== PostgreSQL Weekly News - June 16 2013 == - Mailing list pgsql-announce

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - June 16 2013 ==

The first commitfest for the PostgreSQL 9.4 cycle has begun!
https://commitfest.postgresql.org/action/commitfest_view?id=18

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

Barman 1.2.1, a backup and recovery manager for PostgreSQL, released.
http://www.pgbarman.org

Benetl 4.4, a free ETL tool for postgreSQL, released.
http://www.benetl.net

== PostgreSQL Jobs for June ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2013-06/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

We're going to have a booth at OSCON this year.  Please sign up and
hang out at the booth for an hour or two:
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Oscon_2013_signup

PGDay UK 2013 is July 12, 2013.  Registration is open.
http://postgresqlusergroup.org.uk

PostgreSQL Brazil will be held August 15-17, 2013 in Porto Velho, RO,
Brazil.
http://pgbr.postgresql.org.br/2013/chamada.en.php

Save The Date!
Postgres Open 2013 will be in Chicago, IL, USA, September 16-18.
    Hotel Sax:
    https://reservations.ihotelier.com/crs/g_reservation.cfm?groupID=888761&hotelID=6865
    Early Bird registration open through June 30, 2013:
    http://postgresopen-eac2.eventbrite.com/
    Presentations are due by July 1, 2013.
    http://www.postgresopen.org/2013/speaker/

pgconf.EU 2013 will be held on Oct 29-Nov 1, 2013 at the Conrad Hotel
in downtown Dublin, Ireland.  The CfP is open.
http://2013.pgconf.eu/

PGConf.DE 2013 will be held November 8th, 2013, at the Rhineland
Industrial Museum in Oberhausen.  The CfP is open through September
15, 2013.
http://2013.pgconf.de/

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

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

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

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.  Spanish language
to pwn@arpug.com.ar.

== Applied Patches ==

Fujii Masao pushed:

- Fix pg_isready to handle conninfo properly.  pg_isready displays the
  host name and the port number that it uses to connect to the server.
  So far, pg_isready didn't use the conninfo specified in -d option
  for calculating those host name and port number. This can lead to
  wrong display to a user.  This commit changes pg_isready so that it
  uses the conninfo for that calculation.  Original patch by Phil
  Sorber, modified by me.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/941c4ece98d08113b557bc8e7dbd8a9ac0ffac3e

- Fix pg_restore -l with the directory archive to display the correct
  format name.  Back-patch to 9.1 where the directory archive was
  introduced.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f69aece6f475b08a6ec60f80531eefc0005d9e9b

- Fix description of archive format which pg_restore -j supports.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2bc4ab4f9c2ed8d94c22c41fce05f97838f2fc42

Tatsuo Ishii pushed:

- Add description that loread()/lowrite() are corresponding to
  lo_read()/lo_write() in libpq to avoid confusion.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ecdec470e7a39316df185d387aeaeceab7155ada

Tom Lane pushed:

- Fix cache flush hazard in cache_record_field_properties().  We need
  to increment the refcount on the composite type's cached tuple
  descriptor while we do lookups of its column types.  Otherwise a
  cache flush could occur and release the tuple descriptor before
  we're done with it.  This fails reliably with
  -DCLOBBER_CACHE_ALWAYS, but the odds of a failure in a production
  build seem rather low (since the pfree'd descriptor typically
  wouldn't get scribbled on immediately).  That may explain the lack
  of any previous reports.  Buildfarm issue noted by Christian
  Ullrich.  Back-patch to 9.1 where the bogus code was added.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e262755bfc97f31442cc0def8098b1a7d2913355

- Improve updatability checking for views and foreign tables.  Extend
  the FDW API (which we already changed for 9.3) so that an FDW can
  report whether specific foreign tables are
  insertable/updatable/deletable.  The default assumption continues to
  be that they're updatable if the relevant executor callback function
  is supplied by the FDW, but finer granularity is now possible.  As a
  test case, add an "updatable" option to contrib/postgres_fdw.  This
  patch also fixes the information_schema views, which previously did
  not think that foreign tables were ever updatable, and fixes
  view_is_auto_updatable() so that a view on a foreign table can be
  auto-updatable.  initdb forced due to changes in information_schema
  views and the functions they rely on.  This is a bit unfortunate to
  do post-beta1, but if we don't change this now then we'll have
  another API break for FDWs when we do change it.  Dean Rasheed,
  somewhat editorialized on by Tom Lane
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/dc3eb5638349e74a6628130a5101ce866455f4a3

- Only install a portal's ResourceOwner if it actually has one.  In
  most scenarios a portal without a ResourceOwner is dead and not
  subject to any further execution, but a portal for a cursor WITH
  HOLD remains in existence with no ResourceOwner after the creating
  transaction is over.  In this situation, if we attempt to "execute"
  the portal directly to fetch data from it, we were setting
  CurrentResourceOwner to NULL, leading to a segfault if the datatype
  output code did anything that required a resource owner (such as
  trying to fetch system catalog entries that weren't already cached).
  The case appears to be impossible to provoke with stock libpq, but
  psqlODBC at least is able to cause it when working with held
  cursors.  Simplest fix is to just skip the assignment to
  CurrentResourceOwner, so that any resources used by the data output
  operations will be managed by the transaction-level resource owner
  instead.  For consistency I changed all the places that install a
  portal's resowner as current, even though some of them are probably
  not reachable with a held cursor's portal.  Per report from Joshua
  Berry (with thanks to Hiroshi Inoue for developing a self-contained
  test case).  Back-patch to all supported versions.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/629b3e96dd64fa081d8b4610c5a723ef68af09d7

- Refactor checksumming code to make it easier to use externally.
  pg_filedump and other external utility programs are likely to want
  to be able to check Postgres page checksums.  To avoid messy
  duplication of code, move the checksumming functionality into an
  exported header file, much as we did awhile back for the CRC code.
  In passing, get rid of an unportable assumption that a static char[]
  array will be word-aligned, and do some other minor code
  beautification.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/f04216341dd1cc235e975f93ac806d9d3729a344

- Remove special-case treatment of LOG severity level in standalone
  mode.  elog.c has historically treated LOG messages as low-priority
  during bootstrap and standalone operation.  This has led to
  confusion and even masked a bug, because the normal expectation of
  code authors is that elog(LOG) will put something into the
  postmaster log, and that wasn't happening during initdb.  So get rid
  of the special-case rule and make the priority order the same as it
  is in normal operation.  To keep from cluttering initdb's output and
  the behavior of a standalone backend, tweak the severity level of
  three messages routinely issued by xlog.c during startup and
  shutdown so that they won't appear in these cases.  Per my proposal
  back in December.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c62866eeafd52822ec61a0d2db9428c05e97d3cc

- Avoid deadlocks during insertion into SP-GiST indexes.  SP-GiST's
  original scheme for avoiding deadlocks during concurrent index
  insertions doesn't work, as per report from Hailong Li, and there
  isn't any evident way to make it work completely.  We could possibly
  lock individual inner tuples instead of their whole pages, but
  preliminary experimentation suggests that the performance penalty
  would be huge.  Instead, if we fail to get a buffer lock while
  descending the tree, just restart the tree descent altogether.  We
  keep the old tuple positioning rules, though, in hopes of reducing
  the number of cases where this can happen.  Teodor Sigaev, somewhat
  edited by Tom Lane
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e472b921406407794bab911c64655b8b82375196

- Stamp HEAD as 9.4devel.  Let the hacking begin ...
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/58ae1f457708205e3ea29eb99bde65402a0fcfa7

- Stamp shared-library minor version numbers for 9.4.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8a3f0894a477c09c626abed273be80afdc6b13ac

- Update RELEASE_CHANGES to describe library version bumping more
  fully.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/46e1434f3db21cdc05dea42b4e060d2078ff5b87

- Be consistent about #define'ing configure symbols as "1" not empty.
  This is just neatnik-ism, since all the tests in the code are
  #ifdefs, but we shouldn't specify symbols as "Define to 1 ..." and
  then not actually define them that way.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/5242fefb471d1fb2d0f35a33bde3570e19acd4b1

- Use SA_RESTART for all signals, including SIGALRM.  The exclusion of
  SIGALRM dates back to Berkeley days, when Postgres used SIGALRM in
  only one very short stretch of code.  Nowadays, allowing it to
  interrupt kernel calls doesn't seem like a very good idea, since its
  use for statement_timeout means SIGALRM could occur anyplace in the
  code, and there are far too many call sites where we aren't prepared
  to deal with EINTR failures.  When third-party code is taken into
  consideration, it seems impossible that we ever could be fully
  EINTR-proof, so better to use SA_RESTART always and deal with the
  implications of that.  One such implication is that we should not
  assume pg_usleep() will be terminated early by a signal.  Therefore,
  long sleeps should probably be replaced by WaitLatch operations
  where practical.  Back-patch to 9.3 so we can get some beta testing
  on this change.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/873ab97219caabeb2f7b390268a4fe01e2b7518c

- Use WaitLatch, not pg_usleep, for delaying in pg_sleep().  This
  avoids platform-dependent behavior wherein pg_sleep() might fail to
  be interrupted by statement timeout, query cancel, SIGTERM, etc.
  Also, since there's no reason to wake up once a second any more, we
  can reduce the power consumption of a sleeping backend a tad.
  Back-patch to 9.3, since use of SA_RESTART for SIGALRM makes this a
  bigger issue than it used to be.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/a64ca63e59c11d8fe6db24eee3d82b61db7c2c83

Robert Haas pushed:

- Improve description of loread/lowrite.  Patch by me, reviewed by
  Tatsuo Ishii.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c1d729b419ee876c32ddf4ac3a85fa89a6b4a89b

Andrew Dunstan pushed:

- Fix unescaping of JSON Unicode escapes, especially for non-UTF8.
  Per discussion  on -hackers. We treat Unicode escapes when
  unescaping them similarly to the way we treat them in PostgreSQL
  string literals.  Escapes in the ASCII range are always accepted, no
  matter what the database encoding. Escapes for higher code points
  are only processed in UTF8 databases, and attempts to process them
  in other databases will result in an error. \u0000 is never
  unescaped, since it would result in an impermissible null byte.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/78ed8e03c67d7333708f5c1873ec1d239ae2d7e0

Noah Misch pushed:

- Avoid reading past datum end when parsing JSON.  Several loops in
  the JSON parser examined a byte in memory just before checking
  whether its address was in-bounds, so they could read one byte
  beyond the datum's allocation.  A SIGSEGV is possible.  New in 9.3,
  so no back-patch.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/66008564f8ce570f7ad6368fbde2138e946d328b

- Don't use ordinary NULL-terminated strings as Name datums.
  Consumers are entitled to read the full 64 bytes pertaining to a
  Name; using a shorter NULL-terminated string leads to reading beyond
  the end its allocation; a SIGSEGV is possible.  Use the frequent
  idiom of copying to a NameData on the stack.  New in 9.3, so no
  back-patch.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ff53890f687c7f6b2a10db6661e9c32faf832636

- Avoid reading below the start of a stack variable in
  tokenize_file().  We would wrongly overwrite the prior stack byte if
  it happened to contain '\n' or '\r'.  New in 9.3, so no back-patch.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/3a5d0c55338e6beb4c01ed5fadb1462e90db7545

- Observe array length in HaveVirtualXIDsDelayingChkpt().  Since
  commit f21bb9cfb5646e1793dcc9c0ea697bab99afa523, this function
  ignores the caller-provided length and loops until it finds a
  terminator, which GetVirtualXIDsDelayingChkpt() never adds.  Restore
  the previous loop control logic.  In passing, revert the addition of
  an unused variable by the same commit, presumably a debugging relic.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/fb435f40d5e34f85076a0af56b2f3bf7b86122b8

- Don't pass oidvector by value.  Since the structure ends with a
  flexible array, doing so truncates any vector having more than one
  element.  New in 9.3, so no back-patch.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/813895e4acfa646c6c0405a0a8c5d05637f42865

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- PL/Python: Fix type mixup.  Memory was allocated based on the sizeof
  a type that was not the type of the pointer that the result was
  being assigned to.  The types happen to be of the same size, but
  it's still wrong.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/fa2fc066f34f1b631b5f92f11e7cda9f60a25330

Heikki Linnakangas pushed:

- Add :client_id automatic variable for custom pgbench scripts.  This
  makes it easier to write custom scripts that have different logic
  for each client.  Gurjeet Singh, with some changes by me.
  http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b23160889c963dfe23d8cf1f9be64fb3c535a2d6

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Marco Atzeri sent in another revision of a patch to make compiling on
Cygwin work again.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in a WIP patch to allow for freezing without
write I/O.

Fabien COELHO sent in four more revisions of a patch to add a
--throttle option to pgbench.

KONDO Mitsumasa sent in two revisions of a patch to improve the
checkpoint IO scheduler to make transaction response times more
stable.

Fujii Masao sent in two revisions of a patch to make it easier and
surer to do a clean switchover in replication.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to add a session_preload_libraries
configuration parameter.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to remove USE_PGXS support in
contrib.

Fabrízio de Royes Mello sent in a patch to add support of "IF NOT
EXISTS" to other "CREATE" statements.

Dean Rasheed sent in another revision of a patch to add WITH CHECK
OPTION to VIEWs.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of a patch to add row-level
access controls.

Alexander Korotkov sent in another revision of a patch to add
information for storing GIN indexes.

Alexander Korotkov sent in a patch to allow GIN indexing to help
searches on DFA regexes execute much faster.

Amit Kapila sent in another revision of a patch to create ALTER
SYSTEM, which persists changes to configuration parameters across
restarts of the server by saving those configuration changes to files
read on (re)start.

Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch to update the recommended .emacs
file with support for the aforementioned changes.

Peter Eisentraut sent in another revision of a patch to add
TRANSFORMS.

Dean Rasheed sent in a patch to add an md5 aggregate called md5_agg().

Kyotaro HORIGUCHI sent in a patch to reduce the maximum error in
tuples estimation after vacuum.

Andres Freund sent in another revision of a patch to implement logical
changeset generation.

Alexander Korotkov sent in a patch to add a "fast scan" technique for
GIN indexes.

Andres Freund sent in another revision of a patch to add support for
extensible external toast tuples.

Fujii Masao sent in a patch to fix an issue where pg_dump output in
directory archive form was falsely being reported as unknown in
pg_restore -l.

Kyotaro HORIGUCHI sent in a patch to add visibility map information to
the pg_freespace system view.

Andres Freund sent in a patch to add pluggable compression support
along with one implementing same using the snappy algorithm.

Robert Haas sent in a patch to implement dynamic background workers.
This is intended to be infrastructure for parallelizing operations.

Samrat Revagade and Jeff Davis traded patches to enable fail-back
without fresh backup.

Kevin Grittner sent in a patch to implement REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW
CONCURRENTLY.

Fabien COELHO sent in another revision of a patch to add CREATE CAST
... AS EXPLICIT.

Jon Nelson sent in another revision of a patch to use fallocate /
posix_fallocate for new WAL file creation, etc., when the
aforementioned facilities are available.