Typical markup:
&<> use & escapes
+PostgreSQL <productname>
+postgresql.conf, pg_hba.conf <filename>
[A-Z][A-Z ]+[A-Z] <command>
[A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]+() <function>
[A-Za-z_]/[A-Za-z_]+ <filename>
-PostgreSQL <productname>
pg_[A-Za-z0-9_] <application>
-[A-Z][A-Z] <type>, <envar>, <literal>
+[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z_ ]* <type>, <envar>, <literal>
non-ASCII characters convert to HTML4 entity (&) escapes
wrap long lines
For new features, add links to the documentation sections. Use </link>
-so that Perl can remove it so HISTORY.html can be created with no
-links to the main documentation. This was added only in 8.2, so don't
-do it for earlier branch release files.
+not just </> so that generate_history.pl can remove it, so HISTORY.html
+can be created without links to the main documentation.
-->
review, so each item is truly a community effort.
</para>
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-7">
- <title>Release 8.3.7</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.6.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.7</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5,
- see the release notes for 8.3.5.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
- related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
- for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
- <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
- potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
- error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
- conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
- if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
- for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
- The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
- failures in the same area.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>xpath()</> to not modify the path expression unless
- necessary, and to make a saner attempt at it when necessary (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The SQL standard suggests that <function>xpath</> should work on data
- that is a document fragment, but <application>libxml</> doesn't support
- that, and indeed it's not clear that this is sensible according to the
- XPath standard. <function>xpath</> attempted to work around this
- mismatch by modifying both the data and the path expression, but the
- modification was buggy and could cause valid searches to fail. Now,
- <function>xpath</> checks whether the data is in fact a well-formed
- document, and if so invokes <application>libxml</> with no change to the
- data or path expression. Otherwise, a different modification method
- that is somewhat less likely to fail is used.
- </para>
-
- <note>
- <para>
- The new modification method is still not 100% satisfactory, and it
- seems likely that no real solution is possible. This patch should
- therefore be viewed as a band-aid to keep from breaking existing
- applications unnecessarily. It is likely that
- <productname>PostgreSQL</> 8.4 will simply reject use of
- <function>xpath</> on data that is not a well-formed document.
- </para>
- </note>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
- are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible failure in text search when C locale is used with
- a multi-byte encoding (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Crashes were possible on platforms where <type>wchar_t</> is narrower
- than <type>int</>; Windows in particular.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix extreme inefficiency in text search parser's handling of an
- email-like string containing multiple <literal>@</> characters (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner problem with sub-<command>SELECT</> in the output list
- of a larger subquery (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The known symptom of this bug is a <quote>failed to locate grouping
- columns</> error that is dependent on the datatype involved;
- but there could be other issues as well.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix decompilation of <literal>CASE WHEN</> with an implicit coercion
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build,
- or an <quote>unexpected CASE WHEN clause</> error message in other
- cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If <command>CLUSTER</> or a rewriting variant of <command>ALTER TABLE</>
- were executed by someone other than the table owner, the
- <structname>pg_type</> entry for the table's TOAST table would end up
- marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems,
- since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any
- ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected
- failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command
- (in 8.1 or 8.2), or <quote>owner of data type appears to be invalid</>
- warnings from <application>pg_dump</> after having done so (in 8.3).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change <command>UNLISTEN</> to exit quickly if the current session has
- never executed any <command>LISTEN</> command (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Most of the time this is not a particularly useful optimization, but
- since <command>DISCARD ALL</> invokes <command>UNLISTEN</>, the previous
- coding caused a substantial performance problem for applications that
- made heavy use of <command>DISCARD ALL</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/pgSQL to not treat <literal>INTO</> after <command>INSERT</> as
- an INTO-variables clause anywhere in the string, not only at the start;
- in particular, don't fail for <command>INSERT INTO</> within
- <command>CREATE RULE</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit
- (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause
- the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Retry failed calls to <function>CallNamedPipe()</> on Windows
- (Steve Marshall, Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- It appears that this function can sometimes fail transiently;
- we previously treated any failure as a hard error, which could
- confuse <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</> as well as other
- operations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
- of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-6">
- <title>Release 8.3.6</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.5.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.6</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5,
- see the release notes for 8.3.5.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>DISCARD ALL</> release advisory locks, in addition
- to everything it already did (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was decided to be the most appropriate behavior. This could
- affect existing applications, however.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix whole-index GiST scans to work correctly (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This error could cause rows to be lost if a table is clustered
- on a GiST index.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix crash of <literal>xmlconcat(NULL)</> (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crash in <literal>ispell</> dictionary if high-bit-set
- characters are used as flags (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is known to be done by one widely available Norwegian dictionary,
- and the same condition may exist in others.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix misordering of <application>pg_dump</> output for composite types
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The most likely problem was for user-defined operator classes to
- be dumped after indexes or views that needed them.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
- function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
- conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
- specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible Assert failure if a statement executed in PL/pgSQL is
- rewritten into another kind of statement, for example if an
- <command>INSERT</> is rewritten into an <command>UPDATE</> (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure that a snapshot is available to datatype input functions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This primarily affects domains that are declared with <literal>CHECK</>
- constraints involving user-defined stable or immutable functions. Such
- functions typically fail if no snapshot has been set.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make it safer for SPI-using functions to be used within datatype I/O;
- in particular, to be used in domain check constraints (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
- (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a problem that sometimes kept <command>ALTER TABLE ENABLE/DISABLE
- RULE</> from being recognized by active sessions (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a problem that made <literal>UPDATE RETURNING tableoid</>
- return zero instead of the correct OID (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow functions declared as taking <type>ANYARRAY</> to work on
- the <structname>pg_statistic</> columns of that type (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This used to work, but was unintentionally broken in 8.3.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner misestimation of selectivity when transitive equality
- is applied to an outer-join clause (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could result in bad plans for queries like
- <literal>... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42 ...</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve optimizer's handling of long <literal>IN</> lists (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change avoids wasting large amounts of time on such lists
- when constraint exclusion is enabled.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent synchronous scan during GIN index build (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Because GIN is optimized for inserting tuples in increasing TID order,
- choosing to use a synchronous scan could slow the build by a factor of
- three or more.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the
- contents of TOAST tables (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented
- as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped
- before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then
- vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor,
- but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory leak when a set-returning function is terminated without
- reading its whole result (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix encoding conversion problems in XML functions when the database
- encoding isn't UTF-8 (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <filename>contrib/dblink</>'s
- <function>dblink_get_result(text,bool)</> function (Joe)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible garbage output from <filename>contrib/sslinfo</> functions
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect behavior of <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> compatibility
- trigger when it's fired more than once in a command (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible mis-signaling in autovacuum (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support running as a service on Windows 7 beta (Dave and Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>ecpg</>'s handling of varchar structs (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>configure</> script to properly report failure when
- unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
- <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
- now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
- mailing lists (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
- Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-5">
- <title>Release 8.3.5</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.4.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.5</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
- see the release notes for 8.3.1. Also, if you were running a previous
- 8.3.X release, it is recommended to <command>REINDEX</> all GiST
- indexes after the upgrade.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry
- <quote>dead</> after a deletion (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This would result in index searches failing to find rows they
- should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with
- <command>REINDEX</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
- error message (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
- the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
- be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
- ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crash in <type>bytea</>-to-XML mapping (Michael McMaster)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
- a trigger (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve optimization of <replaceable>expression</> <literal>IN</>
- (<replaceable>expression-list</>) queries (Tom, per an idea from Robert
- Haas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Cases in which there are query variables on the right-hand side had been
- handled less efficiently in 8.2.x and 8.3.x than in prior versions.
- The fix restores 8.1 behavior for such cases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-<literal>SELECT</> appears
- in a function call in <literal>FROM</>, a multi-row <literal>VALUES</>
- list, or a <literal>RETURNING</> list (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The usual symptom of this problem is an <quote>unrecognized node type</>
- error.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix Assert failure during rescan of an <literal>IS NULL</>
- search of a GiST index (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory leak during rescan of a hashed aggregation plan (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
- function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Force a checkpoint before <command>CREATE DATABASE</> starts to copy
- files (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This prevents a possible failure if files had recently been deleted
- in the source database.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent possible collision of <structfield>relfilenode</> numbers
- when moving a table to another tablespace with <command>ALTER SET
- TABLESPACE</> (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of
- picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect text search headline generation when single query
- item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
- using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
- build (Ron Mayer)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <literal>ILIKE</> compare characters case-insensitively
- even when they're escaped (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <command>DISCARD</> is handled properly by statement logging (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect logging of last-completed-transaction time during
- PITR recovery (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
- behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
- different numbers of columns (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
- but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
- The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Mark <varname>SessionReplicationRole</> as <literal>PGDLLIMPORT</>
- so it can be used by <application>Slony</> on Windows (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix small memory leak when using <application>libpq</>'s
- <literal>gsslib</> parameter (Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The space used by the parameter string was not freed at connection
- close.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <application>libgssapi</> is linked into <application>libpq</>
- if needed (Markus Schaaf)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE ROLE</> (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <filename>pg_control</> is opened in binary mode
- (Itagaki Takahiro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <application>pg_controldata</> and <application>pg_resetxlog</>
- did this incorrectly, and so could fail on Windows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
- DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-4">
- <title>Release 8.3.4</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.3.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.4</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
- see the release notes for 8.3.1.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug in btree WAL recovery code (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Recovery failed if the WAL ended partway through a page split operation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potential use of wrong cutoff XID for HOT page pruning (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This error created a risk of corruption in system
- catalogs that are consulted by <command>VACUUM</>: dead tuple versions
- might be removed too soon. The impact of this on actual database
- operations would be minimal, since the system doesn't follow MVCC
- rules while examining catalogs, but it might result in transiently
- wrong output from <application>pg_dump</> or other client programs.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potential miscalculation of <structfield>datfrozenxid</> (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This error may explain some recent reports of failure to remove old
- <structname>pg_clog</> data.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect HOT updates after <structname>pg_class</> is reindexed
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Corruption of <structname>pg_class</> could occur if <literal>REINDEX
- TABLE pg_class</> was followed in the same session by an <literal>ALTER
- TABLE RENAME</> or <literal>ALTER TABLE SET SCHEMA</> command.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix missed <quote>combo cid</> case (Karl Schnaitter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This error made rows incorrectly invisible to a transaction in which they
- had been deleted by multiple subtransactions that all aborted.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent autovacuum from crashing if the table it's currently
- checking is deleted at just the wrong time (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
- sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
- already held</> errors.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Regenerate foreign key checking queries from scratch when either
- table is modified (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, 8.3 would attempt to replan the query, but would work from
- previously generated query text. This led to failures if a
- table or column was renamed.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix missed permissions checks when a view contains a simple
- <literal>UNION ALL</> construct (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Permissions for the referenced tables were checked properly, but not
- permissions for the view itself.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
- <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
- current rowtype (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This situation is believed to be impossible in 8.3, but it can happen in
- prior releases, so a check seems prudent.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible repeated drops during <command>DROP OWNED</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This would typically result in strange errors such as <quote>cache
- lookup failed for relation NNN</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix several memory leaks in XML operations (Kris Jurka, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>xmlserialize()</> to raise error properly for
- unacceptable target data type (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a couple of places that mis-handled multibyte characters in text
- search configuration file parsing (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Certain characters occurring in configuration files would always cause
- <quote>invalid byte sequence for encoding</> failures.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Provide file name and line number location for all errors reported
- in text search configuration files (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> to first try to interpret its timezone
- argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone
- name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names
- in this order. Making <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> do so as well improves
- consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1:
- in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did,
- since in the older versions <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> accepted
- <emphasis>only</> abbreviations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
- running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent integer overflows during units conversion when displaying a
- configuration parameter that has units (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow spaces in the suffix part of an LDAP URL in
- <filename>pg_hba.conf</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
- ON</> query (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner bug that could improperly push down <literal>IS NULL</>
- tests below an outer join (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was triggered by occurrence of <literal>IS NULL</> tests for
- the same relation in all arms of an upper <literal>OR</> clause.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query,
- but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated
- for new parent query rows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
- boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
- expressions' contents (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
- BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
- <literal>IS NULL</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/PgSQL to not fail when a <literal>FOR</> loop's target variable
- is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
- about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance of <function>PQescapeBytea()</> (Rudolf Leitgeb)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- On Windows, work around a Microsoft bug by preventing
- <application>libpq</> from trying to send more than 64kB per system call
- (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>ecpg</> to handle variables properly in <command>SET</>
- commands (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
- error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
- command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix erroneous WAL file cutoff point calculation in
- <application>pg_standby</> (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
- DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
- Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-3">
- <title>Release 8.3.3</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.3.2.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.3</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
- see the release notes for 8.3.1.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
- as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
- be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
- Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
- another recent patch to cause
- <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
- <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
- <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
- as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
- output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO</> update
- <structname>pg_shdepend</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later
- involved in a <command>DROP OWNED</> or <command>REASSIGN OWNED</>
- operation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-2">
- <title>Release 8.3.2</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>never released</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.1.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.2</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
- see the release notes for 8.3.1.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>ERRORDATA_STACK_SIZE exceeded</literal> crash that
- occurred on Windows when using UTF-8 database encoding and a different
- client encoding (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect archive truncation point calculation for the
- <literal>%r</> macro in <varname>recovery_command</> parameters
- (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could lead to data loss if a warm-standby script relied on
- <literal>%r</> to decide when to throw away WAL segment files.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
- column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
- non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>REASSIGN OWNED</> so that it works on procedural
- languages too (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix problems with <command>SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE</> occurring as a
- subquery in a query with a non-<command>SELECT</> top-level operation
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
- <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
- inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> to show the alias, if any, attached
- to the target table of an <command>UPDATE</> or <command>DELETE</>
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Restore the pre-8.3 behavior that an out-of-range block number in a
- TID being used in a TidScan plan results in silently not matching any
- rows (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- 8.3.0 and 8.3.1 threw an error instead.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix GIN bug that could result in a <literal>too many LWLocks
- taken</literal> failure (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix broken GiST comparison function for <type>tsquery</> (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>tsvector_update_trigger()</> and <function>ts_stat()</>
- to accept domains over the types they expect to work with (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix failure to support enum data types as foreign keys (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid possible crash when decompressing corrupted data
- (Zdenek Kotala)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix race conditions between delayed unlinks and <command>DROP
- DATABASE</> (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In the worst case this could result in deleting a newly created table
- in a new database that happened to get the same OID as the
- recently-dropped one; but of course that is an extremely
- low-probability scenario.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Repair two places where SIGTERM exit of a backend could leave corrupted
- state in shared memory (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Neither case is very important if SIGTERM is used to shut down the
- whole database cluster together, but there was a problem if someone
- tried to SIGTERM individual backends.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crash due to incorrect plan generated for an
- <literal><replaceable>x</> IN (SELECT <replaceable>y</>
- FROM ...)</literal> clause when <replaceable>x</> and <replaceable>y</>
- have different data types; and make sure the behavior is semantically
- correct when the conversion from <replaceable>y</>'s type to
- <replaceable>x</>'s type is lossy (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix oversight that prevented the planner from substituting known Param
- values as if they were constants (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This mistake partially disabled optimization of unnamed
- extended-Query statements in 8.3.0 and 8.3.1: in particular the
- LIKE-to-indexscan optimization would never be applied if the LIKE
- pattern was passed as a parameter, and constraint exclusion
- depending on a parameter value didn't work either.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner failure when an indexable <function>MIN</> or
- <function>MAX</> aggregate is used with <literal>DISTINCT</> or
- <literal>ORDER BY</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner to ensure it never uses a <quote>physical tlist</> for a
- plan node that is feeding a Sort node (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This led to the sort having to push around more data than it really
- needed to, since unused column values were included in the sorted
- data.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid unnecessary copying of query strings (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This fixes a performance problem introduced in 8.3.0 when a very large
- number of commands are submitted as a single query string.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId()</> use binary
- search instead of linear search when checking child-transaction XIDs
- (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This fixes some cases in which 8.3.0 was significantly
- slower than earlier releases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
- Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
- two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix several datatype input functions, notably <function>array_in()</>,
- that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
- uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
- values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
- about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
- expressions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
+<!--
+ To add a new major-release series, add an entry here and in filelist.sgml.
+ Follow the naming convention, or you'll confuse generate_history.pl.
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
- (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
- <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
- the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
- subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
- <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
- This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
- it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
- <literal>foo</>).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent cancellation of an auto-vacuum that was launched to prevent
- XID wraparound (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <command>ANALYZE</>'s handling of in-doubt tuples (those
- inserted or deleted by a not-yet-committed transaction) so that the
- counts it reports to the stats collector are more likely to be correct
- (Pavan Deolasee)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>initdb</> to reject a relative path for its
- <literal>--xlogdir</> (<literal>-X</>) option (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <application>psql</> print tab characters as an appropriate
- number of spaces, rather than <literal>\x09</literal> as was done in
- 8.3.0 and 8.3.1 (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
- DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, and
- Argentina/San_Luis)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>ECPGget_PGconn()</> function to
- <application>ecpglib</> (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
- <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix handling of continuation line markers in <application>ecpg</>
- (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crashes in <filename>contrib/cube</> functions (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
- <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
- NULL value (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
- <literal>CFLAGS</>, and make it auto-configure properly for
- <application>libxslt</> present or not (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3-1">
- <title>Release 8.3.1</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-03-17</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.0.
- For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3.1</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
- However, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
- columns after updating, if you are affected by the Windows locale
- issue described below.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix character string comparison for Windows locales that consider
- different character combinations as equal (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This fix applies only on Windows and only when using UTF-8
- database encoding. The same fix was made for all other cases
- over two years ago, but Windows with UTF-8 uses a separate code
- path that was not updated. If you are using a locale that
- considers some non-identical strings as equal, you may need to
- <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on textual columns.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Repair corner-case bugs in <command>VACUUM FULL</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A potential deadlock between concurrent <command>VACUUM FULL</>
- operations on different system catalogs was introduced in 8.2.
- This has now been corrected. 8.3 made this worse because the
- deadlock could occur within a critical code section, making it
- a PANIC rather than just ERROR condition.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Also, a <command>VACUUM FULL</> that failed partway through
- vacuuming a system catalog could result in cache corruption in
- concurrent database sessions.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Another <command>VACUUM FULL</> bug introduced in 8.3 could
- result in a crash or out-of-memory report when dealing with
- pages containing no live tuples.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix misbehavior of foreign key checks involving <type>character</>
- or <type>bit</> columns (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If the referencing column were of a different but compatible type
- (for instance <type>varchar</>), the constraint was enforced incorrectly.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid needless deadlock failures in no-op foreign-key checks (Stephan
- Szabo, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible core dump when re-planning a prepared query (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This bug affected only protocol-level prepare operations, not
- SQL <command>PREPARE</>, and so tended to be seen only with
- JDBC, DBI, and other client-side drivers that use prepared
- statements heavily.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible failure when re-planning a query that calls an SPI-using
- function (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix failure in row-wise comparisons involving columns of different
- datatypes (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
- race condition (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In rare cases a session that had just executed a
- <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
- one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
- <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
- a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
- row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
- should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
- was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
- some applications depend on the old behavior.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow <command>LISTEN</> and <command>UNLISTEN</> within a
- prepared transaction (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant
- consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit
- as long as an <command>UNLISTEN</> remained uncommitted.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow dropping a temporary table within a
- prepared transaction (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was correctly disallowed by 8.1, but the check was inadvertently
- broken in 8.2 and 8.3.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
- (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect comparison of <type>tsquery</> values (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect behavior of <literal>LIKE</> with non-ASCII characters
- in single-byte encodings (Rolf Jentsch)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disable <function>xmlvalidate</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This function should have been removed before 8.3 release, but
- was inadvertently left in the source code. It poses a small
- security risk since unprivileged users could use it to read the
- first few characters of any file accessible to the server.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory leaks in certain usages of set-returning functions (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>encode(<replaceable>bytea</>, 'escape')</> convert all
- high-bit-set byte values into <literal>\</><replaceable>nnn</> octal
- escape sequences (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is necessary to avoid encoding problems when the database
- encoding is multi-byte. This change could pose compatibility issues
- for applications that are expecting specific results from
- <function>encode</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
- <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid tablespace permissions errors in <command>CREATE TABLE LIKE
- INCLUDING INDEXES</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <structname>pg_stat_activity</>.<structfield>waiting</> flag
- is cleared when a lock wait is aborted (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix handling of process permissions on Windows Vista (Dave, Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In particular, this fix allows starting the server as the Administrator
- user.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008a
- (in particular, recent Chile changes); adjust timezone abbreviation
- <literal>VET</> (Venezuela) to mean UTC-4:30, not UTC-4:00 (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>ecpg</> problems with arrays (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
- number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
- postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
- failure.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
- in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
- with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enable building <filename>contrib/uuid-ossp</> with MSVC (Hiroshi Saito)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-3">
- <title>Release 8.3</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-02-04</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Overview</title>
-
- <para>
- With significant new functionality and performance enhancements,
- this release represents a major leap forward for
- <productname>PostgreSQL</>. This was made possible by a growing
- community that has dramatically accelerated the pace of
- development. This release adds the following major features:
- </para>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Full text search is integrated into the core database system
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an
- <type>XML</type> data type
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enumerated data types (<type>ENUM</type>)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Arrays of composite types
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Universally Unique Identifier (<type>UUID</>) data type
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add control over whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Updatable cursors
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function
- basis
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- User-defined types can now have type modifiers
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Automatically re-plan cached queries when table
- definitions change or statistics are updated
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Numerous improvements in logging and statistics collection
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support Security Service Provider Interface (<acronym>SSPI</>) for
- authentication on Windows
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes, and other
- autovacuum improvements
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow the whole <productname>PostgreSQL</> distribution to be compiled
- with <productname>Microsoft Visual C++</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- <para>
- Major performance improvements are listed below. Most of
- these enhancements are automatic and do not require user changes or
- tuning:
- </para>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Asynchronous commit delays writes to WAL during transaction commit
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Checkpoint writes can be spread over a longer time period to smooth
- the I/O spike during each checkpoint
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Heap-Only Tuples (<acronym>HOT</>) accelerate space reuse for
- most <command>UPDATE</>s and <command>DELETE</>s
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Just-in-time background writer strategy improves disk write
- efficiency
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Using non-persistent transaction IDs for read-only transactions
- reduces overhead and <command>VACUUM</> requirements
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Per-field and per-row storage overhead has been reduced
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Large sequential scans no longer force out frequently used
- cached pages
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Concurrent large sequential scans can now share disk reads
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <literal>ORDER BY ... LIMIT</> can be done without sorting
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- <para>
- The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.3</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
- required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
- release.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Observe the following incompatibilities:
- </para>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>General</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Non-character data types are no longer automatically cast to
- <type>TEXT</> (Peter, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, if a non-character value was supplied to an operator or
- function that requires <type>text</> input, it was automatically
- cast to <type>text</>, for most (though not all) built-in data types.
- This no longer happens: an explicit cast to <type>text</> is now
- required for all non-character-string types. For example, these
- expressions formerly worked:
-
-<programlisting>
-substr(current_date, 1, 4)
-23 LIKE '2%'
-</programlisting>
-
- but will now draw <quote>function does not exist</> and <quote>operator
- does not exist</> errors respectively. Use an explicit cast instead:
-
-<programlisting>
-substr(current_date::text, 1, 4)
-23::text LIKE '2%'
-</programlisting>
-
- (Of course, you can use the more verbose <literal>CAST()</> syntax too.)
- The reason for the change is that these automatic casts too often caused
- surprising behavior. An example is that in previous releases, this
- expression was accepted but did not do what was expected:
-
-<programlisting>
-current_date < 2017-11-17
-</programlisting>
-
- This is actually comparing a date to an integer, which should be
- (and now is) rejected — but in the presence of automatic
- casts both sides were cast to <type>text</> and a textual comparison
- was done, because the <literal>text < text</> operator was able
- to match the expression when no other <literal><</> operator could.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Types <type>char(<replaceable>n</>)</type> and
- <type>varchar(<replaceable>n</>)</type> still cast to <type>text</>
- automatically. Also, automatic casting to <type>text</> still works for
- inputs to the concatenation (<literal>||</>) operator, so long as least
- one input is a character-string type.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Full text search features from <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> have
- been moved into the core server, with some minor syntax changes
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> now contains a compatibility
- interface.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <literal>ARRAY(SELECT ...)</literal>, where the <command>SELECT</>
- returns no rows, now returns an empty array, rather than NULL
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- The array type name for a base data type is no longer always the base
- type's name with an underscore prefix
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The old naming convention is still honored when possible, but
- application code should no longer depend on it. Instead
- use the new <literal>pg_type.typarray</literal> column to
- identify the array data type associated with a given type.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <literal>ORDER BY ... USING</> <replaceable>operator</> must now
- use a less-than or greater-than <replaceable>operator</> that is
- defined in a btree operator class
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This restriction was added to prevent inconsistent results.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <command>SET LOCAL</command> changes now persist until
- the end of the outermost transaction, unless rolled back (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously <command>SET LOCAL</command>'s effects were lost
- after subtransaction commit (<command>RELEASE SAVEPOINT</>
- or exit from a PL/pgSQL exception block).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Commands rejected in transaction blocks are now also rejected in
- multiple-statement query strings (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, <literal>"BEGIN; DROP DATABASE; COMMIT"</> will now be
- rejected even if submitted as a single query message.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <command>ROLLBACK</> outside a transaction block now
- issues <literal>NOTICE</> instead of <literal>WARNING</> (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent <command>NOTIFY</command>/<command>LISTEN</command>/<command>UNLISTEN</command>
- from accepting schema-qualified names (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Formerly, these commands accepted <literal>schema.relation</> but
- ignored the schema part, which was confusing.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <command>ALTER SEQUENCE</> no longer affects the sequence's
- <function>currval()</> state (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Foreign keys now must match indexable conditions for
- cross-data-type references (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This improves semantic consistency and helps avoid
- performance problems.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Restrict object size functions to users who have reasonable
- permissions to view such information (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, <function>pg_database_size()</function> now requires
- <literal>CONNECT</> permission, which is granted to everyone by
- default. <function>pg_tablespace_size()</function> requires
- <literal>CREATE</> permission in the tablespace, or is allowed if
- the tablespace is the default tablespace for the database.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove the undocumented <literal>!!=</> (not in) operator (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <literal>NOT IN (SELECT ...)</literal> is the proper way to
- perform this operation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Internal hashing functions are now more uniformly-distributed (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If application code was computing and storing hash values using
- internal <productname>PostgreSQL</> hashing functions, the hash
- values must be regenerated.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- C-code conventions for handling variable-length data values
- have changed (Greg Stark, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new <function>SET_VARSIZE()</> macro <emphasis>must</> be used
- to set the length of generated <type>varlena</> values. Also, it
- might be necessary to expand (<quote>de-TOAST</quote>) input values
- in more cases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Continuous archiving no longer reports each successful archive
- operation to the server logs unless <literal>DEBUG</> level is used
- (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Configuration Parameters</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Numerous changes in administrative server parameters
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <varname>bgwriter_lru_percent</>,
- <varname>bgwriter_all_percent</>,
- <varname>bgwriter_all_maxpages</>,
- <varname>stats_start_collector</>, and
- <varname>stats_reset_on_server_start</> are removed.
- <varname>redirect_stderr</> is renamed to
- <varname>logging_collector</>.
- <varname>stats_command_string</> is renamed to
- <varname>track_activities</>.
- <varname>stats_block_level</> and <varname>stats_row_level</>
- are merged into <varname>track_counts</>.
- A new boolean configuration parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>,
- controls archiving. Autovacuum's default settings have changed.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <varname>stats_start_collector</varname> parameter (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- We now always start the collector process, unless <acronym>UDP</>
- socket creation fails.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <varname>stats_reset_on_server_start</varname> parameter (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was removed because <function>pg_stat_reset()</function>
- can be used for this purpose.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Commenting out a parameter in <filename>postgresql.conf</> now
- causes it to revert to its default value (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, commenting out an entry left the parameter's value unchanged
- until the next server restart.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Character Encodings</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add more checks for invalidly-encoded data (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change plugs some holes that existed in literal backslash
- escape string processing and <command>COPY</command> escape
- processing. Now the de-escaped string is rechecked to see if the
- result created an invalid multi-byte character.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow database encodings that are inconsistent with the server's
- locale setting (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- On most platforms, <literal>C</> locale is the only locale that
- will work with any database encoding. Other locale settings imply
- a specific encoding and will misbehave if the database encoding
- is something different. (Typical symptoms include bogus textual
- sort order and wrong results from <function>upper()</> or
- <function>lower()</>.) The server now rejects attempts to create
- databases that have an incompatible encoding.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure that <function>chr()</function> cannot create
- invalidly-encoded values (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In UTF8-encoded databases the argument of <function>chr()</function> is
- now treated as a Unicode code point. In other multi-byte encodings
- <function>chr()</function>'s argument must designate a 7-bit ASCII
- character. Zero is no longer accepted.
- <function>ascii()</function> has been adjusted to match.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Adjust <function>convert()</function> behavior to ensure encoding
- validity (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The two argument form of <function>convert()</function> has been
- removed. The three argument form now takes a <type>bytea</type>
- first argument and returns a <type>bytea</type>. To cover the
- loss of functionality, three new functions have been added:
- </para>
-
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <function>convert_from(bytea, name)</function> returns
- <type>text</> — converts the first argument from the named
- encoding to the database encoding
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <function>convert_to(text, name)</function> returns
- <type>bytea</> — converts the first argument from the
- database encoding to the named encoding
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <function>length(bytea, name)</function> returns
- <type>integer</> — gives the length of the first
- argument in characters in the named encoding
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <literal>convert(argument USING conversion_name)</literal>
- (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Its behavior did not match the SQL standard.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make JOHAB encoding client-only (Tatsuo)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- JOHAB is not safe as a server-side encoding.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <para>
- Below you will find a detailed account of the
- changes between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.3 and
- the previous major release.
- </para>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Performance</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Asynchronous commit delays writes to WAL during transaction commit
- (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This feature dramatically increases performance for short data-modifying
- transactions. The disadvantage is that because disk writes are delayed,
- if the database or operating system crashes before data is written to
- the disk, committed data will be lost. This feature is useful for
- applications that can accept some data loss. Unlike turning off
- <varname>fsync</varname>, using asynchronous commit does not put
- database consistency at risk; the worst case is that after a crash the
- last few reportedly-committed transactions might not be committed after
- all.
- This feature is enabled by turning off <varname>synchronous_commit</>
- (which can be done per-session or per-transaction, if some transactions
- are critical and others are not).
- <varname>wal_writer_delay</> can be adjusted to control the maximum
- delay before transactions actually reach disk.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Checkpoint writes can be spread over a longer time period to smooth
- the I/O spike during each checkpoint (Itagaki Takahiro and Heikki
- Linnakangas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously all modified buffers were forced to disk as quickly as
- possible during a
- checkpoint, causing an I/O spike that decreased server performance.
- This new approach spreads out disk writes during checkpoints,
- reducing peak I/O usage. (User-requested and shutdown checkpoints
- are still written as quickly as possible.)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Heap-Only Tuples (<acronym>HOT</>) accelerate space reuse for most
- <command>UPDATE</>s and <command>DELETE</>s (Pavan Deolasee, with
- ideas from many others)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <command>UPDATE</>s and <command>DELETE</>s leave dead tuples
- behind, as do failed <command>INSERT</>s. Previously only
- <command>VACUUM</> could reclaim space taken by dead tuples. With
- <acronym>HOT</> dead tuple space can be automatically reclaimed at
- the time of <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> if no changes
- are made to indexed columns. This allows for more consistent
- performance. Also, <acronym>HOT</> avoids adding duplicate index
- entries.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Just-in-time background writer strategy improves disk write
- efficiency (Greg Smith, Itagaki Takahiro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This greatly reduces the need for manual tuning of the background
- writer.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Per-field and per-row storage overhead have been reduced
- (Greg Stark, Heikki Linnakangas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Variable-length data types with data values less than 128 bytes long
- will see a storage decrease of 3 to 6 bytes. For example, two adjacent
- <type>char(1)</type> fields now use 4 bytes instead of 16. Row headers
- are also 4 bytes shorter than before.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Using non-persistent transaction IDs for read-only transactions
- reduces overhead and <command>VACUUM</> requirements (Florian Pflug)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Non-persistent transaction IDs do not increment the global
- transaction counter. Therefore, they reduce the load on
- <structname>pg_clog</> and increase the time between forced
- vacuums to prevent transaction ID wraparound.
- Other performance
- improvements were also made that should improve concurrency.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid incrementing the command counter after a read-only command (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- There was formerly a hard limit of 2<superscript>32</>
- (4 billion) commands per transaction. Now only commands that
- actually changed the database count, so while this limit still
- exists, it should be significantly less annoying.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Create a dedicated <acronym>WAL</> writer process to off-load
- work from backends (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Skip unnecessary WAL writes for <command>CLUSTER</command> and
- <command>COPY</command> (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Unless WAL archiving is enabled, the system now avoids WAL writes
- for <command>CLUSTER</command> and just <function>fsync()</>s the
- table at the end of the command. It also does the same for
- <command>COPY</command> if the table was created in the same
- transaction.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Large sequential scans no longer force out frequently used
- cached pages (Simon, Heikki, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Concurrent large sequential scans can now share disk reads (Jeff Davis)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is accomplished by starting the new sequential scan in the
- middle of the table (where another sequential scan is already
- in-progress) and wrapping around to the beginning to finish. This
- can affect the order of returned rows in a query that does not
- specify <literal>ORDER BY</>. The <varname>synchronize_seqscans</>
- configuration parameter can be used to disable this if necessary.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <literal>ORDER BY ... LIMIT</> can be done without sorting
- (Greg Stark)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is done by sequentially scanning the table and tracking just
- the <quote>top N</> candidate rows, rather than performing a
- full sort of the entire table. This is useful when there is no
- matching index and the <literal>LIMIT</> is not large.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Put a rate limit on messages sent to the statistics
- collector by backends
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This reduces overhead for short transactions, but might sometimes
- increase the delay before statistics are tallied.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve hash join performance for cases with many NULLs (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Speed up operator lookup for cases with non-exact datatype matches (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Server</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Autovacuum is now enabled by default (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Several changes were made to eliminate disadvantages of having
- autovacuum enabled, thereby justifying the change in default.
- Several other autovacuum parameter defaults were also modified.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes (Alvaro, Itagaki
- Takahiro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows multiple vacuums to run concurrently. This prevents
- vacuuming of a large table from delaying vacuuming of smaller tables.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Automatically re-plan cached queries when table
- definitions change or statistics are updated (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously PL/PgSQL functions that referenced temporary tables
- would fail if the temporary table was dropped and recreated
- between function invocations, unless <literal>EXECUTE</> was
- used. This improvement fixes that problem and many related issues.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a <varname>temp_tablespaces</varname> parameter to control
- the tablespaces for temporary tables and files (Jaime Casanova,
- Albert Cervera, Bernd Helmle)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This parameter defines a list of tablespaces to be used. This
- enables spreading the I/O load across multiple tablespaces. A random
- tablespace is chosen each time a temporary object is created.
- Temporary files are no longer stored in per-database
- <filename>pgsql_tmp/</filename> directories but in per-tablespace
- directories.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Place temporary tables' TOAST tables in special schemas named
- <literal>pg_toast_temp_<replaceable>nnn</></literal> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows low-level code to recognize these tables as temporary,
- which enables various optimizations such as not WAL-logging changes
- and using local rather than shared buffers for access. This also
- fixes a bug wherein backends unexpectedly held open file references
- to temporary TOAST tables.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix problem that a constant flow of new connection requests could
- indefinitely delay the postmaster from completing a shutdown or
- a crash restart (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Guard against a very-low-probability data loss scenario by preventing
- re-use of a deleted table's relfilenode until after the next
- checkpoint (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER</>
- to convert old-style foreign key trigger definitions into regular
- foreign key constraints (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This will ease porting of foreign key constraints carried forward from
- pre-7.3 databases, if they were never converted using
- <filename>contrib/adddepend</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>DEFAULT NULL</> to override inherited defaults (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <literal>DEFAULT NULL</> was formerly considered a noise phrase, but it
- should (and now does) override non-null defaults that would otherwise
- be inherited from a parent table or domain.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new encodings EUC_JIS_2004 and SHIFT_JIS_2004 (Tatsuo)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These new encodings can be converted to and from UTF-8.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change server startup log message from <quote>database system is
- ready</quote> to <quote>database system is ready to accept
- connections</quote>, and adjust its timing
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The message now appears only when the postmaster is really ready
- to accept connections.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Monitoring</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <varname>log_autovacuum_min_duration</varname> parameter to
- support configurable logging of autovacuum activity (Simon, Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <varname>log_lock_waits</varname> parameter to log lock waiting
- (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <varname>log_temp_files</varname> parameter to log temporary
- file usage (Bill Moran)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <varname>log_checkpoints</varname> parameter to improve logging
- of checkpoints (Greg Smith, Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <varname>log_line_prefix</varname> now supports
- <literal>%s</literal> and <literal>%c</literal> escapes in all
- processes (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously these escapes worked only for user sessions, not for
- background database processes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <varname>log_restartpoints</varname> to control logging of
- point-in-time recovery restart points (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Last transaction end time is now logged at end of recovery and at
- each logged restart point (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Autovacuum now reports its activity start time in
- <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow server log output in comma-separated value (CSV) format (Arul
- Shaji, Greg Smith, Andrew Dunstan)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- CSV-format log files can easily be loaded into a database table for
- subsequent analysis.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use PostgreSQL-supplied timezone support for formatting timestamps
- displayed in the server log (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This avoids Windows-specific problems with localized time zone
- names that are in the wrong encoding. There is a new
- <varname>log_timezone</> parameter that controls the timezone
- used in log messages, independently of the client-visible
- <varname>timezone</> parameter.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New system view <literal>pg_stat_bgwriter</literal> displays
- statistics about background writer activity (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new columns for database-wide tuple statistics to
- <literal>pg_stat_database</literal> (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add an <literal>xact_start</literal> (transaction start time) column to
- <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This makes it easier to identify long-running transactions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>n_live_tuples</> and <literal>n_dead_tuples</> columns
- to <literal>pg_stat_all_tables</literal> and related views (Glen
- Parker)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Merge <varname>stats_block_level</> and <varname>stats_row_level</>
- parameters into a single parameter <varname>track_counts</>, which
- controls all messages sent to the statistics collector process
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Rename <varname>stats_command_string</varname> parameter to
- <varname>track_activities</varname> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix statistical counting of live and dead tuples to recognize that
- committed and aborted transactions have different effects (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Authentication</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support Security Service Provider Interface (<acronym>SSPI</>) for
- authentication on Windows (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support GSSAPI authentication (Henry Hotz, Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This should be preferred to native Kerberos authentication because
- GSSAPI is an industry standard.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support a global SSL configuration file (Victor Wagner)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <varname>ssl_ciphers</> parameter to control accepted SSL ciphers
- (Victor Wagner)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a Kerberos realm parameter, <varname>krb_realm</> (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Write-Ahead Log (<acronym>WAL</>) and Continuous Archiving</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change the timestamps recorded in transaction WAL records from
- time_t to TimestampTz representation (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This provides sub-second resolution in WAL, which can be useful for
- point-in-time recovery.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Reduce WAL disk space needed by warm standby servers (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change allows a warm standby server to pass the name of the earliest
- still-needed WAL file to the recovery script, allowing automatic removal
- of no-longer-needed WAL files. This is done using <literal>%r</> in
- the <varname>restore_command</varname> parameter of
- <filename>recovery.conf</filename>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New boolean configuration parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>,
- controls archiving (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously setting <varname>archive_command</> to an empty string
- turned off archiving. Now <varname>archive_mode</> turns archiving
- on and off, independently of <varname>archive_command</>. This is
- useful for stopping archiving temporarily.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Queries</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Full text search is integrated into the core database
- system (Teodor, Oleg)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Text search has been improved, moved into the core code, and is now
- installed by default. <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> now contains
- a compatibility interface.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add control over whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last (Teodor, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The syntax is <literal>ORDER BY ... NULLS FIRST/LAST</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow per-column ascending/descending (<literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</>)
- ordering options for indexes (Teodor, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously a query using <literal>ORDER BY</> with mixed
- <literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</> specifiers could not fully use
- an index. Now an index can be fully used in such cases if the
- index was created with matching
- <literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</> specifications.
- <literal>NULL</> sort order within an index can be controlled, too.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>col IS NULL</> to use an index (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Updatable cursors (Arul Shaji, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This eliminates the need to reference a primary key to
- <command>UPDATE</> or <command>DELETE</> rows returned by a cursor.
- The syntax is <literal>UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>FOR UPDATE</literal> in cursors (Arul Shaji, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Create a general mechanism that supports casts to and from the
- standard string types (<type>TEXT</type>, <type>VARCHAR</type>,
- <type>CHAR</type>) for <emphasis>every</emphasis> datatype, by
- invoking the datatype's I/O functions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, such casts were available only for types that had
- specialized function(s) for the purpose.
- These new casts are assignment-only in the to-string direction,
- explicit-only in the other direction, and therefore should create no
- surprising behavior.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>UNION</> and related constructs to return a domain
- type, when all inputs are of that domain type (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Formerly, the output would be considered to be of the domain's base
- type.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow limited hashing when using two different data types (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows hash joins, hash indexes, hashed subplans, and hash
- aggregation to be used in situations involving cross-data-type
- comparisons, if the data types have compatible hash functions.
- Currently, cross-data-type hashing support exists for
- <type>smallint</type>/<type>integer</type>/<type>bigint</type>,
- and for <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve optimizer logic for detecting when variables are equal
- in a <literal>WHERE</> clause (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows mergejoins to work with descending sort orders, and
- improves recognition of redundant sort columns.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance when planning large inheritance trees in
- cases where most tables are excluded by constraints (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Object Manipulation</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
-
- <para>
- Arrays of composite types (David Fetter, Andrew, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In addition to arrays of explicitly-declared composite types,
- arrays of the rowtypes of regular tables and views are now
- supported, except for rowtypes of system catalogs, sequences, and TOAST
- tables.
- </para>
-
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function
- basis (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, functions can now set their own
- <varname>search_path</> to prevent unexpected behavior if a
- different <varname>search_path</> exists at run-time. Security
- definer functions should set <varname>search_path</varname> to
- avoid security loopholes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command> now supports
- <literal>COST</literal> and <literal>ROWS</literal> options (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <literal>COST</literal> allows specification of the cost of a
- function call. <literal>ROWS</literal> allows specification of
- the average number or rows returned by a set-returning function.
- These values are used by the optimizer in choosing the best plan.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Implement <command>CREATE TABLE LIKE ... INCLUDING
- INDEXES</command> (Trevor Hardcastle, Nikhil Sontakke, Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <command>CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY</command> to ignore
- transactions in other databases (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <command>ALTER VIEW ... RENAME TO</command> and <command>ALTER
- SEQUENCE ... RENAME TO</command> (David Fetter, Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously this could only be done via <command>ALTER TABLE ...
- RENAME TO</command>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE</> wait briefly for
- conflicting backends to exit before failing (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This increases the likelihood that these commands will succeed.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow triggers and rules to be deactivated in groups using a
- configuration parameter, for replication purposes (Jan)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows replication systems to disable triggers and rewrite
- rules as a group without modifying the system catalogs directly.
- The behavior is controlled by <command>ALTER TABLE</> and a new
- parameter <varname>session_replication_role</varname>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- User-defined types can now have type modifiers (Teodor, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows a user-defined type to take a modifier, like
- <type>ssnum(7)</>. Previously only built-in
- data types could have modifiers.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Utility Commands</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Non-superuser database owners now are able to add trusted procedural
- languages to their databases by default (Jeremy Drake)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- While this is reasonably safe, some administrators might wish to
- revoke the privilege. It is controlled by
- <structname>pg_pltemplate</>.<structfield>tmpldbacreate</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow a session's current parameter setting to be used as the
- default for future sessions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is done with <literal>SET ... FROM CURRENT</literal> in
- <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command>, <command>ALTER
- DATABASE</command>, or <command>ALTER ROLE</command>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Implement new commands <command>DISCARD ALL</command>,
- <command>DISCARD PLANS</command>, <command>DISCARD
- TEMPORARY</command>, <command>CLOSE ALL</command>, and
- <command>DEALLOCATE ALL</command> (Marko Kreen, Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These commands simplify resetting a database session to its initial
- state, and are particularly useful for connection-pooling software.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>CLUSTER</command> MVCC-safe (Heikki Linnakangas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Formerly, <command>CLUSTER</command> would discard all tuples
- that were committed dead, even if there were still transactions
- that should be able to see them under MVCC visibility rules.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new <command>CLUSTER</command> syntax: <literal>CLUSTER
- <replaceable>table</> USING <replaceable>index</></literal>
- (Holger Schurig)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The old <command>CLUSTER</command> syntax is still supported, but
- the new form is considered more logical.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>EXPLAIN</command> so it can show complex plans
- more accurately (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- References to subplan outputs are now always shown correctly,
- instead of using <literal>?column<replaceable>N</>?</literal>
- for complicated cases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Limit the amount of information reported when a user is dropped
- (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, dropping (or attempting to drop) a user who owned many
- objects could result in large <literal>NOTICE</literal> or
- <literal>ERROR</literal> messages listing all these objects; this
- caused problems for some client applications. The length of the
- message is now limited, although a full list is still sent to the
- server log.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Data Types</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an
- <type>XML</type> data type (Nikolay Samokhvalov, Pavel Stehule, Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enumerated data types (<type>ENUM</type>) (Tom Dunstan)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This feature provides convenient support for fields that have a
- small, fixed set of allowed values. An example of creating an
- <literal>ENUM</> type is
- <literal>CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy')</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Universally Unique Identifier (<type>UUID</>) data type (Gevik
- Babakhani, Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This closely matches <acronym>RFC</> 4122.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Widen the <type>MONEY</type> data type to 64 bits (D'Arcy Cain)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This greatly increases the range of supported <type>MONEY</>
- values.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type> to handle
- <literal>Infinity</> and <literal>NAN</> (Not A Number)
- consistently (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The code formerly was not consistent about distinguishing
- <literal>Infinity</> from overflow conditions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow leading and trailing whitespace during input of
- <type>boolean</type> values (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent <command>COPY</> from using digits and lowercase letters as
- delimiters (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Functions</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new regular expression functions
- <function>regexp_matches()</function>,
- <function>regexp_split_to_array()</function>, and
- <function>regexp_split_to_table()</function> (Jeremy Drake, Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These functions provide extraction of regular expression
- subexpressions and allow splitting a string using a POSIX regular
- expression.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>lo_truncate()</function> for large object truncation
- (Kris Jurka)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Implement <function>width_bucket()</function> for the <type>float8</>
- data type (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>pg_stat_clear_snapshot()</function> to discard
- statistics snapshots collected during the current transaction
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The first request for statistics in a transaction takes a statistics
- snapshot that does not change during the transaction. This function
- allows the snapshot to be discarded and a new snapshot loaded during
- the next statistics query. This is particularly useful for PL/PgSQL
- functions, which are confined to a single transaction.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>isodow</> option to <function>EXTRACT()</> and
- <function>date_part()</> (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This returns the day of the week, with Sunday as seven.
- (<literal>dow</> returns Sunday as zero.)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>ID</> (ISO day of week) and <literal>IDDD</> (ISO
- day of year) format codes for <function>to_char()</>,
- <function>to_date()</>, and <function>to_timestamp()</> (Brendan
- Jurd)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>to_timestamp()</> and <function>to_date()</>
- assume <literal>TM</literal> (trim) option for potentially
- variable-width fields (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This matches <productname>Oracle</>'s behavior.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix off-by-one conversion error in
- <function>to_date()</function>/<function>to_timestamp()</function>
- <literal>D</> (non-ISO day of week) fields (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>setseed()</function> return void, rather than a
- useless integer value (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a hash function for <type>NUMERIC</type> (Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows hash indexes and hash-based plans to be used with
- <type>NUMERIC</type> columns.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve efficiency of
- <literal>LIKE</literal>/<literal>ILIKE</literal>, especially for
- multi-byte character sets like UTF-8 (Andrew, Itagaki Takahiro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>currtid()</function> functions require
- <literal>SELECT</literal> privileges on the target table (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add several <function>txid_*()</function> functions to query
- active transaction IDs (Jan)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is useful for various replication solutions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add scrollable cursor support, including directional control in
- <command>FETCH</command> (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>IN</literal> as an alternative to
- <literal>FROM</literal> in PL/PgSQL's <command>FETCH</command>
- statement, for consistency with the backend's
- <command>FETCH</command> command (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <command>MOVE</command> to PL/PgSQL (Magnus, Pavel Stehule,
- Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Implement <command>RETURN QUERY</command> (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This adds convenient syntax for PL/PgSQL set-returning functions
- that want to return the result of a query. <command>RETURN QUERY</>
- is easier and more efficient than a loop
- around <command>RETURN NEXT</command>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow function parameter names to be qualified with the
- function's name (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, <literal>myfunc.myvar</>. This is particularly
- useful for specifying variables in a query where the variable
- name might match a column name.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make qualification of variables with block labels work properly (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Formerly, outer-level block labels could unexpectedly interfere with
- recognition of inner-level record or row references.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Tighten requirements for <literal>FOR</literal> loop
- <literal>STEP</> values (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Prevent non-positive <literal>STEP</> values, and handle
- loop overflows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve accuracy when reporting syntax error locations (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Other Server-Side Languages</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow type-name arguments to PL/Perl
- <function>spi_prepare()</function> to be data type aliases in
- addition to names found in <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow type-name arguments to PL/Python
- <function>plpy.prepare()</function> to be data type aliases in
- addition to names found in <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow type-name arguments to PL/Tcl <function>spi_prepare</> to
- be data type aliases in addition to names found in
- <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enable PL/PythonU to compile on Python 2.5 (Marko Kreen)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support a true PL/Python boolean type in compatible Python versions
- (Python 2.3 and later) (Marko Kreen)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Tcl problems with thread-enabled <filename>libtcl</> spawning
- multiple threads within the backend (Steve Marshall, Paul Bayer,
- Doug Knight)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This caused all sorts of unpleasantness.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link></title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- List disabled triggers separately in <literal>\d</literal> output
- (Brendan Jurd)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- In <literal>\d</literal> patterns, always match <literal>$</literal>
- literally (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Show aggregate return types in <literal>\da</literal> output
- (Greg Sabino Mullane)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add the function's volatility status to the output of
- <literal>\df+</literal> (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>\prompt</literal> capability (Chad Wagner)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>\pset</literal>, <literal>\t</literal>, and
- <literal>\x</literal> to specify <literal>on</> or <literal>off</>,
- rather than just toggling (Chad Wagner)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>\sleep</> capability (Jan)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enable <literal>\timing</> output for <literal>\copy</> (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <literal>\timing</literal> resolution on Windows
- (Itagaki Takahiro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Flush <literal>\o</> output after each backslash command (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Correctly detect and report errors while reading a <literal>-f</>
- input file (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <literal>-u</> option (this option has long been deprecated)
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link></title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>--tablespaces-only</> and <literal>--roles-only</>
- options to <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add an output file option to
- <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is primarily useful on Windows, where output redirection of
- child <application>pg_dump</application> processes does not work.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <application>pg_dumpall</> to accept an initial-connection
- database name rather than the default
- <literal>template1</literal> (Dave Page)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- In <literal>-n</> and <literal>-t</> switches, always match
- <literal>$</literal> literally (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance when a database has thousands of objects (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <literal>-u</> option (this option has long been deprecated)
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Other Client Applications</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- In <application>initdb</>, allow the location of the
- <filename>pg_xlog</filename> directory to be specified
- (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enable server core dump generation in <application>pg_regress</>
- on supported operating systems (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a <literal>-t</> (timeout) parameter to <application>pg_ctl</>
- (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This controls how long <application>pg_ctl</> will wait when waiting
- for server startup or shutdown. Formerly the timeout was hard-wired
- as 60 seconds.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a <application>pg_ctl</> option to control generation
- of server core dumps (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow Control-C to cancel <application>clusterdb</>,
- <application>reindexdb</>, and <application>vacuumdb</> (Itagaki
- Takahiro, Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Suppress command tag output for <application>createdb</>,
- <application>createuser</>, <application>dropdb</>, and
- <application>dropuser</> (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The <literal>--quiet</> option is ignored and will be removed in 8.4.
- Progress messages when acting on all databases now go to stdout
- instead of stderr because they are not actually errors.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link></title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Interpret the <literal>dbName</> parameter of
- <function>PQsetdbLogin()</> as a <literal>conninfo</> string if
- it contains an equals sign (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows use of <literal>conninfo</> strings in client
- programs that still use <literal>PQsetdbLogin()</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support a global <acronym>SSL</> configuration file (Victor
- Wagner)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add environment variable <varname>PGSSLKEY</> to control
- <acronym>SSL</> hardware keys (Victor Wagner)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>lo_truncate()</function> for large object
- truncation (Kris Jurka)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>PQconnectionNeedsPassword()</function> that returns
- true if the server required a password but none was supplied
- (Joe Conway, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If this returns true after a failed connection attempt, a client
- application should prompt the user for a password. In the past
- applications have had to check for a specific error message string to
- decide whether a password is needed; that approach is now
- deprecated.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>PQconnectionUsedPassword()</function> that returns
- true if the supplied password was actually used
- (Joe Conway, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is useful in some security contexts where it is important
- to know whether a user-supplied password is actually valid.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="ecpg"><application>ecpg</></link></title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use V3 frontend/backend protocol (Michael)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This adds support for server-side prepared statements.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use native threads, instead of pthreads, on Windows (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve thread-safety of ecpglib (Itagaki Takahiro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make the ecpg libraries export only necessary API symbols (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><application>Windows</> Port</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow the whole <productname>PostgreSQL</> distribution to be compiled
- with <productname>Microsoft Visual C++</> (Magnus and others)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows Windows-based developers to use familiar development
- and debugging tools.
- Windows executables made with Visual C++ might also have better
- stability and performance than those made with other tool sets.
- The client-only Visual C++ build scripts have been removed.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Drastically reduce postmaster's memory usage when it has many child
- processes (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow regression tests to be started by an administrative
- user (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add native shared memory implementation (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Server Programming Interface (<acronym>SPI</>)</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add cursor-related functionality in SPI (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Allow access to the cursor-related planning options, and add
- <command>FETCH</>/<command>MOVE</> routines.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow execution of cursor commands through
- <function>SPI_execute</function> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The macro <literal>SPI_ERROR_CURSOR</> still exists but will
- never be returned.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- SPI plan pointers are now declared as <literal>SPIPlanPtr</> instead of
- <literal>void *</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This does not break application code, but switching is
- recommended to help catch simple programming mistakes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Build Options</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <application>configure</> option <literal>--enable-profiling</>
- to enable code profiling (works only with <application>gcc</>)
- (Korry Douglas and Nikhil Sontakke)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <application>configure</> option <literal>--with-system-tzdata</>
- to use the operating system's time zone database (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <acronym>PGXS</> so extensions can be built against PostgreSQL
- installations whose <application>pg_config</> program does not
- appear first in the <varname>PATH</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support <command>gmake draft</command> when building the
- <acronym>SGML</> documentation (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Unless <literal>draft</> is used, the documentation build will
- now be repeated if necessary to ensure the index is up-to-date.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Source Code</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Rename macro <literal>DLLIMPORT</> to <literal>PGDLLIMPORT</> to
- avoid conflicting with third party includes (like Tcl) that
- define <literal>DLLIMPORT</> (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Create <quote>operator families</quote> to improve planning of
- queries involving cross-data-type comparisons (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update GIN <function>extractQuery()</> API to allow signalling
- that nothing can satisfy the query (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Move <literal>NAMEDATALEN</> definition from
- <filename>postgres_ext.h</> to <filename>pg_config_manual.h</>
- (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Provide <function>strlcpy()</function> and
- <function>strlcat()</function> on all platforms, and replace
- error-prone uses of <function>strncpy()</function>,
- <function>strncat()</function>, etc (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Create hooks to let an external plugin monitor (or even replace) the
- planner and create plans for hypothetical situations (Gurjeet
- Singh, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Create a function variable <literal>join_search_hook</> to let plugins
- override the join search order portion of the planner (Julius
- Stroffek)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <function>tas()</> support for Renesas' M32R processor
- (Kazuhiro Inaoka)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <function>quote_identifier()</function> and
- <application>pg_dump</application> no longer quote keywords that are
- unreserved according to the grammar (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change the on-disk representation of the <type>NUMERIC</type>
- data type so that the <structfield>sign_dscale</> word comes
- before the weight (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use <acronym>SYSV</> semaphores rather than POSIX on Darwin
- >= 6.0, i.e., OS X 10.2 and up (Chris Marcellino)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="acronyms">acronym</link> and <link
- linkend="creating-cluster-nfs">NFS</link> documentation
- sections (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- "Postgres" is now documented as an accepted alias for
- "PostgreSQL" (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add documentation about preventing database server spoofing when
- the server is down (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Contrib</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Move <filename>contrib</> <filename>README</> content into the
- main <productname>PostgreSQL</> documentation (Albert Cervera i
- Areny)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <filename>contrib/pageinspect</filename> module for low-level
- page inspection (Simon, Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <filename>contrib/pg_standby</filename> module for controlling
- warm standby operation (Simon)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <filename>contrib/uuid-ossp</filename> module for generating
- <type>UUID</> values using the OSSP UUID library (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Use <application>configure</>
- <literal>--with-ossp-uuid</literal> to activate. This takes
- advantage of the new <type>UUID</type> builtin type.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <filename>contrib/dict_int</filename>,
- <filename>contrib/dict_xsyn</filename>, and
- <filename>contrib/test_parser</filename> modules to provide
- sample add-on text search dictionary templates and parsers
- (Sergey Karpov)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <application>contrib/pgbench</> to set the fillfactor (Pavan
- Deolasee)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add timestamps to <application>contrib/pgbench</> <literal>-l</>
- (Greg Smith)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add usage count statistics to
- <filename>contrib/pgbuffercache</filename> (Greg Smith)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add GIN support for <filename>contrib/hstore</> (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add GIN support for <filename>contrib/pg_trgm</> (Guillaume Smet, Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update OS/X startup scripts in
- <filename>contrib/start-scripts</filename> (Mark Cotner, David
- Fetter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Restrict <function>pgrowlocks()</function> and
- <function>dblink_get_pkey()</function> to users who have
- <literal>SELECT</literal> privilege on the target table (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Restrict <filename>contrib/pgstattuple</filename> functions to
- superusers (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <filename>contrib/xml2</filename> is deprecated and planned for
- removal in 8.4 (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new XML support in core PostgreSQL supersedes this module.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-13">
- <title>Release 8.2.13</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.12.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.13</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11,
- see the release notes for 8.2.11.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
- related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
- for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
- <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
- potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
- error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
- conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
- if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
- for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
- The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
- failures in the same area.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
- are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible failure in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> when C locale is
- used with a multi-byte encoding (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Crashes were possible on platforms where <type>wchar_t</> is narrower
- than <type>int</>; Windows in particular.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix extreme inefficiency in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> parser's
- handling of an email-like string containing multiple <literal>@</>
- characters (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix decompilation of <literal>CASE WHEN</> with an implicit coercion
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build,
- or an <quote>unexpected CASE WHEN clause</> error message in other
- cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If <command>CLUSTER</> or a rewriting variant of <command>ALTER TABLE</>
- were executed by someone other than the table owner, the
- <structname>pg_type</> entry for the table's TOAST table would end up
- marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems,
- since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any
- ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected
- failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command
- (in 8.1 or 8.2), or <quote>owner of data type appears to be invalid</>
- warnings from <application>pg_dump</> after having done so (in 8.3).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/pgSQL to not treat <literal>INTO</> after <command>INSERT</> as
- an INTO-variables clause anywhere in the string, not only at the start;
- in particular, don't fail for <command>INSERT INTO</> within
- <command>CREATE RULE</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit
- (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause
- the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Retry failed calls to <function>CallNamedPipe()</> on Windows
- (Steve Marshall, Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- It appears that this function can sometimes fail transiently;
- we previously treated any failure as a hard error, which could
- confuse <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</> as well as other
- operations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
- of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-12">
- <title>Release 8.2.12</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.11.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.12</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11,
- see the release notes for 8.2.11.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
- function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
- conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
- specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible Assert failure if a statement executed in PL/pgSQL is
- rewritten into another kind of statement, for example if an
- <command>INSERT</> is rewritten into an <command>UPDATE</> (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure that a snapshot is available to datatype input functions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This primarily affects domains that are declared with <literal>CHECK</>
- constraints involving user-defined stable or immutable functions. Such
- functions typically fail if no snapshot has been set.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make it safer for SPI-using functions to be used within datatype I/O;
- in particular, to be used in domain check constraints (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
- (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a problem that made <literal>UPDATE RETURNING tableoid</>
- return zero instead of the correct OID (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner misestimation of selectivity when transitive equality
- is applied to an outer-join clause (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could result in bad plans for queries like
- <literal>... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42 ...</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve optimizer's handling of long <literal>IN</> lists (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change avoids wasting large amounts of time on such lists
- when constraint exclusion is enabled.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the
- contents of TOAST tables (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented
- as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped
- before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then
- vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor,
- but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory leak when a set-returning function is terminated without
- reading its whole result (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <filename>contrib/dblink</>'s
- <function>dblink_get_result(text,bool)</> function (Joe)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible garbage output from <filename>contrib/sslinfo</> functions
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>configure</> script to properly report failure when
- unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
- <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
- now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
- mailing lists (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
- Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-11">
- <title>Release 8.2.11</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.10.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.11</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
- see the release notes for 8.2.7. Also, if you were running a previous
- 8.2.X release, it is recommended to <command>REINDEX</> all GiST
- indexes after the upgrade.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry
- <quote>dead</> after a deletion (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This would result in index searches failing to find rows they
- should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with
- <command>REINDEX</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
- error message (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
- the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
- be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
- ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
- a trigger (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve optimization of <replaceable>expression</> <literal>IN</>
- (<replaceable>expression-list</>) queries (Tom, per an idea from Robert
- Haas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Cases in which there are query variables on the right-hand side had been
- handled less efficiently in 8.2.x and 8.3.x than in prior versions.
- The fix restores 8.1 behavior for such cases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-<literal>SELECT</> appears
- in a function call in <literal>FROM</>, a multi-row <literal>VALUES</>
- list, or a <literal>RETURNING</> list (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The usual symptom of this problem is an <quote>unrecognized node type</>
- error.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory leak during rescan of a hashed aggregation plan (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
- function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent possible collision of <structfield>relfilenode</> numbers
- when moving a table to another tablespace with <command>ALTER SET
- TABLESPACE</> (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of
- picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query
- item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
- using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
- build (Ron Mayer)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
- behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
- different numbers of columns (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
- but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
- The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE ROLE</> (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <filename>pg_control</> is opened in binary mode
- (Itagaki Takahiro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <application>pg_controldata</> and <application>pg_resetxlog</>
- did this incorrectly, and so could fail on Windows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
- DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-10">
- <title>Release 8.2.10</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.9.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.10</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
- see the release notes for 8.2.7.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug in btree WAL recovery code (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Recovery failed if the WAL ended partway through a page split operation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potential miscalculation of <structfield>datfrozenxid</> (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This error may explain some recent reports of failure to remove old
- <structname>pg_clog</> data.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
- sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
- already held</> errors.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix missed permissions checks when a view contains a simple
- <literal>UNION ALL</> construct (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Permissions for the referenced tables were checked properly, but not
- permissions for the view itself.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
- <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
- current rowtype (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</>, followed by re-use of a previously
- cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects
- against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible repeated drops during <command>DROP OWNED</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This would typically result in strange errors such as <quote>cache
- lookup failed for relation NNN</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> to first try to interpret its timezone
- argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone
- name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names
- in this order. Making <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> do so as well improves
- consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1:
- in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did,
- since in the older versions <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> accepted
- <emphasis>only</> abbreviations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
- running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent integer overflows during units conversion when displaying a
- configuration parameter that has units (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow spaces in the suffix part of an LDAP URL in
- <filename>pg_hba.conf</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
- ON</> query (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query,
- but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated
- for new parent query rows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
- boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
- expressions' contents (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
- BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
- <literal>IS NULL</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/PgSQL to not fail when a <literal>FOR</> loop's target variable
- is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
- about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- On Windows, work around a Microsoft bug by preventing
- <application>libpq</> from trying to send more than 64kB per system call
- (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
- error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
- command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
- DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
- Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-9">
- <title>Release 8.2.9</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.2.8.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.9</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
- see the release notes for 8.2.7.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
- as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
- be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
- Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
- another recent patch to cause
- <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
- <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
- <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
- as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
- output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO</> update
- <structname>pg_shdepend</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later
- involved in a <command>DROP OWNED</> or <command>REASSIGN OWNED</>
- operation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-8">
- <title>Release 8.2.8</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>never released</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.7.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.8</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
- see the release notes for 8.2.7.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>ERRORDATA_STACK_SIZE exceeded</literal> crash that
- occurred on Windows when using UTF-8 database encoding and a different
- client encoding (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
- column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
- non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
- <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
- inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> to show the alias, if any, attached
- to the target table of an <command>UPDATE</> or <command>DELETE</>
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix GIN bug that could result in a <literal>too many LWLocks
- taken</literal> failure (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid possible crash when decompressing corrupted data
- (Zdenek Kotala)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Repair two places where SIGTERM exit of a backend could leave corrupted
- state in shared memory (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Neither case is very important if SIGTERM is used to shut down the
- whole database cluster together, but there was a problem if someone
- tried to SIGTERM individual backends.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
- Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
- two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix several datatype input functions, notably <function>array_in()</>,
- that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
- uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
- values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
- about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
- expressions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
- (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
- <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
- the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
- subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
- <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
- This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
- it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
- <literal>foo</>).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
- DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, and
- Argentina/San_Luis)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
- <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix broken GiST comparison function for <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>'s
- <type>tsquery</> type (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crashes in <filename>contrib/cube</> functions (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
- <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
- NULL value (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
- <literal>CFLAGS</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>DatumGetBool</> macro to not fail with <application>gcc</>
- 4.3 (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This problem affects <quote>old style</> (V0) C functions that
- return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to
- back-patch it was not realized at the time.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-7">
- <title>Release 8.2.7</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-03-17</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.6.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.7</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- However, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
- columns after updating, if you are affected by the Windows locale
- issue described below.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix character string comparison for Windows locales that consider
- different character combinations as equal (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This fix applies only on Windows and only when using UTF-8
- database encoding. The same fix was made for all other cases
- over two years ago, but Windows with UTF-8 uses a separate code
- path that was not updated. If you are using a locale that
- considers some non-identical strings as equal, you may need to
- <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on textual columns.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Repair potential deadlock between concurrent <command>VACUUM FULL</>
- operations on different system catalogs (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
- race condition (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In rare cases a session that had just executed a
- <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
- one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
- <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
- a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
- row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
- should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
- was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
- some applications depend on the old behavior.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow <command>LISTEN</> and <command>UNLISTEN</> within a
- prepared transaction (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant
- consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit
- as long as an <command>UNLISTEN</> remained uncommitted.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow dropping a temporary table within a
- prepared transaction (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was correctly disallowed by 8.1, but the check was inadvertently
- broken in 8.2.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
- (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory leaks in certain usages of set-returning functions (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
- <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <structname>pg_stat_activity</>.<structfield>waiting</> flag
- is cleared when a lock wait is aborted (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix handling of process permissions on Windows Vista (Dave, Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In particular, this fix allows starting the server as the Administrator
- user.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008a
- (in particular, recent Chile changes); adjust timezone abbreviation
- <literal>VET</> (Venezuela) to mean UTC-4:30, not UTC-4:00 (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
- number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
- postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
- failure.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
- in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
- with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Correctly enforce <varname>statement_timeout</> values longer
- than <literal>INT_MAX</> microseconds (about 35 minutes) (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This bug affects only builds with <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <quote>unexpected PARAM_SUBLINK ID</> planner error when
- constant-folding simplifies a sub-select (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix logical errors in constraint-exclusion handling of <literal>IS
- NULL</> and <literal>NOT</> expressions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The planner would sometimes exclude partitions that should not
- have been excluded because of the possibility of NULL results.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix another cause of <quote>failed to build any N-way joins</>
- planner errors (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could happen in cases where a clauseless join needed to be
- forced before a join clause could be exploited.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect constant propagation in outer-join planning (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The planner could sometimes incorrectly conclude that a variable
- could be constrained to be equal to a constant, leading
- to wrong query results.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix display of constant expressions in <literal>ORDER BY</>
- and <literal>GROUP BY</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- An explictly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could
- for example lead to corruption of a view definition during
- dump and reload.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>libpq</> to handle NOTICE messages correctly
- during COPY OUT (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined
- datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no
- guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-6">
- <title>Release 8.2.6</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.5,
- including fixes for significant security issues.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.6</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
- the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
- predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
- long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
- execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
- (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
- same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
- because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
- such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
- automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
- can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
- trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
- The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
- (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
- and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
- the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
- used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
- this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
- AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
- <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes,
- infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption,
- all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that
- accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources.
- (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
- password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The fix that appeared for this in 8.2.5 was incomplete, as it plugged
- the hole for only some <filename>dblink</> functions. (CVE-2007-6601,
- CVE-2007-3278)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bugs in WAL replay for GIN indexes (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix GIN index build to work properly when
- <varname>maintenance_work_mem</> is 4GB or more (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2007k
- (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve planner's handling of LIKE/regex estimation in non-C locales
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planning-speed problem for deep outer-join nests, as well as
- possible poor choice of join order (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner failure in some cases of <literal>WHERE false AND var IN
- (SELECT ...)</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>CREATE TABLE ... SERIAL</> and
- <command>ALTER SEQUENCE ... OWNED BY</> not change the
- <function>currval()</> state of the sequence (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Preserve the tablespace and storage parameters of indexes that are
- rebuilt by <command>ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only
- when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing
- archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner
- than the original definition.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>VACUUM</> not use all of <varname>maintenance_work_mem</>
- when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potential crash in <function>translate()</> when using a multibyte
- database encoding (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>corr()</> return the correct result for negative
- correlation values (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix overflow in <literal>extract(epoch from interval)</> for intervals
- exceeding 68 years (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Perl to not fail when a UTF-8 regular expression is used
- in a trusted function (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type <literal>bool</>
- as <literal>int</> rather than <literal>char</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of
- Perl did things this way ... until <productname>Mac OS X</> 10.5.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Python to work correctly with Python 2.5 on 64-bit machines
- (Marko Kreen)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_dump</> to correctly handle inheritance child tables
- that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>libpq</> crash when <varname>PGPASSFILE</> refers
- to a file that is not a plain file (Martin Pitt)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <application>ecpg</> parser fixes (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</> defend against
- <application>OpenSSL</> libraries that fail on keys longer than 128
- bits; which is the case at least on some Solaris versions (Marko Kreen)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <filename>contrib/tablefunc</>'s <function>crosstab()</> handle
- NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <type>tsvector</> and <type>tsquery</> output routines to
- escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix crash of <function>to_tsvector()</> on huge input strings (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Require a specific version of <productname>Autoconf</> to be used
- when re-generating the <command>configure</> script (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made
- to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of
- <productname>Autoconf</> and <productname>PostgreSQL</> versions.
- You can remove the version check if you really want to use a
- different <productname>Autoconf</> version, but it's
- your responsibility whether the result works or not.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update <function>gettimeofday</> configuration check so that
- <productname>PostgreSQL</> can be built on newer versions of
- <productname>MinGW</> (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-5">
- <title>Release 8.2.5</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2007-09-17</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.4.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.5</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and
- then aborts close to the end of a concurrent <command>VACUUM</>
- on the same table (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>ALTER DOMAIN ADD CONSTRAINT</> for cases involving
- domains over domains (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL</> work properly (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix some planner problems with outer joins, notably poor
- size estimation for <literal>t1 LEFT JOIN t2 WHERE t2.col IS NULL</>
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow the <type>interval</> data type to accept input consisting only of
- milliseconds or microseconds (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow timezone name to appear before the year in <type>timestamp</> input (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fixes for <acronym>GIN</> indexes used by <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Speed up rtree index insertion (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix excessive logging of <acronym>SSL</> error messages (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using
- the syslogger process (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix crash when <varname>log_min_error_statement</> logging runs out
- of memory (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>stddev_pop(numeric)</> and <function>var_pop(numeric)</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent <command>REINDEX</> and <command>CLUSTER</> from failing
- due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Windows socket and semaphore improvements (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>pg_ctl -w</> work properly in Windows service mode (Dave Page)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix memory allocation bug when using <application>MIT Kerberos</> on Windows (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Suppress timezone name (<literal>%Z</>) in log timestamps on Windows
- because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
- password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Restrict <filename>/contrib/pgstattuple</> functions to superusers, for security reasons (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Do not let <filename>/contrib/intarray</> try to make its GIN opclass
- the default (this caused problems at dump/restore) (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-4">
- <title>Release 8.2.4</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2007-04-23</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.3,
- including a security fix.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.4</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within
- <varname>search_path</>, and disable searching it for functions
- and operators (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a
- truly secure value of <varname>search_path</>. Without it,
- an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code
- with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138).
- See <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> for more information.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <varname>shared_preload_libraries</> for Windows
- by forcing reload in each backend (Korry Douglas)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <function>to_char()</> so it properly upper/lower cases localized day or month
- names (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> crash fixes (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Require <command>COMMIT PREPARED</> to be executed in the same
- database as the transaction was prepared in (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <command>pg_dump</> to do binary backups larger than two gigabytes
- on Windows (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New traditional (Taiwan) Chinese <acronym>FAQ</> (Zhou Daojing)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent the statistics collector from writing to disk too frequently (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how <command>VACUUM FULL</> handles
- <command>UPDATE</> chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug in domains that use array types (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>pg_dump</> so it can dump a serial column's sequence
- using <option>-t</> when not also dumping the owning table
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Planner fixes, including improving outer join and bitmap scan
- selection logic (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible wrong answers or crash when a PL/pgSQL function tries
- to <literal>RETURN</> from within an <literal>EXCEPTION</> block
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-3">
- <title>Release 8.2.3</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2007-02-07</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains two fixes from 8.2.2.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.3</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and
- functional indexes(Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix optimization so MIN/MAX in subqueries can again use indexes (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-2">
- <title>Release 8.2.2</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2007-02-05</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.1, including
- a security fix.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.2</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users
- to read backend memory (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL
- function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the
- data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These
- errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in
- principle might be used to read database content that the user
- should not be able to access.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix not-so-rare-anymore bug wherein btree index page splits could fail
- due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix Borland C compile scripts (L Bayuk)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Properly handle <function>to_char('CC')</> for years ending in
- <literal>00</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Year 2000 is in the twentieth century, not the twenty-first.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> localization improvements (Tatsuo, Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect permission check in
- <literal>information_schema.key_column_usage</> view (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The symptom is <quote>relation with OID nnnnn does not exist</> errors.
- To get this fix without using <command>initdb</>, use <command>CREATE OR
- REPLACE VIEW</> to install the corrected definition found in
- <filename>share/information_schema.sql</>. Note you will need to do
- this in each database.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <command>VACUUM</> performance for databases with many tables (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by <literal>UNION</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potentially incorrect results from index searches using
- <literal>ROW</> inequality conditions (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences
- over three bytes long (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bogus <quote>permission denied</> failures occurring on Windows
- due to attempts to fsync already-deleted files (Magnus, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug that could cause the statistics collector
- to hang on Windows (Magnus)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This would in turn lead to autovacuum not working.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crashes when an already-in-use PL/pgSQL function is
- updated (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve PL/pgSQL handling of domain types (Sergiy Vyshnevetskiy, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible errors in processing PL/pgSQL exception blocks (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2-1">
- <title>Release 8.2.1</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2007-01-08</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.
- For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2.1</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix crash with <literal>SELECT</> ... <literal>LIMIT ALL</> (also
- <literal>LIMIT NULL</>) (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <filename>Several /contrib/tsearch2</> fixes (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- On Windows, make log messages coming from the operating system use
- <acronym>ASCII</> encoding (Hiroshi Saito)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This fixes a conversion problem when there is a mismatch between
- the encoding of the operating system and database server.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix Windows linking of <application>pg_dump</> using
- <filename>win32.mak</>
- (Hiroshi Saito)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner mistakes for outer join queries (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix several problems in queries involving sub-SELECTs (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix potential crash in SPI during subtransaction abort (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This affects all PL functions since they all use SPI.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve build speed of <acronym>PDF</> documentation (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Re-add <acronym>JST</> (Japan) timezone abbreviation (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve optimization decisions related to index scans (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Have <application>psql</> print multi-byte combining characters as
- before, rather than output as <literal>\u</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This improves <application>psql</> <literal>\d</> performance also.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <application>pg_dumpall</> assume that databases have public
- <literal>CONNECT</> privilege, when dumping from a pre-8.2 server (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This preserves the previous behavior that anyone can connect to a
- database if allowed by <filename>pg_hba.conf</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-2">
- <title>Release 8.2</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2006-12-05</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Overview</title>
-
- <para>
- This release adds many functionality and performance improvements that
- were requested by users, including:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Query language enhancements including <command>INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE
- RETURNING</command>, multirow <literal>VALUES</literal> lists, and
- optional target-table alias in
- <command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</command>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Index creation without blocking concurrent
- <command>INSERT</>/<command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</>
- operations
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Many query optimization improvements, including support for
- reordering outer joins
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improved sorting performance with lower memory usage
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- More efficient locking with better concurrency
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- More efficient vacuuming
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Easier administration of warm standby servers
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New <literal>FILLFACTOR</literal> support for tables and indexes
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Monitoring, logging, and performance tuning additions
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- More control over creating and dropping objects
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Table inheritance relationships can be defined
- for and removed from pre-existing tables
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <command>COPY TO</command> can copy the output of an arbitrary
- <command>SELECT</command> statement
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Array improvements, including nulls in arrays
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Aggregate-function improvements, including multiple-input
- aggregates and SQL:2003 statistical functions
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Many <filename>contrib/</filename> improvements
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.2</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
- required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
- release.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Observe the following incompatibilities:
- </para>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Set <link
- linkend="guc-escape-string-warning"><varname>escape_string_warning</></link>
- to <literal>on</> by default (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This issues a warning if backslash escapes are used in
- <link linkend="sql-syntax-strings">non-escape (non-<literal>E''</>)
- strings</link>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change the <link linkend="sql-syntax-row-constructors">row
- constructor syntax</link> (<literal>ROW(...)</>) so that
- list elements <literal>foo.*</> will be expanded to a list
- of their member fields, rather than creating a nested
- row type field as formerly (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new behavior is substantially more useful since it
- allows, for example, triggers to check for data changes
- with <literal>IF row(new.*) IS DISTINCT FROM row(old.*)</>.
- The old behavior is still available by omitting <literal>.*</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <link linkend="row-wise-comparison">row comparisons</link>
- follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics and allow them
- to be used in index scans (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, row = and <> comparisons followed the
- standard but < <= > >= did not. A row comparison
- can now be used as an index constraint for a multicolumn
- index matching the row value.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <link linkend="functions-comparison">row <literal>IS <optional>NOT</> NULL</literal></link>
- tests follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The former behavior conformed to the standard for simple cases
- with <literal>IS NULL</>, but <literal>IS NOT NULL</> would return
- true if any row field was non-null, whereas the standard says it
- should return true only when all fields are non-null.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <link linkend="SQL-SET-CONSTRAINTS"><command>SET
- CONSTRAINT</></link> affect only one constraint (Kris Jurka)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In previous releases, <command>SET CONSTRAINT</> modified
- all constraints with a matching name. In this release,
- the schema search path is used to modify only the first
- matching constraint. A schema specification is also
- supported. This more nearly conforms to the SQL standard.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <literal>RULE</> permission for tables, for security reasons
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- As of this release, only a table's owner can create or modify
- rules for the table. For backwards compatibility,
- <command>GRANT</>/<command>REVOKE RULE</> is still accepted,
- but it does nothing.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Array comparison improvements (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Now array dimensions are also compared.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change <link linkend="functions-array">array concatenation</link>
- to match documented behavior (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This changes the previous behavior where concatenation
- would modify the array lower bound.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make command-line options of <application>postmaster</>
- and <link linkend="app-postgres"><application>postgres</></link>
- identical (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows the postmaster to pass arguments to each backend
- without using <literal>-o</>. Note that some options are now
- only available as long-form options, because there were conflicting
- single-letter options.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Deprecate use of <application>postmaster</> symbolic link (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <application>postmaster</> and <application>postgres</>
- commands now act identically, with the behavior determined
- by command-line options. The <application>postmaster</> symbolic link is
- kept for compatibility, but is not really needed.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change <link
- linkend="guc-log-duration"><varname>log_duration</></link>
- to output even if the query is not output (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In prior releases, <varname>log_duration</> only printed if
- the query appeared earlier in the log.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <link
- linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(time)</></link>
- and <link
- linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(interval)</></link>
- treat <literal>HH</> and <literal>HH12</> as 12-hour
- intervals
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Most applications should use <literal>HH24</> unless they
- want a 12-hour display.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Zero unmasked bits in conversion from <link
- linkend="datatype-inet"><type>INET</></link> to <link
- linkend="datatype-inet"><type>CIDR</></link> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This ensures that the converted value is actually valid for
- <type>CIDR</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <varname>australian_timezones</> configuration variable
- (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This variable has been superseded by a more general facility
- for configuring timezone abbreviations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve cost estimation for nested-loop index scans (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This might eliminate the need to set unrealistically small
- values of <link
- linkend="guc-random-page-cost"><varname>random_page_cost</></link>.
- If you have been using a very small <varname>random_page_cost</>,
- please recheck your test cases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change behavior of <command>pg_dump</> <literal>-n</> and
- <literal>-t</> options. (Greg Sabino Mullane)
- </para>
- <para>
- See the <command>pg_dump</> manual page for details.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Change <link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link>
- <function>PQdsplen()</> to return a useful value (Martijn
- van Oosterhout)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Declare <link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link>
- <function>PQgetssl()</> as returning <literal>void *</>,
- rather than <literal>SSL *</> (Martijn van Oosterhout)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows applications to use the function without including
- the OpenSSL headers.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- C-language loadable modules must now include a
- <link linkend="xfunc-c-dynload"><literal>PG_MODULE_MAGIC</></link>
- macro call for version compatibility checking
- (Martijn van Oosterhout)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- For security's sake, modules used by a PL/PerlU function are no
- longer available to PL/Perl functions (Andrew)
- </para>
- <note>
- <para>
- This also implies that data can no longer be shared between a PL/Perl
- function and a PL/PerlU function.
- Some Perl installations have not been compiled with the correct flags
- to allow multiple interpreters to exist within a single process.
- In this situation PL/Perl and PL/PerlU cannot both be used in a
- single backend. The solution is to get a Perl installation which
- supports multiple interpreters.
- </para>
- </note>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- In <filename>contrib/xml2/</>, rename <function>xml_valid()</> to
- <function>xml_is_well_formed()</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <function>xml_valid()</> will remain for backward compatibility,
- but its behavior will change to do schema checking in a future
- release.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <filename>contrib/ora2pg/</>, now at <ulink
- url="http://www.samse.fr/GPL/ora2pg"></ulink>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove contrib modules that have been migrated to PgFoundry:
- <filename>adddepend</>, <filename>dbase</>, <filename>dbmirror</>,
- <filename>fulltextindex</>, <filename>mac</>, <filename>userlock</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove abandoned contrib modules:
- <filename>mSQL-interface</>, <filename>tips</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove <acronym>QNX</> and <acronym>BEOS</> ports (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These ports no longer had active maintainers.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <para>
- Below you will find a detailed account of the
- changes between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.2 and
- the previous major release.
- </para>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Performance Improvements</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow the planner to reorder <link linkend="queries-join">outer
- joins</link> in some circumstances (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In previous releases, outer joins would always be evaluated in
- the order written in the query. This change allows the
- query optimizer to consider reordering outer joins, in cases where
- it can determine that the join order can be changed without
- altering the meaning of the query. This can make a
- considerable performance difference for queries involving
- multiple outer joins or mixed inner and outer joins.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve efficiency of <link
- linkend="functions-comparisons"><literal>IN</>
- (list-of-expressions)</link> clauses (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve sorting speed and reduce memory usage (Simon, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve subtransaction performance (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro,
- Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>FILLFACTOR</> to <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATETABLE">table</link> and <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATEINDEX">index</link> creation (ITAGAKI
- Takahiro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This leaves extra free space in each table or index page,
- allowing improved performance as the database grows. This
- is particularly valuable to maintain clustering.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Increase default values for <link
- linkend="guc-shared-buffers"><varname>shared_buffers</></link>
- and <varname>max_fsm_pages</>
- (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve locking performance by breaking the lock manager tables into
- sections
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows locking to be more fine-grained, reducing
- contention.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Reduce locking requirements of sequential scans (Qingqing
- Zhou)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Reduce locking required for database creation and destruction
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve the optimizer's selectivity estimates for <link
- linkend="functions-like"><literal>LIKE</></link>, <link
- linkend="functions-like"><literal>ILIKE</></link>, and
- <link linkend="functions-posix-regexp">regular expression</link>
- operations (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve planning of joins to <link linkend="ddl-inherit">inherited
- tables</link> and <link linkend="queries-union"><literal>UNION
- ALL</></link> views (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="guc-constraint-exclusion">constraint
- exclusion</link> to be applied to <link
- linkend="ddl-inherit">inherited</link> <command>UPDATE</> and
- <command>DELETE</> queries (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <command>SELECT</> already honored constraint exclusion.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve planning of constant <literal>WHERE</> clauses, such as
- a condition that depends only on variables inherited from an
- outer query level (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Protocol-level unnamed prepared statements are re-planned
- for each set of <literal>BIND</> values (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This improves performance because the exact parameter values
- can be used in the plan.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Speed up vacuuming of B-Tree indexes (Heikki Linnakangas,
- Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid extra scan of tables without indexes during <link
- linkend="SQL-VACUUM"><command>VACUUM</></link> (Greg Stark)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve multicolumn <link linkend="GiST"><acronym>GiST</></link>
- indexing (Oleg, Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove dead index entries before B-Tree page split (Junji
- Teramoto)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Server Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow a forced switch to a new transaction log file (Simon, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is valuable for keeping warm standby slave servers
- in sync with the master. Transaction log file switching now also happens
- automatically during <link
- linkend="functions-admin"><function>pg_stop_backup()</></link>.
- This ensures that all
- transaction log files needed for recovery can be archived immediately.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <acronym>WAL</> informational functions (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Add functions for interrogating the current transaction log insertion
- point and determining <acronym>WAL</> filenames from the
- hex <acronym>WAL</> locations displayed by <link
- linkend="functions-admin"><function>pg_stop_backup()</></link>
- and related functions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve recovery from a crash during <acronym>WAL</> replay (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The server now does periodic checkpoints during <acronym>WAL</>
- recovery, so if there is a crash, future <acronym>WAL</>
- recovery is shortened. This also eliminates the need for
- warm standby servers to replay the entire log since the
- base backup if they crash.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve reliability of long-term <acronym>WAL</> replay
- (Heikki, Simon, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Formerly, trying to roll forward through more than 2 billion
- transactions would not work due to XID wraparound. This meant
- warm standby servers had to be reloaded
- from fresh base backups periodically.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="guc-archive-timeout"><varname>archive_timeout</></link>
- to force transaction log file switches at a given interval (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This enforces a maximum replication delay for warm standby servers.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add native <link linkend="auth-ldap"><acronym>LDAP</></link>
- authentication (Magnus Hagander)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is particularly useful for platforms that do not
- support <acronym>PAM</>, such as Windows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="sql-grant-description-objects"><literal>GRANT
- CONNECT ON DATABASE</></link> (Gevik Babakhani)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This gives SQL-level control over database access. It works as
- an additional filter on top of the existing
- <link linkend="auth-pg-hba-conf"><filename>pg_hba.conf</></link>
- controls.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add support for <link linkend="ssl-tcp"><acronym>SSL</>
- Certificate Revocation List</link> (<acronym>CRL</>) files
- (Libor Hohoš)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The server and <application>libpq</> both recognize <acronym>CRL</>
- files now.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <link linkend="GiST"><acronym>GiST</></link> indexes are
- now clusterable (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove routine autovacuum server log entries (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <link
- linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_activity</></link>
- now shows autovacuum activity.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Track maximum XID age within individual tables, instead of whole databases (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This reduces the overhead involved in preventing transaction
- ID wraparound, by avoiding unnecessary VACUUMs.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add last vacuum and analyze timestamp columns to the stats
- collector (Larry Rosenman)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These values now appear in the <link
- linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_*_tables</></link>
- system views.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially
- <varname>stats_command_string</>
- (Tom, Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This release enables <varname>stats_command_string</> by
- default, now that its overhead is minimal. This means
- <link
- linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_activity</></link>
- will now show all active queries by default.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a <literal>waiting</> column to <link
- linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_activity</></link>
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows <structname>pg_stat_activity</> to show all the
- information included in the <application>ps</> display.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add configuration parameter <link
- linkend="guc-update-process-title"><varname>update_process_title</></link>
- to control whether the <application>ps</> display is updated
- for every command (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- On platforms where it is expensive to update the <application>ps</>
- display, it might be worthwhile to turn this off and rely solely on
- <structname>pg_stat_activity</> for status information.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow units to be specified in configuration settings
- (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, you can now set <link
- linkend="guc-shared-buffers"><varname>shared_buffers</></link>
- to <literal>32MB</> rather than mentally converting sizes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add support for <link linkend="config-setting">include
- directives</link> in <filename>postgresql.conf</> (Joachim
- Wieland)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve logging of protocol-level prepare/bind/execute
- messages (Bruce, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Such logging now shows statement names, bind parameter
- values, and the text of the query being executed. Also,
- the query text is properly included in logged error messages
- when enabled by <varname>log_min_error_statement</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent <link
- linkend="guc-max-stack-depth"><varname>max_stack_depth</></link>
- from being set to unsafe values
- </para>
-
- <para>
- On platforms where we can determine the actual kernel stack depth
- limit (which is most), make sure that the initial default value of
- <varname>max_stack_depth</> is safe, and reject attempts to set it
- to unsafely large values.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enable highlighting of error location in query in more
- cases (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The server is now able to report a specific error location for
- some semantic errors (such as unrecognized column name), rather
- than just for basic syntax errors as before.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <quote>failed to re-find parent key</> errors in
- <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Clean out <filename>pg_internal.init</> cache files during server
- restart (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This avoids a hazard that the cache files might contain stale
- data after PITR recovery.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a
- gigabyte boundary by <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug causing needless deadlock errors on row-level locks (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Each backend process is now its own process group leader (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows query cancel to abort subprocesses invoked from a
- backend or archive/recovery process.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Query Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-INSERT"><command>INSERT</></link>/<link
- linkend="SQL-UPDATE"><command>UPDATE</></link>/<link
- linkend="SQL-DELETE"><command>DELETE</></link>
- <literal>RETURNING</> (Jonah Harris, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows these commands to return values, such as the
- computed serial key for a new row. In the <command>UPDATE</>
- case, values from the updated version of the row are returned.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add support for multiple-row <link
- linkend="queries-values"><literal>VALUES</></link> clauses,
- per SQL standard (Joe, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows <command>INSERT</> to insert multiple rows of
- constants, or queries to generate result sets using constants.
- For example, <literal>INSERT ... VALUES (...), (...),
- ....</>, and <literal>SELECT * FROM (VALUES (...), (...),
- ....) AS alias(f1, ...)</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-UPDATE"><command>UPDATE</></link>
- and <link linkend="SQL-DELETE"><command>DELETE</></link>
- to use an alias for the target table (Atsushi Ogawa)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The SQL standard does not permit an alias in these commands, but
- many database systems allow one anyway for notational convenience.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-UPDATE"><command>UPDATE</></link>
- to set multiple columns with a list of values (Susanne
- Ebrecht)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is basically a short-hand for assigning the columns
- and values in pairs. The syntax is <literal>UPDATE tab
- SET (<replaceable>column</>, ...) = (<replaceable>val</>, ...)</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make row comparisons work per standard (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The forms <, <=, >, >= now compare rows lexicographically,
- that is, compare the first elements, if equal compare the second
- elements, and so on. Formerly they expanded to an AND condition
- across all the elements, which was neither standard nor very useful.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-TRUNCATE"><literal>CASCADE</></link>
- option to <command>TRUNCATE</> (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This causes <command>TRUNCATE</> to automatically include all tables
- that reference the specified table(s) via foreign keys. While
- convenient, this is a dangerous tool — use with caution!
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support <literal>FOR UPDATE</> and <literal>FOR SHARE</>
- in the same <link linkend="SQL-INSERT"><literal>SELECT</></link>
- command (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="functions-comparisons"><literal>IS NOT
- DISTINCT FROM</></link> (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This operator is similar to equality (<literal>=</>), but
- evaluates to true when both left and right operands are
- <literal>NULL</>, and to false when just one is, rather than
- yielding <literal>NULL</> in these cases.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve the length output used by <link
- linkend="queries-union"><literal>UNION</></link>/<literal>INTERSECT</>/<literal>EXCEPT</>
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- When all corresponding columns are of the same defined length, that
- length is used for the result, rather than a generic length.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="functions-like"><literal>ILIKE</></link>
- to work for multi-byte encodings (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Internally, <literal>ILIKE</> now calls <function>lower()</>
- and then uses <literal>LIKE</>. Locale-specific regular
- expression patterns still do not work in these encodings.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Enable <link
- linkend="guc-standard-conforming-strings"><varname>standard_conforming_strings</></link>
- to be turned <literal>on</> (Kevin Grittner)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows backslash escaping in strings to be disabled,
- making <productname>PostgreSQL</> more
- standards-compliant. The default is <literal>off</> for backwards
- compatibility, but future releases will default this to <literal>on</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Do not flatten subqueries that contain <literal>volatile</>
- functions in their target lists (Jaime Casanova)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This prevents surprising behavior due to multiple evaluation
- of a <literal>volatile</> function (such as <function>random()</>
- or <function>nextval()</>). It might cause performance
- degradation in the presence of functions that are unnecessarily
- marked as <literal>volatile</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add system views <link
- linkend="view-pg-prepared-statements"><literal>pg_prepared_statements</></link>
- and <link
- linkend="view-pg-cursors"><literal>pg_cursors</></link>
- to show prepared statements and open cursors (Joachim Wieland, Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These are very useful in pooled connection setups.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support portal parameters in <link
- linkend="SQL-EXPLAIN"><command>EXPLAIN</></link> and <link
- linkend="SQL-EXECUTE"><command>EXECUTE</></link> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows, for example, <acronym>JDBC</> <literal>?</> parameters to
- work in these commands.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- If <acronym>SQL</>-level <link
- linkend="SQL-PREPARE"><command>PREPARE</></link> parameters
- are unspecified, infer their types from the content of the
- query (Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Protocol-level <command>PREPARE</> already did this.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>LIMIT</> and <literal>OFFSET</> to exceed
- two billion (Dhanaraj M)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Object Manipulation Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>TABLESPACE</> clause to <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATETABLEAS"><command>CREATE TABLE AS</></link>
- (Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows a tablespace to be specified for the new table.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>ON COMMIT</> clause to <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATETABLEAS"><command>CREATE TABLE AS</></link>
- (Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows temporary tables to be truncated or dropped on
- transaction commit. The default behavior is for the table
- to remain until the session ends.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS</> to <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATETABLE"><command>CREATE TABLE LIKE</></link>
- (Greg Stark)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows easy copying of <literal>CHECK</> constraints to a new
- table.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow the creation of placeholder (shell) <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATETYPE">types</link> (Martijn van Oosterhout)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A shell type declaration creates a type name, without specifying
- any of the details of the type. Making a shell type is useful
- because it allows cleaner declaration of the type's input/output
- functions, which must exist before the type can be defined <quote>for
- real</>. The syntax is <command>CREATE TYPE <replaceable
- class="parameter">typename</replaceable></>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <link linkend="SQL-CREATEAGGREGATE">Aggregate functions</link>
- now support multiple input parameters (Sergey Koposov, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new aggregate creation <link
- linkend="SQL-CREATEAGGREGATE">syntax</link> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new syntax is <command>CREATE AGGREGATE
- <replaceable>aggname</> (<replaceable>input_type</>)
- (<replaceable>parameter_list</>)</command>. This more
- naturally supports the new multi-parameter aggregate
- functionality. The previous syntax is still supported.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="SQL-ALTERROLE"><command>ALTER ROLE PASSWORD NULL</></link>
- to remove a previously set role password (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <command>DROP</> object <literal>IF EXISTS</> for many
- object types (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows <command>DROP</> operations on non-existent
- objects without generating an error.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-DROP-OWNED"><literal>DROP OWNED</></link>
- to drop all objects owned by a role (Alvaro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-REASSIGN-OWNED"><literal>REASSIGN
- OWNED</></link> to reassign ownership of all objects owned
- by a role (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This, and <literal>DROP OWNED</> above, facilitate dropping
- roles.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-GRANT"><command>GRANT ON SEQUENCE</></link>
- syntax (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was added for setting sequence-specific permissions.
- <literal>GRANT ON TABLE</> for sequences is still supported
- for backward compatibility.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-GRANT"><literal>USAGE</></link>
- permission for sequences that allows only <function>currval()</>
- and <function>nextval()</>, not <function>setval()</>
- (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <literal>USAGE</> permission allows more fine-grained
- control over sequence access. Granting <literal>USAGE</>
- allows users to increment
- a sequence, but prevents them from setting the sequence to
- an arbitrary value using <function>setval()</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-ALTERTABLE"><literal>ALTER TABLE
- [ NO ] INHERIT</></link> (Greg Stark)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows inheritance to be adjusted dynamically, rather than
- just at table creation and destruction. This is very valuable
- when using inheritance to implement table partitioning.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-COMMENT">comments</link> on global
- objects to be stored globally (Kris Jurka)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, comments attached to databases were stored in individual
- databases, making them ineffective, and there was no provision
- at all for comments on roles or tablespaces. This change adds a new
- shared catalog <link
- linkend="catalog-pg-shdescription"><structname>pg_shdescription</structname></link>
- and stores comments on databases, roles, and tablespaces therein.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Utility Command Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add option to allow indexes to be created without blocking
- concurrent writes to the table (Greg Stark, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new syntax is <link linkend="SQL-CREATEINDEX"><command>CREATE
- INDEX CONCURRENTLY</></link>. The default behavior is
- still to block table modification while a index is being
- created.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Provide <link linkend="functions-advisory-locks">advisory
- locking</link> functionality (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is a new locking API designed to replace what used to be
- in /contrib/userlock. The userlock code is now on pgfoundry.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-COPY"><command>COPY</></link> to
- dump a <command>SELECT</> query (Zoltan Boszormenyi, Karel
- Zak)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows <command>COPY</> to dump arbitrary <acronym>SQL</>
- queries. The syntax is <literal>COPY (SELECT ...) TO</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make the <link linkend="SQL-COPY"><command>COPY</></link>
- command return a command tag that includes the number of
- rows copied (Volkan YAZICI)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-VACUUM"><command>VACUUM</></link>
- to expire rows without being affected by other concurrent
- <command>VACUUM</> operations (Hannu Krossing, Alvaro, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <link linkend="APP-INITDB"><application>initdb</></link>
- detect the operating system locale and set the default
- <varname>DateStyle</> accordingly (Peter)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This makes it more likely that the installed
- <filename>postgresql.conf</> <varname>DateStyle</> value will
- be as desired.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Reduce number of progress messages displayed by <application>initdb</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Date/Time Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow full timezone names in <link
- linkend="datatype-datetime"><type>timestamp</></link> input values
- (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, <literal>'2006-05-24 21:11
- America/New_York'::timestamptz</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support configurable timezone abbreviations (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A desired set of timezone abbreviations can be chosen via the
- configuration parameter <link
- linkend="guc-timezone-abbreviations"><varname>timezone_abbreviations</></link>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="view-pg-timezone-abbrevs"><varname>pg_timezone_abbrevs</></link>
- and <link
- linkend="view-pg-timezone-names"><varname>pg_timezone_names</></link>
- views to show supported timezones (Magnus Hagander)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>clock_timestamp()</></link>,
- <link
- linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>statement_timestamp()</></link>,
- and <link
- linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>transaction_timestamp()</></link>
- (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <function>clock_timestamp()</> is the current wall-clock time,
- <function>statement_timestamp()</> is the time the current
- statement arrived at the server, and
- <function>transaction_timestamp()</> is an alias for
- <function>now()</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link
- linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char()</></link>
- to print localized month and day names (Euler Taveira de
- Oliveira)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link
- linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(time)</></link>
- and <link
- linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(interval)</></link>
- to output <acronym>AM</>/<acronym>PM</> specifications
- (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Intervals and times are treated as 24-hour periods, e.g.
- <literal>25 hours</> is considered <acronym>AM</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new function <link
- linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>justify_interval()</></link>
- to adjust interval units (Mark Dilger)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow timezone offsets up to 14:59 away from GMT
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Kiribati uses GMT+14, so we'd better accept that.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Interval computation improvements (Michael Glaesemann, Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Other Data Type and Function Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow arrays to contain <literal>NULL</> elements (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow assignment to array elements not contiguous with the existing
- entries (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The intervening array positions will be filled with nulls.
- This is per SQL standard.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New built-in <link linkend="functions-array">operators</link>
- for array-subset comparisons (<literal>@></>,
- <literal><@</>, <literal>&&</>) (Teodor, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These operators can be indexed for many data types using
- <acronym>GiST</> or <acronym>GIN</> indexes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add convenient arithmetic <link
- linkend="cidr-inet-operators-table">operations</link> on
- <type>INET</>/<type>CIDR</> values (Stephen R. van den
- Berg)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new operators are <literal>&</> (and), <literal>|</>
- (or), <literal>~</> (not), <type>inet</> <literal>+</> <type>int8</>,
- <type>inet</> <literal>-</> <type>int8</>, and
- <type>inet</> <literal>-</> <type>inet</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new <link
- linkend="functions-aggregate-statistics-table">aggregate functions</link>
- from SQL:2003 (Neil)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The new functions are <function>var_pop()</>,
- <function>var_samp()</>, <function>stddev_pop()</>, and
- <function>stddev_samp()</>. <function>var_samp()</> and
- <function>stddev_samp()</> are merely renamings of the
- existing aggregates <function>variance()</> and
- <function>stddev()</>. The latter names remain available
- for backward compatibility.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add SQL:2003 statistical <link
- linkend="functions-aggregate-statistics-table">aggregates</link>
- (Sergey Koposov)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- New functions: <function>regr_intercept()</>,
- <function>regr_slope()</>, <function>regr_r2()</>,
- <function>corr()</>, <function>covar_samp()</>,
- <function>covar_pop()</>, <function>regr_avgx()</>,
- <function>regr_avgy()</>, <function>regr_sxy()</>,
- <function>regr_sxx()</>, <function>regr_syy()</>,
- <function>regr_count()</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-CREATEDOMAIN">domains</link> to be
- based on other domains (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Properly enforce domain <link
- linkend="ddl-constraints"><literal>CHECK</></link> constraints
- everywhere (Neil, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- For example, the result of a user-defined function that is
- declared to return a domain type is now checked against the
- domain's constraints. This closes a significant hole in the domain
- implementation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix problems with dumping renamed <link
- linkend="datatype-serial"><type>SERIAL</></link> columns
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The fix is to dump a <type>SERIAL</> column by explicitly
- specifying its <literal>DEFAULT</> and sequence elements,
- and reconstructing the <type>SERIAL</> column on reload
- using a new <link linkend="SQL-ALTERSEQUENCE"><command>ALTER
- SEQUENCE OWNED BY</></link> command. This also allows
- dropping a <type>SERIAL</> column specification.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a server-side sleep function <link
- linkend="functions-datetime-delay"><function>pg_sleep()</></link>
- (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add all comparison operators for the <link
- linkend="datatype-oid"><type>tid</></link> (tuple id) data
- type (Mark Kirkwood, Greg Stark, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>TG_table_name</> and <literal>TG_table_schema</> to
- trigger parameters (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <literal>TG_relname</> is now deprecated. Comparable
- changes have been made in the trigger parameters for the other
- PLs as well.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>FOR</> statements to return values to scalars
- as well as records and row types (Pavel Stehule)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a <literal>BY</> clause to the <literal>FOR</> loop,
- to control the iteration increment (Jaime Casanova)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>STRICT</> to <link
- linkend="plpgsql-statements-sql-onerow"><command>SELECT
- INTO</></link> (Matt Miller)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <literal>STRICT</> mode throws an exception if more or less
- than one row is returned by the <command>SELECT</>, for
- <productname>Oracle PL/SQL</> compatibility.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>PL/Perl Server-Side Language Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>table_name</> and <literal>table_schema</> to
- trigger parameters (Adam Sjøgren)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add prepared queries (Dmitry Karasik)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <literal>$_TD</> trigger data a global variable (Andrew)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, it was lexical, which caused unexpected sharing
- violations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Run PL/Perl and PL/PerlU in separate interpreters, for security
- reasons (Andrew)
- </para>
- <para>
- In consequence, they can no longer share data nor loaded modules.
- Also, if Perl has not been compiled with the requisite flags to
- allow multiple interpreters, only one of these languages can be used
- in any given backend process.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>PL/Python Server-Side Language Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Named parameters are passed as ordinary variables, as well as in the
- <literal>args[]</> array (Sven Suursoho)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>table_name</> and <literal>table_schema</> to
- trigger parameters (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow returning of composite types and result sets (Sven Suursoho)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Return result-set as <literal>list</>, <literal>iterator</>,
- or <literal>generator </>(Sven Suursoho)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow functions to return <literal>void</> (Neil)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Python 2.5 is now supported (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link> Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new command <literal>\password</> for changing role
- password with client-side password encryption (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <literal>\c</> to connect to a new host and port
- number (David, Volkan YAZICI)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add tablespace display to <literal>\l+</> (Philip Yarra)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <literal>\df</> slash command to include the argument
- names and modes (<literal>OUT</> or <literal>INOUT</>) of
- the function (David Fetter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support binary <command>COPY</> (Andreas Pflug)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add option to run the entire session in a single transaction
- (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Use option <literal>-1</> or <literal>--single-transaction</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support for automatically retrieving <command>SELECT</>
- results in batches using a cursor (Chris Mair)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is enabled using <command>\set FETCH_COUNT
- <replaceable>n</></command>. This
- feature allows large result sets to be retrieved in
- <application>psql</> without attempting to buffer the entire
- result set in memory.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make multi-line values align in the proper column
- (Martijn van Oosterhout)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Field values containing newlines are now displayed in a more
- readable fashion.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Save multi-line statements as a single entry, rather than
- one line at a time (Sergey E. Koposov)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This makes up-arrow recall of queries easier. (This is
- not available on Windows, because that platform uses the native
- command-line editing present in the operating system.)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make the line counter 64-bit so it can handle files with more
- than two billion lines (David Fetter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Report both the returned data and the command status tag
- for <command>INSERT</>/<command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE
- RETURNING</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link> Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow complex selection of objects to be included or excluded
- by <application>pg_dump</> (Greg Sabino Mullane)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <application>pg_dump</> now supports multiple <literal>-n</>
- (schema) and <literal>-t</> (table) options, and adds
- <literal>-N</> and <literal>-T</> options to exclude objects.
- Also, the arguments of these switches can now be wild-card expressions
- rather than single object names, for example
- <literal>-t 'foo*'</>, and a schema can be part of
- a <literal>-t</> or <literal>-T</> switch, for example
- <literal>-t schema1.table1</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="APP-PGRESTORE"><application>pg_restore</></link>
- <literal>--no-data-for-failed-tables</> option to suppress
- loading data if table creation failed (i.e., the table already
- exists) (Martin Pitt)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="APP-PGRESTORE"><application>pg_restore</></link>
- option to run the entire session in a single transaction
- (Simon)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Use option <literal>-1</> or <literal>--single-transaction</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link> Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="libpq-misc"><function>PQencryptPassword()</></link>
- to encrypt passwords (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows passwords to be sent pre-encrypted for commands
- like <link linkend="SQL-ALTERROLE"><command>ALTER ROLE ...
- PASSWORD</></link>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add function <link
- linkend="libpq-threading"><function>PQisthreadsafe()</></link>
- (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This allows applications to query the thread-safety status
- of the library.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="libpq-exec-main"><function>PQdescribePrepared()</></link>,
- <link
- linkend="libpq-exec-main"><function>PQdescribePortal()</></link>,
- and related functions to return information about previously
- prepared statements and open cursors (Volkan YAZICI)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="libpq-ldap"><acronym>LDAP</></link> lookups
- from <link
- linkend="libpq-pgservice"><filename>pg_service.conf</></link>
- (Laurenz Albe)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow a hostname in <link
- linkend="libpq-pgpass"><filename>~/.pgpass</></link>
- to match the default socket directory (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A blank hostname continues to match any Unix-socket connection,
- but this addition allows entries that are specific to one of
- several postmasters on the machine.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><link linkend="ecpg"><application>ecpg</></link> Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <link linkend="SQL-SHOW"><command>SHOW</></link> to
- put its result into a variable (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="SQL-COPY"><command>COPY TO STDOUT</></link>
- (Joachim Wieland)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add regression tests (Joachim Wieland, Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Major source code cleanups (Joachim Wieland, Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title><application>Windows</> Port</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow <acronym>MSVC</> to compile the <productname>PostgreSQL</>
- server (Magnus, Hiroshi Saito)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <acronym>MSVC</> support for utility commands and <link
- linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link> (Hiroshi
- Saito)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add support for Windows code pages <literal>1253</>,
- <literal>1254</>, <literal>1255</>, and <literal>1257</>
- (Kris Jurka)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Drop privileges on startup, so that the server can be started from
- an administrative account (Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Stability fixes (Qingqing Zhou, Magnus)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add native semaphore implementation (Qingqing Zhou)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The previous code mimicked SysV semaphores.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Source Code Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link linkend="GIN"><acronym>GIN</></link> (Generalized
- Inverted iNdex) index access method (Teodor, Oleg)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove R-tree indexing (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Rtree has been re-implemented using <link
- linkend="GiST"><acronym>GiST</></link>. Among other
- differences, this means that rtree indexes now have support
- for crash recovery via write-ahead logging (WAL).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Reduce libraries needlessly linked into the backend (Martijn
- van Oosterhout, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a configure flag to allow libedit to be preferred over
- <acronym>GNU</> readline (Bruce)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Use configure <link
- linkend="configure"><literal>--with-libedit-preferred</></link>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow installation into directories containing spaces
- (Peter)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve ability to relocate installation directories (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add support for <productname>Solaris x86_64</> using the
- <productname>Solaris</> compiler (Pierre Girard, Theo
- Schlossnagle, Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <application>DTrace</> support (Robert Lor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>PG_VERSION_NUM</> for use by third-party
- applications wanting to test the backend version in C using >
- and < comparisons (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>XLOG_BLCKSZ</> as independent from <literal>BLCKSZ</>
- (Mark Wong)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>LWLOCK_STATS</> define to report locking
- activity (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Emit warnings for unknown <application>configure</> options
- (Martijn van Oosterhout)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add server support for <quote>plugin</> libraries
- that can be used for add-on tasks such as debugging and performance
- measurement (Korry Douglas)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This consists of two features: a table of <quote>rendezvous
- variables</> that allows separately-loaded shared libraries to
- communicate, and a new configuration parameter <link
- linkend="guc-local-preload-libraries"><varname>local_preload_libraries</></link>
- that allows libraries to be loaded into specific sessions without
- explicit cooperation from the client application. This allows
- external add-ons to implement features such as a PL/PgSQL debugger.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Rename existing configuration parameter
- <varname>preload_libraries</> to <link
- linkend="guc-shared-preload-libraries"><varname>shared_preload_libraries</></link>
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was done for clarity in comparison to
- <varname>local_preload_libraries</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add new configuration parameter <link
- linkend="guc-server-version-num"><varname>server_version_num</></link>
- (Greg Sabino Mullane)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is like <varname>server_version</varname>, but is an
- integer, e.g. <literal>80200</>. This allows applications to
- make version checks more easily.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add a configuration parameter <link
- linkend="guc-seq-page-cost"><varname>seq_page_cost</></link>
- (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Re-implement the <link linkend="regress">regression test</link> script as a C program
- (Magnus, Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Allow loadable modules to allocate shared memory and
- lightweight locks (Marc Munro)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add automatic initialization and finalization of dynamically
- loaded libraries (Ralf Engelschall, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- New <link linkend="xfunc-c-dynload">functions</link>
- <function>_PG_init()</> and <function>_PG_fini()</> are
- called if the library defines such symbols. Hence we no
- longer need to specify an initialization function in
- <varname>shared_preload_libraries</>; we can assume that
- the library used the <function>_PG_init()</> convention
- instead.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <link
- linkend="xfunc-c-dynload"><literal>PG_MODULE_MAGIC</></link>
- header block to all shared object files (Martijn van
- Oosterhout)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The magic block prevents version mismatches between loadable object
- files and servers.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add shared library support for AIX (Laurenz Albe)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New <link linkend="datatype-xml"><acronym>XML</></link>
- documentation section (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- <sect3>
- <title>Contrib Changes</title>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- multibyte encoding support, including <acronym>UTF8</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- query rewriting support
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- improved ranking functions
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- thesaurus dictionary support
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ispell dictionaries now recognize <application>MySpell</>
- format, used by <application>OpenOffice</>
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <acronym>GIN</> support
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add adminpack module containing <application>Pgadmin</> administration
- functions (Dave)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- These functions provide additional file system access
- routines not present in the default <productname>PostgreSQL</>
- server.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add sslinfo module (Victor Wagner)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Reports information about the current connection's <acronym>SSL</>
- certificate.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add pgrowlocks module (Tatsuo)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This shows row locking information for a specified table.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add hstore module (Oleg, Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add isn module, replacing isbn_issn (Jeremy Kronuz)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This new implementation supports <acronym>EAN13</>, <acronym>UPC</>,
- <acronym>ISBN</> (books), <acronym>ISMN</> (music), and
- <acronym>ISSN</> (serials).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add index information functions to pgstattuple (ITAGAKI Takahiro,
- Satoshi Nagayasu)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add pg_freespacemap module to display free space map information
- (Mark Kirkwood)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- pgcrypto now has all planned functionality (Marko Kreen)
- </para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Include iMath library in pgcrypto to have the public-key encryption
- functions always available.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add SHA224 algorithm that was missing in OpenBSD code.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Activate builtin code for SHA224/256/384/512 hashes on older
- OpenSSL to have those algorithms always available.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New function gen_random_bytes() that returns cryptographically strong
- randomness. Useful for generating encryption keys.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Remove digest_exists(), hmac_exists() and cipher_exists() functions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improvements to cube module (Joshua Reich)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- New functions are <function>cube(float[])</>,
- <function>cube(float[], float[])</>, and
- <function>cube_subset(cube, int4[])</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add async query capability to dblink (Kai Londenberg,
- Joe Conway)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- New operators for array-subset comparisons (<literal>@></>,
- <literal><@</>, <literal>&&</>) (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Various contrib packages already had these operators for their
- datatypes, but the naming wasn't consistent. We have now added
- consistently named array-subset comparison operators to the core code
- and all the contrib packages that have such functionality.
- (The old names remain available, but are deprecated.)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add uninstall scripts for all contrib packages that have install
- scripts (David, Josh Drake)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect3>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-17">
- <title>Release 8.1.17</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.16.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.17</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15,
- see the release notes for 8.1.15.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
- related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
- for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
- <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
- potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
- error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
- conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
- if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
- for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
- The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
- failures in the same area.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
- are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix decompilation of <literal>CASE WHEN</> with an implicit coercion
- (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build,
- or an <quote>unexpected CASE WHEN clause</> error message in other
- cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If <command>CLUSTER</> or a rewriting variant of <command>ALTER TABLE</>
- were executed by someone other than the table owner, the
- <structname>pg_type</> entry for the table's TOAST table would end up
- marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems,
- since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any
- ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected
- failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command
- (in 8.1 or 8.2), or <quote>owner of data type appears to be invalid</>
- warnings from <application>pg_dump</> after having done so (in 8.3).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit
- (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause
- the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
- of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-16">
- <title>Release 8.1.16</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.15.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.16</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15,
- see the release notes for 8.1.15.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix crash in autovacuum (Alvaro)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The crash occurs only after vacuuming a whole database for
- anti-transaction-wraparound purposes, which means that it occurs
- infrequently and is hard to track down.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
- function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
- conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
- specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
- (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the
- contents of TOAST tables (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented
- as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped
- before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then
- vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor,
- but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix uninitialized variables in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>'s
- <function>get_covers()</> function (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>configure</> script to properly report failure when
- unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
- <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
- now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
- mailing lists (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
- Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-15">
- <title>Release 8.1.15</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.14.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.15</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
- see the release notes for 8.1.2. Also, if you were running a previous
- 8.1.X release, it is recommended to <command>REINDEX</> all GiST
- indexes after the upgrade.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry
- <quote>dead</> after a deletion (Teodor)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This would result in index searches failing to find rows they
- should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with
- <command>REINDEX</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
- error message (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
- the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
- be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
- ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
- a trigger (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-<literal>SELECT</> appears
- in a function call in <literal>FROM</>, a multi-row <literal>VALUES</>
- list, or a <literal>RETURNING</> list (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The usual symptom of this problem is an <quote>unrecognized node type</>
- error.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
- function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent possible collision of <structfield>relfilenode</> numbers
- when moving a table to another tablespace with <command>ALTER SET
- TABLESPACE</> (Heikki)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of
- picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query
- item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
- using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
- build (Ron Mayer)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
- behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
- different numbers of columns (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
- but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
- The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE ROLE</> (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
- DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-14">
- <title>Release 8.1.14</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.13.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.14</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
- see the release notes for 8.1.2.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
- sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
- already held</> errors.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
- <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
- current rowtype (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</>, followed by re-use of a previously
- cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects
- against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> to first try to interpret its timezone
- argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone
- name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names
- in this order. Making <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> do so as well improves
- consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1:
- in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did,
- since in the older versions <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> accepted
- <emphasis>only</> abbreviations.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
- running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
- ON</> query (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query,
- but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated
- for new parent query rows.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
- boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
- expressions' contents (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
- BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
- <literal>IS NULL</>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/PgSQL to not fail when a <literal>FOR</> loop's target variable
- is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
- about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix PL/Python to work with Python 2.5
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is a back-port of fixes made during the 8.2 development cycle.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
- error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
- command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
- DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
- Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-13">
- <title>Release 8.1.13</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.1.12.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.13</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
- see the release notes for 8.1.2.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
- as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
- be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
- Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
- another recent patch to cause
- <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
- <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
- <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
- as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
- output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make <command>ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO</> update
- <structname>pg_shdepend</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later
- involved in a <command>DROP OWNED</> or <command>REASSIGN OWNED</>
- operation.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-12">
- <title>Release 8.1.12</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>never released</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.11.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.12</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
- see the release notes for 8.1.2.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
- column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
- non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
- <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
- inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
- Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
- two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a few datatype input functions
- that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
- uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
- values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
- about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
- expressions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
- (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
- <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
- the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
- subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
- <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
- This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
- it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
- <literal>foo</>).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
- DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba,
- Argentina/San_Luis, and Chile)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
- <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
- <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
- NULL value (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
- <literal>CFLAGS</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <literal>DatumGetBool</> macro to not fail with <application>gcc</>
- 4.3 (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This problem affects <quote>old style</> (V0) C functions that
- return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to
- back-patch it was not realized at the time.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
- race condition (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- In rare cases a session that had just executed a
- <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
- one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
- <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
- a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
- row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
- should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
- was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
- some applications depend on the old behavior.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Disallow <command>LISTEN</> and <command>UNLISTEN</> within a
- prepared transaction (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant
- consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit
- as long as an <command>UNLISTEN</> remained uncommitted.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
- (Heikki)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
- <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
- number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
- postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
- failure.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
- in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
- with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix display of constant expressions in <literal>ORDER BY</>
- and <literal>GROUP BY</> (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- An explictly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could
- for example lead to corruption of a view definition during
- dump and reload.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Fix <application>libpq</> to handle NOTICE messages correctly
- during COPY OUT (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined
- datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no
- guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="release-8-1-11">
- <title>Release 8.1.11</title>
-
- <note>
- <title>Release date</title>
- <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
- </note>
-
- <para>
- This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.10,
- including fixes for significant security issues.
- For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
- <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This is the last 8.1.X release for which the <productname>PostgreSQL</>
- community will produce binary packages for <productname>Windows</>.
- Windows users are encouraged to move to 8.2.X or later,
- since there are Windows-specific fixes in 8.2.X that
- are impractical to back-port. 8.1.X will continue to
- be supported on other platforms.
- </para>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Migration to Version 8.1.11</title>
-
- <para>
- A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
- However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
- see the release notes for 8.1.2.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Changes</title>
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
- the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
- predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
- long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
- execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
- (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
- same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
- because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
- such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
- automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
- can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
- trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
- The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
- (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
- and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
- the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
- used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
- this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
- AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
- <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
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