Re: IS NULL

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> David Link <dlink@soundscan.com> writes:
> > The data in my column was bogus and not of the form 'DDMMYYYY'.  Sorry
> > Tom, my mistake.   Actually, it was of the form YYYY and it was causing
> > the query to blow up with:
>
> > psql:show_title.sql:13: pqReadData() -- backend closed the channel
> > unexpectedly.
>
> This is a bug.  What version are you using?  Could you supply
> an exact example of a value that makes it crash?

pg 7.0.3 (running on mandrake 8.0 / 2.4.3 kernal)

Query 1 - All's Well:

bobcat=# select upckey, upc, title, theatre_reldate, genre, subgenre
from title
 where upckey = 77703;
 upckey |     upc      |   title    | theatre_reldate | genre | subgenre
--------+--------------+------------+-----------------+-------+----------
  77703 | 339660005072 | HOLLOW MAN | 2000            | 944   | x
(1 row)

Queary 2 - Bogus date (garbage in, garbage out):

bobcat=# select upckey, upc, title, to_char(to_date (theatre_reldate,
'DDMMYYYY
'), 'DD Mon YYYY') from title where upckey = 77703;
 upckey |     upc      |             title              |   to_char
--------+--------------+--------------------------------+-------------
  77703 | 339660005072 | HOLLOW MAN                     | 20 Dec 0002
(1 row)

Query 3 - Add a column to query and get more bad data:

bobcat=# select upckey, upc, title, to_char(to_date (theatre_reldate,
'DDMMYYYY
'), 'DD Mon YYYY'), genre from title where upckey = 77703;
 upckey |     upc      |             title              |   to_char   |
genre
--------+--------------+--------------------------------+-------------+-------
  77703 | 339660005072 | HOLLOW MAN                     | 20 Dec 0002 |
¨a
(1 row)


Query 4 - Add another column and it blows up:

bobcat=# select upckey, upc, title, to_char(to_date (theatre_reldate,
'DDMMYYYY'), 'DD Mon YYYY'), genre, subgenre from title where upckey =
77703;
pqReadData() -- backend closed the channel unexpectedly.
        This probably means the backend terminated abnormally
        before or while processing the request.
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Failed.
!#

After repeating the error once or twice, It then gives this error for
this query and others involving this row:

FATAL 1:  Memory exhausted in AllocSetAlloc()
pqReadData() -- backend closed the channel unexpectedly.
        This probably means the backend terminated abnormally
        before or while processing the request.
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Succeeded.

Scared, I shutdown the database and started it up again and it seems to
be OK again.

Thanks, David