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[postgresql] / doc / TODO

PostgreSQL TODO List
====================
Current maintainer:     Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us)
Last updated:           Thu Dec 29 11:45:08 EST 2005

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.TODO.html.

#A hyphen, "-", marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 8.2 release.#
#A percent sign, "%", marks items that are easier to implement.#

Bracketed items, "[]", have more detail.

This list contains all known PostgreSQL bugs and feature requests. If
you would like to work on an item, please read the Developer's FAQ
first.


Administration
==============

* %Remove behavior of postmaster -o after making postmaster/postgres
  flags unique
* %Allow pooled connections to list all prepared statements

  This would allow an application inheriting a pooled connection to know
  the statements prepared in the current session.

* Allow major upgrades without dump/reload, perhaps using pg_upgrade 
  [pg_upgrade]
* Check for unreferenced table files created by transactions that were
  in-progress when the server terminated abruptly
* Allow administrators to safely terminate individual sessions either
  via an SQL function or SIGTERM 

  Lock table corruption following SIGTERM of an individual backend
  has been reported in 8.0.  A possible cause was fixed in 8.1, but
  it is unknown whether other problems exist.  This item mostly
  requires additional testing rather than of writing any new code.

* %Set proper permissions on non-system schemas during db creation

  Currently all schemas are owned by the super-user because they are
  copied from the template1 database.

* Support table partitioning that allows a single table to be stored
  in subtables that are partitioned based on the primary key or a WHERE
  clause
* Add function to report the time of the most recent server reload


* Improve replication solutions

        o Load balancing

          You can use any of the master/slave replication servers to use a
          standby server for data warehousing. To allow read/write queries to
          multiple servers, you need multi-master replication like pgcluster.

        o Allow replication over unreliable or non-persistent links


* Configuration files

        o %Add "include file" functionality in postgresql.conf
        o %Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to restore them
          to defaults

          Currently, if a variable is commented out, it keeps the
          previous uncommented value until a server restarted.

        o %Allow pg_hba.conf settings to be controlled via SQL

          This would add a function to load the SQL table from
          pg_hba.conf, and one to writes its contents to the flat file.
          The table should have a line number that is a float so rows
          can be inserted between existing rows, e.g. row 2.5 goes
          between row 2 and row 3.

        o %Allow postgresql.conf file values to be changed via an SQL
          API, perhaps using SET GLOBAL
        o Allow the server to be stopped/restarted via an SQL API
        o Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value
          is modified  and the server config files are reloaded
        o Mark change-on-restart-only values in postgresql.conf


* Tablespaces

        * Allow a database in tablespace t1 with tables created in
          tablespace t2 to be used as a template for a new database created
          with default tablespace t2

          All objects in the default database tablespace must have default
          tablespace specifications. This is because new databases are
          created by copying directories. If you mix default tablespace
          tables and tablespace-specified tables in the same directory,
          creating a new database from such a mixed directory would create a
          new database with tables that had incorrect explicit tablespaces.
          To fix this would require modifying pg_class in the newly copied
          database, which we don't currently do.

        * Allow reporting of which objects are in which tablespaces

          This item is difficult because a tablespace can contain objects
          from multiple databases. There is a server-side function that
          returns the databases which use a specific tablespace, so this
          requires a tool that will call that function and connect to each
          database to find the objects in each database for that tablespace.

        o %Add a GUC variable to control the tablespace for temporary objects
          and sort files

          It could start with a random tablespace from a supplied list and
          cycle through the list.

        o Allow WAL replay of CREATE TABLESPACE to work when the directory
          structure on the recovery computer is different from the original

        o Allow per-tablespace quotas


* Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR)

          o Allow point-in-time recovery to archive partially filled
            write-ahead logs [pitr]

            Currently only full WAL files are archived. This means that the
            most recent transactions aren't available for recovery in case
            of a disk failure. This could be triggered by a user command or
            a timer.

          o Automatically force archiving of partially-filled WAL files when
            pg_stop_backup() is called or the server is stopped

            Doing this will allow administrators to know more easily when
            the archive contains all the files needed for point-in-time
            recovery.

          o %Create dump tool for write-ahead logs for use in determining
            transaction id for point-in-time recovery
          o Allow a warm standby system to also allow read-only statements
            [pitr]

            This is useful for checking PITR recovery.

          o Allow the PITR process to be debugged and data examined


Monitoring
==========

* Allow server log information to be output as INSERT statements

  This would allow server log information to be easily loaded into
  a database for analysis.

* %Add ability to monitor the use of temporary sort files
* Allow server logs to be remotely read and removed using SQL commands
* Allow protocol-level BIND parameter values to be logged


Data Types
==========

* Improve the MONEY data type

  Change the MONEY data type to use DECIMAL internally, with special
  locale-aware output formatting.

* Change NUMERIC to enforce the maximum precision
* Add NUMERIC division operator that doesn't round?

  Currently NUMERIC _rounds_ the result to the specified precision.  
  This means division can return a result that multiplied by the 
  divisor is greater than the dividend, e.g. this returns a value > 10:

    SELECT (10::numeric(2,0) / 6::numeric(2,0))::numeric(2,0) * 6;

  The positive modulus result returned by NUMERICs might be considered
  inaccurate, in one sense.

* %Disallow changing default expression of a SERIAL column?
* Fix data types where equality comparison isn't intuitive, e.g. box
* %Prevent INET cast to CIDR if the unmasked bits are not zero, or
  zero the bits
* %Prevent INET cast to CIDR from dropping netmask, SELECT '1.1.1.1'::inet::cidr
* Allow INET + INT4 to increment the host part of the address, or
  throw an error on overflow
* %Add 'tid != tid ' operator for use in corruption recovery
* Allow user-defined types to specify a type modifier at table creation
  time


* Dates and Times

        o Allow infinite dates just like infinite timestamps
        o Merge hardwired timezone names with the TZ database; allow either 
          kind everywhere a TZ name is currently taken
        o Allow customization of the known set of TZ names (generalize the
          present australian_timezones hack)
        o Allow TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE to store the original timezone
          information, either zone name or offset from UTC [timezone]

          If the TIMESTAMP value is stored with a time zone name, interval 
          computations should adjust based on the time zone rules.

        o Fix SELECT '0.01 years'::interval, '0.01 months'::interval
        o Fix SELECT INTERVAL '1' MONTH
        o Add a GUC variable to allow output of interval values in ISO8601 
          format
        o Improve timestamptz subtraction to be DST-aware

          Currently, subtracting one date from another that crosses a
          daylight savings time adjustment can return '1 day 1 hour', but
          adding that back to the first date returns a time one hour in
          the future.  This is caused by the adjustment of '25 hours' to
          '1 day 1 hour', and '1 day' is the same time the next day, even
          if daylight savings adjustments are involved.

        o Fix interval display to support values exceeding 2^31 hours
        o Add overflow checking to timestamp and interval arithmetic    
        o Add ISO INTERVAL handling
                o Add support for day-time syntax, INTERVAL '1 2:03:04' DAY TO 
                  SECOND
                o Add support for year-month syntax, INTERVAL '50-6' YEAR TO MONTH
                o For syntax that isn't uniquely ISO or PG syntax, like '1:30' or
                  '1', treat as ISO if there is a range specification clause,
                  and as PG if there no clause is present, e.g. interpret 
                          '1:30' MINUTE TO SECOND as '1 minute 30 seconds', and 
                          interpret '1:30' as '1 hour, 30 minutes'
                o Interpret INTERVAL '1 year' MONTH as CAST (INTERVAL '1 year' AS
                  INTERVAL MONTH), and this should return '12 months'
                o Round or truncate values to the requested precision, e.g.
                  INTERVAL '11 months' AS YEAR should return one or zero
                o Support precision, CREATE TABLE foo (a INTERVAL MONTH(3))


* Arrays

        o -Allow NULLs in arrays
        o Delay resolution of array expression's data type so assignment
          coercion can be performed on empty array expressions


* Binary Data

        o Improve vacuum of large objects, like /contrib/vacuumlo?
        o Add security checking for large objects
        o Auto-delete large objects when referencing row is deleted

          /contrib/lo offers this functionality.

        o Allow read/write into TOAST values like large objects

          This requires the TOAST column to be stored EXTERNAL.


Functions
=========

* Allow INET subnet tests using non-constants to be indexed
* Add transaction_timestamp(), statement_timestamp(), clock_timestamp()
  functionality

  Current CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the start time of the current
  transaction, and gettimeofday() returns the wallclock time. This will
  make time reporting more consistent and will allow reporting of
  the statement start time.

* %Add pg_get_acldef(), pg_get_typedefault(), pg_get_attrdef(),
  pg_get_tabledef(), pg_get_domaindef(), pg_get_functiondef()
* Allow to_char() to print localized month names
* Allow functions to have a schema search path specified at creation time
* Allow substring/replace() to get/set bit values
* Allow to_char() on interval values to accumulate the highest unit
  requested

  Some special format flag would be required to request such
  accumulation.  Such functionality could also be added to EXTRACT. 
  Prevent accumulation that crosses the month/day boundary because of
  the uneven number of days in a month.

        o to_char(INTERVAL '1 hour 5 minutes', 'MI') => 65
        o to_char(INTERVAL '43 hours 20 minutes', 'MI' ) => 2600 
        o to_char(INTERVAL '43 hours 20 minutes', 'WK:DD:HR:MI') => 0:1:19:20
        o to_char(INTERVAL '3 years 5 months','MM') => 41

* Add sleep() function, remove from regress.c
* Allow user-defined functions retuning a domain value to enforce domain
  constraints
* Add SPI_gettypmod() to return the typemod for a TupleDesc


Multi-Language Support
======================

* Add NCHAR (as distinguished from ordinary varchar),
* Allow locale to be set at database creation

  Currently locale can only be set during initdb.  No global tables have
  locale-aware columns.  However, the database template used during
  database creation might have locale-aware indexes.  The indexes would
  need to be reindexed to match the new locale.

* Allow encoding on a per-column basis

  Right now only one encoding is allowed per database.

* Support multiple simultaneous character sets, per SQL92
* Improve UTF8 combined character handling?
* Add octet_length_server() and octet_length_client()
* Make octet_length_client() the same as octet_length()?
* Fix problems with wrong runtime encoding conversion for NLS message files


Views / Rules
=============

* %Automatically create rules on views so they are updateable, per SQL99

  We can only auto-create rules for simple views.  For more complex
  cases users will still have to write rules.

* Add the functionality for WITH CHECK OPTION clause of CREATE VIEW
* Allow NOTIFY in rules involving conditionals
* Allow VIEW/RULE recompilation when the underlying tables change

  Another issue is whether underlying table changes should be reflected
  in the view, e.g. should SELECT * show additional columns if they
  are added after the view is created.


SQL Commands
============

* Change LIMIT/OFFSET and FETCH/MOVE to use int8
* Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT
* Add ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS options to GROUP BY
* %Allow SET CONSTRAINTS to be qualified by schema/table name
* %Allow TRUNCATE ... CASCADE/RESTRICT

  This is like DELETE CASCADE, but truncates.

* %Add a separate TRUNCATE permission

  Currently only the owner can TRUNCATE a table because triggers are not
  called, and the table is locked in exclusive mode.

* Allow PREPARE of cursors
* Allow PREPARE to automatically determine parameter types based on the SQL
  statement
* Allow finer control over the caching of prepared query plans

  Currently, queries prepared via the libpq API are planned on first
  execute using the supplied parameters --- allow SQL PREPARE to do the
  same.  Also, allow control over replanning prepared queries either
  manually or automatically when statistics for execute parameters
  differ dramatically from those used during planning.

* Allow LISTEN/NOTIFY to store info in memory rather than tables?

  Currently LISTEN/NOTIFY information is stored in pg_listener. Storing
  such information in memory would improve performance.

* Add optional textual message to NOTIFY

  This would allow an informational message to be added to the notify
  message, perhaps indicating the row modified or other custom
  information.

* Add a GUC variable to warn about non-standard SQL usage in queries
* Add SQL-standard MERGE command, typically used to merge two tables
  [merge]

  This is similar to UPDATE, then for unmatched rows, INSERT.
  Whether concurrent access allows modifications which could cause
  row loss is implementation independent.

* Add REPLACE or UPSERT command that does UPDATE, or on failure, INSERT
  [merge]

  To implement this cleanly requires that the table have a unique index
  so duplicate checking can be easily performed.  It is possible to
  do it without a unique index if we require the user to LOCK the table
  before the MERGE.

* Add NOVICE output level for helpful messages like automatic sequence/index
  creation
* %Add COMMENT ON for all cluster global objects (roles, databases
  and tablespaces)
* -Make row-wise comparisons work per SQL spec

  Right now, '(a, b) < (1, 2)' is processed as 'a < 1 and b < 2', but
  the SQL standard requires it to be processed as a column-by-column
  comparison, so the proper comparison is '(a < 1) OR (a = 1 AND b < 2)'.

* Add RESET CONNECTION command to reset all session state

  This would include resetting of all variables (RESET ALL), dropping of
  temporary tables, removing any NOTIFYs, cursors, open transactions,
  prepared queries, currval()s, etc.  This could be used  for connection
  pooling.  We could also change RESET ALL to have this functionality.  
  The difficult of this features is allowing RESET ALL to not affect 
  changes made by the interface driver for its internal use.  One idea 
  is for this to be a protocol-only feature.  Another approach is to 
  notify the protocol when a RESET CONNECTION command is used.

* Add GUC to issue notice about statements that use unjoined tables
* Allow EXPLAIN to identify tables that were skipped because of 
  constraint_exclusion
* Allow EXPLAIN output to be more easily processed by scripts
* Eventually enable escape_string_warning and standard_conforming_strings
* Simplify dropping roles that have objects in several databases
* Allow COMMENT ON to accept an expression rather than just a string
* Allow the count returned by SELECT, etc to be to represent as an int64
  to allow a higher range of values


* CREATE

        o Allow CREATE TABLE AS to determine column lengths for complex
          expressions like SELECT col1 || col2
        o Use more reliable method for CREATE DATABASE to get a consistent
          copy of db?
        o Add ON COMMIT capability to CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT


* UPDATE
        o Allow UPDATE to handle complex aggregates [update]?
        o Allow an alias to be provided for the target table in
          UPDATE/DELETE

          This is not SQL-spec but many DBMSs allow it.

        o Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (...) for updating multiple
          columns


* ALTER

        o %Have ALTER TABLE RENAME rename SERIAL sequence names
        o Add ALTER DOMAIN to modify the underlying data type
        o %Allow ALTER TABLE ... ALTER CONSTRAINT ... RENAME
        o %Allow ALTER TABLE to change constraint deferrability and actions
        o Add missing object types for ALTER ... SET SCHEMA
        o Allow ALTER TABLESPACE to move to different directories
        o Allow databases to be moved to different tablespaces
        o Allow moving system tables to other tablespaces, where possible

          Currently non-global system tables must be in the default database
          tablespace. Global system tables can never be moved.

        o %Disallow dropping of an inherited constraint
        o %Prevent child tables from altering or dropping constraints 
          like CHECK that were inherited from the parent table
        o Have ALTER INDEX update the name of a constraint using that index
        o Add ALTER TABLE RENAME CONSTRAINT, update index name also


* CLUSTER

        o Automatically maintain clustering on a table

          This might require some background daemon to maintain clustering
          during periods of low usage. It might also require tables to be only
          partially filled for easier reorganization.  Another idea would
          be to create a merged heap/index data file so an index lookup would
          automatically access the heap data too.  A third idea would be to
          store heap rows in hashed groups, perhaps using a user-supplied
          hash function.

        o %Add default clustering to system tables

          To do this, determine the ideal cluster index for each system
          table and set the cluster setting during initdb.


* COPY

        o Allow COPY to report error lines and continue

          This requires the use of a savepoint before each COPY line is
          processed, with ROLLBACK on COPY failure.

        o %Have COPY return the number of rows loaded/unloaded?
        o Allow COPY on a newly-created table to skip WAL logging

          On crash recovery, the table involved in the COPY would
          be removed or have its heap and index files truncated.  One
          issue is that no other backend should be able to add to 
          the table at the same time, which is something that is 
          currently allowed.

        o Allow COPY to output from views

          Another idea would be to allow actual SELECT statements in a COPY.


* GRANT/REVOKE

        o Allow column-level privileges
        o %Allow GRANT/REVOKE permissions to be applied to all schema objects
          with one command

          The proposed syntax is:
                GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN public TO phpuser;
                GRANT SELECT ON NEW TABLES IN public TO phpuser;

        * Allow GRANT/REVOKE permissions to be inherited by objects based on
          schema permissions


* CURSOR

        o Allow UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF cursor

          This requires using the row ctid to map cursor rows back to the
          original heap row. This become more complicated if WITH HOLD cursors
          are to be supported because WITH HOLD cursors have a copy of the row
          and no FOR UPDATE lock.

        o Prevent DROP TABLE from dropping a row referenced by its own open
          cursor?

        o %Allow pooled connections to list all open WITH HOLD cursors

          Because WITH HOLD cursors exist outside transactions, this allows
          them to be listed so they can be closed.


* INSERT

        o Allow INSERT/UPDATE of the system-generated oid value for a row
        o Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)
        o Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col

          This is useful for returning the auto-generated key for an INSERT.
          One complication is how to handle rules that run as part of
          the insert.


* SHOW/SET

        o Add SET PERFORMANCE_TIPS option to suggest INDEX, VACUUM, VACUUM
          ANALYZE, and CLUSTER
        o Add SET PATH for schemas?

          This is basically the same as SET search_path.


* Server-Side Languages

        o Fix PL/pgSQL RENAME to work on variables other than OLD/NEW
        o Allow function parameters to be passed by name,
          get_employee_salary(emp_id => 12345, tax_year => 2001)
        o Add Oracle-style packages
        o Add table function support to pltcl, plpython
        o Add capability to create and call PROCEDURES
        o Allow PL/pgSQL to handle %TYPE arrays, e.g. tab.col%TYPE[]
        o Allow function argument names to be statements from PL/PgSQL
        o Add MOVE to PL/pgSQL
        o Add support for polymorphic arguments and return types to
          languages other than PL/PgSQL
        o Add support for OUT and INOUT parameters to languages other 
          than PL/PgSQL
        o Add single-step debugging of PL/PgSQL functions
        o Allow PL/PgSQL to support WITH HOLD cursors


Clients
=======

* -Have initdb set the input DateStyle (MDY or DMY) based on locale
* Have pg_ctl look at PGHOST in case it is a socket directory?
* Allow pg_ctl to work properly with configuration files located outside
  the PGDATA directory

  pg_ctl can not read the pid file because it isn't located in the
  config directory but in the PGDATA directory.  The solution is to
  allow pg_ctl to read and understand postgresql.conf to find the
  data_directory value.


* psql

        o Have psql show current values for a sequence
        o Move psql backslash database information into the backend, use
          mnemonic commands? [psql]

          This would allow non-psql clients to pull the same information out
          of the database as psql.

        o Fix psql's display of schema information (Neil)
        o Allow psql \pset boolean variables to set to fixed values, rather
          than toggle
        o Consistently display privilege information for all objects in psql
        o Improve psql's handling of multi-line statements

          Currently, while \e saves a single statement as one entry, interactive
          statements are saved one line at a time.  Ideally all statements
          would be saved like \e does.

        o Allow multi-line column values to align in the proper columns

          If the second output column value is 'a\nb', the 'b' should appear
          in the second display column, rather than the first column as it
          does now.

        o Display IN, INOUT, and OUT parameters in \df+

          It probably requires psql to output newlines in the proper
          column, which is already on the TODO list.

        o Add auto-expanded mode so expanded output is used if the row
          length is wider than the screen width.  

          Consider using auto-expanded mode for backslash commands like \df+.


* pg_dump

        o %Have pg_dump use multi-statement transactions for INSERT dumps
        o %Allow pg_dump to use multiple -t and -n switches [pg_dump]
        o %Add dumping of comments on index columns and composite type columns
        o %Add full object name to the tag field.  eg. for operators we need
          '=(integer, integer)', instead of just '='.
        o Add pg_dumpall custom format dumps?
        o %Add CSV output format
        o Update pg_dump and psql to use the new COPY libpq API (Christopher)
        o Remove unnecessary function pointer abstractions in pg_dump source
          code
        o Allow selection of individual object(s) of all types, not just
          tables
        o In a selective dump, allow dumping of an object and all its 
          dependencies
        o Add options like pg_restore -l and -L to pg_dump
        o Stop dumping CASCADE on DROP TYPE commands in clean mode
        o Allow pg_dump --clean to drop roles that own objects or have
          privileges
        o Add -f to pg_dumpall


* ecpg

        o Docs

          Document differences between ecpg and the SQL standard and
          information about the Informix-compatibility module.

        o Solve cardinality > 1 for input descriptors / variables?
        o Add a semantic check level, e.g. check if a table really exists
        o fix handling of DB attributes that are arrays
        o Use backend PREPARE/EXECUTE facility for ecpg where possible
        o Implement SQLDA
        o Fix nested C comments
        o %sqlwarn[6] should be 'W' if the PRECISION or SCALE value specified
        o Make SET CONNECTION thread-aware, non-standard?
        o Allow multidimensional arrays
        o Add internationalized message strings


libpq

        o Add a function to support Parse/DescribeStatement capability
        o Add PQescapeIdentifier()
        o Prevent PQfnumber() from lowercasing unquoted the column name

          PQfnumber() should never have been doing lowercasing, but 
          historically it has so we need a way to prevent it

        o Allow statement results to be automatically batched to the client

          Currently, all statement results are transferred to the libpq
          client before libpq makes the results available to the 
          application.  This feature would allow the application to make
          use of the first result rows while the rest are transferred, or
          held on the server waiting for them to be requested by libpq.
          One complexity is that a statement like SELECT 1/col could error
          out mid-way through the result set.


Referential Integrity
=====================

* Add MATCH PARTIAL referential integrity
* Add deferred trigger queue file

  Right now all deferred trigger information is stored in backend
  memory.  This could exhaust memory for very large trigger queues.
  This item involves dumping large queues into files.

* Change foreign key constraint for array -> element to mean element
  in array?
* Allow DEFERRABLE UNIQUE constraints?
* Allow triggers to be disabled in only the current session.

  This is currently possible by starting a multi-statement transaction,
  modifying the system tables, performing the desired SQL, restoring the
  system tables, and committing the transaction.  ALTER TABLE ...
  TRIGGER requires a table lock so it is not ideal for this usage.

* With disabled triggers, allow pg_dump to use ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY

  If the dump is known to be valid, allow foreign keys to be added
  without revalidating the data.

* Allow statement-level triggers to access modified rows
* Support triggers on columns (Greg Sabino Mullane)
* Enforce referential integrity for system tables
* Allow AFTER triggers on system tables

  System tables are modified in many places in the backend without going
  through the executor and therefore not causing triggers to fire. To
  complete this item, the functions that modify system tables will have
  to fire triggers.


Dependency Checking
===================

* Flush cached query plans when the dependent objects change,
  when the cardinality of parameters changes dramatically, or
  when new ANALYZE statistics are available

  A more complex solution would be to save multiple plans for different
  cardinality and use the appropriate plan based on the EXECUTE values.

* Track dependencies in function bodies and recompile/invalidate

  This is particularly important for references to temporary tables
  in PL/PgSQL because PL/PgSQL caches query plans.  The only workaround
  in PL/PgSQL is to use EXECUTE.  One complexity is that a function
  might itself drop and recreate dependent tables, causing it to
  invalidate its own query plan.


Exotic Features
===============

* Add SQL99 WITH clause to SELECT
* Add SQL99 WITH RECURSIVE to SELECT
* Add pre-parsing phase that converts non-ISO syntax to supported
  syntax

  This could allow SQL written for other databases to run without
  modification.

* Allow plug-in modules to emulate features from other databases
* SQL*Net listener that makes PostgreSQL appear as an Oracle database
  to clients
* Allow statements across databases or servers with transaction
  semantics

  This can be done using dblink and two-phase commit.

* Add the features of packages

        o  Make private objects accessible only to objects in the same schema
        o  Allow current_schema.objname to access current schema objects
        o  Add session variables
        o  Allow nested schemas


Indexes
=======

* Allow inherited tables to inherit index, UNIQUE constraint, and primary
  key, foreign key
* UNIQUE INDEX on base column not honored on INSERTs/UPDATEs from
  inherited table:  INSERT INTO inherit_table (unique_index_col) VALUES
  (dup) should fail

  The main difficulty with this item is the problem of creating an index
  that can span more than one table.

* Allow SELECT ... FOR UPDATE on inherited tables
* Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes
* Prevent index uniqueness checks when UPDATE does not modify the column

  Uniqueness (index) checks are done when updating a column even if the
  column is not modified by the UPDATE.

* Allow the creation of on-disk bitmap indexes which can be quickly
  combined with other bitmap indexes

  Such indexes could be more compact if there are only a few distinct values.
  Such indexes can also be compressed.  Keeping such indexes updated can be
  costly.

* Allow use of indexes to search for NULLs

  One solution is to create a partial index on an IS NULL expression.

* Allow accurate statistics to be collected on indexes with more than
  one column or expression indexes, perhaps using per-index statistics
* Add fillfactor to control reserved free space during index creation
* Allow the creation of indexes with mixed ascending/descending specifiers
* Allow constraint_exclusion to work for UNIONs like it does for
  inheritance, allow it to work for UPDATE and DELETE statements, and allow
  it to be used for all statements with little performance impact
* Allow CREATE INDEX to take an additional parameter for use with
  special index types
* Consider compressing indexes by storing key values duplicated in
  several rows as a single index entry

  This is difficult because it requires datatype-specific knowledge.


* GIST

        o Add more GIST index support for geometric data types
        o Allow GIST indexes to create certain complex index types, like
          digital trees (see Aoki)

* Hash

        o Pack hash index buckets onto disk pages more efficiently

          Currently only one hash bucket can be stored on a page. Ideally
          several hash buckets could be stored on a single page and greater
          granularity used for the hash algorithm.

        o Consider sorting hash buckets so entries can be found using a
          binary search, rather than a linear scan

        o In hash indexes, consider storing the hash value with or instead
          of the key itself

        o Add WAL logging for crash recovery
        o Allow multi-column hash indexes


Fsync
=====

* Improve commit_delay handling to reduce fsync()
* Determine optimal fdatasync/fsync, O_SYNC/O_DSYNC options

  Ideally this requires a separate test program that can be run
  at initdb time or optionally later.  Consider O_SYNC when
  O_DIRECT exists.

* %Add an option to sync() before fsync()'ing checkpoint files
* Add program to test if fsync has a delay compared to non-fsync


Cache Usage
===========

* Allow free-behind capability for large sequential scans, perhaps using
  posix_fadvise()

  Posix_fadvise() can control both sequential/random file caching and
  free-behind behavior, but it is unclear how the setting affects other
  backends that also have the file open, and the feature is not supported
  on all operating systems.

* Speed up COUNT(*)

  We could use a fixed row count and a +/- count to follow MVCC
  visibility rules, or a single cached value could be used and
  invalidated if anyone modifies the table.  Another idea is to
  get a count directly from a unique index, but for this to be
  faster than a sequential scan it must avoid access to the heap
  to obtain tuple visibility information.

* Add estimated_count(*) to return an estimate of COUNT(*)

  This would use the planner ANALYZE statistics to return an estimated
  count.

* Allow data to be pulled directly from indexes

  Currently indexes do not have enough tuple visibility information 
  to allow data to be pulled from the index without also accessing 
  the heap.  One way to allow this is to set a bit on index tuples 
  to indicate if a tuple is currently visible to all transactions 
  when the first valid heap lookup happens.  This bit would have to 
  be cleared when a heap tuple is expired.  

  Another idea is to maintain a bitmap of heap pages where all rows
  are visible to all backends, and allow index lookups to reference 
  that bitmap to avoid heap lookups, perhaps the same bitmap we might
  add someday to determine which heap pages need vacuuming.  Frequently
  accessed bitmaps would have to be stored in shared memory.  One 8k
  page of bitmaps could track 512MB of heap pages.

* Consider automatic caching of statements at various levels:

        o Parsed query tree
        o Query execute plan
        o Query results

* Allow sequential scans to take advantage of other concurrent
  sequential scans, also called "Synchronised Scanning"

  One possible implementation is to start sequential scans from the lowest
  numbered buffer in the shared cache, and when reaching the end wrap
  around to the beginning, rather than always starting sequential scans
  at the start of the table.


Vacuum
======

* Improve speed with indexes

  For large table adjustments during VACUUM FULL, it is faster to 
  reindex rather than update the index.

* Reduce lock time during VACUUM FULL by moving tuples with read lock,
  then write lock and truncate table

  Moved tuples are invisible to other backends so they don't require a
  write lock. However, the read lock promotion to write lock could lead
  to deadlock situations.

* Auto-fill the free space map by scanning the buffer cache or by
  checking pages written by the background writer
* Create a bitmap of pages that need vacuuming

  Instead of sequentially scanning the entire table, have the background
  writer or some other process record pages that have expired rows, then
  VACUUM can look at just those pages rather than the entire table.  In
  the event of a system crash, the bitmap would probably be invalidated.
  One complexity is that index entries still have to be vacuumed, and
  doing this without an index scan (by using the heap values to find the
  index entry) might be slow and unreliable, especially for user-defined
  index functions.

* %Add system view to show free space map contents


* Auto-vacuum

        o Use free-space map information to guide refilling
        o %Issue log message to suggest VACUUM FULL if a table is nearly
          empty?
        o Improve xid wraparound detection by recording per-table rather
          than per-database
        o Consider logging activity either to the logs or a system view


Locking
=======

* Fix priority ordering of read and write light-weight locks (Neil)


Startup Time Improvements
=========================

* Experiment with multi-threaded backend [thread]

  This would prevent the overhead associated with process creation. Most
  operating systems have trivial process creation time compared to
  database startup overhead, but a few operating systems (Win32,
  Solaris) might benefit from threading.  Also explore the idea of
  a single session using multiple threads to execute a statement faster.

* Add connection pooling

  It is unclear if this should be done inside the backend code or done
  by something external like pgpool. The passing of file descriptors to
  existing backends is one of the difficulties with a backend approach.


Write-Ahead Log
===============

* Eliminate need to write full pages to WAL before page modification [wal]

  Currently, to protect against partial disk page writes, we write
  full page images to WAL before they are modified so we can correct any
  partial page writes during recovery.  These pages can also be
  eliminated from point-in-time archive files.

        o  When off, write CRC to WAL and check file system blocks
           on recovery

           If CRC check fails during recovery, remember the page in case
           a later CRC for that page properly matches.

        o  Write full pages during file system write and not when
           the page is modified in the buffer cache

           This allows most full page writes to happen in the background
           writer.  It might cause problems for applying WAL on recovery
           into a partially-written page, but later the full page will be
           replaced from WAL.

* Allow WAL traffic to be streamed to another server for stand-by
  replication
* Reduce WAL traffic so only modified values are written rather than
  entire rows?
* Allow the pg_xlog directory location to be specified during initdb
  with a symlink back to the /data location
* Allow WAL information to recover corrupted pg_controldata
* Find a way to reduce rotational delay when repeatedly writing
  last WAL page

  Currently fsync of WAL requires the disk platter to perform a full
  rotation to fsync again. One idea is to write the WAL to different
  offsets that might reduce the rotational delay.

* Allow buffered WAL writes and fsync

  Instead of guaranteeing recovery of all committed transactions, this
  would provide improved performance by delaying WAL writes and fsync
  so an abrupt operating system restart might lose a few seconds of
  committed transactions but still be consistent.  We could perhaps
  remove the 'fsync' parameter (which results in an an inconsistent
  database) in favor of this capability.


Optimizer / Executor
====================

* Improve selectivity functions for geometric operators
* Allow ORDER BY ... LIMIT # to select high/low value without sort or
  index using a sequential scan for highest/lowest values

  Right now, if no index exists, ORDER BY ... LIMIT # requires we sort
  all values to return the high/low value.  Instead The idea is to do a 
  sequential scan to find the high/low value, thus avoiding the sort.
  MIN/MAX already does this, but not for LIMIT > 1.

* Precompile SQL functions to avoid overhead
* Create utility to compute accurate random_page_cost value
* Improve ability to display optimizer analysis using OPTIMIZER_DEBUG
* Have EXPLAIN ANALYZE highlight poor optimizer estimates
* Consider using hash buckets to do DISTINCT, rather than sorting

  This would be beneficial when there are few distinct values.  This is
  already used by GROUP BY.

* Log statements where the optimizer row estimates were dramatically
  different from the number of rows actually found?


Miscellaneous Performance
=========================

* Do async I/O for faster random read-ahead of data

  Async I/O allows multiple I/O requests to be sent to the disk with
  results coming back asynchronously.

* Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory or to write WAL files?

  This would remove the requirement for SYSV SHM but would introduce
  portability issues. Anonymous mmap (or mmap to /dev/zero) is required
  to prevent I/O overhead.

* Consider mmap()'ing files into a backend?

  Doing I/O to large tables would consume a lot of address space or
  require frequent mapping/unmapping.  Extending the file also causes
  mapping problems that might require mapping only individual pages,
  leading to thousands of mappings.  Another problem is that there is no
  way to _prevent_ I/O to disk from the dirty shared buffers so changes
  could hit disk before WAL is written.

* Add a script to ask system configuration questions and tune postgresql.conf
* Merge xmin/xmax/cmin/cmax back into three header fields

  Before subtransactions, there used to be only three fields needed to
  store these four values. This was possible because only the current
  transaction looks at the cmin/cmax values. If the current transaction
  created and expired the row the fields stored where xmin (same as
  xmax), cmin, cmax, and if the transaction was expiring a row from a
  another transaction, the fields stored were xmin (cmin was not
  needed), xmax, and cmax. Such a system worked because a transaction
  could only see rows from another completed transaction. However,
  subtransactions can see rows from outer transactions, and once the
  subtransaction completes, the outer transaction continues, requiring
  the storage of all four fields. With subtransactions, an outer
  transaction can create a row, a subtransaction expire it, and when the
  subtransaction completes, the outer transaction still has to have
  proper visibility of the row's cmin, for example, for cursors.

  One possible solution is to create a phantom cid which represents a
  cmin/cmax pair and is stored in local memory.  Another idea is to
  store both cmin and cmax only in local memory.

* Research storing disk pages with no alignment/padding


Source Code
===========

* Add use of 'const' for variables in source tree
* Rename some /contrib modules from pg* to pg_*
* Move some things from /contrib into main tree
* Move some /contrib modules out to their own project sites
* %Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align
* Move platform-specific ps status display info from ps_status.c to ports
* Add optional CRC checksum to heap and index pages
* Improve documentation to build only interfaces (Marc)
* Remove or relicense modules that are not under the BSD license, if possible
* %Remove memory/file descriptor freeing before ereport(ERROR)
* Acquire lock on a relation before building a relcache entry for it
* %Promote debug_query_string into a server-side function current_query()
* %Allow the identifier length to be increased via a configure option
* Allow cross-compiling by generating the zic database on the target system
* Improve NLS maintenace of libpgport messages linked onto applications
* Allow ecpg to work with MSVC and BCC
* Add xpath_array() to /contrib/xml2 to return results as an array
* Allow building in directories containing spaces

  This is probably not possible because 'gmake' and other compiler tools
  do not fully support quoting of paths with spaces.

* -Allow installing to directories containing spaces

  This is possible if proper quoting is added to the makefiles for the
  install targets.  Because PostgreSQL supports relocatable installs, it
  is already possible to install into a directory that doesn't contain 
  spaces and then copy the install to a directory with spaces.

* Fix sgmltools so PDFs can be generated with bookmarks
* %Clean up compiler warnings (especially with gcc version 4)
* Use UTF8 encoding for NLS messages so all server encodings can
  read them properly
* Update Bonjour to work with newer cross-platform SDK
* Remove BeOS and QNX-specific code


* Win32

        o Remove configure.in check for link failure when cause is found
        o Remove readdir() errno patch when runtime/mingwex/dirent.c rev
          1.4 is released
        o Remove psql newline patch when we find out why mingw outputs an
          extra newline
        o Allow psql to use readline once non-US code pages work with
          backslashes
        o Re-enable timezone output on log_line_prefix '%t' when a
          shorter timezone string is available
        o Fix problem with shared memory on the Win32 Terminal Server
        o Improve signal handling,
          http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2005-06/msg00027.php
        o Add long file support for binary pg_dump output

          While Win32 supports 64-bit files, the MinGW API does not,
          meaning we have to build an fseeko replacement on top of the
          Win32 API, and we have to make sure MinGW handles it.  Another
          option is to wait for the MinGW project to fix it, or use the
          code from the LibGW32C project as a guide.


* Wire Protocol Changes

        o Allow dynamic character set handling
        o Add decoded type, length, precision
        o Use compression?
        o Update clients to use data types, typmod, schema.table.column names
          of result sets using new statement protocol


---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Developers who have claimed items are:
--------------------------------------
* Alvaro is Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@dcc.uchile.cl>
* Andrew is Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
* Bruce is Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> of Software Research Assoc.
* Christopher is Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> of
    Family Health Network
* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> of The Cain Gang Ltd.
* Fabien is Fabien Coelho <coelho@cri.ensmp.fr>
* Gavin is Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au> of Alcove Systems Engineering
* Greg is Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
* Jan is Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com> of Afilias, Inc.
* Joe is Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>
* Karel is Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>
* Magnus is Magnus Hagander <mha@sollentuna.net>
* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> of PostgreSQL, Inc.
* Matthew T. O'Connor <matthew@zeut.net>
* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org> of Credativ
* Neil is Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
* Oleg is Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>
* Peter is Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
* Philip is Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> of Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.
* Rod is Rod Taylor <pg@rbt.ca>
* Simon is Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
* Stephan is Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone23.bigpanda.com>
* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp> of Software Research Assoc.
* Teodor is Teodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru>
* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> of Red Hat