Thread: 8.2 Release: need help digesting the release notes
Folks, OK, there's been a *lot* of changes on what's in and what's out for the PostgreSQL release since my first draft. Can I have some help with this? We're looking for things actually in 8.2, according to Bruce's release notes, which will make sense to the press and moderately technical non-DBA readers. http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgrelease We'll want to pick out 3-5 things for the main release, and another 3-5 things for the extended release. The extended release items can be things which matter only to existing users (like pg_dump improvements) but the main release items need to be things which are "buzzword compliant" or otherwise newsworthy. One big thing is overall performance, which is up 20% overall on OLTP workload tests at Sun. (SpecJ and TPC) -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco
josh@agliodbs.com (Josh Berkus) writes: > Folks, > > OK, there's been a *lot* of changes on what's in and what's out for the > PostgreSQL release since my first draft. Can I have some help with this? > > We're looking for things actually in 8.2, according to Bruce's release notes, > which will make sense to the press and moderately technical non-DBA readers. > > http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgrelease > > We'll want to pick out 3-5 things for the main release, and another 3-5 things > for the extended release. The extended release items can be things which > matter only to existing users (like pg_dump improvements) but the main > release items need to be things which are "buzzword compliant" or otherwise > newsworthy. On the "main release" side, it's a pretty tough call. Here are things maybe worth mentioning. - PITR functionality has been improved, allowing more precise control over WAL file generation, thereby giving better control over standby servers. - Support multi-row VALUES clauses - It seems to me that the combination of the various object manipulation changes could be collected together as being similar. e.g. - DROP x IF EXISTS, DROP OWNED, REASSIGN OWNED, sequence usage changes Extended release: - Allow units to be specified in configuration settings (Peter) You can now set shared_buffers to "32000kB", for example. - pg_dump can select objects via regexp - COPY can dump based on a SELECT -- output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "linuxdatabases.info") http://linuxdatabases.info/info/sap.html "One of my most often repeated quips was the one I made when former Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon stood by each other at a White House event. 'There they are,' I said. 'See no evil, hear no evil, and ... evil.'" -- Bob Dole, 1983
Josh,
first thing: has there been tests of performance improvement on win32? As there have been various adjustments, there might be even more then 20%.
For the main part:
- Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor):multibyte encoding support (including UTF8)
tsearch2 supporting UTF-8 is really helpfull for multilanguage applications!
those sql2003 functions: Add new aggregate functions from SQL2003 (Neil)
-> that improves the sql2003 compliance even further, doesn't it?
what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by Magnus which allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with privilege dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32 users -> PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market
Harald
--
GHUM Harald Massa
persuadere et programmare
Harald Armin Massa
Reinsburgstraße 202b
70197 Stuttgart
0173/9409607
-
Let's set so double the killer delete select all.
We're looking for things actually in 8.2, according to Bruce's release notes,
which will make sense to the press and moderately technical non-DBA readers.
One big thing is overall performance, which is up 20% overall on OLTP workload
tests at Sun. (SpecJ and TPC)
For the main part:
- Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor):multibyte encoding support (including UTF8)
tsearch2 supporting UTF-8 is really helpfull for multilanguage applications!
those sql2003 functions: Add new aggregate functions from SQL2003 (Neil)
-> that improves the sql2003 compliance even further, doesn't it?
what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by Magnus which allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with privilege dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32 users -> PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market
Harald
--
GHUM Harald Massa
persuadere et programmare
Harald Armin Massa
Reinsburgstraße 202b
70197 Stuttgart
0173/9409607
-
Let's set so double the killer delete select all.
josh@agliodbs.com (Josh Berkus) writes: > OK, there's been a *lot* of changes on what's in and what's out for the > PostgreSQL release since my first draft. Can I have some help with this? > > We're looking for things actually in 8.2, according to Bruce's release notes, > which will make sense to the press and moderately technical non-DBA readers. > > http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgrelease > > We'll want to pick out 3-5 things for the main release, and another 3-5 things > for the extended release. The extended release items can be things which > matter only to existing users (like pg_dump improvements) but the main > release items need to be things which are "buzzword compliant" or otherwise > newsworthy. > > One big thing is overall performance, which is up 20% overall on OLTP workload > tests at Sun. (SpecJ and TPC) Looking back at your presentation to JPUG (I think...), there were a number of items listed as coming in 8.2 that I'm not sure have actually made it. Or perhaps they are there, and should be in the release notes. 1. Faster sorting - apparently some algorithm/memory improvements I think I see this one as a Simon/Tom change 2. Outer Join optimization - up to 300% improvement I think I see this one... 3. PL/pgSQL debugger I think that's listed as the following: Add support for libraries that enhance server-side languages (Korry Douglas) Such libraries can be used for debugging or performance measurement. 4. TSearch3 It looks like they didn't rename it; still called TSearch2 Those are some items that might fit into either the main or extended release... -- output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "linuxfinances.info") http://cbbrowne.com/info/spiritual.html If the FreeBSD team could get away with it, they would probably use warnings like "Contains live plague bacteria. Beware the Rabid Hippopotami. May cause nausea and vomiting." -- Michael Lucas, re: FreeBSD-CURRENT
Hi people, As it seems i've had some problems with my registration, i post my precedent email (bouncing does not work) as an attachment. It seems the release not i've read are been edited, i'm not sure if my previous email is still pertinent. This is more a test to check i'm able to post messages to this list. Sorry for inconvenience, if any, -- Dimitri Fontaine Hi people, Le vendredi 15 septembre 2006 06:27, vous avez écrit : > http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgrelease There's quite a lot of things to read on this page! PostgreSQL work for this release is once more amazing... > We'll want to pick out 3-5 things for the main release, and another 3-5 > things for the extended release. The extended release items can be things > which matter only to existing users (like pg_dump improvements) but the > main release items need to be things which are "buzzword compliant" or > otherwise newsworthy. I've just spent a couple of hours reading bruce's notes, and here's my topics proposal. This proposal is only based on this resource. I try to provide a first single line keyword, then I cite release note involved lines. When this single line reference does not seem to be related to the topic you read it in, please refer to Bruce's list before to complain: the comment should tell you more about it. Topic names are (of course) only indications, english language not being my natural language, and myself not being that much of a marketing aware kind of person :) main release items choice -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- * SQL2003 compatibility - Make row comparisons follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics and allow them to be used in index scans (Tom) - Enable standard_conforming_strings to be turned on (Kevin Grittner) - Disallow aggregate functions in <command>UPDATE</> commands (unless within a subquery) (Tom) - Add support for multi-row <literal>VALUES</> clauses as part of <command>INSERT</> and <command>SELECT</> statements (Joe, Tom) - Aggregate functions now support multiple input parameters (Sergey Koposov, Tom) - Add new aggregate functions from SQL2003 (Neil) - Add SQL2003-standard statistical aggregates (Sergey Koposov) * better citizen release (win32, ldap, dtrace and oracle support) - Add native <acronym>LDAP</> authentication (Magnus Hagander) - Win32 stability fixes (Magnus) - Improve handling of intermittent file system and resource failures on win32 platforms (Qingqing Zhou) - Add <literal>STRICT</> to <command>SELECT INTO</> (Matt Miller) -- oracle compatibility - Add DTrace support (Robert Lor) - Allow <acronym>MSVC</> to compile the PostgreSQL server (Magnus, Hiroshi Saito) * Prepared statement improving (performance, logging/debugging, explain support, better planning) - Improve logging of protocol-level prepare/bind/execute messages (Bruce, Tom) - Support portal parameters in <command>EXPLAIN</> and <command>EXECUTE</> (Tom) - Add system view <literal>pg_prepared_statements</> to show prepared statements (Joachim Wieland) - Protocol-level unnamed prepared statements are re-planned for each set of <literal>BIND</> values (Tom) > One big thing is overall performance, which is up 20% overall on OLTP > workload tests at Sun. (SpecJ and TPC) * Overall performance improving - Improve locking performance by breaking locks into sections (Tom) - Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially <literal>pg_stat_activity</> (Tom) - Allow the planner to re-order <literal>OUTER JOIN</>s when possible (Tom) - Improve subtransaction performance (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro, Tom) * Features - Add option to allow indexes to be created indexes without blocking concurrent writes to the table (Greg Stark) - Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor) - Add hstore module (Oleg, Teodor) extended release items choice -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- * DBA support - Allow <command>COPY</> to dump a <command>SELECT</> query (Zoltan Boszormenyi, Karel Zak) - Allow multi-line values to align in the proper column in psql (Martijn van Oosterhout) - Save multi-line statements as a single entry, rather than one line at a time (Sergey E. Koposov) - Improve highlighting of error location in query in more cases (Tom) - Add <application>pg_restore</> option to run the entire session in a single transaction (Simon) - Add pg_freespacemap to display free space map information (Mark Kirkwood) * Fine grained online backup control and restartable recovery - Allow a forced switch to a new xlog file (Simon Riggs, Tom) - Allow <acronym>WAL</> replay to be restored quicker in case of a crash (Simon Riggs) - Add timer to force xlog file switches at a given interval (Simon Riggs) * complete ddl partitionning - Allow constraint exclusion to be applied to inherited <command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</> queries (Tom) - Add <literal>ALTER TABLE ... [NO] INHERIT</> (Greg Stark) Homework's done, hope you like it :) -- dim
Attachment
Hi people, Le vendredi 15 septembre 2006 06:27, vous avez écrit : > http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgrelease There's quite a lot of things to read on this page! PostgreSQL work for this release is once more amazing... > We'll want to pick out 3-5 things for the main release, and another 3-5 > things for the extended release. The extended release items can be things > which matter only to existing users (like pg_dump improvements) but the > main release items need to be things which are "buzzword compliant" or > otherwise newsworthy. I've just spent a couple of hours reading bruce's notes, and here's my topics proposal. This proposal is only based on this resource. I try to provide a first single line keyword, then I cite release note involved lines. When this single line reference does not seem to be related to the topic you read it in, please refer to Bruce's list before to complain: the comment should tell you more about it. Topic names are (of course) only indications, english language not being my natural language, and myself not being that much of a marketing aware kind of person :) main release items choice -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- * SQL2003 compatibility - Make row comparisons follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics and allow them to be used in index scans (Tom) - Enable standard_conforming_strings to be turned on (Kevin Grittner) - Disallow aggregate functions in <command>UPDATE</> commands (unless within a subquery) (Tom) - Add support for multi-row <literal>VALUES</> clauses as part of <command>INSERT</> and <command>SELECT</> statements (Joe, Tom) - Aggregate functions now support multiple input parameters (Sergey Koposov, Tom) - Add new aggregate functions from SQL2003 (Neil) - Add SQL2003-standard statistical aggregates (Sergey Koposov) * better citizen release (win32, ldap, dtrace and oracle support) - Add native <acronym>LDAP</> authentication (Magnus Hagander) - Win32 stability fixes (Magnus) - Improve handling of intermittent file system and resource failures on win32 platforms (Qingqing Zhou) - Add <literal>STRICT</> to <command>SELECT INTO</> (Matt Miller) -- oracle compatibility - Add DTrace support (Robert Lor) - Allow <acronym>MSVC</> to compile the PostgreSQL server (Magnus, Hiroshi Saito) * Prepared statement improving (performance, logging/debugging, explain support, better planning) - Improve logging of protocol-level prepare/bind/execute messages (Bruce, Tom) - Support portal parameters in <command>EXPLAIN</> and <command>EXECUTE</> (Tom) - Add system view <literal>pg_prepared_statements</> to show prepared statements (Joachim Wieland) - Protocol-level unnamed prepared statements are re-planned for each set of <literal>BIND</> values (Tom) > One big thing is overall performance, which is up 20% overall on OLTP > workload tests at Sun. (SpecJ and TPC) * Overall performance improving - Improve locking performance by breaking locks into sections (Tom) - Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially <literal>pg_stat_activity</> (Tom) - Allow the planner to re-order <literal>OUTER JOIN</>s when possible (Tom) - Improve subtransaction performance (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro, Tom) * Features - Add option to allow indexes to be created indexes without blocking concurrent writes to the table (Greg Stark) - Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor) - Add hstore module (Oleg, Teodor) extended release items choice -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- * DBA support - Allow <command>COPY</> to dump a <command>SELECT</> query (Zoltan Boszormenyi, Karel Zak) - Allow multi-line values to align in the proper column in psql (Martijn van Oosterhout) - Save multi-line statements as a single entry, rather than one line at a time (Sergey E. Koposov) - Improve highlighting of error location in query in more cases (Tom) - Add <application>pg_restore</> option to run the entire session in a single transaction (Simon) - Add pg_freespacemap to display free space map information (Mark Kirkwood) * Fine grained online backup control and restartable recovery - Allow a forced switch to a new xlog file (Simon Riggs, Tom) - Allow <acronym>WAL</> replay to be restored quicker in case of a crash (Simon Riggs) - Add timer to force xlog file switches at a given interval (Simon Riggs) * complete ddl partitionning - Allow constraint exclusion to be applied to inherited <command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</> queries (Tom) - Add <literal>ALTER TABLE ... [NO] INHERIT</> (Greg Stark) Homework's done, hope you like it :) -- dim
Harald Armin Massa wrote: > what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by Magnus which > allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with privilege > dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32 users -> > PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market Uh, Win32 guys, is this an item that should be in the release notes? -- Bruce Momjian bruce@momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
> > what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by Magnus > which > > allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with > privilege > > dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32 > users -> > > PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market > > Uh, Win32 guys, is this an item that should be in the release > notes? Given the number of complaints we received about the previous behavior, I think so. But since I wrote the feature, I don't think I should be the one to tell you if it should go in there, so let's hear others :-) //Magnus
Magnus Hagander wrote: > > > what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by Magnus > > which > > > allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with > > privilege > > > dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32 > > users -> > > > PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market > > > > Uh, Win32 guys, is this an item that should be in the release > > notes? > > Given the number of complaints we received about the previous behavior, > I think so. But since I wrote the feature, I don't think I should be the > one to tell you if it should go in there, so let's hear others :-) No, I think you are the perfect one to tell me. What would the TODO wording be, please? -- Bruce Momjian bruce@momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
> > > > what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by > Magnus > > > which > > > > allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with > > > privilege > > > > dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32 > > > users -> > > > > PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market > > > > > > Uh, Win32 guys, is this an item that should be in the release > notes? > > > > Given the number of complaints we received about the previous > > behavior, I think so. But since I wrote the feature, I don't > think I > > should be the one to tell you if it should go in there, so let's > hear > > others :-) > > No, I think you are the perfect one to tell me. What would the > TODO wording be, please? I assume you mean releasenotes wording and not TODO, right? * On Win32, PostgreSQL will drop privileges when started, permitting servers running from an administrative account Or something along that line? //Magnus
Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > > > > what I did not find on that list: wasn't there a patch by
> > Magnus
> > > > which
> > > > > allows to start postgres as an administrator on win32, with
> > > > privilege
> > > > > dropping on start? That will be a real helper for many win32
> > > > users ->
> > > > > PostgreSQL enters the ACCESS market
> > > >
> > > > Uh, Win32 guys, is this an item that should be in the release
> > notes?
> > >
> > > Given the number of complaints we received about the previous
> > > behavior, I think so. But since I wrote the feature, I don't
> > think I
> > > should be the one to tell you if it should go in there, so let's
> > hear
> > > others :-)
> >
> > No, I think you are the perfect one to tell me. What would the
> > TODO wording be, please?
>
> I assume you mean releasenotes wording and not TODO, right?
>
>
> * On Win32, PostgreSQL will drop privileges when started, permitting
> servers running from an administrative account
>
> Or something along that line?
Sorry, yea, release notes. Item added to Win32 section:
Drop privileges on startup so servers can be started from
an administrative account (Magnus)
--
Bruce Momjian bruce@momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
> > I assume you mean releasenotes wording and not TODO, right? > > > > > > * On Win32, PostgreSQL will drop privileges when started, > permitting > > servers running from an administrative account > > > > Or something along that line? > > Sorry, yea, release notes. Item added to Win32 section: > > Drop privileges on startup so servers can be started from > an administrative account (Magnus) I think you need to clearify that it's win32 onlyi. //Magnus
Magnus Hagander wrote: > > > I assume you mean releasenotes wording and not TODO, right? > > > > > > > > > * On Win32, PostgreSQL will drop privileges when started, > > permitting > > > servers running from an administrative account > > > > > > Or something along that line? > > > > Sorry, yea, release notes. Item added to Win32 section: > > > > Drop privileges on startup so servers can be started from > > an administrative account (Magnus) > > I think you need to clearify that it's win32 onlyi. We don't normally re-mention the section title for an item. I am hoping "administrative" will be enough of a hint. If we see confusion, we can add Win32 later. -- Bruce Momjian bruce@momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
> > > > * On Win32, PostgreSQL will drop privileges when started, > > > permitting > > > > servers running from an administrative account > > > > > > > > Or something along that line? > > > > > > Sorry, yea, release notes. Item added to Win32 section: > > > > > > Drop privileges on startup so servers can be started from > > > an administrative account (Magnus) > > > > I think you need to clearify that it's win32 onlyi. > > We don't normally re-mention the section title for an item. I > am hoping "administrative" will be enough of a hint. If we > see confusion, we can add Win32 later. Oh, didn't realise there was a win32 issue. Then it's fine, no need to remention it . //Magnus
Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>>> I assume you mean releasenotes wording and not TODO, right?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * On Win32, PostgreSQL will drop privileges when started,
>>> permitting
>>>> servers running from an administrative account
>>>>
>>>> Or something along that line?
>>> Sorry, yea, release notes. Item added to Win32 section:
>>>
>>> Drop privileges on startup so servers can be started from
>>> an administrative account (Magnus)
>> I think you need to clearify that it's win32 onlyi.
>
> We don't normally re-mention the section title for an item. I am hoping
> "administrative" will be enough of a hint. If we see confusion, we can
> add Win32 later.
>
I think that is going to cause people to think they can start postgresql
as root.
Joshua D. Drake
--
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