PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 9th 2003

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 9th 2003 ==

    A group of PostgreSQL users has decided to undertake creating a more
comprehensive test package to be used for benchmarking comparisons. The
initial effort spawned from discussions on the -performance list
regarding recommended OS and file systems for PostgreSQL. There are
several different theories on what to recommend, but no hard figures to
back it up.  Right now the plan is to make the test perl-based using a
database of wireless services available from the FCC.  They are currently
hoping to have something to show in the next few weeks.

    On the development front, there were a lot of little changes like
tweaking variable types or removing of redundant function calls.
Miscellaneous fixes in the current cvs code include a repair of
incorrect checking of grouped/ungrouped variables in the presence of
unnamed joins (per hackers discussion), fixing load_user/load_group to
not leave dangling pointers around if the config files are present on
one pass and not present on a later pass, preventing EXPLAIN (without
ANALYZE) SELECT ... INTO from creating an INTO table, cleaning up the
GUC comparison script, and avoiding repeated computation of the
constants date2j(1970, 1, 1) and date2j(2000, 1, 1) which should make
for some marginal speed improvement in date/time operations.

    There was some additional work done on the "remove zero damaged pages"
functionality. Some signed-vs-unsigned-int issues were fixed and
print_aligned_vertical was made safe for zero-column tables. The example
GUC setting in the postgresql.conf to turn this feature on was removed
in an effort to keep people from accidentally turning this on as it can
be quite destructive if used incorrectly. Folks thinking they might need
this are encouraged to read the discussion on -hackers and read the
documentation that explains just how dangerous it is.  The first phase
of Joe Conway's work on array improvements has also been added in.
ARRAY[x,y,z] constructor expressions, ARRAY(sub-SELECT) expressions,
some array functions, and polymorphic functions using
ANYARRAY/ANYELEMENT argument and return types are all included in this
patch.  There were some regression tests in place, though more may be
needed and the documentation is currently lacking; still it's a good
start. A long time annoyance with foreign key locks was fixed by Jan
Wieck. The fix involved avoiding primary key lookup (and lock) if
foreign key does not change on UPDATE. The trick is to actually do a
check identical to NO ACTION after an eventually done UPDATE in the SET
DEFAULT case. Since a SET DEFAULT operation should have moved
referencing rows to a new "home", a following NO ACTION check can only
fail if the column defaults of the referencing table resulted in the key
we actually deleted. Thanks to Stephan Szabo and Tom Lane for their help
on that.

    On the win32 front, additions were put in to handle cp, rm, and exec
for win32 platforms. Win32 path handling (for / vs \ and drive letters)
is also now in place, and a compile problem with Win32 macro used inside
another macro has been fixed.



== PostgreSQL Product News ==

phpPgAdmin 3.0.0-dev-3 released
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=266122

First public release of Open Application Server
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-04/msg00142.php

EMS PostgreSQL Query and PostgreSQL Extract released
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-04/msg00521.php



== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Ellison an oracle for open source?
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/04/02/2129211&mode=thread&tid=3



== Upcoming Events ==

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 - April 9th 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