Re: 8.2 Release: need help digesting the release notes

Hi people,

As it seems i've had some problems with my registration, i post my precedent
email (bouncing does not work) as an attachment.

It seems the release not i've read are been edited, i'm not sure if my
previous email is still pertinent.
This is more a test to check i'm able to post messages to this list.

Sorry for inconvenience, if any,
--
Dimitri Fontaine
Hi people,

Le vendredi 15 septembre 2006 06:27, vous avez écrit :
> http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgrelease

There's quite a lot of things to read on this page!
PostgreSQL work for this release is once more amazing...

> We'll want to pick out 3-5 things for the main release, and another 3-5
> things for the extended release.   The extended release items can be things
> which matter only to existing users (like pg_dump improvements) but the
> main release items need to be things which are "buzzword compliant" or
> otherwise newsworthy.

I've just spent a couple of hours reading bruce's notes, and here's my topics
proposal. This proposal is only based on this resource.

I try to provide a first single line keyword, then I cite release note
involved lines.
When this single line reference does not seem to be related to the topic you
read it in, please refer to Bruce's list before to complain: the comment
should tell you more about it.

Topic names are (of course) only indications, english language not being my
natural language, and myself not being that much of a marketing aware kind of
person :)

main release items choice
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

* SQL2003 compatibility

  - Make row comparisons follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics and allow
    them to be used in index scans (Tom)
  - Enable standard_conforming_strings to be turned on (Kevin Grittner)
  - Disallow aggregate functions in <command>UPDATE</> commands (unless within
    a subquery) (Tom)
  - Add support for multi-row <literal>VALUES</> clauses as part of
    <command>INSERT</> and <command>SELECT</> statements (Joe, Tom)
  - Aggregate functions now support multiple input parameters
    (Sergey Koposov, Tom)
  - Add new aggregate functions from SQL2003 (Neil)
  - Add SQL2003-standard statistical aggregates (Sergey Koposov)

* better citizen release (win32, ldap, dtrace and oracle support)

  - Add native <acronym>LDAP</> authentication (Magnus Hagander)
  - Win32 stability fixes (Magnus)
  - Improve handling of intermittent file system and resource failures on
    win32 platforms (Qingqing Zhou)
  - Add <literal>STRICT</> to <command>SELECT INTO</> (Matt Miller)
    -- oracle compatibility
  - Add DTrace support (Robert Lor)
  - Allow <acronym>MSVC</> to compile the PostgreSQL server
    (Magnus, Hiroshi Saito)

* Prepared statement improving (performance, logging/debugging, explain
  support, better planning)

  - Improve logging of protocol-level prepare/bind/execute messages
    (Bruce, Tom)
  - Support portal parameters in <command>EXPLAIN</> and <command>EXECUTE</>
    (Tom)
  - Add system view <literal>pg_prepared_statements</> to show prepared
    statements (Joachim Wieland)
  - Protocol-level unnamed prepared statements are re-planned for each set of
    <literal>BIND</> values (Tom)

> One big thing is overall performance, which is up 20% overall on OLTP
> workload tests at Sun. (SpecJ and TPC)

* Overall performance improving

  - Improve locking performance by breaking locks into sections (Tom)
  - Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially
    <literal>pg_stat_activity</> (Tom)
  - Allow the planner to re-order <literal>OUTER JOIN</>s when possible (Tom)
  - Improve subtransaction performance (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

* Features

  - Add option to allow indexes to be created indexes without blocking
    concurrent writes to the table (Greg Stark)
  - Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor)
  - Add hstore module (Oleg, Teodor)

extended release items choice
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

* DBA support

  - Allow <command>COPY</> to dump a <command>SELECT</> query
    (Zoltan Boszormenyi, Karel Zak)
  - Allow multi-line values to align in the proper column in psql
    (Martijn van Oosterhout)
  - Save multi-line statements as a single entry, rather than one line at
    a time (Sergey E. Koposov)
  - Improve highlighting of error location in query in more cases (Tom)
  - Add <application>pg_restore</> option to run the entire session in a
    single transaction (Simon)
  - Add pg_freespacemap to display free space map information (Mark Kirkwood)

* Fine grained online backup control and restartable recovery

  - Allow a forced switch to a new xlog file (Simon Riggs, Tom)
  - Allow <acronym>WAL</> replay to be restored quicker in case of a crash
    (Simon Riggs)
  - Add timer to force xlog file switches at a given interval (Simon Riggs)

* complete ddl partitionning

  - Allow constraint exclusion to be applied to inherited
    <command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</> queries (Tom)
  - Add <literal>ALTER TABLE ... [NO] INHERIT</> (Greg Stark)

Homework's done, hope you like it :)
--
dim