From: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:13:19 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: PostgreSQL Weekly News February 15, 2009
X-Git-Url: http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/static/gitweb.js?a=commitdiff_plain;h=5962538e3db56db2091cd37bb9a78451b0c26723;p=pgweb-old.git

PostgreSQL Weekly News February 15, 2009

git-svn-id: file:///Users/dpage/pgweb/svn-repo/trunk@2414 8f5c7a92-453e-0410-a47f-ad33c8a6b003
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diff --git a/portal/files/weeklynews.xml b/portal/files/weeklynews.xml
index 86b1bb98..110324f7 100644
--- a/portal/files/weeklynews.xml
+++ b/portal/files/weeklynews.xml
@@ -10,6 +10,18 @@
 <description></description>
 <language>en</language>
 
+<item>
+<title>PostgreSQL Weekly News February 15th 2009</title>
+<description>
+At Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day, the Czech and Slovak people
+reunited to form a Czechoslovakian PostgreSQL Users&#x27; Group.  Expect
+news from them soon.
+
+
+</description>
+<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20090215</guid>
+<pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST</pubDate>
+</item>
 <item>
 <title>PostgreSQL Weekly News February 8th 2009</title>
 <description>
@@ -113,17 +125,5 @@ Welcome to PostgreSQL&#x27;s newest member, Pascal Scherbaum. :)
 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20081214</guid>
 <pubDate>Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST</pubDate>
 </item>
-<item>
-<title>PostgreSQL Weekly News December 7th 2008</title>
-<description>
-Lorenzo Alberton has written an article comparing case handling in
-identifiers for several RDBMSs.
-&#x3C;a href=&#x22;http://www.alberton.info/dbms_identifiers_and_case_sensitivity.html&#x22;&#x3E;http://www.alberton.info/dbms_identifiers_and_case_sensitivity.html&#x3C;/a&#x3E;
-
-
-</description>
-<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20081207</guid>
-<pubDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST</pubDate>
-</item>
 </channel>
 </rss>
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews.html b/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews.html
index 64255417..6b2a2d9c 100644
--- a/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews.html
+++ b/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews.html
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ Weekly News
 <p>To receive the Weekly News in your inbox, please subscribe to the <a href="/https/git.postgresql.org/community/lists/subscribe">pgsql-announce@postgresql.org</a> mailing list.</p>
 
 <ul>
+    <li><a href="/https/git.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20090215">February 15th 2009</a></li>
     <li><a href="/https/git.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20090208">February 8th 2009</a></li>
     <li><a href="/https/git.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20090201">February 1st 2009</a></li>
     <li><a href="/https/git.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20090125">January 25th 2009</a></li>
diff --git a/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews/pwn20090215.html b/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews/pwn20090215.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..129e1d6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/portal/template/en/community/weeklynews/pwn20090215.html
@@ -0,0 +1,349 @@
+<!-- BEGIN page_title_block -->
+Weekly News - February 15 2009
+<!-- END page_title_block -->
+
+<h1>PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 15 2009</h1>
+
+<p>
+At Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day, the Czech and Slovak people
+reunited to form a Czechoslovakian PostgreSQL Users' Group.  Expect
+news from them soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Save The Date: pgDay San Jose.  Sunday, July 19th immediately before 
+OSCON.  CfP, more info TBA!
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Product News</h2>
+<p>
+Benetl 2.5, an ETL tool for files using PostgreSQL, released.
+<a href="http://www.benetl.net">http://www.benetl.net</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+pgpool-II 2.2 RC1, a connection pooler and more, released.
+<a href="http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/">http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL 8.4 Feature of the Week</h2>
+<p>
+Parallel Restore.  Andrew Dunstan parallelized pg_restore to that you
+can put all of your processors to work loading (or upgrading) a
+database.  In testing, this feature cuts load times by 50% with 4
+cores and 75% with 8.  Even better, this new pg_restore will work with
+8.3 databases.
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Tip of the Week</h2>
+<p>
+Don't index low-cardinality columns, except as part of a multicolumn
+index.
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Jobs for February</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-02/threads.php">http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-02/threads.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL Local</h2>
+<p>
+Ed Borasky will be speaking about Data Visualization at PDXPUG on
+February 19, 2009, 7-9pm in Portland.
+<a href="http://calagator.org/events/1250456619">http://calagator.org/events/1250456619</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PostgreSQL will be at SCALE February 20-22, 2009 in Los Angeles.
+<a href="http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/">http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum will be presenting a talk at Perl Workshop
+2009 on February 25 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
+<a href="http://www.perl-workshop.de/talks/151/view">http://www.perl-workshop.de/talks/151/view</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The German PostgreSQL User Group will have a booth, 2 talks and a               
+workshop on the Linuxdays Chemnitz on March 14 and 15, 2009.  More
+information in German here:
+<a href="http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/525-PostgreSQL-auf-den-Chemnitzer-Linuxtagen.html">http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/525-PostgreSQL-auf-den-Chemnitzer-Linuxtagen.html</a>                    
+</p>
+
+<p>
+
+PostgreSQL Conference, U.S. will be holding a PgDay at LinuxFest
+Northwest (April 25/26th). The call for papers is out at
+<a href="http://www.postgresqlconference.org/">http://www.postgresqlconference.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PGCon 2009 will be held 21-22 May 2009, in Ottawa at the University of
+Ottawa.  It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 19-20 May
+2009.
+<a href="http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php">http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PGCon Brazil will be take place October 23-24 2009 at Unicamp in
+Campinas, Sao Paulo state.
+</p>
+
+<h2>PostgreSQL in the News</h2>
+<p>
+Planet PostgreSQL: <a href="http://planet.postgresql.org/">http://planet.postgresql.org/</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter
+and Josh Berkus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
+Please send English language ones to david@fetter.org, German language
+to pwn@pgug.de, Italian language to pwn@itpug.org.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Applied Patches</h2>
+<p>
+Bruce Momjian committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml, fix spelling error in docs.
+  Erik Rijkers
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml, update wording of how to
+  prevent pg_dump from affecting statistics collection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/libpq.sgml, clarify PQinitSSL() documentation
+  to mention what the argument controls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml, remove tabs from SGML.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvaro Herrera committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Update autovacuum to use reloptions instead of a system catalog, for
+  per-table overrides of parameters.  This removes a whole class of
+  problems related to misusing the catalog, and perhaps more
+  importantly, gives us pg_dump support for the parameters.  Based on
+  a patch by Euler Taveira de Oliveira, heavily reworked by me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/bin/psql/describe.c, improve psql \d+ to show TOAST
+  reloptions too.  Per complaint from ITAGAKI Takahiro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom Lane committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Adopt Bob Jenkins' improved hash function for hash_any().  This
+  changes the contents of hash indexes (again), so bump catversion.
+  Kenneth Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Tweak configure to attempt to add -qnoansialias to CFLAGS whenever
+  running on AIX with a non-gcc compiler.  The previous coding would
+  do this only if CC was exactly "xlc"; which is a bad idea, as
+  demonstrated by trouble report from Mihai Criveti.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Change ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS to rewrite the whole table to
+  physically get rid of the OID column.  This eliminates the problem
+  discovered by Heikki back in November that 8.4's suppression of
+  "unnecessary" junk filtering in INSERT/SELECT could lead to an
+  Assert failure, or storing of oids into a table that shouldn't have
+  them if Asserts are off.  While that particular problem could have
+  been solved in other ways, it seems likely to be just a forerunner
+  of things to come if we continue to allow tables to contain rows
+  that disagree with the pg_class.relhasoids setting.  It's better to
+  make this operation slow than to sacrifice performance or risk bugs
+  in more common code paths.  Also, add ALTER TABLE SET WITH OIDS to
+  rewrite the table to add oids.  This was a bit more controversial,
+  but in view of the very small amount of extra code needed given the
+  current ALTER TABLE infrastructure, it seems best to eliminate the
+  asymmetry in features.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Fix UNLISTEN to fall out quickly if the current backend has never
+  executed any LISTEN command.  This is more important than it used to
+  be because DISCARD ALL invokes UNLISTEN.  Connection-pooled
+  applications making heavy use of DISCARD ALL were seeing significant
+  contention for pg_listener, as reported by Matteo Beccati.  It seems
+  unlikely that clients using LISTEN would use pooled connections, so
+  this simple tweak seems sufficient, especially since the pg_listener
+  implementation is slated to go away soon anyway.  Back-patch to 8.3,
+  where DISCARD ALL was introduced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/catalog/information_schema.sql, a couple of
+  marginal performance hacks for the information_schema views: replace
+  the old recursive-SQL-function implementation of _pg_keysequal()
+  with use of the built-in array containment operators, and change
+  table_constraints' UNION to UNION ALL.  Per discussion with Octavio
+  Alvarez.  initdb not forced since this doesn't affect results, but
+  you'd need to initdb or reload the information_schema to see the new
+  definitions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml, minor wordsmithing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Teach the planner to treat a partial unique index as proving a
+  variable is unique for a particular query, if the index predicate is
+  satisfied.  This requires a bit of reordering of operations so that
+  we check the predicates before doing any selectivity estimates, but
+  shouldn't really cause any noticeable slowdown.  Per a comment from
+  Michal Politowski.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peter Eisentraut committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/mb/Unicode/UCS_to_most.pl, add
+  possibility to generate only some files, by passing command-line
+  arguments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/mb/wchar.c, remove the encoding *numbers*
+  from the comments.  They are useless, and make maintenance harder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Support for KOI8U encoding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Only unset the locale environment when --no-locale is used (the way
+  it was presumably designed, but didn't act).  This allows running
+  the temp install tests in a non-C locale, thus exercising users'
+  real environments better.  Document how to change locales for test
+  runs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Unset language-related locale settings in any case, otherwise psql
+  will speak in tongues and mess up the regression test diffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- The Czech (cs_CZ) and Slovak (sk_SK) locales sort numbers after
+  letters, instead of vice versa.  Update the regression test
+  expectations to support that.  In the plpgsql test, adjust the test
+  data so that this isn't an issue.  In the char and varchar tests,
+  add new expected files.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Magnus Hagander committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/port/win32env.c, don't call SetEnvironmentVariable()
+  when removing an environment variable, as this seems to crash on at
+  least some versions of MingW. Our current usage of this function
+  does not require it, so it should be ok to ignore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- In pgsql/src/port/kill.c, loop calling CallNamedPipe() several times
+  in case it fails, since it can be transient failures, causing kill()
+  to not properly send signals.  Original patch from Steve Marshall,
+  modified by me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andrew Dunstan committed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+- Do not use unsetenv.c on mingw.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Rejected Patches (for now)</h2>
+<p>
+No one was disappointed this week :-)
+</p>
+
+<h2>Pending Patches</h2>
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of the recovery
+infrastructure patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heikki Linnakangas sent in a change to the way subtransaction cache
+works.  This is in aid of Hot Standby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ITAGAKI Takahiro sent in a patch to reject toast.fillfactor as a
+reloption, modify the relopt_kind to bit flags, and report the
+relation type on "unrecognized parameter" errors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Teodor Sigaev sent in another revision of the fast GIN insert patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pavel Stehule sent in a patch to add in some parser hooks for
+Oracle-compatible DECODE support.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeff Davis sent in a patch to advance xmin more aggressively in
+long-running transactions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KaiGai Kohei sent in two more revisions of the SE-PostgreSQL patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvaro Herrera sent in two revisions of a patch to adjust psql's
+describe to do the right thing in when talking to different versions
+of PostgreSQL (pre-8.4 vs. later) pursuant to the reloptions patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fujii Masao sent in another revision of the synchronous replication
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Teodor Sigaev sent in another revision of the B-Tree emulation for GIN
+patch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Andrew Chernow sent in two revisions of a patch which adds a
+PQInitCrypto(int) function to libpq so that it's possible to use a
+crypto library separately from SSL.
+
+</p>
+