== PostgreSQL Weekly News - January 5th 2004 == - Mailing list pgsql-announce

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - January 5th 2004 ==

    If no news is good news, then I have a whole lot of good news for everyone.
:-) As expected, this week was fairly tame in the grand scheme of things. In
fact, probably the biggest item of the week involved an outage of the main
PostgreSQL web servers. The nitty gritty details weren't too interesting
(though you can read them here if you want:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2004-01/msg00101.php), but
things should be back on track now so hopefully we will have smooth sailing
for the rest of 2004.

    One potentially exciting enhancement involved a rewrite of the OR indexscan
processing to allow for two-column index use when the WHERE condition is
similar to 'col1 = foo AND (col2 = bar OR col2 = baz)'.  Previously if the OR
wasn't on the first column of the index, we wouldn't have noticed it.
Operator parsing saw a reduction in palloc() overhead, which should help
speed up the parser.  Not too much else to write home about, though we did
have a few bug fixes including one fix in the executor that fixed a corner
case with running out of memory during hash_creation for index scans and
another fix put in for non-gcc based compiles on Solaris.

    A few items did cross my radar screen for those interested in benchmarks and
cross-database testing. The first was a report from the folks at the Open
Source Development Labs that there is now a framework in place for automated
testing of patches against the OSDL's PostgreSQL systems. Here's a link to
the original announcement
(http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-12/msg00797.php) and a
link to an example already put to good use
(http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-12/msg00816.php).  Second
was a link to a TPC-H style benchmark project on sourceforge
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/benchw) available for multiple database
back-ends, including PostgreSQL.  And finally was the announcement from Luis
Neves that he has "ported" the Foodmart2000 sample database used in the
Microsoft documentation and several other technical articles dealing with
OLAP/SQL Server. More information and a URL for download is available at
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2004-01/msg00095.php.



== PostgreSQL Product News ==

PHP Weather 2.2.0
http://www.phparch.com/news/922

WASP UDDI 4.6 - Extra features add to a solid product
http://sys-con.com/webservices/article.cfm?id=752



== PostgreSQL In the News ==

Object relational mappings are over-rated... (blog)
http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/01/01/foodForThought

Installing psycopg on Red Hat 9 (blog)
http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/12/31/psycopg



== Upcoming Events ==

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

LinuxWorld: New York City, New York: January 21
Bruce Momjian will host a PostgreSQL BoF
http://www.postgresql.org/event.php?EventID=180

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 3-5
Bruce Momjian will be presenting
http://www.linuxsolutions.fr/EN/home/index.php?site=default



== PostgreSQL Weekly News - January 5th 2004 ==
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