PostgreSQL Weekly News - Mar 12th 2003

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - Mar 12th 2003 ==

    With a lot of quality work already being done, much of the buzz this
week surrounded discussion of a front end/ back end protocol overhaul.
It's been on the TODO list for quite some time, but some really solid
planning is being laid out and I think there is a high probability we
might see this undertaken before the next release is put out. Speaking
of the TODO list, a couple more items we're marked off the list this
week, including a modification of the regression tests to prevent
failures due to minor numeric rounding and adding checkpoint_min_warning
as a postgresql.conf option to warn about checkpoints that are too
frequent.
    On the bug squashing front, Tom Lane fixed a bug in UPDATE and DELETES
using the new IN implementation, and added regression test to check for
the problem in the future. A bug also was fixed in pg_restore where it
failed to restore blobs if -X disable-triggers was specified. Another
issue was resolved in applications that may have a large number of files
open, such that libpq's socket number exceeds the range supported by
fd_set. This was mainly done by switching to poll(2) in preference to
select(2), those more interested can look for the patch from Chris Brown
in the archives. One final change that was semi-bug related, explicit
tests were added for division by zero to all user-accessible
integer    division and modulo functions, to avoid problems on OS X (which
fails to trap 0 divide at all) and Windows (which traps it in some
bizarre    nonstandard fashion).  He also standardized on 'division by
zero' as the one true spelling of this error message and added
regression tests.
    SQL enthusiasts can rejoice, as SQL92-compatible FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE
n, RELATIVE n options for FETCH and MOVE have been added into the back
end. Another nice feature that has been added is PostgreSQL will now
dump contents of the free space map into a cache file at database
shutdown, and then load it again at database startup.  This preserves
the hard-won knowledge of free space across restarts (given an orderly
shutdown). Those DBA's in the crowd will certainly cheer this addition.
    We've also seen quite a bit done on the JDBC interface, including a
massive cleanup and reorganization of the code. The cleanup included
adding a private api layer (org.postgresql.core.Base*), cleaning up the
public api (org.postgresql.PG*), adding consistent headers and copyright
info, removed some deprecated functionality, and moving some files to
more appropriate locations. Along with this 3 patches were committed;
one from Paul Sorenson to correctly handle schema names in updateable
result sets, one from Rich Cullingford to fix a NPE in the absolute()
method of result set, and one from Tarjei Skorgenes to fix a NPE when
logging is enabled.



== PostgreSQL Product News ==

PostgreSQL Hierarchical Queries 0.3
http://gppl.terminal.ru/index.eng.html

tcap ether traffic accounting to Postgresql alpha1 release
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/tcap/news/newsfull.php?news_id=100

3D Array support added to PL/R
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/plr/news/newsfull.php?news_id=99



== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Waikato waste website a success
http://www.idg.net.nz/pressroom.nsf/UNID/59DEA05DC7E87580CC256CE400835AF5!opendocument

A database query
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/03/07/10osource_1.html?s=tc



== Upcoming Events ==

PostgreSQL Seminar: Instanbul, Turkey: March 15
Devrim Gunduz will present a PostgreSQL seminar in the 1st Open Source
Workshop, at Bilgi University
http://open.bilgi.edu.tr/workshop/workshop.html

Novell BrainShare: Salt Lake City, Utah: April 13-18
A PostgreSQL session including install, configure, administration, and
interfacing with PHP
http://www.novell.com/brainshare

Open Source Conference: Portland, Oregon: July 7-11
A PostgreSQL track will be available at this years conference.
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2003



== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 12th 2003 ==

Don't forget to read Elein Mustain's Weekly Summary of the PostgreSQL
General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org
http://advocacy.postgresql.org