== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 12 2014 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 12 2014 ==

PostgreSQL 9.4 Beta 3 released.  TEST!
http://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1547/

The CfP for PGConf NYC 2015 is open through December 17th, 2014
Notifications will go out on January 10, 2014.  The event takes place
March 25-27, 2015 in NYC.
http://nyc.pgconf.us/2015/

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

pgBadger 6.2, a parallel PostgreSQL log analyzer written in Perl, released:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbadger/
Development:
https://github.com/dalibo/pgbadger/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for October ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2014-10/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The fifth edition of the Argentinian PostgreSQL Day will be held on
November 28th, 2014 in Santa Fe, Argentina.  The International CfP is
open through September 28th, 2014.
http://www.postgresql.org.ar/pgday2014

The 4th PgDay Ecuador will be held on Tuesday 7th in October at the
city of Quito, as part of the 5th International Congress of Free
Software.  Send talk proposals to ecpug AT postgresql DOT org.

The sixth PGDay Cubano be held on 13 and 14 October 2014 in Habana.
https://postgresql.uci.cu/?p=380

PGConf.EU 2014 in Madrid, Spain on October 21-24 is now open for
registration.
http://2014.pgconf.eu/registration/

PGDay.IT 2014 will take place in Prato on November the 7th 2014.  The
International Call For Papers is now open:
http://2014.pgday.it/call-for-papers-en/

== 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.

== Applied Patches ==

Andres Freund pushed:

- Rename pg_recvlogical's --create/--drop to
  --create-slot/--drop-slot.  A future patch (9.5 only) adds slot
  management to pg_receivexlog.  The verbs create/drop don't seem
  descriptive enough there. It seems better to rename pg_recvlogical's
  commands now, in beta, than live with the inconsistency forever.
  The old form (e.g. --drop) will still be accepted by virtue of most
  getopt_long() options accepting abbreviations for long commands.
  Backpatch to 9.4 where pg_recvlogical was introduced.  Author:
  Michael Paquier and Andres Freund Discussion:
  CAB7nPqQtt79U6FmhwvgqJmNyWcVCbbV-nS72j_jyPEopERg9rg@mail.gmail.com
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c8b6cba84a986ae9154f748e44709a17d6723191

- Add support for managing physical replication slots to
  pg_receivexlog.  pg_receivexlog already has the capability to use a
  replication slot to reserve WAL on the upstream node. But the used
  slot currently has to be created via SQL.  To allow using slots
  directly, without involving SQL, add --create-slot and --drop-slot
  actions, analogous to the logical slot manipulation support in
  pg_recvlogical.  Author: Michael Paquier Discussion:
  CABUevEx+zrOHZOQg+dPapNPFRJdsk59b=TSVf30Z71GnFXhQaw@mail.gmail.com
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/d9f38c7a555dd5a6b81100c6d1e4aa68342d8771

Stephen Frost pushed:

- Clean up Create/DropReplicationSlot query buffer.
  CreateReplicationSlot() and DropReplicationSlot() were not cleaning
  up the query buffer in some cases (mostly error conditions) which
  meant a small leak.  Not generally an issue as the error case would
  result in an immediate exit, but not difficult to fix either and
  reduces the number of false positives from code analyzers.  In
  passing, also add appropriate PQclear() calls to
  RunIdentifySystem().  Pointed out by Coverity.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/273b29dbe96b1584dd66615cf8dc83e7e6ae7386

Tom Lane pushed:

- Fix array overrun in ecpg's version of ParseDateTime().  The code
  wrote a value into the caller's field[] array before checking to see
  if there was room, which of course is backwards.  Per report from
  Michael Paquier.  I fixed the equivalent bug in the backend's
  version of this code way back in 630684d3a130bb93, but failed to
  think about ecpg's copy.  Fortunately this doesn't look like it
  would be exploitable for anything worse than a core dump: an
  external attacker would have no control over the single word that
  gets written.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/55bfdd1cfd991af0864535bbca24a606e8be7e45

- Fix bogus optimization in JSONB containment tests.  When determining
  whether one JSONB object contains another, it's okay to make a quick
  exit if the first object has fewer pairs than the second: because we
  de-duplicate keys within objects, it is impossible that the first
  object has all the keys the second does.  However, the code was
  applying this rule to JSONB arrays as well, where it does *not* hold
  because arrays can contain duplicate entries.  The test was really
  in the wrong place anyway; we should do it within JsonbDeepContains,
  where it can be applied to nested objects not only top-level ones.
  Report and test cases by Alexander Korotkov; fix by Peter Geoghegan
  and Tom Lane.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4a50de13127b7657f32f14dc17beb2e15a3a4777

- Improve documentation about JSONB array containment behavior.  Per
  gripe from Josh Berkus.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/25ad5a52847699527ddba6e86aa353075e578e9b

Robert Haas pushed:

- Fix typo in elog message.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c421efd21330f2e5bed253b4a53d7ea5e084edf6

- Extend shm_mq API with new functions shm_mq_sendv,
  shm_mq_set_handle.  shm_mq_sendv sends a message to the queue
  assembled from multiple locations.  This is expected to be used by
  forthcoming patches to allow frontend/backend protocol messages to
  be sent via shm_mq, but might be useful for other purposes as well.
  shm_mq_set_handle associates a BackgroundWorkerHandle with an
  already-existing shm_mq_handle.  This solves a timing problem when
  creating a shm_mq to communicate with a newly-launched background
  worker: if you attach to the queue first, and the background worker
  fails to start, you might block forever trying to do I/O on the
  queue; but if you start the background worker first, but then die
  before attaching to the queue, the background worrker might block
  forever trying to do I/O on the queue.  This lets you attach before
  starting the worker (so that the worker is protected) and then
  associate the BackgroundWorkerHandle later (so that you are also
  protected).  Patch by me, reviewed by Stephen Frost.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7bb0e97407c32cbf7245ef91fcc27d120c81e872

Álvaro Herrera pushed:

- Implement SKIP LOCKED for row-level locks This clause changes the
  behavior of SELECT locking clauses in the presence of locked rows:
  instead of causing a process to block waiting for the locks held by
  other processes (or raise an error, with NOWAIT), SKIP LOCKED makes
  the new reader skip over such rows.  While this is not appropriate
  behavior for general purposes, there are some cases in which it is
  useful, such as queue-like tables.  Catalog version bumped because
  this patch changes the representation of stored rules.  Reviewed by
  Craig Ringer (based on a previous attempt at an implementation by
  Simon Riggs, who also provided input on the syntax used in the
  current patch), David Rowley, and Álvaro Herrera.  Author: Thomas
  Munro
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/df630b0dd5ea2de52972d456f5978a012436115e

- Split builtins.h to a new header ruleutils.h.  The new header
  contains many prototypes for functions in ruleutils.c that are not
  exposed to the SQL level.  Reviewed by Andres Freund and Michael
  Paquier.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7b1c2a0f2066672b24f6257ec9b8d78a1754f494

Fujii Masao pushed:

- Fix broken example in PL/pgSQL document.  Back-patch to all
  supported branches.  Marti Raudsepp, per a report from Marko
  Tiikkaja
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f19f0ee7160e9aa0bec69146a02e544b9030191b

Heikki Linnakangas pushed:

- Change the way encoding and locale checks are done in pg_upgrade.
  Lc_collate and lc_ctype have been per-database settings since server
  version 8.4, but pg_upgrade was still treating them as cluster-wide
  options.  It fetched the values for the template0 databases in old
  and new cluster, and compared them. That's backwards; the encoding
  and locale of the template0 database doesn't matter, as template0 is
  guaranteed to contain only ASCII characters. But if there are any
  other databases that exist on both clusters (in particular template1
  and postgres databases), their encodings and locales must be
  compatible.  Also, make the locale comparison more lenient. If the
  locale names are not equal, try to canonicalize both of them by
  passing them to setlocale(). We used to do that only when upgrading
  from 9.1 or below, but it seems like a good idea even with newer
  versions. If we change the canonical form of a locale, this allows
  pg_upgrade to still work. I'm about to do just that to fix bug
  #11431, by mapping a locale name that contains non-ASCII characters
  to a pure-ASCII alias of the same locale.  No backpatching, because
  earlier versions of pg_upgrade still support upgrading from 8.3
  servers. That would be more complicated, so it doesn't seem worth
  it, given that we haven't received any complaints about this from
  users.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/33755e8edf149dabfc0ed9b697a84f70b0cca0de

- Remove unnecessary initialization of local variables.  Oops, forgot
  these in the previous commit.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/733be2a5cd124b28a15d5d09de9b227691e6c5a0

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- docs:  remove mention that attnotnull should be changed.  Report by
  Andres Freund
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/80e6af1272750595c02e910bde907e30c592579b

- regression:  adjust polygon diagrams to not use tabs.  Also, small
  diagram adjustments.  Patch by Emre Hasegeli
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4f2e5a8a84f39ec027d1018f655b85b1b1513701

- pg_upgrade:  prefix Unix shell script name output with "./".  This
  more clearly suggests the current directory.  While this also works
  on Windows, it might be confusing.  Report by Christoph Berg
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/dc9c612767f20f28f35f06d709d59ed8477bfe32

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- Message improvements
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b7a08c80283c8d564933381b24c1993d49926e15

- pg_recvlogical: Improve --help output.  List the actions first, as
  they are the most important options.  Group the other options more
  sensibly, consistent with the man page.  Correct a few typographical
  errors, clarify some things.  Also update the pg_receivexlog --help
  output to make it a bit more consistent with that of pg_recvlogical.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/a0fb59d8bd7711fb8f08a4371074f07c62617d78

Noah Misch pushed:

- pg_ctl: Cast DWORD values to avoid -Wformat warnings.  This affects
  pg_ctl alone, because pg_ctl takes the exceptional step of calling
  Windows API functions in a Cygwin build.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/27a23f9dfe81e324e5e51e04aad364bcaaff1096

- Suppress dead, unportable src/port/crypt.c code.  This file used
  __int64, which is specific to native Windows, rather than int64.
  Suppress the long-unused union field of this type.  Noticed on
  Cygwin x86_64 with -lcrypt not installed.  Back-patch to 9.0 (all
  supported versions).
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/772945b4dfb6cc7354e79e23e2552d2d3712d5a1

- Fix quoting in the add_to_path Makefile macro.  The previous quoting
  caused "make -C src/bin check" to ignore, rather than add to, any
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH content from the environment.  Back-patch to 9.4,
  where the macro was introduced.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/494affbd900d1c90de17414a575af1a085c3e37a

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Etsuro Fujita sent in a patch to improve the autoanalyze messages on
inheritance trees.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of a patch to change the
format and API of WALs.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of a patch to implement an
SSL regression test suite.

Fabrízio de Royes Mello sent in another revision of a patch to
implement CINE for indexes.

Ali Akbar sent in two more revisions of a patch to implement
generate_series(numeric, numeric).

Ali Akbar sent in another revision of a patch to fix xpath() to return
namespace definitions.

Dilip Kumar sent in another revision of a patch to allow parallel
cores to be used by vacuumdb.

Álvaro Herrera sent in another revision of a patch to implement BRIN
indexes.

Feike Steenbergen sent in a patch to add regression tests for
autocommit-off mode for psql and fix some omissions, and another to
backpatch it to 9.2+.

Peter Geoghegan sent in another revision of a patch to implement
(INSERT|UPDATE) ... ON CONFLICT...

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a patch to implement page inspection
functions for GIN indexes.

Tom Lane sent in a patch to help fix the mess that is timezone
abbreviations.

Álvaro Herrera sent in three more revisions of a patch to refactor
pg_dump to remove global variables.

Fujii Masao sent in another revision of a patch to add a
pending_list_cleanup_size GUC and associated machinery.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a patch to fix the CRC algorithm so it
matches what the documents say it is.

Michael Paquier sent in three more revisions of a patch to ensure that
.ready files not appear on replicas.

Robert Haas sent in two patches to defer some AtStart* allocations.

Kyotaro HORIGUCHI sent in another revision of a patch to fix a
situation where it was impossible to escape from a blocked send().

Andres Freund sent in three more revisions of a patch to implement
wait-free LW_SHARED acquisition.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of a patch to add a
throttling latency limit to pgbench.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch to allow ALTER ROLE/DATABASE SET to set
PGC_BACKEND and PGC_SU_BACKEND parameters.

Amit Kapila sent in another revision of a patch to scale buffer
eviction.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to remove an obsolete reference to
_bt_tuplecompare() within tuplesort.c.

Kyotaro HORIGUCHI sent in a patch to arrange things so ALTER USER/ROLE
now takes CURRENT_USER as user name, rewrite the sysnopsis of the
documents for ALTER USER and ALTER ROLE so as to they have exactly
same syntax, and modify the syntax of ALTER USER so as to be an alias
of ALTER ROLE.

Craig Ringer sent in another revision of a patch to use a faster,
higher precision timer API on Windows.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to fix some docs around row-level
locking.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to see that B-Tree index builds use
sortsupport.

Noah Misch sent in a patch to fix an error caused by the fact that
Darwin's setlocale() can start a thread.

Fabrízio de Royes Mello sent in a patch to get rid the toast table for
pg_seclabel.

Peter Geoghegan sent in a patch to make B-Tree and CLUSTER sortsupport
use abbreviation and fix PG_CACHE_LINE_SIZE bit rot.

Bruce Momjian and Peter Eisentraut traded patches to deal with some
psql output changes in 9.4-to-be.

Ali Akbar sent in two revisions of a patch to create array_agg() for
arrays.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to create a new header quote.h
in include/utils that groups all the quote-related functions.

Tomas Vondra sent in a WIP patch to implement multivariate statistics.

Álvaro Herrera sent in another revision of a patch to add CREATE
support to event triggers.

SAWADA Masahiko sent in a patch to implement REINDEX SCHEMA.