== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 08 2009 == - Mailing list pgsql-announce

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 08 2009 ==

You can now follow the pgsql-announce list on twitter @PGSQL_Announce.

Kevin Kempter will be speaking about backup and recover at Denver
PUG's first meeting on April 8, 2009.
http://www.diapug.org/Meeting.html

New Survey: Do you ever access the PostgreSQL System Catalogs?
http://www.postgresql.org/community

PostgreSQL Conference (JDCon) East 2009 registration is now open.
http://www.postgresql.us/purchase

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

PostgreSQL Maestro 9.2, a GUI for administration and development on
Windows, released.
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/postgresql/maestro/

Npgsql2 2.0.4, a .NET data provider for PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.npgsql.org

Turnkey Linux PostgreSQL appliance 8.3.5 released.
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances/postgresql

Turnkey Linux LAPP appliance released.
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances/lapp/updates/new-turnkey-lapp-version-200902-hardy

Golconde 0.4, a queue-based replication system written in python,
released.
http://code.google.com/p/golconde/

== PostgreSQL 8.4 Feature of the Week ==

auto_explain.  This "contrib" feature, if installed, allows you to
turn on and off (at runtime) automatically logging explain plans for
slow queries to the PostgreSQL activity log.

== PostgreSQL Tip of the Week ==

Lines in the pg_hba.conf are processed in sequential order, and only
the first line which matches the incoming connection is evaluated.

== PostgreSQL Jobs for March ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2009-03/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

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:
http://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/525-PostgreSQL-auf-den-Chemnitzer-Linuxtagen.html

PostgreSQLFr will have a booth at Solutions Linux 2009 March 31-April
2 in Paris.  Sign up with sas AT postgresql DOT fr or at the
French-language wiki:
http://postgresql.fr/sl2009:start

PostgreSQL Conference, U.S. will be holding a PgDay at LinuxFest
Northwest (April 25/26th). The call for papers is out at
http://www.postgresqlconference.org/

Michael Renner will be giving a PostgreSQL replication workshop at
Netways OSDC 2009 on April 29 and 30 in Nuremberg, Germany.
http://www.netways.de/english/osdc/y2009/programm/w/michael_renner_postgresql_repliziert_ein_ueberblick/

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.
http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php

Save The Date: pgDay San Jose.  Sunday, July 19th 2009 immediately
before OSCON.  CfP, more info TBA!

PGCon Brazil will be take place October 23-24 2009 at Unicamp in
Campinas, Sao Paulo state.

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter
and Josh Berkus

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.

== Applied Patches ==

Teodor Sigaev committed:

- Fix usage of char2wchar/wchar2char. Changes: pg_wchar and wchar_t
  could have different size, so char2wchar doesn't call
  pg_mb2wchar_with_len to prevent out-of-bound memory bug.  Make
  char2wchar/wchar2char symmetric, now they should not be called with
  C-locale because mbstowcs/wcstombs oftenly doesn't work correct with
  C-locale.  Text parser uses pg_mb2wchar_with_len directly in case of
  C-locale and multibyte encoding Per bug report by Hiroshi Inoue and
  following discussion.  Backpatch up to 8.2 when multi-byte support
  was implemented in tsearch.

Tom Lane committed:

- When we are in error recursion trouble, arrange to suppress
  translation and encoding conversion of any elog/ereport message
  being sent to the frontend.  This generalizes a patch that I put in
  last October, which suppressed translation of only specific messages
  known to be associated with recursive can't-translate-the-message
  behavior.  As shown in bug #4680, we need a more general answer in
  order to have some hope of coping with broken encoding conversion
  setups.  This approach seems a good deal less klugy anyway.  Patch
  in all supported branches.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/error/elog.c, ooops ... fix some
  confusion between gettext() and _() in my previous patch.  This has
  moved around in past releases, so just copying-and-pasting from HEAD
  didn't work as intended.

- In pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/float.c, put back our old workaround
  for machines that declare cbrt() in math.h but fail to provide the
  function itself.  Not sure how we escaped testing anything later
  than 7.3 on such cases, but they still exist, as per Andr?
  Volpato's report about AIX 5.3.

- Fix column privilege checking for cases where parent and child have
  different attribute numbering.  Also, a parent whole-row reference
  should not require select privilege on child columns that aren't
  inherited from the parent.  Problem diagnosed by KaiGai Kohei,
  though this isn't exactly his patch.

- In pgsql/doc/src/sgml/backup.sgml, remove documentation of
  log_restartpoints setting, which is obsoleted in favor of
  log_checkpoints.  Fujii Masao

- Teach the planner to support index access methods that only
  implement amgettuple or only implement amgetbitmap, instead of the
  former assumption that every AM supports both APIs.  Extracted with
  minor editorialization from Teodor Sigaev's fast-GIN-insert patch;
  whatever becomes of that, this seems like a simple and reasonable
  generalization of the index AM interface spec.

Heikki Linnakangas committed:

- In pgsql/src/include/storage/lwlock.h, remove the placeholder
  LWLockId in place of the removed FreeSpaceLock.  As pointed out by
  ITAGAKI Takahiro, we split SInvalLock into two in 8.4, so to keep
  the numbers of the rest of the locks unchanged from 8.3, we don't
  need a placeholder.

- In pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c, fix copy-pasto in the
  patch to allow background writer to run during recovery: if
  background writer or pgstat process dies during recovery (or any
  other child process, but those two are the only ones running), send
  SIGQUIT to the startup process using correct pid.

- In pgsql/src/backend/commands/functioncmds.c, add some sanity checks
  to CREATE CAST ... WITHOUT FUNCTION.  Disallow composite, enum and
  array types, as those are surely not binary-compatible with anything
  else because of the embedded OIDs.  Inspired by bug report by Oleg
  Serov.

- Reload config file in startup process on SIGHUP.  Fujii Masao.

- Add MUST (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the list of known
  abbreviations.  Mauritius began using DST in the summer 2008-2009;
  the Olson library has been updated already.  Xavier Bugaud

Magnus Hagander committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/hba.c, log a warning instead of shutting
  down the system if we can't load pg_hba.conf on reload (for example
  due to a permission error).  Selena Deckelmann.

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/hba.c, change hba load failure message to
  LOG instead of WARNING.  Per comment from Tom Lane.

- In pgsql/src/backend/libpq/hba.c, make pg_hba parsing report all
  errors in the file before aborting the load, instead of just
  reporting the first one.  Selena Deckelmann

- In pgsql/src/tools/msvc/Mkvcbuild.pm, fix MSVC build for new ways to
  pull in keywords.c and kwlookup.c.

Peter Eisentraut committed:

- In pgsql/src/backend/storage/file/fd.c, don't actively violate the
  system limit of maximum open files (RLIMIT_NOFILE).  This avoids
  irritating kernel logs (if system overstep violations are enabled)
  and also the grsecurity alert when starting PostgreSQL.  Original
  patch by Jacek Drobiecki.

- Add new SQL:2008 error codes for invalid LIMIT and OFFSET values.
  Remove unused nonstandard error code that was perhaps intended for
  this but never used.

- Provide some proper minimal documentation for the pg_dump(all)
  --binary-upgrade option.  We don't want to commit to what it does,
  but hiding it will only cause confusion.

- In pgsql/src/backend/parser/scan.l, clarify to the translator that
  yyerror() deals with the translation of "syntax error", not the
  literal string.  I was previously confused on this matter, but I
  have now verified that everything is translated properly.

- In pgsql/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_backup_archiver.c, message tuning.

Alvaro Herrera committed:

- Separate the key word list that lived in keywords.c into a new
  header file kwlist.h, to avoid having to link the backend object
  file into other programs like pg_dump.  We can now simply symlink a
  single source file from the backend (kwlookup.c, containing the
  shared routine ScanKeywordLookup) and compile it locally, which is a
  lot cleaner.

- In pgsql/src/bin/scripts/Makefile, avoid MSVC breakage caused by my
  previous commit by not using a variable in the src/bin/scripts
  Makefile.

- On Windows, call bind_textdomain_codeset on domains other than the
  default one, too, so that the codeset is properly mapped on the
  newly added PL domains.

- Add comments about kwlookup.c expectations.

- pg_bind_textdomain_codeset must exist only on ENABLE_NLS.

- Revert pg_bind_textdomain_codeset to a existant-but-empty function
  when ENABLE_NLS is not defined, for better compatibility of the
  backend with modules compiled the other way.  Per note from Tom Lane
  after my previous commit.

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Bryce Cutt sent in another revision of the patch to improve
the performance of multi-batchHash join for skewed data sets.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of his SE-PostgreSQL patches.

Fujii Masao sent in another revision of his PITR performance
improvement patch.

Josh Tolley sent in a back-patch for 8.3 intended to duplicate Selena
Deckelmann's, "Issue WARNING instead of FATAL when reload can't read
pg_hba.conf" behavior applied to HEAD this week.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a patch for pg_standby which changes its
behavior on receiving a SIGQUIT, to immediately killing pg_standby,
triggering the FATAL death of the startup process, too.

Fujii Masao sent in another revision of the synchronous replication
patch.

Teodor Sigaev sent in another revision of the fast insert GIN patch.

Teodor Sigaev sent in another revision of the B-Tree emulation for GIN
patch.

Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of the mixed named notation in
functions.

Robert Lor sent in a two revisions of a patch to add Theo
Schlossnagle's Dtrace probes.

Zdenek Kotala sent in a patch to fix regression tests for the Czech
locale.

Andrew Dunstan sent in an optimization for parallel pg_restore.

Gregory Stark sent in a patch to head off a potential conflict between
indexes created concurrently and HOT.

Selena Deckelmann sent in a patch to have ParseConfigFile report all
parsing errors, then bail.