== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 22 2003 == - Mailing list pgsql-announce

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 22 2003 ==

    Much of this weeks efforts focused on finishing up with 7.4.1's open items;
perhaps as an effort to give a nice Christmas gift from the PostgreSQL
developers. Expect an official announcement sometime today, and packages
should start showing up on your local mirrors soon. Of course the release
announcement will have information on getting the full changelog, but here
are some highlights from fixes for 7.4.1 from this past week. A bug in
constraint_column_usage for foreign keys in information schema was fixed. A
couple of problems in ecpg were rooted out, including an incorrect if call in
long=>numeric conversion and a conflicting include file issue. A planner
failure involving multiple IN clauses, each with a join in its subselect, was
repaired. The parser was tweaked to better handle ANY/ANYELEMENT/ANYARRAY
coercion without effecting UNKNOWN-type literals or Params. A few problems
with Set Returning Functions in the areas of planning and executing were
fixed. A memory leak with SSL connections was fixed. We now forbid REVOKE on
untrusted languages nor do we dump their privileges. A bug that broke IDENT
support on some BSD setups was fixed. Again check the release notes for more
details, and as a reminder a dump/reload is NOT required for users upgrading
from 7.4.0.

    With the focus on 7.4.1, we still managed to keep things moving on 7.5. Some
fixes included an enhancement to the optimizer to detect detect cases where a
joinclause is redundant with a restriction clause. There was also an
enhancement to btree's initial-positioning code so that we never need to step
more than one entry after descending the search tree to arrive at the correct
place to start the scan which improves the behavior substantially when there
are many entries equal to the chosen boundary value. There has also been good
progress made on the win32 port, with many of the issues with fork/exec
starting to get worked out, with several patches waiting in the wings to
complete that transition. After that there are a few more items on the list
to work out, but already one of the folks working on the port has stated he
has a working, though kludgey, copy of PostgreSQL running natively.

    On the web front, Chris Ryan spent some time this weekend moving
gborg.postgresql.org over to a new VM, which should give a boost to
performance for the site and adds some robustness for the backend processes.
Otherwise the change should be user transparent, but if you happen to see any
problems please email them to xgbe@yahoo.com or webmaster@postgresql.org. We
also have a new ftp mirror in Bulgaria, thanks to the folks at Sofia
University St. Kliment Ohridski.

    One final note on a hot topic on several of the mailing lists last week is
the desire for training information regarding PostgreSQL. A few members of
the community are discussing putting together some outlines of material they
feel ought to be covered by training classes, in the mean time those looking
for structured training classes should keep an eye on the main website, which
lists training classes along with other PostgreSQL related events.  For
example, on the site currently you will find information on training classes
offered in Brazil by Dextra Systems, and also the week long "PostgreSQL Boot
Camp" offered by core team member Bruce Momjian.   Also don't forget that
many of the conventions where PostgreSQL is involved tend to have training
classes, O'Reilly's OSCon is perhaps one of the better examples of this.
Incedentally, if you have an idea for a topic you would like to see covered
at OSCon (or any convention for that matter), there has been quite a bit of
discussion regarding just that on the -advocacy mailing list this past week,
so please join in.



== PostgreSQL Product News ==

PostgreSQL Log Analyzer 2.0
http://freshmeat.net/projects/pganalyzer/?branch_id=46363&release_id=145497&topic_id=245

Release 2.1 of IvolutionCMS
http://www.ivolutioncms.com/templates/page5_details.asp?docid=619

phpVideoPro 0.5.6
http://www.phparch.com/news/884



== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Software sets IBM?s hardware apart
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php?id=1288181878&fp=16&fpid=0

On the GUI Selection in UserLinux
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38270.htm

Year in Review: Defending the internet
http://www.computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/1EBF4479469680B2CC256DF1006B576A?OpenDocument

Linux 2.6 kernel 'out of detox'
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci941938,00.html

WebObjects 5.x and PostgreSQL (blog)
http://bonk.nu/blog/archives/000136.html

Database arrays considered harmful? (blog)
http://peter.mapledesign.co.uk/weblog/archives/database_arrays_considered_harmful.html



== Upcoming Events ==

Linux.Conf.Au: Adelaide, Australia: January 12-17
BOF and Tutorials presented by Gavin Sherry
http://lca2004.linux.org.au.

NordU Usenix 2004: Denmark: January 28 - February 1
Bruce Momjian will be giving PostgreSQL several tutorials
http://www.nordu.org/NordU2004/

Linux Solutions 2004: Paris, France: February 4-6
Bruce Momjian will be presenting
http://www.linuxsolutions.fr/EN/home/index.php?site=default



== PostgreSQL Weekly News - December 22nd 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