== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 17 2010 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 17 2010 ==

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

psqlODBC 09.00.0101, an ODBC driver for PostgreSQL, released.
http://psqlodbc.projects.postgresql.org/release.html

== PostgreSQL Jobs for October ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2010-10/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

SFPUG presents David Fetter and Josh Berkus on PL/Parrot, 9.0 Q&A, and
JDCon West, Oh My!  October 19, 2010 at EzRez in San Francisco.
http://www.meetup.com/postgresql-1/calendar/14770870/

PDXPUG presents Aurynn Shaw on Postgres and Node.js.  Thursday,
October 21, 2010, 7-9pm at FreeGeek in Portland, Oregon.
http://pugs.postgresql.org/node/1650

The deadline for the CfP for MySQL Conf is October 25, 2010.  Mail
Selena Deckelman selenamarie <AT> gmail <DOT> com for feedback, help
with submissions, or help generating ideas.
http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2011/public/cfp/126

PgDay.IT 2010 will be in Rome this year December 10th.  The Call for
Papers is now open.
http://www.pgday.it/

Early bird registration for JDCon West 2010 is now open.  Scott
McNealy, formerly of Sun Microsystems, will keynote.
https://www.postgresqlconference.org/content/pgwest-2010-registration

Call for Papers for PGDay.EU 2010 held on December 6-8 in Stuttgart,
Germany is open.
http://2010.pgday.eu/callforpapers


== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter

Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
Please send English language ones to david@fetter.org, German language
to pwn@pgug.de, Italian language to pwn@itpug.org.  Spanish language
to pwn@arpug.com.ar.

== Reviews ==

Andrew Geery reviewed the patch to extend NOT NULL representation to
pg_constraint.

Alvaro Herrera reviewed the patch to fix snapshot taking inaccuracies.

== Applied Patches ==

Tom Lane pushed:

- Fix assorted bugs in GIN's WAL replay logic.  The original coding
  was quite sloppy about handling the case where XLogReadBuffer fails
  (because the page has since been deleted).  This would result in
  either "bad buffer id: 0" or an Assert failure during replay, if
  indeed the page were no longer there.  In a couple of places it also
  neglected to check whether the change had already been applied,
  which would probably result in corrupted index contents.  I believe
  that bug #5703 is an instance of the first problem.  These issues
  could show up without replication, but only if you were unfortunate
  enough to crash between modification of a GIN index and the next
  checkpoint.  Back-patch to 8.2, which is as far back as GIN has WAL
  support.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=4016bdef8aded77b4903c457050622a5a1815c16

- Fix plpython so that it again honors typmod while assigning to tuple
  fields.  This was broken in 9.0 while improving plpython's
  conversion behavior for bytea and boolean.  Per bug report from
  maizi.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=09130e5867d49c72ef0f11bef30c5385d83bf194

- Remove some unnecessary tests of pgstat_track_counts.  We may as
  well make pgstat_count_heap_scan() and related macros just count
  whenever rel->pgstat_info isn't null.  Testing pgstat_track_counts
  buys nothing at all in the normal case where that flag is ON; and
  when it's OFF, the pgstat_info link will be null, so it's still a
  useless test.  This change is unlikely to buy any noticeable
  performance improvement, but a cycle shaved is a cycle earned; and
  my investigations earlier today convinced me that we're down to the
  point where individual instructions in the inner execution loops are
  starting to matter.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=f4d242ef94730c447d87b9840a40b0ec3371fe0f

- Document the DISTINCT noise word in the UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT
  constructs.  I also rearranged the order of the sections to match
  the logical order of processing steps: the distinct-elimination
  implied by SELECT DISTINCT happens before, not after, any
  UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT combination.  Per a suggestion from Hitoshi
  Harada.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=71d24466fb84bf51c479dcc85b52a0c2b71b9c50

- Allow WITH clauses to be attached to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
  statements.  This is not the hoped-for facility of using
  INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE inside a WITH, but rather the other way around.
  It seems useful in its own right anyway.  Note: catversion bumped
  because, although the contents of stored rules might look
  compatible, there's actually a subtle semantic change.  A single
  Query containing a WITH and INSERT...VALUES now represents writing
  the WITH before the INSERT, not before the VALUES.  While it's not
  clear that that matters to anyone, it seems like a good idea to have
  it cited in the git history for catversion.h.  Original patch by
  Marko Tiikkaja, with updating and cleanup by Hitoshi Harada.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=07f1264dda0e776a7e329b091c127059bce8cc54

- Fix recent changes to not break non-IPV6-aware systems.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=9771125c18c5746be57a55cfc31340f5311fca2c

- Improve GIN indexscan cost estimation.  The better estimate requires
  more statistics than we previously stored: in particular, counts of
  "entry" versus "data" pages within the index, as well as knowledge
  of the number of distinct key values.  We collect this information
  during initial index build and update it during VACUUM, storing the
  info in new fields on the index metapage.  No initdb is required
  because these fields will read as zeroes in a pre-existing index,
  and the new gincostestimate code is coded to behave (reasonably)
  sanely if they are zeroes.  Teodor Sigaev, reviewed by Jan Urbanski,
  Tom Lane, and Itagaki Takahiro.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=48c7d9f6ff99714495b7d6d2ebc44fbbe992cc8f

- Fix a passel of inappropriately-named global functions in GIN.  The
  GIN code has absolutely no business exporting GIN-specific functions
  with names as generic as compareItemPointers() or newScanKey();
  that's just trouble waiting to happen.  I got annoyed about this
  again just now and decided to fix it.  This commit ensures that all
  global symbols defined in access/gin/ have names including "gin" or
  "Gin".  There were a couple of cases, like names involving
  "PostingItem", where arguably the names were already sufficiently
  nongeneric; but I figured as long as I was risking creating merge
  problems for unapplied GIN patches I might as well impose a uniform
  policy.  I didn't touch any static symbol names.  There might be
  some places where it'd be appropriate to rename some static
  functions to match siblings that are exported, but I'll leave that
  for another time.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=419d2374bfbc1eae562121fde31c1aa0e8a164cb

Alvaro Herrera pushed:

- Fix typo.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=82659e0456f5c5a52a35ee41e63882c280ec2496

- Allow pg_ctl to register the service in either AUTO or DEMAND start
  type Author: Quan Zongliang.  Documentation updates by David Fetter
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=0c9b166db5329119b6553e0f38fe486521f1352f

- Document that translate() removes characters in "from" that don't
  have a corresponding "to" character.  Author: Josh Kupershmidt.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=33ae03f4003adb27651d00688016d1c4a979686f

ITAGAKI Takahiro pushed:

- Accept 'public' as a pseudo-role name in has_table_privilege() and
  friends to see if a particular privilege has been granted to PUBLIC.
  The issue was reported by Jim Nasby.  Patch by Alvaro Herrera, and
  reviewed by KaiGai Kohei.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=d0f876ca8ccb7dc8820302543b114014b7bac090

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- Mention the default pg_ctl wait time in the -t option documentation
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=ceb5b787c6fcfbb8667f3b0254d2f2796cee20e2

- Fix makefile logic to not break the build when xgettext is missing.
  xgettext is only required when make init-po is run manually; it is
  not required for a build.  The intent to handle that was already
  there, but the ifdef's were in the wrong place.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=30e749dece0e6502d4dd0a3b2892eab61f8c073b

- Remove reference.ced.  This is a parsed DocBook DTD for the PSGML
  Emacs mode, but it hasn't been updated since we switched to DocBook
  4.2 about seven years ago.  Also, PSGML has deprecated this method
  of DTD parsing.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=402e11913fe05a7523828554cc2de3f1eb982d9c

- Document (compositeval).* field selection syntax.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=80ada4c0dbc877d494f7c8886fdaebda0fbbe0bc

- Complete the documentation of the USAGE privilege for foreign
  servers.  The GRANT reference page failed to mention that the USAGE
  privilege allows modifying associated user mappings, although this
  was already documented on the CREATE/ALTER/DROP USER MAPPING pages.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=9f2d7f6e2de23ecc1cfdd4172e23bd8b949fbcd2

- Support MergeAppend plans, to allow sorted output from append
  relations.  This patch eliminates the former need to sort the output
  of an Append scan when an ordered scan of an inheritance tree is
  wanted.  This should be particularly useful for fast-start cases
  such as queries with LIMIT.  Original patch by Greg Stark, with
  further hacking by Hans-Jurgen Schonig, Robert Haas, and Tom Lane.

- Change references to SQL/XML:2003 to :2008 and renumber sections
  accordingly
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=3cde44374ac6cd83915d34042a10030a3bbfcd31

- Support host names in pg_hba.conf.  Peter Eisentraut, reviewed by
  KaiGai Kohei and Tom Lane
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=6ab42ae36713b1e6f961c37e22f99d3e6267523b

  - Remove executable permission from files where it doesn't belong
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=1a996d6c2972b343d8ec446d1c7c4c5fa8e19ef4

- Put per-letter quicklinks at the top of the HTML bookindex page.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=3bf79839c81b84a234c40faa56c8e0464a533b6a

- Add index entries for pg_stat* views.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=e8a47b3cb92de64e80ae444e90f5a9cbb4294d48

- Make title capitalization consistent with surroundings
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=ef204db5778f04225dcf145f6480402a614fff73

Michael Meskes pushed:

- Applied patch by Itagaki Takahiro to fix incorrect status
  calculation in ecpglib. Instead of parsing the statement just as ask
  the database server. This patch removes the whole client side track
  keeping of the current transaction status.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=816b008eaf1a1ff1069f3bafff363a9a8bf04a21

Simon Riggs pushed:

- Fix bug in comment of timeline history file.  Fujii Masao.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=45cd9199c2498b04cccc3989a5abbd04def806b3

- Make startup process respond to signals to cancel waiting on latch.
  A tidy up for recently committed changes to startup latch.  Fujii
  Masao.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=3bbcc5c9992f21fa735f438f5ff5f3a81efea39c

- Improvements to docs about pg_archive_cleanup and use of archives
  Brendan Jurd.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=7085891784784fda7314c0510da901fc8402380a

- Correct WAL space calculation formula in docs.  Error pointed out by
  Fujii Masao, though not his patch.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=915116bc62db2aaec7001bde6610128f4cbd29f9

Robert Haas pushed:

- Add pg_user_mappings to the table of system views.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=e4682133586c641096969ff26dc520d1d6bac7cc

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- Improve comment about ignoring 128 error code on Windows: "Microsoft
  reports it is related to mutex failure: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2010-09/msg00790.php"
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=23177114c6f4f12d313d453e9153daf80c94c70b

Magnus Hagander pushed:

- Fix low-risk potential denial of service against RADIUS login.
  Corrupt RADIUS responses were treated as errors and not ignored
  (which the RFC2865 states they should be). This meant that a user
  with unfiltered access to the network of the PostgreSQL or RADIUS
  server could send a spoofed RADIUS response to the PostgreSQL server
  causing it to reject a valid login, provided the attacker could also
  guess (or brute-force) the correct port number.  Fix is to simply
  retry the receive in a loop until the timeout has expired or a valid
  (signed by the correct RADIUS server) packet arrives.  Reported by
  Alan DeKok in bug #5687.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=0e7f7071e893bb171150e53271404b0819a40669

- Fix msvc build for localized versions of Visual C++.  Look only at
  the non-localized part of the output from "vcbuild /?", which is
  used to determine the version of Visual Studio in use.  Different
  languages seem to localize different amounts of the string, but we
  assume the part "Microsoft Visual C++" won't be modified.
  http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=cd0e8253216907982fe369b91f6d788d699b6c47

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

KaiGai Kohei sent in another patch to fix some access control leaks in
views.

Robert Haas sent in another revision of the levenshtein_less_equal
patch.

Dimitri Fontaine sent in a patch to implement CREATE EXTENSION.

Andrew Dunstan sent in another revision of the patch to make enums
extensible.

Radoslaw Smogura sent in three more revisions of the patch to add
setQueryTimeout et al. to the JDBC driver.

Pursuant to Andrew Geery's review, Bernd Helmle and Dean Rasheed
traded new patches which extend NOT NULL representation into
pg_constraint.

Dean Rasheed reviewed and sent a revised patch for extensible ENUMs.

Dimitri Fontaine sent in seven revisions of a patch to add EXTENSIONs.

Robert Haas reviewed and revised the patch for knngist.

Terry Laurenzo sent in an alternative patch to add JSON support to
PostgreSQL.

Peter Eisentraut added an "all" option for network interfaces to
pg_hba.conf.  This has the same functionality as specifying behavior
for 0.0.0.0/0 (IPv4) and ::/0 (IPv6) taken together.

Greg Smith reviewed and revised the patch to add MERGE.

Andres Freund sent in a WIP patch to implement cancelling "<IDLE> in
transaction" connections.

Brendan Jurd sent in a patch to make keywords in pg_hba.conf
field-specific.