== PostgreSQL Weekly News - August 13 2006 == - Mailing list pgsql-announce

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - August 13 2006 ==

Planner hints are a subject of another lively discussion on -hackers.

People are engaging in a lively discussion on -hackers about packages
for PL languages.

== Applied Patches ==

Tom Lane committed:

- A back-patch of HEAD's configure fixes to select the appropriate
  compiler switches for Intel's icc and AIX's xlc.

- A joint Simon Riggs/Tom Lane patch which makes recovery from WAL be
  restartable, by executing a checkpoint-like operation every so
  often.

- A patch based on Ralph Engeschall's which creates hooks for
  dynamically initializing preloaded libraries.  You can do this by
  calling functions _PG_init() and _PG_fini() if the library defines
  such symbols.  This way, you no longer need to specify an
  initialization function in preload_libraries.   Instead, PostgreSQL
  can assume that the library used the _PG_init() convention.  This
  removes one source of pilot error in use of preloaded libraries.

- His fix UNION, EXCEPT and INTERSECT which shows the output typmod
  (i.e. the 255 in varchar(255)) when inputs being merged have the
  same data type and typmod.  Per several gripes over the years about
  UNION's dropping precision info.

- A Jonah Harris/Tom Lane patch which adds INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE ...
  RETURNING capability, PL/PgSQL support will follow.  The patch also
  converts execMain's SELECT INTO support into a DestReceiver,
  eliminating some ugly special cases.

- A change to SPI_cursor_open to allow INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING.

- A patch which fixes a cord dump in duration logging for a
  V3-protocol Execute message when what's being executed is a COMMIT
  or ROLLBACK.  Per report from Sergey Koposov.  This includes
  back-patches to 8.1 and 8.0.

- A patch which causes psql to report both the returned data and the
  command status tag for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING.

- A change to the regression test for RETURNING which makes output
  deterministic.

Teodor Sigaev committed:

- a fix to contrib/ltree's gist_betwee() per report by Mario Weilguni
  where modifying a value in a shared buffer could result in index
  corruption.

Bruce Momjian committed:

- a patch which lets you log protocol-level prepare/bind/execute

- a fix to statement_timeout so that it properly treats microseconds
  as microseconds, rather than as 100 microseconds, as it did before.
  This actually fixes all setitimer calls on Win32, but
  statement_timeout is the most visible fix.

- Yoshiyuki Asaba's patch which sets the server-size socket buffer on
  Win32 to 32k for performance.

- David Fetter's patch which increases the size of the psql line
  counter so it can handle files with more than 2^32 lines.

- Add Neil Conway and Gavin Sherry's presentation from the PostgreSQL
  Tenth Anniversary Conference to FAQ_DEV.

- Zdenek Kotala's refactor of set_config_option() which makes its
  behavior more consistent.

Michael Meskes committed:

- Alvaro Herrera's patch which fixes ECPG regression tests for VPATH
  builds.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

Tom Lane rejected Dhanaraj M's patch which changes FETCH and MOVE to
use int8 on grounds of excessive invasiveness and lack of utility.

Zdenek Kotala's patch which allows commenting of variables in
postgresql.conf to restore them to defaults.  It broke the buildfarm.

Pavel Stehule's patch which allows you to convert from perl to
postgresql array in OUT parameters.  Another part of the patch allows
hash form output from procedures with one OUT argument.  It broke the
buildfarm.

== Pending Patches ==

Sven Suursoho sent in a patch adding to PL/Python's capabilities,
including:

- Return SETOF as Python's sequence types (tuple, list) or using
  iterator or generator

- Return composite types as sequence (tuple, list), mapping (dict) or
  class (actually any object providing method __getattr__)

- Allow named procedure arguments

Korry Douglas sent in another version of his PL instrumentation plugin
patch, this one using "rendezvous variables" per Tom Lane's
suggestion.

Satoshi Nagayasu sent in a patch which adds pgstatindex functions to
the pgstattuple contrib module.
== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Active Query Builder 1.6 is out.
http://activequerybuilder.com/

Watch for the upcoming NPGSQL 1.0RC3, now with lots of fixes.
http://pgfoundry.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=835

PostgreSQL 8.1.4 packages for Solaris are out.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/solarispackages/

DBLink-TDS 0.64 is out.  It supports PostgreSQL 8.1.4 and freetds 0.63.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/dblink-tds/

The PL/Scheme project has kicked off on pgfoundry.
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/plscheme/

Slony-I 1.2 RC3 is out.  Please test.
http://slony.info/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for August ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2006-08/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

Everything this week was global.

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://www.planetpostgresql.org/

General Bits, Archives and occasional new articles:
http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter.