTF8 (Andrew, Itagaki Takahiro)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow leading and trailing whitespace in the input to the
- <type>boolean</type> type (Neil)
+ Allow leading and trailing whitespace for <type>BOOLEAN</type>
+ values (Neil)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add additional checks for invalidly-encoded data (Andrew)
+ More checks for invalidly-encoded data (Andrew)
</para>
<para>
- This change plugs some holes that formerly existed in SQL literal
- backslash escape processing and <command>COPY</command> escape
- processing: the de-escaped string is rechecked if it might have
- resulted in creating invalid multi-byte characters.
+ This change plugs some holes that existed in literal backslash
+ escape string processing and <command>COPY</command> escape
+ processing. Now the de-escaped string is rechecked to see if the
+ result created an invalid multi-byte character.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Ensure that <function>chr()</function> cannot create invalidly
- encoded text (Andrew)
+ encoded values (Andrew)
</para>
<para>
- In UTF8-encoded databases the argument is treated as a Unicode code
- point. In other multi-byte encodings the argument must designate a
- 7-bit ASCII character, or an error is raised, as is also the case if
- the argument is 0.
- </para>
+ In UTF8-encoded databases the argument is processed as a Unicode
+ code point. In other multi-byte encodings the argument must
+ designate a 7-bit ASCII character, or an error is raised. Zero
+ also causes an error. <function>ascii()</function> has been
+ adjusted as well to match this behavior.
- <para>
- <function>ascii()</function> has been adjusted so that it remains
- the inverse of <function>chr()</function>.
- </para>
+ </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
</para>
<para>
- The two argument form of <function>convert()</function> is gone, and
- the three argument form now takes a <type>bytea</type> first
- argument and returns a <type>bytea</type>. To cover this loss three
- new functions are introduced:
+ The two argument form of <function>convert()</function> has been
+ removed. The three argument form now takes a <type>BYTEA</type>
+ first argument and returns a <type>BYTEA</type>. To cover this
+ loss three new functions are introduced:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
- <function>convert_from(bytea, name)</function> returning
- <type>text</> — converts the first argument from the named
+ <function>convert_from(bytea, name)</function> returns
+ <type>TEXT</> — converts the first argument from the named
encoding to the database encoding.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- <function>convert_to(text, name)</function> returning <type>bytea</>
- — converts the first argument from the database encoding to
- the named encoding.
+ <function>convert_to(text, name)</function> returns
+ <type>BYTEA</> — converts the first argument from the
+ database encoding to the named encoding.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- <function>length(bytea, name)</function> returning <type>int</>
- — gives the length of the first argument in characters in the
- named encoding.
+ <function>length(bytea, name)</function> returns
+ <type>INTEGER</> — gives the length of the first
+ argument in characters in the named encoding.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
- Remove <literal>CONVERT(argument USING conversion_name)</literal>
+ Remove <literal>convert(argument USING conversion_name)</literal>
(Andrew)
</para>
<para>
- Although this syntax is required by the SQL standard, it's not clear
- what the standard expects it to do, except that it's most likely not
- what we were doing. The former behavior was an encoding security
- hole, too.
+ Its behavior did not match the SQL standard and could not be
+ implemented in this release.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Put some security restrictions on the dbsize functions (Tom)
+ Restrict object size functions to users who have reasonable
+ permissions to view such information (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- Restrict <function>pg_database_size()</function> to users who can
- connect to the target database (note that <literal>CONNECT</literal>
- privilege is granted by default, so this does not change the default
- behavior). Restrict <function>pg_tablespace_size()</function> to
- users who have <literal>CREATE</literal> privilege on the tablespace
- (which is <emphasis>not</emphasis> granted by default), except when
- the tablespace is the default tablespace for the current database
- (since we treat that as implicitly allowing use of the tablespace).
+ For example, <function>pg_database_size()</function> now
+ requires <literal>CONNECT</> permission, which is granted to
+ everyone by default. <function>pg_tablespace_size()</function>
+ requires <literal>CREATE</> permission in the tablespace, or the
+ tablespace is the default tablespace for the database.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support scrollable cursors (ie, add a direction clause in
- <command>FETCH</command>) in PL/PgSQL (Pavel Stehule)
+ Add scrollable cursor support by adding directional control to
+ PL/PgSQL's <command>FETCH</command> (Pavel Stehule)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add support for <literal>IN</literal> as alternative to
+ Add support for <literal>IN</literal> as an alternative to
<literal>FROM</literal> in PL/PgSQL's <command>FETCH</command>
statement, for consistency with the backend's
<command>FETCH</command> command (Pavel Stehule)
<listitem>
<para>
- Support <command>MOVE</command> in PL/PgSQL (Magnus, Pavel Stehule,
+ Add <command>MOVE</command> to PL/PgSQL (Magnus, Pavel Stehule,
Neil)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Implement <command>RETURN QUERY</command> for PL/PgSQL (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
+ Implement <command>RETURN QUERY</command> (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
</para>
<para>
- This provides some convenient syntax sugar for PL/PgSQL
- set-returning functions that want to return the result of evaluating
- a query; it should also be more efficient than repeated
- <command>RETURN NEXT</command> statements.
+ This adds convenient syntax for PL/PgSQL set-returning functions
+ that want to return the result of a query, rather than using
+ <command>RETURN NEXT</command>. <command>RETURN QUERY</command>
+ is more efficient too.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow PL/PgSQL function parameter names to be qualified with the
- function's name (Tom)
+ Allow function parameter names to be qualified with the
+ function's name(Tom)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ For example, <literal>myfunc.myvar</>. This is particularly
+ useful for specifying variables in a query where the variable
+ name might match a column name.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Reject zero or negative <literal>BY</literal> step in plpgsql
- integer <literal>FOR</literal>-loops, and behave sanely if the loop
- value overflows <type>int32</type> on the way to the end value (Tom)
+ Tighten requirements for <literal>FOR</literal> loop
+ <literal>STEP</> values (Tom)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Prevent non-positive <literal>STEP</> values, and handle
+ loop overflows.
</para>
+
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Improve accuracy of error locations in PL/PgSQL syntax errors (Tom)
+ Improve accuracy when reporting syntax error locations (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Allow type-name arguments to <function>spi_prepare()</function> to
- be standard type aliases as well as the names given in
+ be data type aliases in addition to names in
<literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Allow type-name arguments to <function>plpy.prepare()</function> to
- be standard type aliases as well as the names given in
+ be data type aliases in addition to names in
<literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support true boolean type in Python versions that have it, i.e.,
- version 2.3 and later (Marko Kreen)
+ Support a true boolean type in compatible Python versions
+ (Python 2.3 and later) (Marko Kreen)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow type-name arguments to <function>spi_prepare</> to be standard
- type aliases as well as the names given in <literal>pg_type</>
- (Andrew)
+ Allow type-name arguments to <function>spi_prepare</> to
+ be data type aliases in addition to names in
+ <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Fix problems with thread-enabled libtcl spawning multiple threads
- within the backend (Steve Marshall, Paul Bayer, Doug Knight)
+ Fix problems with thread-enabled <filename>libtcl</> spawning
+ multiple threads within the backend (Steve Marshall, Paul Bayer,
+ Doug Knight)
</para>
<para>
</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Identify schema of inherited table in <literal>\d</literal> output
- (Bernd Helmle)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
<listitem>
<para>
Show aggregate return types in <literal>\da</literal> output
<listitem>
<para>
In <literal>\d</literal> patterns, always match <literal>$</literal>
- literally, whether quoted or not (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Since we allow <literal>$</literal> as a character within
- identifiers, this behavior is useful, whereas the previous behavior
- of treating it as the regexp ending anchor was nearly useless given
- that the pattern is automatically anchored anyway.
+ literally (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <literal>\prompt</literal> command (Chad Wagner)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This lets a <application>psql</application> script prompt the user for input.
+ Add <literal>\prompt</literal> capability (Chad Wagner)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow <literal>\pset</literal>, <literal>\t</literal> and
- <literal>\x</literal> to use boolean constants on/off, rather than
- always toggling (Chad Wagner)
+ Allow <literal>\pset</literal>, <literal>\t</literal>, and
+ <literal>\x</literal> to use <literal>on</>/<literal>off</>,
+ rather than just toggling (Chad Wagner)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <literal>\sleep</> command to allow delays in
- <application>psql</application> scripts (Jan)
+ Add <literal>\sleep</> capability (Jan)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Enable <literal>\timing</> output for <literal>\copy</> commands
- (Andrew)
+ Enable <literal>\timing</> output for <literal>\copy</> (Andrew)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow <literal>\timing</literal> to have better resolution than
- ~15ms on Windows (Itagaki Takahiro)
+ Improve <literal>\timing</literal> resolution on Windows
+ (Itagaki Takahiro)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Flush the <literal>\o</> file, if any, after each backslash command
- (Tom)
+ Flush <literal>\o</> output after each backslash command (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add --tablespaces-only and --roles-only options to
- <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
+ Add <literal>--tablespaces-only</> and <literal>--roles-only</>
+
options to <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add output-file option for <application>pg_dumpall</application>
- (Dave Page)
+ Add an output file option to
+ <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
</para>
<para>
This is primarily useful on Windows, where output redirection of
- child <application>pg_dump</application> processes doesn't work.
+ child <application>pg_dump</application> processes does not work.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow pg_dumpall to accept an initial-connection database name
- rather than the default <literal>template1</literal> (Dave Page)
+ Allow <application>pg_dumpall</> to accept an initial-connection
+ database name rather than the default
+ <literal>template1</literal> (Dave Page)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- In -n and -t switches, always match <literal>$</literal> literally,
- whether quoted or not (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Since we allow <literal>$</literal> as a character within
- identifiers, this behavior is useful, whereas the previous behavior
- of treating it as the regexp ending anchor was nearly useless given
- that the pattern is automatically anchored anyway.
+ In <literal>-n</> and <literal>-t</> switches, always match
+ <literal>$</literal> literally (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Replace linear searches with binary searches in pg_dump's code to
- lookup objects by OID (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This can improve speed materially in databases with thousands of
- objects of the same kind (for instances, thousands of functions).
+ Improve performance when a database has many thousands of objects (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow a nondefault <filename>pg_xlog</filename> directory location
- to be specified to initdb (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
+ In <application>initdb</>, allow the location of the
+ <filename>pg_xlog</filename> directory location to be specified
+ (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Call setrlimit if possible in pg_regress to allow core file
- generation, and provide a switch for similar behavior in pg_ctl
- (Andrew)
+ Enable core dump generation in <application>pg_regress</> and
+ <application>pg_ctl</>, if possible (Andrew)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add cancel handlers so it's possible to Ctrl-C clusterdb, reindexdb
- and vacuumdb (Itagaki Takahiro, Magnus)
+ Allow Control-C to cancel <application>clusterdb</>,
+ <application>reindexdb</>, and <application>vacuumdb</> (Itagaki
+ Takahiro, Magnus)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Remove gratuitous response messages from utility programs (Peter)
+ Suppress command tag output for <application>createdb</>,
+ <application>createuser</>, <application>dropdb</>,
+ <application>dropuser</> (Peter)
</para>
<para>
- The --quiet option is now obsolete and without effect in createdb,
- createuser, dropdb, dropuser; kept for compatibility but marked for
- removal in 8.4.
-
+ The <literal>--quiet</> option is ignored and will be removed in 8.4.
Progress messages when acting on all databases now go to stdout
- instead of stderr, since they are not in fact errors.
+ instead of stderr because they are not actually errors.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Interpret the dbName parameter of PQsetdbLogin as a conninfo string
- if it contains an = sign (Andrew)
+ Interpret the <literal>dbName</> parameter of
+ <function>PQsetdbLogin()</> as a <literal>conninfo</> string if
+ it contains an equals sign (Andrew)
</para>
<para>
- This allows use of all the options of conninfo strings through
- client programs that still use PQsetdbLogin.
+ This allows use of <literal>conninfo</> strings in client
+ programs that still use <literal>PQsetdbLogin()</>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support a global SSL configuration file (Victor Wagner)
+ Support a global <acronym>SSL</> configuration file (Victor
+ Wagner)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add libpq environment variable PGSSLKEY to control SSL hardware keys
- (Victor Wagner)
+ Add environment variable <varname>PGSSLKEY</> to control
+ <acronym>SSL</> hardware keys (Victor Wagner)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add <function>lo_truncate()</function> function for large object
+ Add <function>lo_truncate()</function> for large object
truncation (Kris Jurka)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Provide <function>PQconnectionUsedPassword()</function> function
- that returns true if the server demanded a password during
- authentication (Joe Conway)
+ Add <function>PQconnectionUsedPassword()</function> that returns
+ true if the server required a password (Joe Conway)
</para>
<para>
- If this is true after a failed connection, and the user did not give
- a password, clients may choose to prompt for a password and retry.
+ If this returns true and the connection failed a client
+ application should prompt the user for a password.
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
- Among other things, prepared statements can now be prepared on the
- server side.
+ This adds server-side prepared statements.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Prevent ecpg libraries from exporting any symbols other than
- their intended API (Michael)
+ Have ecpg libraries exporting only API symbols (Michael)
+ Win32 only? XXX
</para>
</listitem>
Support building the entire Postgres system with Visual C++ (Magnus
and others)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Remove old-style client-only Visual C++ build infrastructure for
- everything except libpq (Magnus)
+ The client-only C++ build scripts have been removed.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow regression tests to be started by an admin user (Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This uses the same privilege-dropping method that's used by pg_ctl
- and initdb.
+ Allow regression tests to be started by an <literal>admin</>
+ user (Magnus)
</para>
</listitem>
<para>
Native shared memory implementation for Windows (Magnus)
</para>
-
- <para>
- Same underlying tech as before, but removes the useless SysV
- emulation layer.
- </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
- Replace direct assignments to VARATT_SIZEP(x) with SET_VARSIZE(x,
- len) (Greg Stark, Tom)
+ New C macros for handling variable-length data values (Greg
+ Stark, Tom)
</para>
<para>
- Third-party C code that manipulates varlena datums <emphasis>must</emphasis> convert to
- this convention, since the varvarlena patch changes the
- representation of length words on some architectures. Also, it
- may be necessary to <quote>detoast</quote> input varlena datums in cases where
- no toasting could have happened before.
+ The new <function>SET_VARSIZE()</> macro <emphasis>must</> be
+ used to set the length of generated values. Also, it might be
+ necessary to expand (<quote>de-TOAST</quote>) input values in
+ additional places.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Rename DLLIMPORT macro to PGDLLIMPORT to avoid conflict with third
- party includes (like tcl) that define DLLIMPORT (Magnus)
+ Rename macro <literal>DLLIMPORT</> to <literal>PGDLLIMPORT</> to
+ avoid conflicting with third party includes (like TCL) that
+ define DLLIMPORT (Magnus)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Remove the prohibition on executing cursor commands through
+ Allow execution of cursor commands through
<function>SPI_execute</function> (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- The macro definition of SPI_ERROR_CURSOR still exists, so as not to
- needlessly break any SPI callers that are checking for it, but that
- code will never actually be returned anymore.
+ The macro <literal>SPI_ERROR_CURSOR</> still exists but will
+ never be returned.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Clean up SPI's API a little bit by declaring SPI plan pointers as
- <literal>SPIPlanPtr</> instead of <literal>void *</> (Tom)
+ SPI plan pointers are now <literal>SPIPlanPtr</> instead of
+ <literal>void *</> (Tom)
</para>
<para>
- This does not break any existing code, but switching is recommended
- to help catch simple programming mistakes.
+ This does not break application code, but switching is
+ recommended to help catch simple programming mistakes.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Expose more cursor-related functionality in SPI (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Allow access to the planner's cursor-related planning options, and
- provide new FETCH/MOVE routines that allow access to the full power
- of those commands.
+ Add cursor-related functionality in SPI (Pavel Stehule)
</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
<para>
- Add configure --enable-profiling switch to enable code profiling
- (works with gcc only, for now) (Korry Douglas and Nikhil S)
+ Allow access to the cursor-related planning options, and add
+ <command>FETCH</>/<command>MOVE</> routines.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add configure option --with-system-tzdata to use operating system
- time zone database (Peter)
+ Add <application>configure</> <literal>--enable-profiling</>
+ to enable code profiling (works only with <application>gcc</>)
+ (Korry Douglas and Nikhil S)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Support <literal>gmake draft</literal> in doc/src/sgml/Makefile (Bruce)
+ Add <application>configure</> <literal>--with-system-tzdata</>
+ to use the operating system time zone database (Peter)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow GIN's extractQuery method to signal that nothing can satisfy
- the query (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This changes prototype of extractQuery method to use int32* instead
- of uint32* for nentries argument. A -1 result means that no search
- is needed.
+ Create <quote>operator families</quote> improve planning of
+ queries involving cross-data-type comparisons (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Move NAMEDATALEN definition from postgres_ext.h to
- pg_config_manual.h (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- It used to be part of libpq's exported interface many releases ago,
- but now it's no longer necessary to make it accessible to clients.
- We may eventually make it configurable via a configure switch, but
- we should first flush out any client-side code that thinks it needs
- to know the value.
+ Support <command>gmake draft</command> when building the
+ <acronym>SGML</> documentation (Bruce)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Get rid of client-code dependencies on the exact text of the
- no-password error message, by using
- <function>PQconnectionUsedPassword()</function> instead (Tom)
+ Update GIN <function>extractQuery()</> API to allow signalling
+ that nothing can satisfy the query (Teodor)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Rename MaxTupleSize to MaxHeapTupleSize to clarify that it's not
- meant to describe the maximum size of index tuples (Tom)
+ Move <literal>NAMEDATALEN</> definition from
+ <filename>postgres_ext.h</> to <filename>pg_config_manual.h</>
+ (Peter)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Remove the xlog-centric <quote>database system is ready</quote>
- message and replace it with <quote>database system is ready to
- accept connections</quote>
+ Change server startup log message from <quote>database system is
+ ready</quote> to <quote>database system is ready to accept
+ connections</quote>
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve smgr/md API (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This improves error detection and reporting, both for external
- problems and for coding errors inside the backend. Notably,
- disallow <function>mdread()</function> beyond EOF, and enforce that
- <function>mdwrite()</function> is to be used for rewriting existing
- blocks while <function>mdextend()</function> is to be used for
- extending the relation EOF.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Restructure planner-to-executor API (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Notably, the executor no longer sees the Query structure at all, but
- gets a new node type called PlannedStmt that is more suitable as
- executor input. This allows us to stop storing mostly-redundant
- Query trees in prepared statements, portals, etc. Also, the
- rangetable used by the executor is now a flat list with no
- unnecessary substructure — this simplifies many things.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Preserve typmod information in Const, Param, ArrayRef, ArrayExpr,
- and EXPR and ARRAY SubLink nodes (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This seems like a good idea in view of the expected increase in
- typmod usage from Teodor's work to allow user-defined types to have
- typmods.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove advertising clause from Berkeley BSD-licensed files, per
- instructions from Berkeley (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Replace 4-clause licensed blf.[ch] in contrib/pgcrypto with blowfish
- implementation from PuTTY which is under minimal BSD/MIT license
- (Marko Kreen)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Decouple the values of TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD and
- TOAST_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE, and adjust them to avoid wasting two bytes per
- toast chunk (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This forces initdb because the value of TOAST_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE
- determines the content of toast tables. Add TOAST_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE to
- the values checked in pg_control, since it can't be changed without
- invalidating toast table content.
- </para>
-
- <note>
- <para>
- While TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD can now be changed without initdb, some
- thought still needs to be given to needs_toast_table() in
- toasting.c before unleashing random changes.
- </para>
- </note>
- </listitem>
-
<listitem>
<para>
Fix pgstats counting of live and dead tuples to recognize that
committed and aborted transactions have different effects (Tom)
</para>
-
- <para>
- This should result in noticeably more accurate tracking of
- n_live_tuples and n_dead_tuples.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a flag bit to WAL records that shows whether it is safe to
- remove full-page images (Koichi Suzuki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This supports implementation of external WAL-compression filters
- that remove such images.
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Create hooks to let a loadable plugin monitor (or even replace) the
- planner and/or create plans for hypothetical situations (Gurjeet
+ planner and create plans for hypothetical situations (Gurjeet
Singh, Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Downgrade some boring startup messages to <literal>DEBUG1</literal>
- (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix several hash functions that were taking chintzy shortcuts
- instead of delivering a well-randomized hash value (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Redefine IsTransactionState() to only return true for
- TRANS_INPROGRESS state (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Arrange for <function>quote_identifier()</function> and
- <application>pg_dump</application> to not quote keywords that are
+ Have <function>quote_identifier()</function> and
+ <application>pg_dump</application> not quote keywords that are
unreserved according to the grammar (Tom)
</para>
-
- <para>
- Should this be flagged as a potential incompatibility?
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PGXS conventions so that extensions can be built against
- Postgres installations whose pg_config program does not appear first
- in the PATH (Tom)
- </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Adjust the output of <function>MemoryContextStats()</function> so
- that the line for a child memory context is indented two spaces to
- the right of its parent context (Neil)
+ Fix <acronym>PGXS</> so extensions can be built against Postgres
+ installations whose <application>pg_config</> program does not
+ appear first in the <varname>PATH</> (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Change the on-disk representation of the <type>numeric</type>
- datatype so that the sign_dscale word comes before the weight
- instead of after (Tom)
+ Change the on-disk representation of the <type>NUMERIC</type>
+ data type so that the <structfield>sign_dscale</> word comes
+ before the weight (Tom)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Use SYSV semaphores rather than POSIX on Darwin >= 6.0, i.e., OS X
- 10.2 and up (Chris Marcellino)
+ Use <acronym>SYSV</> semaphores rather than POSIX on Darwin
+ >= 6.0, i.e., OS X 10.2 and up (Chris Marcellino)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Add <filename>/contrib/uuid-ossp</filename> module for generating
- UUID values using the OSSP UUID library (Peter)
+ <type>UUID</> values using the OSSP UUID library (Peter)
</para>
<para>
- Use configure option <literal>--with-ossp-uuid</literal> to
- activate. This takes advantage of the new <type>uuid</type> builtin
- type.
+ Use <application>configure</>
+ <literal>--with-ossp-uuid</literal> to activate. This takes
+ advantage of the new <type>UUID</type> builtin type.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add pgbench option to set fillfactor (Pavan Deolasee)
+ Allow <application>pgbench</> to set the fillfactor (Pavan Deolasee)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Enhance pgbench -l option to add timestamp (Greg Smith)
+ Add timestamps to <application>pgbench</> <literal>-l</> (Greg
+ Smith)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add usage count statistics to the information available from
+ Add usage count statistics to
<filename>contrib/pgbuffercache</filename> (Greg Smith)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add GIN support for hstore (Teodor)
+ Add GIN support for <filename>hstore</> (Teodor)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Add GIN support for pg_trgm (Guillaume Smet, Teodor)
+ Add GIN support for <filename>pg_trgm</> (Guillaume Smet, Teodor)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Update <filename>/contrib/start-scripts</filename> OS/X startup
- files, and move to a separate OS/X directory (Mark Cotner, David
+ Update OS/X startup scripts in
+ <filename>/contrib/start-scripts</filename> (Mark Cotner, David
Fetter)
</para>
</listitem>
projects / thirdparty / postgresql.git / commitdiff
