PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 23rd 2003 - Mailing list pgsql-announce

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 23rd 2003 ==

    There has been some initial talk about releasing a 7.3.3 version in the
next few weeks. The fixes available all tend to be minor, for example
this week the implementation of abstime-to-time cast function was
changed, along with it's volatility, but it would still be nice to make
these changes available for those who haven't upgrade yet. As I get more
details I will surely report them.
    The big development news is the Tom Lane has started implementing the
revised Front-End/Back-End protocol. For phase one we received the new
StartupPacket layout with variable-width fields. There will be no more
truncation of long user names and libpq can now send it's
environment-variable-driven SET commands. Phase two has added length
counts from frontend->backend messages. It also has changed COPY IN data
to be packetized into messages. After that, COPY OUT was reimplemented
per the new protocol and COPY BINARY to/from the frontend works (at
least from the back end's point of view). Libpq's PQgetline API will
need to be reworked to be NULL safe. Libpq uses message length words for
performance improvement, but not yet for error recovery.
By the way, I should mention that while working on this, there may be
problems getting compiled CVS version to work; those interested in the
gory details can check the -hackers archives.
    There were some other minor miscellaneous fixes as always; Fixing some
breaks in the recent variable-handling changes, cleaning up a palloc(0)
error for tables with zero columns, stddev() and variance() were changed
to return NULL when there is just one input value (based on recent
-general discussion), multiple issues in plperl error handling were
cleaned up, and COPY was reworked a little to make handling of line
termination more robust. Another important change was the improvement of
deferred trigger performance by making defferedTriggerInvokeEvents only
scan events added since it last ran. Thanks to Stephan Szabo and Tom
Lane for work on that one. Bruce Momjian continues his work on Native
Win32 . This week saw updating of tests to match the existing Cygwin
tests where appropriate and Win32 now also has a version of unlink and
rename.
    On the documentation front, Bruce Momjian updated the pg_dump
information, and updated the FAQ. There was also some addition to the
documentation for shared memory costs after some recent discussion on
the -performance list. Peter Eisentraut continues is work cleaning up
the docs for the next release with another wide batch of changes
touching everything from casting to views. While those are only
available in CVS right now, in the meantime pdf docs for 7.3.2 we're
added to the website at http://www.postgresql.org/docs.
    We end on a sad note this week, to offer brief mention E. F. Codd has
passed away. For those who may not be familiar with him, Codd pioneered
the relational model while working for IBM in the 1960's and 1970's.
Given that so much of todays technology industry deals with relational
databases, we all should pay our respects to someone who was at least as
influential as some of our more modern day tech heroes, if not as
famous.



== PostgreSQL Product News ==

PDAdmin Version 1.1.1 Released
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pdadmin/projdisplay.php

Mammoth PostgreSQL 7.3.2 shipping 04-25-03
http://linuxpr.com/releases/5787.html

EMS PostgreSQL Manager for Linux released
http://www.databasejournal.com/news/article.php/2194361



== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Interview with the PostgreSQL Team
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3341

LinuxFest Northwest to be held April 26 in Bellingham, Washington
http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/03/04/23/1323226.shtml?tid=52



== Upcoming Events ==

Open Source Conference: Portland, Oregon: July 7-11
A PostgreSQL track will be available at this years conference.
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2003



== PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 23rd 2003 ==

Don't forget to read Elein Mustain's Weekly Summary of the PostgreSQL
General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org
http://advocacy.postgresql.org