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35 <appendix id="release">
36 <title>Release Notes</title>
39 The release notes contain the significant changes in each
40 <productname>PostgreSQL</> release, with major features and migration
41 issues listed at the top. The release notes do not contain changes
42 that affect only a few users or changes that are internal and therefore not
43 user-visible. For example, the optimizer is improved in almost every
44 release, but the improvements are usually observed by users as simply
49 A complete list of changes for each release can be obtained by
50 viewing the <link linkend="cvs">CVS</link> logs for each release.
52 url="http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/">pgsql-committers
53 email list</ulink> records all source code changes as well. There is also
54 a <ulink url="http://anoncvs.postgresql.org/cvsweb.cgi/pgsql/">web
55 interface</ulink> that shows changes to specific files.
56 <!-- we need a file containing the CVS logs for each release, and something
57 like the SVN web interface that groups commits but has branches -->
61 The name appearing next to each item represents the major developer for
62 that item. Of course all changes involve community discussion and patch
63 review, so each item is truly a community effort.
66 <sect1 id="release-8-4">
67 <title>Release 8.4</title>
70 <title>Release date</title>
71 <simpara>2009-XX-XX</simpara>
72 ITEMS CURRENT AS OF 2009-03-16
76 <title>Overview</title>
79 This major PostgreSQL release brings SQL features people have been
80 waiting for for years, as well as performance enhancements
81 and changes to make space reuse more efficient and
82 more automatic. This release adds the following major features:
89 *MAJOR ITEM LIST GOES HERE*
96 The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.
102 <title>Migration to Version 8.4</title>
105 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
106 required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
111 Observe the following incompatibilities:
115 <title>General</title>
120 Use 64-bit integer datetimes by default (Neil Conway)
124 This was available previously via a configure --enable-integer-datetimes
131 Change postgresql.conf default for log_min_messages to 'warning'
132 (previously 'notice') to reduce log file volume (Tom)
138 Have debug_print_parse, debug_print_rewritten, and debug_print_plan
139 output appear as LOG message level, not DEBUG1 (Tom) bjm: inconsistency
140 because of var names?
146 Have debug_pretty_print default to on (Tom)
152 Make "log_temp_files" super-user set only, like other logging options
159 Disable appending of the epoch date/time when '%' escapes are missing in
160 log_filename (Robert Haas)
164 This change was made because some users wanted a consistent log
171 Remove explain_pretty_print postgresql.conf setting (no longer needed)
178 Remove log_restartpoints from recovery.conf; instead use
179 log_checkpoints (Simon Riggs)
185 Remove support for the (insecure) crypt authentication method (Magnus)
189 This breaks compatibility with pre-7.2 versions.
195 Remove krb_realm and krb_server_hostname, now pg_hba.conf-only settings
202 Remove ipcclean utility command (Bruce)
206 The utility only worked on a few platforms; users should use their
207 operating system tools instead.
213 pg_hba.conf also has extensive changes related to migration. bjm: add markup
222 <title>Queries</title>
228 Have children inherit CHECK constraints from parents (Alex Hunsaker,
229 Nikhil Sontakke, Tom Lane)
235 Force child tables to have the same CHECK constraints as parents (Alex
236 Hunsaker, Nikhil Sontakke, Tom Lane) bjm: verify
242 Change TRUNCATE and LOCK behavior to apply to all child tables (Peter)
246 There is a new ONLY clause which disables this behavior.
252 Disallow negative LIMIT or OFFSET values, rather than treating them as
259 Disallow LOCK TABLE outside a transaction block (Tom)
263 Such an operation is useless because the lock would be immediately
270 Make DISCARD ALL also discard advisory locks (Marko Kreen)
280 <title>Functions and Operators</title>
286 Have NUMERIC 0 ^ 4.3 return 1, rather than an error, and have 0 ^ 0.0
287 return 1, rather than error (Bruce)
291 This was already the float8 behavior.
297 Remove code that prevented unary minus of floating-point values from
302 The changed behavior is more IEEE-standards compliant.
308 Throw an error of an escape character is the last character in a LIKE
309 pattern (nothing to escape) (Tom)
315 Have to_char()'s localized month/day names depend on LC_TIME, not
316 LC_MESSAGES (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
322 Cause to_date() and to_timestamp() to more consistently report errors on
323 invalid input (Brendan Jurd)
329 Provide consistent rounding for fractional seconds (Ron Mayer) bjm:
330 combine with another item?
336 Fix to_timestamp() to not require upper/lower case matching for meridian
337 (AM/PM) and era (BC/AD) format designations (Brendan Jurd)
343 Require the existence of periods in to_timestamp() meridian
344 (AM/PM) and era (BC/AD) format designations to match (Brendan Jurd)
348 For example, input value 'AD' does not match format string 'A.D.'.
354 Remove ~=~ and ~<>~ operators used for LIKE index comparisons (Tom) bjm:
359 A not-immediately-obvious incompatibility is that the sort order within
360 bpchar_pattern_ops indexes changes --- it had been identical to plain
361 strcmp, but is now trailing-blank-insensitive. This will impact
362 in-place upgrades, if those ever happen.
373 <title>Changes</title>
376 Below you will find a detailed account of the
377 changes between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.4 and
378 the previous major release.
382 <title>Performance</title>
387 Improve optimizer statistics calculations (Tom, Jan
392 This includes improved statistics for full text columns.
398 Allow SELECT DISTINCT and UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT to use hashing (Tom)
402 This causes SELECT DISTINCT no longer always produces sorted output;
403 add an ORDER BY clause. The old SELECT DISTINCT behavior can be
404 restored by disabling enable_hashagg. SELECT DISTINCT ON does not use
405 hashing. bjm: enable_hashagg accurate?
411 New semi- and ansi-joins (Tom)
415 While semi-joins merely replace existing IN joins, anti-joins
416 are a new capability for NOT IN and NOT EXIST clauses (Tom)
417 This improves optimization possibilities.
423 Improve IN/ANY/EXISTS processing (Tom)
427 IN and EXISTs now provide similar performance for equivalent clauses.
433 Improve the performance of text_position() and related functions by
434 using Boyer-Moore-Horspool searching (David Rowley)
438 This is particularly useful for long search patterns.
444 Improve handling of subqueries by the optimizer (Tom)
450 Reduce I/O frequency of writing the backend statistics file by writing
451 the file only when requested (Martin Pihlak)
457 Improve performance for bulk inserts (Robert Haas, Simon)
463 Increase the default value of default_statistics_target from 10 to 100
468 The maximum value was also increased from 1000 to 10000.
474 Modify 'constraint_exclusion' to check for partitioned tables by default
475 when inheritance or UNION ALL is used (Tom)
479 A new constraint_exclusion setting, "partition", which matches this
486 Allow I/O read-ahead for bitmap index scans (Greg Stark)
490 The amount of read-ahead is controlled by effective_io_concurrency.
491 This requires posix_fadvise() support in the kernel.
497 Inline simple set-returning SQL functions in FROM clauses (Richard Rowell)
511 Consider TOAST compression on values as short as 32 bytes (previously
518 Require 25% of space savings before using TOAST compression (previously
525 Be more aggressive in storing EXTERNAL and EXTENDED column values in
535 <title>Server Settings</title>
540 Convert many postgresql.conf settings to enumerated values so
541 pg_settings can easily display valid values (Magnus)
547 Add postgresql.conf setting cursor_tuple_fraction to control the
548 fraction of a cursor's rows expected to be requested by the user (Robert
555 Allow underscores in postgresql.conf custom variable classes (Tom)
564 <title>Monitoring</title>
569 Add pg_conf_load_time() function to report when the Postgres configuration
570 files were last loaded (George Gensure)
576 Add pg_terminate_backend() to safely terminate a backend (the SIGTERM
577 signal also works) (Tom, Bruce)
583 Add ability to track user-defined functions call counts and runtimes via
584 postgresql.conf variable 'track_functions' (Martin Pihlak)
588 Function statistics appear in a new system table, pg_stat_user_functions.
589 However, inlined SQL functions are not tracked.
595 Allow specification of the maximum pg_stat_activity query string size
596 via postgresql.conf variable track_activity_query_size (Thomas Lee)
602 Improve syslog performance by increasing the maximum line length
609 Add read-only postgresql.conf variables segment_size, wal_block_size,
610 and wal_segment_size (Bernd Helmle)
616 When reporting a deadlock, report all session queries involved in the
617 deadlock to the server log (Itagaki Takahiro)
623 New pg_stat_get_activity(pid) function to return information about a
624 specific process id (Magnus)
630 Move that server statistics file into the subdirectory pg_stat_tmp
635 This allows the statistics file to be placed in a RAM-resident
636 directory to reduce I/O requirements. On startup/shutdown, the
637 file is copied to the top-level $PGDATA directory so it is preserved
644 Allow the location of the new pg_stat_tmp to be configured via
645 the stats_temp_directory setting (Magnus)
655 <title>pg_hba.conf</title>
660 Parse pg_hba.conf in the postmaster so errors are reported on reload
667 Make pg_hba.conf "sameuser" an optional argument for ident
668 authentication (Magnus)
674 Change all pg_hba.conf authentication options to be 'name=value'
681 Allow 'ident' authentication over Unix-domain sockets on Solaris (Garick
688 Add pg_hba.conf option "clientcert" to control requesting of a client
693 Previously this was controlled by the presence of a root certificate
694 file in the server's data directory.
700 Add pg_hba.conf "cert" authentication method to allow user
701 authentication via SSL certificates (Magnus)
705 Previously SSL certificates could only authenticate hosts, not users.
711 Allow krb5, gssapi and sspi realm and krb5 host settings to be specified
712 in pg_hba.conf (Magnus)
716 These override the settings in postgresql.conf.
722 Addkrb5, gssapi and sspi 'include_realm' parameter to pg_hba.conf
727 This allows identical usernames from different realms to be
728 authenticated as different database users. bjm: correct?
734 Issue a warning rather than shut down when pg_hba.conf can't be loaded
744 <title>Authentication</title>
749 Report appropriate error message for combination of MD5 authentication
750 and db_user_namespace enabled (Bruce)
756 Support regular expressions in pg_ident.conf (Magnus)
762 Allow Kerberos/GSSAPI parameters to be changed without restarting the
772 <title>Continuous Archiving</title>
777 Have pg_stop_backup() wait for modified WAL files to be archived (Simon)
781 This guarantees that the backup is valid at the time pg_stop_backup()
788 Prevent normal shutdown if a continuous archiving base backup is in
789 progress (Laurenz Albe)
795 Cancel a continuous archiving base backup if a fast shutdown is requested
802 Allow recovery.conf boolean variables to take the same range of string
803 alues as postgresql.conf (Bruce)
812 <title>Queries</title>
817 Add support for WINDOW functions (Hitoshi Harada)
823 Add WITH clauses support, including WITH RECURSIVE (Yoshiyuki Asaba,
830 New TABLE command (Peter)
834 "TABLE tablename" is a short-hand for "SELECT * FROM tablename".
840 Allow AS to be optional when specifying a SELECT (or RETURNING) column
841 output label (assuming the label is not an SQL keyword) (Hiroshi Saito)
847 Support set-returning functions in the target lists of Agg and Group plan
848 nodes. This is a pretty ugly feature but since we don't yet have a
849 plausible substitute, we'd better support it everywhere (Tom) bjm:
856 Allow SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE to work on inheritance trees (Tom)
862 Add infrastructure for SQL/MED (Martin Pihlak, Peter)
866 There are no remote or external SQL/MED capabilities yet. bjm:
873 Invalidate cached plans when schemas, operators, or operator classes are
874 modified (Tom) bjm: effect?
880 Improve the plan cache invalidation mechanism to make it invalidate plans
881 when user-defined functions used in a plan are modified (Tom, Martin
888 Allow comparison of composite types and allow arrays of
889 possibly-anonymous composite types (Tom) bjm: clear?
893 Specifically this allows 'array[ row(1,2), row(3,4)]' and 'row(1,1.1)
894 = any (array[ row(7,7.7), row(1,1.0)'. This is particularly useful
895 for recursive queries.
901 Add support for Unicode sting and identifier specifications using code
902 points, e.g. U&'d\0061t\+000061' (Peter)
908 Improve the parser's ability to report the error location of a query
918 <title>LIMIT/OFFSET</title>
923 Allow LIMIT and OFFSET to use subselects as arguments (Tom)
929 Document that LIMIT NULL and OFFSET NULL have no effect (Tom)
935 Add SQL-standards syntax for LIMIT/OFFSET capabilities (Peter)
941 OFFSET num {ROW|ROWS} FETCH {FIRST|NEXT} [num] {ROW|ROWS} ONLY.
950 <title>ALTER TABLE</title>
955 Add ALTER TYPE RENAME (Petr Jelinek)
961 Add ALTER SEQUENCE ... RESTART (no parameter) to reset a sequence to its
962 initial value (Zoltan Boszormenyi) bjm: compatibility problem?
968 Modify the ALTER TABLE syntax to allow all reasonable combinations for
969 tables, indexes, sequences, and views (Tom)
975 New syntax supported (these formerly required "ALTER TABLE")
984 ALTER SEQUENCE OWNER TO
989 ALTER VIEW ALTER COLUMN SET/DROP DEFAULT
999 ALTER VIEW SET SCHEMA
1008 Add support for the syntax ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN ... SET DATA
1013 This is SQL-standard syntax for functionality that was already
1020 Have ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS rewrite the table to remove oid values
1025 Also, add ALTER TABLE SET WITH OIDS to rewrite the table to add oids.
1031 Add ALTER DATABASE SET TABLESPACE to move a database to a new tablespace
1032 (Guillaume Lelarge, Bernd Helmle)
1041 <title>TRUNCATE</title>
1046 Support statement-level ON TRUNCATE triggers (Simon)
1052 Add TRUNCATE TABLE ... RESTART/CONTINUE IDENTITY clauses (Zoltan
1057 The start value of a sequence can be changed by ALTER SEQUENCE START
1064 Allow TRUNCATE foo, foo to succeed (Bruce)
1070 Add a separate TRUNCATE permission (Robert Haas)
1079 <title>Database Operations</title>
1084 Improve reporting of CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE failure when
1085 uncommitted prepared transactions are the cause (Tom)
1091 Make LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE database-level settings (Radek Strnad, Heikki)
1095 This makes collation similar to encoding, which was always configurable
1102 Improve checks that the database encoding, collation (LC_COLLATE), and
1103 character classes (LC_CTYPE) match (Heikki)
1112 <title>Object Manipulation</title>
1117 Add support for column-level privileges (Stephen Frost, KaiGai Kohei)
1123 Improve reporting of dependencies during DROP commands (Alex Hunsaker)
1129 Refactor multi-object DROP operations so conflicting dependencies don't
1130 generate an error (Alex Hunsaker)
1136 Add WITH [NO] DATA clause to CREATE TABLE AS, per the SQL standard (Tom, Peter)
1142 Add support for user-defined I/O conversion casts (Heikki)
1148 Allow CREATE AGGREGATE to user an "internal" transition datatype (for
1149 super-users only) (Tom)
1155 Add LIKE clause to CREATE TYPE (Tom)
1159 This simplifies creation of data types like existing types.
1165 Allow CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW to add columns to the _end_ of the view
1175 <title>Vacuum</title>
1180 Allow relation forks to track free space (Heikki)
1184 This allows the recording of all free space discovered by vacuum in
1185 *.fsm files, rather than having to limit recording to a fixed-sized
1186 shared memory area; max_fsm_pages and max_fsm_relations settings
1193 New visibility map file to track pages that do not require vacuum
1198 This allows VACUUM to avoid sequentially scanning a table when only a
1199 portion of the table needs vacuuming.
1205 Track explicit transaction snapshots (Alvaro)
1209 This improves space reuse by vacuum in the presence of long-running
1216 Add vacuum_freeze_table_age to postgresql.conf to control when VACUUM should
1217 ignore the visibility map and do a full table scan to set frozen xids
1224 Add ability to specify autovacuum and TOAST parameters in
1225 CREATE TABLE (Alvaro, Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
1229 Autovacuum options uses to be stored in a system table.
1235 Add --freeze option to vacuumdb (Bruce)
1244 <title>EXPLAIN</title>
1249 Have EXPLAIN VERBOSE show the output columns of a query (Tom)
1253 Previously EXPLAIN VERBOSE output an internal representation of the
1260 Have EXPLAIN honor debug_print_plan (Tom) bjm: verify behavior, this
1261 replaces EXPLAIN VERBOSE?
1267 Allow EXPLAIN on CREATE TABLE AS (Peter)
1276 <title>Other Utility Operations</title>
1281 Add verbose option to the CLUSTER command and clusterdb (Jim Cox)
1287 Decrease memory requirements for recording pending trigger events (Tom)
1296 <title>General Data Types</title>
1301 Add a CaseSensitive option for text search synonym dictionaries (Simon)
1307 Improve the precision of NUMERIC division (Tom)
1313 Add int2 with int8 basic arithmetic operators (Tom)
1317 This simplifies casting requirements.
1323 Allow UUID input to accept optional hyphens after every four digits
1330 Accept 'on'/'off' as boolean data type values (ITAGAKI Takahiro)
1339 <title>Temporal Data Types</title>
1344 Reject year '0 BC' and years '000' and '0000' (Tom)
1348 Previously these were interpreted as 1 BC. (Years '0' and '00' are
1349 assumed to be the year 2000.)
1355 Include SGT (Singapore time) as a valid timezone abbreviation (Tom)
1361 Support the IS0 8601 time interval syntax (Tom) bjm: sufficient?
1365 For example, INTERVAL 'P1Y2M3DT4H5M6.7S' is now supported.
1371 Allow the interval precision to be specified after the last field, for
1372 SQL-standards compliance (Tom)
1376 Formerly the precision had to be specified after the keyword INTERVAL
1377 (the old syntax is still supported). Data type definitions will now
1378 be output using the new format.
1384 Support 'infinite' dates (Tom)
1390 Add postgresql.conf variable IntervalStyle which controls how interval
1391 values are output (Ron Mayer)
1395 Valid value are: postgres, postgres_verbose, sql_standard, iso_8601.
1396 This also controls handling of negative interval input when only some
1397 fields have positive/negative designations.
1403 Increase the number of fractional seconds digits displayed by intervals (Ron
1410 Increase variability in the number of fractional seconds digits
1411 displayed (Ron Mayer)
1420 <title>General Functions</title>
1425 Document that setseed() allows values from -1 to 1 (not 0 to 1), and
1426 enforce the valid range (Kris Jurka)
1432 Add server side lo_import(filename, oid) function (Tatsuo)
1438 Add quote_nullable(), which behaves like quote_literal() but returns
1439 'NULL' for a null argument (Brendan Jurd)
1445 Improve full text search headline() generation to allow several
1446 fragments (Sushant Sinha)
1452 Add suppress_redundant_updates_trigger() trigger function to avoid
1453 non-data-changing updates (Andrew)
1459 Add div(NUMERIC, NUMERIC) for NUMERIC division, without rounding (Tom)
1465 Add timestamp and timestamptz versions of generate_series() (Hitoshi
1475 <title>Database Informational Functions</title>
1480 Implement current_query() for use by functions that need to know the
1481 currently running query (Tomas Doran)
1487 Add pg_get_keywords() function to return predefined parser keywords
1494 Add function pg_get_functiondef() to see a functions definition (Abhijit
1501 Modify pg_relation_size() to handle free space map (*.fsm) files
1508 Modify pg_relation_size() to use 'regclass' (Heikki)
1512 pg_relation_size(data_type_name) no longer works.
1518 Add boot_val and reset_val columns to pg_settings output (Greg Smith)
1524 Add support for CURRENT_CATALOG, CURRENT_SCHEMA, SET CATALOG, SET SCHEMA
1529 These are SQL-standard capabilities.
1535 Add pg_typeof() function to return the data type of any value (Brendan
1542 Have version() return information about whether the server is a 32
1543 or 64-bit binary (Bruce)
1549 Fix the behavior of information schema columns is_insertable_into and
1550 is_updatable to be consistent (Peter)
1556 Convert remaining builtin set-returning functions to use OUT parameters
1561 This makes it possible to call these functions without specifying
1562 a column list: pg_show_all_settings(), pg_lock_status(),
1563 pg_prepared_xact(), pg_prepared_statement(), pg_cursor()
1569 Have pg_*_is_visible and has_*_privilege functions return NULL for
1570 invalid oids, rather than generate an error (Tom)
1576 Add has_column_privilege() and has_any_column_privilege() functions
1577 (Stephen Frost, Tom)
1586 <title>Function Creation</title>
1591 Support variadic functions (functions with a variable number of
1592 arguments) (Pavel Stehule)
1596 Only trailing arguments can be of variable length, and they all must
1597 be of the same data type.
1603 Allow DEFAULT values for function arguments (Pavel Stehule)
1609 Add CREATE FUNCTION ... RETURNS TABLE clause (Pavel Stehule)
1615 Allow SQL-language functions to return the output of an INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE
1616 RETURNING clause (Tom)
1620 Formerly only SELECT was supported.
1629 <title>Arrays</title>
1634 Have cast on ARRAY[] apply to all elements, not just the array result
1639 This allows NULL ARRAY[] entries as long as it is properly cast
1645 Make the SQL ARRAY dimensions optional to match the SQL standard
1652 Add array_ndims() function to return the number of dimensions of an array (Robert
1659 Add array_length() function to return the length of an array for the
1660 specified dimensions (Jim Nasby, Robert Haas, Peter Eisentraut)
1664 Also add identically-functioning SQL-standard function cardinality().
1670 Add new aggregate function array_agg(), which returns all aggregated
1671 values as a single array (Robert Haas, Jeff Davis, Peter)
1677 Add function unnest(), which converts an array to individual row values
1682 This is the opposite of array_agg().
1688 Add array_fill() to create arrays initialized with a value (Pavel Stehule)
1694 Add generate_subscripts() to generate array subscripts (Pavel Stehule)
1700 Generate proper error if a SERIAL array is specified (Tom)
1709 <title>Indexes</title>
1714 Dramatically improve the speed of building and accessing hash indexes
1715 (Tom Raney, Shreya Bhargava, Kenneth Marshall, Tom)
1719 This allows hash indexes to be often faster than btree indexes.
1720 However, hash indexes are still not crash-safe.
1726 Have hash indexes store only the hashed value, not the full indexed
1731 This greatly reduces the size of hash indexes for long indexed
1732 values, and improves performance.
1738 Remove requirement to use "@@@" when doing GIN weighted lookups on full
1745 Add optimizer selectivity function for '@@' text search operations (Jan
1752 Add partial match support for GIN indexes (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov)
1758 Allow prefix matching in full text searches (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg
1765 Support multi-column GIN indexes (Teodor Sigaev)
1771 Special xxx_pattern_ops LIKE indexes can now be used for simple equality
1781 <title>PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language</title>
1786 Support EXECUTE USING in PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)
1792 Allow PL/pgSQL to loop over an open cursor using a FOR loop (Pavel
1799 Support RETURN QUERY EXECUTE in PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)
1805 Improve the PL/pgSQL RAISE command (Pavel Stehule)
1814 Support DETAIL and HINT fields
1819 Support SQLSTATE error codes
1824 Support an exception name parameter
1829 Allow RAISE without parameters in an exception
1830 block to rethrow the current error
1839 Allow the specification of SQLSTATE numeric codes in EXCEPTION lists
1844 This is useful for handling custom SQLSTATE codes.
1850 Support CASE statement in PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)
1856 Add PL/PgSQL FOUND and GET DIAGNOSTICS support for the RETURN QUERY
1857 statement (Pavel Stehule)
1863 Add PL/pgSQL translation (Alvaro)
1872 <title>General <link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link></title>
1877 Remove psql startup banner; now just suggest 'help' (Joshua Drake)
1883 Have psql 'help' show common backslash commands (Greg Sabino Mullane)
1889 Add psql '\pset format wrapped' mode to wrap output to screen width, or
1890 file/pipe output too if \pset columns' is set (Bryce Nesbitt)
1896 Use the psql pager for wide output (Bruce)
1902 Require a space between a psql backslash command and the first argument (Bernd
1909 Display access control rights on multiple lines in psql (Brendan Jurd,
1916 Improve psql tab completion support for schema qualified and quoted
1917 identifiers (Greg Sabino Mullane)
1923 Allow the normal range of boolean values in \pset, rather than just
1924 'on' and 'off' (Bruce)
1930 Add optional on/off argument to psql \timing (David Fetter)
1936 Have psql \l show access privileges (Andrew Gilligan)
1942 Have psql \l+ show database sizes, if permissions allow (Andrew Gilligan)
1948 Add psql \ef command to edit function definitions (Abhijit Menon-Sen)
1952 \ef without a function names creates an empty function template for
1962 <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link> \d*</title>
1967 Have psql \d display references to this table as a foreign-key constraint
1974 Have psql \d show the value of sequence columns (Euler Taveira de
1981 Add column storage type and other relation options to psql \d+ display
1982 (Gregory Stark, Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
1988 Show relation size in psql \d+ output (Dickson S. Guedes)
1994 Have all psql \d* commands show system objects only if 'S' is specified
1995 (Greg Sabino Mullane)
1999 psql \dt already behaved this way.
2005 Make psql \d and \dt consistent in their display of system tables
2010 Previously, '\d pg_class' would show pg_class while '\dt pg_class'
2017 Show enumerated values in psql's \dT+ (David Fetter)
2023 Allow psql \dC to accept wildcard patterns (Tom)
2029 Allow psql \d* commands to work with versions of Postgres back to 7.4
2039 <title><link linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link></title>
2044 Add --no-tablespaces option to pg_dump/pg_dumpall/pg_restore so dumps
2045 can be restored to clusters that have non-matching tablespace layouts
2052 Remove -i/--ignore-version option from pg_dump and pg_dumpall (Tom)
2056 Use of the options does not throw an error, but it has no effect.
2057 This option was removed because the version checks are considered
2064 Disable statement_timeout during dump and restore (Joshua Drake)
2070 Add pg_dump/pg_dumpall option --lock-wait-timeout (David Gould)
2074 Allows dumps to fail if unable to acquire shared table within the
2075 specified amount of time.
2081 Reorder pg_dump --data-only output to dump primary-key tables referenced
2082 by foreign keys are dumped before the foreign-key referencing tables
2087 This allows data loads when foreign keys are already present. If
2088 circular references make this impossible, issue a NOTICE.
2094 Allow pg_dump, pg_dumpall, and pg_restore to use a specified role (Benedek
2101 Allow pg_restore of a custom format archive to use multiple concurrent
2102 connections to do the restore (Andrew)
2106 The number of concurrent connections is controlled by the option
2113 Add new pg_dump --binary-upgrade flag to be used by binary upgrade
2123 <title>Other Client Applications</title>
2128 Fix 'pg_ctl restart' to preserve command-line arguments (Bruce)
2134 Add -w/--no-password option that suppresses password prompts to all
2135 utilities that have a -W/--password option (Peter)
2141 Remove -q (quiet) option for create* and drop* utility commands (Peter)
2145 These options have had no effect since 8.3.
2154 <title>General <link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link></title>
2159 Allow the OID to be specified when importing large objects using
2160 libpq lo_import_with_oid() (Tatsuo)
2166 Add events support to libpq (Andrew Chernow, Merlin Moncure)
2170 This adds the ability to register callbacks to handle private data
2171 for connection and result creation and destruction.
2177 Improve libpq error handling to allow the return of multiple error
2178 messages as multi-line error reports (Magnus)
2184 Have libpq PQexecParams() return PGRES_EMPTY_QUERY for an empty query
2189 It previously returned PGRES_COMMAND_OK.
2195 Document how to avoid the libpq overhead of WSACleanup() overhead on
2196 Windows (Andrew Chernow)
2205 <title><link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link> SSL</title>
2210 Fix libpq certificate validation for SSL connections (Magnus) bjm:
2217 Allow the file locations for libpq SSL certificates to be specified
2218 (Mark Woodward, Alvaro, Magnus)
2224 Add libpq connection parameter "sslverify" to control the verification
2225 of the server's SSL certificate (Magnus)
2229 The default is full verification.
2235 Properly unregister OpenSSL callbacks when libpq is done with
2236 all connection (Bruce, Magnus, Russell Smith)
2240 This is required for applications that unload the libpq library so
2241 no invalid OpenSSL callbacks remain.
2250 <title><link linkend="ecpg"><application>ecpg</></link></title>
2255 Add localization support for ecpg messages (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
2261 ecpg parser is now automatically generated from the server parser
2266 Previously a separate ecpg parser was maintained.
2276 <title>Server Programming Interface (<acronym>SPI</>)</title>
2281 Add SPI support for single-use plans with out-of-line parameters (Tom)
2287 Add new SPI_OK_REWRITTEN return code to SPI_execute() (Heikki)
2291 This is used when a command is rewritten to another type of command.
2300 <title>Build Options</title>
2305 Support 64-bit timezone data files (Heikki)
2309 This adds support for daylight saving time (DST) calculations beyond 2038.
2315 Fix bug in handling of the timezone database when cross-compiling
2322 Update build system to use Autoconf 2.61 (Peter)
2328 Require GNU bison for source code builds (Peter)
2332 This has been a requirement for several years but this removes the
2333 infrastructure for supporting other parser tools.
2339 Add pg_config --htmldir option (Peter)
2345 Pass float4 by value inside the server (Zoltan Boszormenyi)
2349 Add configure option --disable-float4-byval to use the old behavior.
2351 Pass float8 and int8 by value in the server where possible (Zoltan
2356 Add configure option --disable-float8-byval to use the old behavior.
2362 Add configure options -with-segsize, --with-blocksize,
2363 --with-wal-blocksize, --with-wal-segsize (Zdenek Kotala, Tom)
2367 This allows compile-time control over several compile-time constants
2368 that control how large tables and WAL are segmented into separate files and
2369 their internal block sizes
2375 Allow threaded builds on Solaris 2.5 (Bruce)
2381 Add support for Sun Studio compiler on Linux (Julius Stroffek)
2387 Append major version number to the gettext domain name, and for
2388 libraries the soname major version number (Peter)
2392 This simplifies parallel installations.
2398 Allow out-of-tree builds on Mingw and Cygwin (Richard Evans)
2404 Fix the use of Mingw32 as a cross-compiling source platform (Peter)
2410 Fix problem when setting LC_MESSAGES on MSVC-built systems (Hiroshi
2411 Inoue, Hiroshi Saito, Magnus) bjm: details?
2420 <title>Source Code</title>
2425 Link backend object files in one step, rather than in stages (Peter)
2431 Additional DTrace probes (Robert Lor)
2437 Add DTrace support on Mac OS X Leopard (Robert Lor)
2443 Add new cstring to text conversion functions (Brendan Jurd, Tom)
2449 Improve logic for shared cache invalidation (Tom)
2455 Make "name" char-aligned (Tom) bjm: pg_upgrade?
2461 Add function hook to let plug-ins control the executor (ITAGAKI
2468 Add a hook to allow planner statistics lookup behavior to be overridden
2475 Add "shmem_startup_hook" for custom shared memory requirements (Tom)
2481 Replace pg_class column reltriggers with boolean relhastriggers (Simon)
2485 Also remove unused pg_class columns relukeys, relfkeys, and relrefs.
2491 Move SQL-command manual pages from the 'manl' (man-el) section to 'man7'
2498 Move platform FAQs into the main documentation (Peter)
2504 Add %expect 0 to all parser input files to prevent builds with parser
2511 Add support for the KOI8U (Ukrainian) encoding (Peter)
2520 <title>Contrib</title>
2525 Add -M (query mode) to /contrib/pgbench (ITAGAKI Takahiro)
2531 Add duration option to /contrib/pgbench (Takahiro Itagaki)
2537 Fix /contrib/pgstattuple to handle tables and indexes with over 2
2538 billion pages (Tatsuhito Kasahara)
2544 Add Levenshtein string-distance function to /contrib/fuzzystrmatch
2545 that allows the user to specify the cost of insertion, deletion,
2546 and substitution (Volkan Yazici)
2552 Remove dblink_current_query() from /contrib/dblink; it should now use
2553 current_query() (Tomas Doran)
2559 Have /contrib/ltree support multibyte encodings (laser)
2565 Add /contrib/citext as a case-insensitive text data type (David Wheeler)
2571 Make sure /contrib/dblink uses a password supplied by the user, and not
2572 accidentally from the server .pgpass file (Joe Conway)
2576 This is a security enhancement.
2582 Add fsm_page_contents() to contrib/pageinspect (Heikki)
2586 Modify get_raw_page() to support free space map (*.fsm) files.
2587 Also update /contrib/pg_freespacemap.
2593 Add support for multibyte encodings to /contrib/pg_trgm (Teodor)
2599 Rewrite contrib/intagg to user new server-side functions array_agg() and
2606 Add /contrib/auto_explain to automatically run EXPLAIN on queries
2607 exceeding a specified duration (Takahiro Itagaki, Tom)
2613 Add contrib/pg_stat_statements for server-wide tracking of statement execution
2614 statistics (Takahiro Itagaki)
2624 <sect1 id="release-8-3-6">
2625 <title>Release 8.3.6</title>
2628 <title>Release date</title>
2629 <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
2633 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.5.
2634 For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
2635 <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
2639 <title>Migration to Version 8.3.6</title>
2642 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
2643 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5,
2644 see the release notes for 8.3.5.
2650 <title>Changes</title>
2656 Make <command>DISCARD ALL</> release advisory locks, in addition
2657 to everything it already did (Tom)
2661 This was decided to be the most appropriate behavior. This could
2662 affect existing applications, however.
2668 Fix whole-index GiST scans to work correctly (Teodor)
2672 This error could cause rows to be lost if a table is clustered
2679 Fix crash of <literal>xmlconcat(NULL)</> (Peter)
2685 Fix possible crash in <literal>ispell</> dictionary if high-bit-set
2686 characters are used as flags (Teodor)
2690 This is known to be done by one widely available Norwegian dictionary,
2691 and the same condition may exist in others.
2697 Fix misordering of <application>pg_dump</> output for composite types
2702 The most likely problem was for user-defined operator classes to
2703 be dumped after indexes or views that needed them.
2709 Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
2715 Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
2722 Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
2723 conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
2724 specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
2730 Fix possible Assert failure if a statement executed in PL/pgSQL is
2731 rewritten into another kind of statement, for example if an
2732 <command>INSERT</> is rewritten into an <command>UPDATE</> (Heikki)
2738 Ensure that a snapshot is available to datatype input functions (Tom)
2742 This primarily affects domains that are declared with <literal>CHECK</>
2743 constraints involving user-defined stable or immutable functions. Such
2744 functions typically fail if no snapshot has been set.
2750 Make it safer for SPI-using functions to be used within datatype I/O;
2751 in particular, to be used in domain check constraints (Tom)
2757 Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
2764 Fix a problem that sometimes kept <command>ALTER TABLE ENABLE/DISABLE
2765 RULE</> from being recognized by active sessions (Tom)
2771 Fix a problem that made <literal>UPDATE RETURNING tableoid</>
2772 return zero instead of the correct OID (Tom)
2778 Allow functions declared as taking <type>ANYARRAY</> to work on
2779 the <structname>pg_statistic</> columns of that type (Tom)
2783 This used to work, but was unintentionally broken in 8.3.
2789 Fix planner misestimation of selectivity when transitive equality
2790 is applied to an outer-join clause (Tom)
2794 This could result in bad plans for queries like
2795 <literal>... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42 ...</>
2801 Improve optimizer's handling of long <literal>IN</> lists (Tom)
2805 This change avoids wasting large amounts of time on such lists
2806 when constraint exclusion is enabled.
2812 Prevent synchronous scan during GIN index build (Tom)
2816 Because GIN is optimized for inserting tuples in increasing TID order,
2817 choosing to use a synchronous scan could slow the build by a factor of
2824 Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the
2825 contents of TOAST tables (Tom)
2829 Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented
2830 as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped
2831 before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then
2832 vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor,
2833 but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.
2839 Fix memory leak when a set-returning function is terminated without
2840 reading its whole result (Tom)
2846 Fix encoding conversion problems in XML functions when the database
2847 encoding isn't UTF-8 (Tom)
2853 Fix <filename>contrib/dblink</>'s
2854 <function>dblink_get_result(text,bool)</> function (Joe)
2860 Fix possible garbage output from <filename>contrib/sslinfo</> functions
2867 Fix incorrect behavior of <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> compatibility
2868 trigger when it's fired more than once in a command (Teodor)
2874 Fix possible mis-signaling in autovacuum (Heikki)
2880 Support running as a service on Windows 7 beta (Dave and Magnus)
2886 Fix <application>ecpg</>'s handling of varchar structs (Michael)
2892 Fix <application>configure</> script to properly report failure when
2893 unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)
2899 Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
2900 <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
2901 now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
2908 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
2909 Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
2918 <sect1 id="release-8-3-5">
2919 <title>Release 8.3.5</title>
2922 <title>Release date</title>
2923 <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
2927 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.4.
2928 For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
2929 <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
2933 <title>Migration to Version 8.3.5</title>
2936 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
2937 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
2938 see the release notes for 8.3.1. Also, if you were running a previous
2939 8.3.X release, it is recommended to <command>REINDEX</> all GiST
2940 indexes after the upgrade.
2946 <title>Changes</title>
2952 Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry
2953 <quote>dead</> after a deletion (Teodor)
2957 This would result in index searches failing to find rows they
2958 should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with
2959 <command>REINDEX</>.
2965 Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
2970 We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
2971 the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
2972 be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
2973 ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
2979 Fix possible crash in <type>bytea</>-to-XML mapping (Michael McMaster)
2985 Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
2992 Improve optimization of <replaceable>expression</> <literal>IN</>
2993 (<replaceable>expression-list</>) queries (Tom, per an idea from Robert
2998 Cases in which there are query variables on the right-hand side had been
2999 handled less efficiently in 8.2.x and 8.3.x than in prior versions.
3000 The fix restores 8.1 behavior for such cases.
3006 Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-<literal>SELECT</> appears
3007 in a function call in <literal>FROM</>, a multi-row <literal>VALUES</>
3008 list, or a <literal>RETURNING</> list (Tom)
3012 The usual symptom of this problem is an <quote>unrecognized node type</>
3019 Fix Assert failure during rescan of an <literal>IS NULL</>
3020 search of a GiST index (Teodor)
3026 Fix memory leak during rescan of a hashed aggregation plan (Neil)
3032 Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
3033 function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
3039 Force a checkpoint before <command>CREATE DATABASE</> starts to copy
3044 This prevents a possible failure if files had recently been deleted
3045 in the source database.
3051 Prevent possible collision of <structfield>relfilenode</> numbers
3052 when moving a table to another tablespace with <command>ALTER SET
3053 TABLESPACE</> (Heikki)
3057 The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of
3058 picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.
3064 Fix incorrect text search headline generation when single query
3065 item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
3071 Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
3072 using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
3079 Make <literal>ILIKE</> compare characters case-insensitively
3080 even when they're escaped (Andrew)
3086 Ensure <command>DISCARD</> is handled properly by statement logging (Tom)
3092 Fix incorrect logging of last-completed-transaction time during
3099 Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
3100 behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
3101 different numbers of columns (Tom)
3105 This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
3106 but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
3107 The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
3113 Mark <varname>SessionReplicationRole</> as <literal>PGDLLIMPORT</>
3114 so it can be used by <application>Slony</> on Windows (Magnus)
3120 Fix small memory leak when using <application>libpq</>'s
3121 <literal>gsslib</> parameter (Magnus)
3125 The space used by the parameter string was not freed at connection
3132 Ensure <application>libgssapi</> is linked into <application>libpq</>
3133 if needed (Markus Schaaf)
3139 Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE ROLE</> (Michael)
3145 Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
3151 Ensure <filename>pg_control</> is opened in binary mode
3156 <application>pg_controldata</> and <application>pg_resetxlog</>
3157 did this incorrectly, and so could fail on Windows.
3163 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
3164 DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
3173 <sect1 id="release-8-3-4">
3174 <title>Release 8.3.4</title>
3177 <title>Release date</title>
3178 <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
3182 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.3.
3183 For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
3184 <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
3188 <title>Migration to Version 8.3.4</title>
3191 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
3192 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
3193 see the release notes for 8.3.1.
3199 <title>Changes</title>
3205 Fix bug in btree WAL recovery code (Heikki)
3209 Recovery failed if the WAL ended partway through a page split operation.
3215 Fix potential use of wrong cutoff XID for HOT page pruning (Alvaro)
3219 This error created a risk of corruption in system
3220 catalogs that are consulted by <command>VACUUM</>: dead tuple versions
3221 might be removed too soon. The impact of this on actual database
3222 operations would be minimal, since the system doesn't follow MVCC
3223 rules while examining catalogs, but it might result in transiently
3224 wrong output from <application>pg_dump</> or other client programs.
3230 Fix potential miscalculation of <structfield>datfrozenxid</> (Alvaro)
3234 This error may explain some recent reports of failure to remove old
3235 <structname>pg_clog</> data.
3241 Fix incorrect HOT updates after <structname>pg_class</> is reindexed
3246 Corruption of <structname>pg_class</> could occur if <literal>REINDEX
3247 TABLE pg_class</> was followed in the same session by an <literal>ALTER
3248 TABLE RENAME</> or <literal>ALTER TABLE SET SCHEMA</> command.
3254 Fix missed <quote>combo cid</> case (Karl Schnaitter)
3258 This error made rows incorrectly invisible to a transaction in which they
3259 had been deleted by multiple subtransactions that all aborted.
3265 Prevent autovacuum from crashing if the table it's currently
3266 checking is deleted at just the wrong time (Alvaro)
3272 Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
3276 This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
3277 sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
3278 already held</> errors.
3284 Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)
3290 Regenerate foreign key checking queries from scratch when either
3291 table is modified (Tom)
3295 Previously, 8.3 would attempt to replan the query, but would work from
3296 previously generated query text. This led to failures if a
3297 table or column was renamed.
3303 Fix missed permissions checks when a view contains a simple
3304 <literal>UNION ALL</> construct (Heikki)
3308 Permissions for the referenced tables were checked properly, but not
3309 permissions for the view itself.
3315 Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
3316 <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
3317 current rowtype (Tom)
3321 This situation is believed to be impossible in 8.3, but it can happen in
3322 prior releases, so a check seems prudent.
3328 Fix possible repeated drops during <command>DROP OWNED</> (Tom)
3332 This would typically result in strange errors such as <quote>cache
3333 lookup failed for relation NNN</>.
3339 Fix several memory leaks in XML operations (Kris Jurka, Tom)
3345 Fix <function>xmlserialize()</> to raise error properly for
3346 unacceptable target data type (Tom)
3352 Fix a couple of places that mis-handled multibyte characters in text
3353 search configuration file parsing (Tom)
3357 Certain characters occurring in configuration files would always cause
3358 <quote>invalid byte sequence for encoding</> failures.
3364 Provide file name and line number location for all errors reported
3365 in text search configuration files (Tom)
3371 Fix <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> to first try to interpret its timezone
3372 argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone
3373 name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)
3377 The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names
3378 in this order. Making <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> do so as well improves
3379 consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1:
3380 in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did,
3381 since in the older versions <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> accepted
3382 <emphasis>only</> abbreviations.
3388 Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
3389 running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
3395 Prevent integer overflows during units conversion when displaying a
3396 configuration parameter that has units (Tom)
3402 Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
3408 Allow spaces in the suffix part of an LDAP URL in
3409 <filename>pg_hba.conf</> (Tom)
3415 Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
3422 Fix planner bug that could improperly push down <literal>IS NULL</>
3423 tests below an outer join (Tom)
3427 This was triggered by occurrence of <literal>IS NULL</> tests for
3428 the same relation in all arms of an upper <literal>OR</> clause.
3434 Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)
3438 If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query,
3439 but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated
3440 for new parent query rows.
3446 Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
3447 boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
3448 expressions' contents (Tom)
3452 This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
3453 BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
3454 <literal>IS NULL</>.
3460 Fix PL/PgSQL to not fail when a <literal>FOR</> loop's target variable
3461 is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)
3467 Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
3468 about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
3474 Improve performance of <function>PQescapeBytea()</> (Rudolf Leitgeb)
3480 On Windows, work around a Microsoft bug by preventing
3481 <application>libpq</> from trying to send more than 64kB per system call
3488 Fix <application>ecpg</> to handle variables properly in <command>SET</>
3495 Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
3496 error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
3502 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
3503 command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
3509 Fix erroneous WAL file cutoff point calculation in
3510 <application>pg_standby</> (Simon)
3516 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
3517 DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
3518 Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
3527 <sect1 id="release-8-3-3">
3528 <title>Release 8.3.3</title>
3531 <title>Release date</title>
3532 <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
3536 This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.3.2.
3537 For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
3538 <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
3542 <title>Migration to Version 8.3.3</title>
3545 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
3546 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
3547 see the release notes for 8.3.1.
3553 <title>Changes</title>
3559 Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
3563 Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
3564 as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
3565 be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
3566 Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
3567 another recent patch to cause
3568 <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
3569 <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
3570 <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
3571 as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
3572 output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
3578 Make <command>ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO</> update
3579 <structname>pg_shdepend</> (Tom)
3583 This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later
3584 involved in a <command>DROP OWNED</> or <command>REASSIGN OWNED</>
3594 <sect1 id="release-8-3-2">
3595 <title>Release 8.3.2</title>
3598 <title>Release date</title>
3599 <simpara>never released</simpara>
3603 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.1.
3604 For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
3605 <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
3609 <title>Migration to Version 8.3.2</title>
3612 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
3613 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1,
3614 see the release notes for 8.3.1.
3620 <title>Changes</title>
3626 Fix <literal>ERRORDATA_STACK_SIZE exceeded</literal> crash that
3627 occurred on Windows when using UTF-8 database encoding and a different
3628 client encoding (Tom)
3634 Fix incorrect archive truncation point calculation for the
3635 <literal>%r</> macro in <varname>recovery_command</> parameters
3640 This could lead to data loss if a warm-standby script relied on
3641 <literal>%r</> to decide when to throw away WAL segment files.
3647 Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
3648 column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
3649 non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
3653 Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
3659 Fix <command>REASSIGN OWNED</> so that it works on procedural
3660 languages too (Alvaro)
3666 Fix problems with <command>SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE</> occurring as a
3667 subquery in a query with a non-<command>SELECT</> top-level operation
3674 Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
3675 <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
3676 inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
3682 Fix <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> to show the alias, if any, attached
3683 to the target table of an <command>UPDATE</> or <command>DELETE</>
3690 Restore the pre-8.3 behavior that an out-of-range block number in a
3691 TID being used in a TidScan plan results in silently not matching any
3696 8.3.0 and 8.3.1 threw an error instead.
3702 Fix GIN bug that could result in a <literal>too many LWLocks
3703 taken</literal> failure (Teodor)
3709 Fix broken GiST comparison function for <type>tsquery</> (Teodor)
3715 Fix <function>tsvector_update_trigger()</> and <function>ts_stat()</>
3716 to accept domains over the types they expect to work with (Tom)
3722 Fix failure to support enum data types as foreign keys (Tom)
3728 Avoid possible crash when decompressing corrupted data
3735 Fix race conditions between delayed unlinks and <command>DROP
3736 DATABASE</> (Heikki)
3740 In the worst case this could result in deleting a newly created table
3741 in a new database that happened to get the same OID as the
3742 recently-dropped one; but of course that is an extremely
3743 low-probability scenario.
3749 Repair two places where SIGTERM exit of a backend could leave corrupted
3750 state in shared memory (Tom)
3754 Neither case is very important if SIGTERM is used to shut down the
3755 whole database cluster together, but there was a problem if someone
3756 tried to SIGTERM individual backends.
3762 Fix possible crash due to incorrect plan generated for an
3763 <literal><replaceable>x</> IN (SELECT <replaceable>y</>
3764 FROM ...)</literal> clause when <replaceable>x</> and <replaceable>y</>
3765 have different data types; and make sure the behavior is semantically
3766 correct when the conversion from <replaceable>y</>'s type to
3767 <replaceable>x</>'s type is lossy (Tom)
3773 Fix oversight that prevented the planner from substituting known Param
3774 values as if they were constants (Tom)
3778 This mistake partially disabled optimization of unnamed
3779 extended-Query statements in 8.3.0 and 8.3.1: in particular the
3780 LIKE-to-indexscan optimization would never be applied if the LIKE
3781 pattern was passed as a parameter, and constraint exclusion
3782 depending on a parameter value didn't work either.
3788 Fix planner failure when an indexable <function>MIN</> or
3789 <function>MAX</> aggregate is used with <literal>DISTINCT</> or
3790 <literal>ORDER BY</> (Tom)
3796 Fix planner to ensure it never uses a <quote>physical tlist</> for a
3797 plan node that is feeding a Sort node (Tom)
3801 This led to the sort having to push around more data than it really
3802 needed to, since unused column values were included in the sorted
3809 Avoid unnecessary copying of query strings (Tom)
3813 This fixes a performance problem introduced in 8.3.0 when a very large
3814 number of commands are submitted as a single query string.
3820 Make <function>TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId()</> use binary
3821 search instead of linear search when checking child-transaction XIDs
3826 This fixes some cases in which 8.3.0 was significantly
3827 slower than earlier releases.
3833 Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
3834 Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
3835 two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
3841 Fix several datatype input functions, notably <function>array_in()</>,
3842 that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
3843 uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
3847 This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
3848 values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
3849 about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
3856 Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
3857 (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
3858 <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
3862 The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
3863 the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
3864 subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
3865 <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
3866 This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
3867 it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
3874 Prevent cancellation of an auto-vacuum that was launched to prevent
3875 XID wraparound (Alvaro)
3881 Improve <command>ANALYZE</>'s handling of in-doubt tuples (those
3882 inserted or deleted by a not-yet-committed transaction) so that the
3883 counts it reports to the stats collector are more likely to be correct
3890 Fix <application>initdb</> to reject a relative path for its
3891 <literal>--xlogdir</> (<literal>-X</>) option (Tom)
3897 Make <application>psql</> print tab characters as an appropriate
3898 number of spaces, rather than <literal>\x09</literal> as was done in
3899 8.3.0 and 8.3.1 (Bruce)
3905 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
3906 DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, and
3913 Add <function>ECPGget_PGconn()</> function to
3914 <application>ecpglib</> (Michael)
3920 Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
3921 <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
3927 Fix handling of continuation line markers in <application>ecpg</>
3934 Fix possible crashes in <filename>contrib/cube</> functions (Tom)
3940 Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
3941 <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
3948 Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
3949 <literal>CFLAGS</>, and make it auto-configure properly for
3950 <application>libxslt</> present or not (Tom)
3959 <sect1 id="release-8-3-1">
3960 <title>Release 8.3.1</title>
3963 <title>Release date</title>
3964 <simpara>2008-03-17</simpara>
3968 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.0.
3969 For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
3970 <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
3974 <title>Migration to Version 8.3.1</title>
3977 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
3978 However, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
3979 columns after updating, if you are affected by the Windows locale
3980 issue described below.
3986 <title>Changes</title>
3992 Fix character string comparison for Windows locales that consider
3993 different character combinations as equal (Tom)
3997 This fix applies only on Windows and only when using UTF-8
3998 database encoding. The same fix was made for all other cases
3999 over two years ago, but Windows with UTF-8 uses a separate code
4000 path that was not updated. If you are using a locale that
4001 considers some non-identical strings as equal, you may need to
4002 <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on textual columns.
4008 Repair corner-case bugs in <command>VACUUM FULL</> (Tom)
4012 A potential deadlock between concurrent <command>VACUUM FULL</>
4013 operations on different system catalogs was introduced in 8.2.
4014 This has now been corrected. 8.3 made this worse because the
4015 deadlock could occur within a critical code section, making it
4016 a PANIC rather than just ERROR condition.
4020 Also, a <command>VACUUM FULL</> that failed partway through
4021 vacuuming a system catalog could result in cache corruption in
4022 concurrent database sessions.
4026 Another <command>VACUUM FULL</> bug introduced in 8.3 could
4027 result in a crash or out-of-memory report when dealing with
4028 pages containing no live tuples.
4034 Fix misbehavior of foreign key checks involving <type>character</>
4035 or <type>bit</> columns (Tom)
4039 If the referencing column were of a different but compatible type
4040 (for instance <type>varchar</>), the constraint was enforced incorrectly.
4046 Avoid needless deadlock failures in no-op foreign-key checks (Stephan
4053 Fix possible core dump when re-planning a prepared query (Tom)
4057 This bug affected only protocol-level prepare operations, not
4058 SQL <command>PREPARE</>, and so tended to be seen only with
4059 JDBC, DBI, and other client-side drivers that use prepared
4066 Fix possible failure when re-planning a query that calls an SPI-using
4073 Fix failure in row-wise comparisons involving columns of different
4080 Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
4081 race condition (Tom)
4085 In rare cases a session that had just executed a
4086 <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
4087 one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
4088 <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
4092 A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
4093 a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
4094 row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
4095 should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
4096 was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
4097 some applications depend on the old behavior.
4103 Disallow <command>LISTEN</> and <command>UNLISTEN</> within a
4104 prepared transaction (Tom)
4108 This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant
4109 consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit
4110 as long as an <command>UNLISTEN</> remained uncommitted.
4116 Disallow dropping a temporary table within a
4117 prepared transaction (Heikki)
4121 This was correctly disallowed by 8.1, but the check was inadvertently
4122 broken in 8.2 and 8.3.
4128 Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
4135 Fix incorrect comparison of <type>tsquery</> values (Teodor)
4141 Fix incorrect behavior of <literal>LIKE</> with non-ASCII characters
4142 in single-byte encodings (Rolf Jentsch)
4148 Disable <function>xmlvalidate</> (Tom)
4152 This function should have been removed before 8.3 release, but
4153 was inadvertently left in the source code. It poses a small
4154 security risk since unprivileged users could use it to read the
4155 first few characters of any file accessible to the server.
4161 Fix memory leaks in certain usages of set-returning functions (Neil)
4167 Make <function>encode(<replaceable>bytea</>, 'escape')</> convert all
4168 high-bit-set byte values into <literal>\</><replaceable>nnn</> octal
4169 escape sequences (Tom)
4173 This is necessary to avoid encoding problems when the database
4174 encoding is multi-byte. This change could pose compatibility issues
4175 for applications that are expecting specific results from
4176 <function>encode</>.
4182 Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
4186 The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
4192 Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
4193 <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
4199 Avoid tablespace permissions errors in <command>CREATE TABLE LIKE
4200 INCLUDING INDEXES</> (Tom)
4206 Ensure <structname>pg_stat_activity</>.<structfield>waiting</> flag
4207 is cleared when a lock wait is aborted (Tom)
4213 Fix handling of process permissions on Windows Vista (Dave, Magnus)
4217 In particular, this fix allows starting the server as the Administrator
4224 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008a
4225 (in particular, recent Chile changes); adjust timezone abbreviation
4226 <literal>VET</> (Venezuela) to mean UTC-4:30, not UTC-4:00 (Tom)
4232 Fix <application>ecpg</> problems with arrays (Michael)
4238 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
4239 number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
4243 Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
4244 postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
4251 Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
4252 in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
4256 This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
4257 with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
4263 Enable building <filename>contrib/uuid-ossp</> with MSVC (Hiroshi Saito)
4272 <sect1 id="release-8-3">
4273 <title>Release 8.3</title>
4276 <title>Release date</title>
4277 <simpara>2008-02-04</simpara>
4281 <title>Overview</title>
4284 With significant new functionality and performance enhancements,
4285 this release represents a major leap forward for
4286 <productname>PostgreSQL</>. This was made possible by a growing
4287 community that has dramatically accelerated the pace of
4288 development. This release adds the following major features:
4295 Full text search is integrated into the core database system
4301 Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an
4302 <type>XML</type> data type
4308 Enumerated data types (<type>ENUM</type>)
4314 Arrays of composite types
4320 Universally Unique Identifier (<type>UUID</>) data type
4326 Add control over whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last
4338 Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function
4345 User-defined types can now have type modifiers
4351 Automatically re-plan cached queries when table
4352 definitions change or statistics are updated
4358 Numerous improvements in logging and statistics collection
4364 Support Security Service Provider Interface (<acronym>SSPI</>) for
4365 authentication on Windows
4371 Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes, and other
4372 autovacuum improvements
4378 Allow the whole <productname>PostgreSQL</> distribution to be compiled
4379 with <productname>Microsoft Visual C++</>
4386 Major performance improvements are listed below. Most of
4387 these enhancements are automatic and do not require user changes or
4395 Asynchronous commit delays writes to WAL during transaction commit
4401 Checkpoint writes can be spread over a longer time period to smooth
4402 the I/O spike during each checkpoint
4408 Heap-Only Tuples (<acronym>HOT</>) accelerate space reuse for
4409 most <command>UPDATE</>s and <command>DELETE</>s
4415 Just-in-time background writer strategy improves disk write
4422 Using non-persistent transaction IDs for read-only transactions
4423 reduces overhead and <command>VACUUM</> requirements
4429 Per-field and per-row storage overhead has been reduced
4435 Large sequential scans no longer force out frequently used
4442 Concurrent large sequential scans can now share disk reads
4448 <literal>ORDER BY ... LIMIT</> can be done without sorting
4455 The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.
4461 <title>Migration to Version 8.3</title>
4464 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
4465 required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
4470 Observe the following incompatibilities:
4474 <title>General</title>
4479 Non-character data types are no longer automatically cast to
4480 <type>TEXT</> (Peter, Tom)
4484 Previously, if a non-character value was supplied to an operator or
4485 function that requires <type>text</> input, it was automatically
4486 cast to <type>text</>, for most (though not all) built-in data types.
4487 This no longer happens: an explicit cast to <type>text</> is now
4488 required for all non-character-string types. For example, these
4489 expressions formerly worked:
4492 substr(current_date, 1, 4)
4496 but will now draw <quote>function does not exist</> and <quote>operator
4497 does not exist</> errors respectively. Use an explicit cast instead:
4500 substr(current_date::text, 1, 4)
4504 (Of course, you can use the more verbose <literal>CAST()</> syntax too.)
4505 The reason for the change is that these automatic casts too often caused
4506 surprising behavior. An example is that in previous releases, this
4507 expression was accepted but did not do what was expected:
4510 current_date < 2017-11-17
4513 This is actually comparing a date to an integer, which should be
4514 (and now is) rejected — but in the presence of automatic
4515 casts both sides were cast to <type>text</> and a textual comparison
4516 was done, because the <literal>text < text</> operator was able
4517 to match the expression when no other <literal><</> operator could.
4521 Types <type>char(<replaceable>n</>)</type> and
4522 <type>varchar(<replaceable>n</>)</type> still cast to <type>text</>
4523 automatically. Also, automatic casting to <type>text</> still works for
4524 inputs to the concatenation (<literal>||</>) operator, so long as least
4525 one input is a character-string type.
4531 Full text search features from <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> have
4532 been moved into the core server, with some minor syntax changes
4536 <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> now contains a compatibility
4543 <literal>ARRAY(SELECT ...)</literal>, where the <command>SELECT</>
4544 returns no rows, now returns an empty array, rather than NULL
4551 The array type name for a base data type is no longer always the base
4552 type's name with an underscore prefix
4556 The old naming convention is still honored when possible, but
4557 application code should no longer depend on it. Instead
4558 use the new <literal>pg_type.typarray</literal> column to
4559 identify the array data type associated with a given type.
4565 <literal>ORDER BY ... USING</> <replaceable>operator</> must now
4566 use a less-than or greater-than <replaceable>operator</> that is
4567 defined in a btree operator class
4571 This restriction was added to prevent inconsistent results.
4577 <command>SET LOCAL</command> changes now persist until
4578 the end of the outermost transaction, unless rolled back (Tom)
4582 Previously <command>SET LOCAL</command>'s effects were lost
4583 after subtransaction commit (<command>RELEASE SAVEPOINT</>
4584 or exit from a PL/pgSQL exception block).
4590 Commands rejected in transaction blocks are now also rejected in
4591 multiple-statement query strings (Tom)
4595 For example, <literal>"BEGIN; DROP DATABASE; COMMIT"</> will now be
4596 rejected even if submitted as a single query message.
4602 <command>ROLLBACK</> outside a transaction block now
4603 issues <literal>NOTICE</> instead of <literal>WARNING</> (Bruce)
4609 Prevent <command>NOTIFY</command>/<command>LISTEN</command>/<command>UNLISTEN</command>
4610 from accepting schema-qualified names (Bruce)
4614 Formerly, these commands accepted <literal>schema.relation</> but
4615 ignored the schema part, which was confusing.
4621 <command>ALTER SEQUENCE</> no longer affects the sequence's
4622 <function>currval()</> state (Tom)
4628 Foreign keys now must match indexable conditions for
4629 cross-data-type references (Tom)
4633 This improves semantic consistency and helps avoid
4634 performance problems.
4640 Restrict object size functions to users who have reasonable
4641 permissions to view such information (Tom)
4645 For example, <function>pg_database_size()</function> now requires
4646 <literal>CONNECT</> permission, which is granted to everyone by
4647 default. <function>pg_tablespace_size()</function> requires
4648 <literal>CREATE</> permission in the tablespace, or is allowed if
4649 the tablespace is the default tablespace for the database.
4655 Remove the undocumented <literal>!!=</> (not in) operator (Tom)
4659 <literal>NOT IN (SELECT ...)</literal> is the proper way to
4660 perform this operation.
4666 Internal hashing functions are now more uniformly-distributed (Tom)
4670 If application code was computing and storing hash values using
4671 internal <productname>PostgreSQL</> hashing functions, the hash
4672 values must be regenerated.
4678 C-code conventions for handling variable-length data values
4679 have changed (Greg Stark, Tom)
4683 The new <function>SET_VARSIZE()</> macro <emphasis>must</> be used
4684 to set the length of generated <type>varlena</> values. Also, it
4685 might be necessary to expand (<quote>de-TOAST</quote>) input values
4692 Continuous archiving no longer reports each successful archive
4693 operation to the server logs unless <literal>DEBUG</> level is used
4703 <title>Configuration Parameters</title>
4709 Numerous changes in administrative server parameters
4713 <varname>bgwriter_lru_percent</>,
4714 <varname>bgwriter_all_percent</>,
4715 <varname>bgwriter_all_maxpages</>,
4716 <varname>stats_start_collector</>, and
4717 <varname>stats_reset_on_server_start</> are removed.
4718 <varname>redirect_stderr</> is renamed to
4719 <varname>logging_collector</>.
4720 <varname>stats_command_string</> is renamed to
4721 <varname>track_activities</>.
4722 <varname>stats_block_level</> and <varname>stats_row_level</>
4723 are merged into <varname>track_counts</>.
4724 A new boolean configuration parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>,
4725 controls archiving. Autovacuum's default settings have changed.
4731 Remove <varname>stats_start_collector</varname> parameter (Tom)
4735 We now always start the collector process, unless <acronym>UDP</>
4736 socket creation fails.
4742 Remove <varname>stats_reset_on_server_start</varname> parameter (Tom)
4746 This was removed because <function>pg_stat_reset()</function>
4747 can be used for this purpose.
4753 Commenting out a parameter in <filename>postgresql.conf</> now
4754 causes it to revert to its default value (Joachim Wieland)
4758 Previously, commenting out an entry left the parameter's value unchanged
4759 until the next server restart.
4769 <title>Character Encodings</title>
4775 Add more checks for invalidly-encoded data (Andrew)
4779 This change plugs some holes that existed in literal backslash
4780 escape string processing and <command>COPY</command> escape
4781 processing. Now the de-escaped string is rechecked to see if the
4782 result created an invalid multi-byte character.
4788 Disallow database encodings that are inconsistent with the server's
4789 locale setting (Tom)
4793 On most platforms, <literal>C</> locale is the only locale that
4794 will work with any database encoding. Other locale settings imply
4795 a specific encoding and will misbehave if the database encoding
4796 is something different. (Typical symptoms include bogus textual
4797 sort order and wrong results from <function>upper()</> or
4798 <function>lower()</>.) The server now rejects attempts to create
4799 databases that have an incompatible encoding.
4805 Ensure that <function>chr()</function> cannot create
4806 invalidly-encoded values (Andrew)
4810 In UTF8-encoded databases the argument of <function>chr()</function> is
4811 now treated as a Unicode code point. In other multi-byte encodings
4812 <function>chr()</function>'s argument must designate a 7-bit ASCII
4813 character. Zero is no longer accepted.
4814 <function>ascii()</function> has been adjusted to match.
4820 Adjust <function>convert()</function> behavior to ensure encoding
4825 The two argument form of <function>convert()</function> has been
4826 removed. The three argument form now takes a <type>bytea</type>
4827 first argument and returns a <type>bytea</type>. To cover the
4828 loss of functionality, three new functions have been added:
4834 <function>convert_from(bytea, name)</function> returns
4835 <type>text</> — converts the first argument from the named
4836 encoding to the database encoding
4842 <function>convert_to(text, name)</function> returns
4843 <type>bytea</> — converts the first argument from the
4844 database encoding to the named encoding
4850 <function>length(bytea, name)</function> returns
4851 <type>integer</> — gives the length of the first
4852 argument in characters in the named encoding
4860 Remove <literal>convert(argument USING conversion_name)</literal>
4865 Its behavior did not match the SQL standard.
4871 Make JOHAB encoding client-only (Tatsuo)
4875 JOHAB is not safe as a server-side encoding.
4886 <title>Changes</title>
4889 Below you will find a detailed account of the
4890 changes between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.3 and
4891 the previous major release.
4895 <title>Performance</title>
4900 Asynchronous commit delays writes to WAL during transaction commit
4905 This feature dramatically increases performance for short data-modifying
4906 transactions. The disadvantage is that because disk writes are delayed,
4907 if the database or operating system crashes before data is written to
4908 the disk, committed data will be lost. This feature is useful for
4909 applications that can accept some data loss. Unlike turning off
4910 <varname>fsync</varname>, using asynchronous commit does not put
4911 database consistency at risk; the worst case is that after a crash the
4912 last few reportedly-committed transactions might not be committed after
4914 This feature is enabled by turning off <varname>synchronous_commit</>
4915 (which can be done per-session or per-transaction, if some transactions
4916 are critical and others are not).
4917 <varname>wal_writer_delay</> can be adjusted to control the maximum
4918 delay before transactions actually reach disk.
4924 Checkpoint writes can be spread over a longer time period to smooth
4925 the I/O spike during each checkpoint (Itagaki Takahiro and Heikki
4930 Previously all modified buffers were forced to disk as quickly as
4932 checkpoint, causing an I/O spike that decreased server performance.
4933 This new approach spreads out disk writes during checkpoints,
4934 reducing peak I/O usage. (User-requested and shutdown checkpoints
4935 are still written as quickly as possible.)
4941 Heap-Only Tuples (<acronym>HOT</>) accelerate space reuse for most
4942 <command>UPDATE</>s and <command>DELETE</>s (Pavan Deolasee, with
4943 ideas from many others)
4947 <command>UPDATE</>s and <command>DELETE</>s leave dead tuples
4948 behind, as do failed <command>INSERT</>s. Previously only
4949 <command>VACUUM</> could reclaim space taken by dead tuples. With
4950 <acronym>HOT</> dead tuple space can be automatically reclaimed at
4951 the time of <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> if no changes
4952 are made to indexed columns. This allows for more consistent
4953 performance. Also, <acronym>HOT</> avoids adding duplicate index
4960 Just-in-time background writer strategy improves disk write
4961 efficiency (Greg Smith, Itagaki Takahiro)
4965 This greatly reduces the need for manual tuning of the background
4972 Per-field and per-row storage overhead have been reduced
4973 (Greg Stark, Heikki Linnakangas)
4977 Variable-length data types with data values less than 128 bytes long
4978 will see a storage decrease of 3 to 6 bytes. For example, two adjacent
4979 <type>char(1)</type> fields now use 4 bytes instead of 16. Row headers
4980 are also 4 bytes shorter than before.
4986 Using non-persistent transaction IDs for read-only transactions
4987 reduces overhead and <command>VACUUM</> requirements (Florian Pflug)
4991 Non-persistent transaction IDs do not increment the global
4992 transaction counter. Therefore, they reduce the load on
4993 <structname>pg_clog</> and increase the time between forced
4994 vacuums to prevent transaction ID wraparound.
4996 improvements were also made that should improve concurrency.
5002 Avoid incrementing the command counter after a read-only command (Tom)
5006 There was formerly a hard limit of 2<superscript>32</>
5007 (4 billion) commands per transaction. Now only commands that
5008 actually changed the database count, so while this limit still
5009 exists, it should be significantly less annoying.
5015 Create a dedicated <acronym>WAL</> writer process to off-load
5016 work from backends (Simon)
5022 Skip unnecessary WAL writes for <command>CLUSTER</command> and
5023 <command>COPY</command> (Simon)
5027 Unless WAL archiving is enabled, the system now avoids WAL writes
5028 for <command>CLUSTER</command> and just <function>fsync()</>s the
5029 table at the end of the command. It also does the same for
5030 <command>COPY</command> if the table was created in the same
5037 Large sequential scans no longer force out frequently used
5038 cached pages (Simon, Heikki, Tom)
5044 Concurrent large sequential scans can now share disk reads (Jeff Davis)
5048 This is accomplished by starting the new sequential scan in the
5049 middle of the table (where another sequential scan is already
5050 in-progress) and wrapping around to the beginning to finish. This
5051 can affect the order of returned rows in a query that does not
5052 specify <literal>ORDER BY</>. The <varname>synchronize_seqscans</>
5053 configuration parameter can be used to disable this if necessary.
5059 <literal>ORDER BY ... LIMIT</> can be done without sorting
5064 This is done by sequentially scanning the table and tracking just
5065 the <quote>top N</> candidate rows, rather than performing a
5066 full sort of the entire table. This is useful when there is no
5067 matching index and the <literal>LIMIT</> is not large.
5073 Put a rate limit on messages sent to the statistics
5074 collector by backends
5079 This reduces overhead for short transactions, but might sometimes
5080 increase the delay before statistics are tallied.
5086 Improve hash join performance for cases with many NULLs (Tom)
5092 Speed up operator lookup for cases with non-exact datatype matches (Tom)
5101 <title>Server</title>
5106 Autovacuum is now enabled by default (Alvaro)
5110 Several changes were made to eliminate disadvantages of having
5111 autovacuum enabled, thereby justifying the change in default.
5112 Several other autovacuum parameter defaults were also modified.
5118 Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes (Alvaro, Itagaki
5123 This allows multiple vacuums to run concurrently. This prevents
5124 vacuuming of a large table from delaying vacuuming of smaller tables.
5130 Automatically re-plan cached queries when table
5131 definitions change or statistics are updated (Tom)
5135 Previously PL/PgSQL functions that referenced temporary tables
5136 would fail if the temporary table was dropped and recreated
5137 between function invocations, unless <literal>EXECUTE</> was
5138 used. This improvement fixes that problem and many related issues.
5144 Add a <varname>temp_tablespaces</varname> parameter to control
5145 the tablespaces for temporary tables and files (Jaime Casanova,
5146 Albert Cervera, Bernd Helmle)
5150 This parameter defines a list of tablespaces to be used. This
5151 enables spreading the I/O load across multiple tablespaces. A random
5152 tablespace is chosen each time a temporary object is created.
5153 Temporary files are no longer stored in per-database
5154 <filename>pgsql_tmp/</filename> directories but in per-tablespace
5161 Place temporary tables' TOAST tables in special schemas named
5162 <literal>pg_toast_temp_<replaceable>nnn</></literal> (Tom)
5166 This allows low-level code to recognize these tables as temporary,
5167 which enables various optimizations such as not WAL-logging changes
5168 and using local rather than shared buffers for access. This also
5169 fixes a bug wherein backends unexpectedly held open file references
5170 to temporary TOAST tables.
5176 Fix problem that a constant flow of new connection requests could
5177 indefinitely delay the postmaster from completing a shutdown or
5178 a crash restart (Tom)
5184 Guard against a very-low-probability data loss scenario by preventing
5185 re-use of a deleted table's relfilenode until after the next
5192 Fix <command>CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER</>
5193 to convert old-style foreign key trigger definitions into regular
5194 foreign key constraints (Tom)
5198 This will ease porting of foreign key constraints carried forward from
5199 pre-7.3 databases, if they were never converted using
5200 <filename>contrib/adddepend</>.
5206 Fix <literal>DEFAULT NULL</> to override inherited defaults (Tom)
5210 <literal>DEFAULT NULL</> was formerly considered a noise phrase, but it
5211 should (and now does) override non-null defaults that would otherwise
5212 be inherited from a parent table or domain.
5218 Add new encodings EUC_JIS_2004 and SHIFT_JIS_2004 (Tatsuo)
5222 These new encodings can be converted to and from UTF-8.
5228 Change server startup log message from <quote>database system is
5229 ready</quote> to <quote>database system is ready to accept
5230 connections</quote>, and adjust its timing
5234 The message now appears only when the postmaster is really ready
5235 to accept connections.
5244 <title>Monitoring</title>
5249 Add <varname>log_autovacuum_min_duration</varname> parameter to
5250 support configurable logging of autovacuum activity (Simon, Alvaro)
5256 Add <varname>log_lock_waits</varname> parameter to log lock waiting
5263 Add <varname>log_temp_files</varname> parameter to log temporary
5264 file usage (Bill Moran)
5270 Add <varname>log_checkpoints</varname> parameter to improve logging
5271 of checkpoints (Greg Smith, Heikki)
5277 <varname>log_line_prefix</varname> now supports
5278 <literal>%s</literal> and <literal>%c</literal> escapes in all
5283 Previously these escapes worked only for user sessions, not for
5284 background database processes.
5290 Add <varname>log_restartpoints</varname> to control logging of
5291 point-in-time recovery restart points (Simon)
5297 Last transaction end time is now logged at end of recovery and at
5298 each logged restart point (Simon)
5304 Autovacuum now reports its activity start time in
5305 <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Tom)
5311 Allow server log output in comma-separated value (CSV) format (Arul
5312 Shaji, Greg Smith, Andrew Dunstan)
5316 CSV-format log files can easily be loaded into a database table for
5317 subsequent analysis.
5323 Use PostgreSQL-supplied timezone support for formatting timestamps
5324 displayed in the server log (Tom)
5328 This avoids Windows-specific problems with localized time zone
5329 names that are in the wrong encoding. There is a new
5330 <varname>log_timezone</> parameter that controls the timezone
5331 used in log messages, independently of the client-visible
5332 <varname>timezone</> parameter.
5338 New system view <literal>pg_stat_bgwriter</literal> displays
5339 statistics about background writer activity (Magnus)
5345 Add new columns for database-wide tuple statistics to
5346 <literal>pg_stat_database</literal> (Magnus)
5352 Add an <literal>xact_start</literal> (transaction start time) column to
5353 <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Neil)
5357 This makes it easier to identify long-running transactions.
5363 Add <literal>n_live_tuples</> and <literal>n_dead_tuples</> columns
5364 to <literal>pg_stat_all_tables</literal> and related views (Glen
5371 Merge <varname>stats_block_level</> and <varname>stats_row_level</>
5372 parameters into a single parameter <varname>track_counts</>, which
5373 controls all messages sent to the statistics collector process
5380 Rename <varname>stats_command_string</varname> parameter to
5381 <varname>track_activities</varname> (Tom)
5387 Fix statistical counting of live and dead tuples to recognize that
5388 committed and aborted transactions have different effects (Tom)
5397 <title>Authentication</title>
5402 Support Security Service Provider Interface (<acronym>SSPI</>) for
5403 authentication on Windows (Magnus)
5409 Support GSSAPI authentication (Henry Hotz, Magnus)
5413 This should be preferred to native Kerberos authentication because
5414 GSSAPI is an industry standard.
5420 Support a global SSL configuration file (Victor Wagner)
5426 Add <varname>ssl_ciphers</> parameter to control accepted SSL ciphers
5433 Add a Kerberos realm parameter, <varname>krb_realm</> (Magnus)
5442 <title>Write-Ahead Log (<acronym>WAL</>) and Continuous Archiving</title>
5447 Change the timestamps recorded in transaction WAL records from
5448 time_t to TimestampTz representation (Tom)
5452 This provides sub-second resolution in WAL, which can be useful for
5453 point-in-time recovery.
5459 Reduce WAL disk space needed by warm standby servers (Simon)
5463 This change allows a warm standby server to pass the name of the earliest
5464 still-needed WAL file to the recovery script, allowing automatic removal
5465 of no-longer-needed WAL files. This is done using <literal>%r</> in
5466 the <varname>restore_command</varname> parameter of
5467 <filename>recovery.conf</filename>.
5473 New boolean configuration parameter, <varname>archive_mode</>,
5474 controls archiving (Simon)
5478 Previously setting <varname>archive_command</> to an empty string
5479 turned off archiving. Now <varname>archive_mode</> turns archiving
5480 on and off, independently of <varname>archive_command</>. This is
5481 useful for stopping archiving temporarily.
5490 <title>Queries</title>
5495 Full text search is integrated into the core database
5496 system (Teodor, Oleg)
5500 Text search has been improved, moved into the core code, and is now
5501 installed by default. <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> now contains
5502 a compatibility interface.
5508 Add control over whether <literal>NULL</>s sort first or last (Teodor, Tom)
5512 The syntax is <literal>ORDER BY ... NULLS FIRST/LAST</>.
5518 Allow per-column ascending/descending (<literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</>)
5519 ordering options for indexes (Teodor, Tom)
5523 Previously a query using <literal>ORDER BY</> with mixed
5524 <literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</> specifiers could not fully use
5525 an index. Now an index can be fully used in such cases if the
5526 index was created with matching
5527 <literal>ASC</>/<literal>DESC</> specifications.
5528 <literal>NULL</> sort order within an index can be controlled, too.
5534 Allow <literal>col IS NULL</> to use an index (Teodor)
5540 Updatable cursors (Arul Shaji, Tom)
5544 This eliminates the need to reference a primary key to
5545 <command>UPDATE</> or <command>DELETE</> rows returned by a cursor.
5546 The syntax is <literal>UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF</>.
5552 Allow <literal>FOR UPDATE</literal> in cursors (Arul Shaji, Tom)
5558 Create a general mechanism that supports casts to and from the
5559 standard string types (<type>TEXT</type>, <type>VARCHAR</type>,
5560 <type>CHAR</type>) for <emphasis>every</emphasis> datatype, by
5561 invoking the datatype's I/O functions (Tom)
5565 Previously, such casts were available only for types that had
5566 specialized function(s) for the purpose.
5567 These new casts are assignment-only in the to-string direction,
5568 explicit-only in the other direction, and therefore should create no
5569 surprising behavior.
5575 Allow <literal>UNION</> and related constructs to return a domain
5576 type, when all inputs are of that domain type (Tom)
5580 Formerly, the output would be considered to be of the domain's base
5587 Allow limited hashing when using two different data types (Tom)
5591 This allows hash joins, hash indexes, hashed subplans, and hash
5592 aggregation to be used in situations involving cross-data-type
5593 comparisons, if the data types have compatible hash functions.
5594 Currently, cross-data-type hashing support exists for
5595 <type>smallint</type>/<type>integer</type>/<type>bigint</type>,
5596 and for <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type>.
5602 Improve optimizer logic for detecting when variables are equal
5603 in a <literal>WHERE</> clause (Tom)
5607 This allows mergejoins to work with descending sort orders, and
5608 improves recognition of redundant sort columns.
5614 Improve performance when planning large inheritance trees in
5615 cases where most tables are excluded by constraints (Tom)
5624 <title>Object Manipulation</title>
5630 Arrays of composite types (David Fetter, Andrew, Tom)
5634 In addition to arrays of explicitly-declared composite types,
5635 arrays of the rowtypes of regular tables and views are now
5636 supported, except for rowtypes of system catalogs, sequences, and TOAST
5644 Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function
5649 For example, functions can now set their own
5650 <varname>search_path</> to prevent unexpected behavior if a
5651 different <varname>search_path</> exists at run-time. Security
5652 definer functions should set <varname>search_path</varname> to
5653 avoid security loopholes.
5659 <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command> now supports
5660 <literal>COST</literal> and <literal>ROWS</literal> options (Tom)
5664 <literal>COST</literal> allows specification of the cost of a
5665 function call. <literal>ROWS</literal> allows specification of
5666 the average number or rows returned by a set-returning function.
5667 These values are used by the optimizer in choosing the best plan.
5673 Implement <command>CREATE TABLE LIKE ... INCLUDING
5674 INDEXES</command> (Trevor Hardcastle, Nikhil Sontakke, Neil)
5680 Allow <command>CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY</command> to ignore
5681 transactions in other databases (Simon)
5687 Add <command>ALTER VIEW ... RENAME TO</command> and <command>ALTER
5688 SEQUENCE ... RENAME TO</command> (David Fetter, Neil)
5692 Previously this could only be done via <command>ALTER TABLE ...
5693 RENAME TO</command>.
5699 Make <command>CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE</> wait briefly for
5700 conflicting backends to exit before failing (Tom)
5704 This increases the likelihood that these commands will succeed.
5710 Allow triggers and rules to be deactivated in groups using a
5711 configuration parameter, for replication purposes (Jan)
5715 This allows replication systems to disable triggers and rewrite
5716 rules as a group without modifying the system catalogs directly.
5717 The behavior is controlled by <command>ALTER TABLE</> and a new
5718 parameter <varname>session_replication_role</varname>.
5724 User-defined types can now have type modifiers (Teodor, Tom)
5728 This allows a user-defined type to take a modifier, like
5729 <type>ssnum(7)</>. Previously only built-in
5730 data types could have modifiers.
5739 <title>Utility Commands</title>
5744 Non-superuser database owners now are able to add trusted procedural
5745 languages to their databases by default (Jeremy Drake)
5749 While this is reasonably safe, some administrators might wish to
5750 revoke the privilege. It is controlled by
5751 <structname>pg_pltemplate</>.<structfield>tmpldbacreate</>.
5757 Allow a session's current parameter setting to be used as the
5758 default for future sessions (Tom)
5762 This is done with <literal>SET ... FROM CURRENT</literal> in
5763 <command>CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION</command>, <command>ALTER
5764 DATABASE</command>, or <command>ALTER ROLE</command>.
5770 Implement new commands <command>DISCARD ALL</command>,
5771 <command>DISCARD PLANS</command>, <command>DISCARD
5772 TEMPORARY</command>, <command>CLOSE ALL</command>, and
5773 <command>DEALLOCATE ALL</command> (Marko Kreen, Neil)
5777 These commands simplify resetting a database session to its initial
5778 state, and are particularly useful for connection-pooling software.
5784 Make <command>CLUSTER</command> MVCC-safe (Heikki Linnakangas)
5788 Formerly, <command>CLUSTER</command> would discard all tuples
5789 that were committed dead, even if there were still transactions
5790 that should be able to see them under MVCC visibility rules.
5796 Add new <command>CLUSTER</command> syntax: <literal>CLUSTER
5797 <replaceable>table</> USING <replaceable>index</></literal>
5802 The old <command>CLUSTER</command> syntax is still supported, but
5803 the new form is considered more logical.
5809 Fix <command>EXPLAIN</command> so it can show complex plans
5810 more accurately (Tom)
5814 References to subplan outputs are now always shown correctly,
5815 instead of using <literal>?column<replaceable>N</>?</literal>
5816 for complicated cases.
5822 Limit the amount of information reported when a user is dropped
5827 Previously, dropping (or attempting to drop) a user who owned many
5828 objects could result in large <literal>NOTICE</literal> or
5829 <literal>ERROR</literal> messages listing all these objects; this
5830 caused problems for some client applications. The length of the
5831 message is now limited, although a full list is still sent to the
5841 <title>Data Types</title>
5846 Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an
5847 <type>XML</type> data type (Nikolay Samokhvalov, Pavel Stehule, Peter)
5853 Enumerated data types (<type>ENUM</type>) (Tom Dunstan)
5857 This feature provides convenient support for fields that have a
5858 small, fixed set of allowed values. An example of creating an
5859 <literal>ENUM</> type is
5860 <literal>CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy')</>.
5866 Universally Unique Identifier (<type>UUID</>) data type (Gevik
5871 This closely matches <acronym>RFC</> 4122.
5877 Widen the <type>MONEY</type> data type to 64 bits (D'Arcy Cain)
5881 This greatly increases the range of supported <type>MONEY</>
5888 Fix <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type> to handle
5889 <literal>Infinity</> and <literal>NAN</> (Not A Number)
5890 consistently (Bruce)
5894 The code formerly was not consistent about distinguishing
5895 <literal>Infinity</> from overflow conditions.
5901 Allow leading and trailing whitespace during input of
5902 <type>boolean</type> values (Neil)
5908 Prevent <command>COPY</> from using digits and lowercase letters as
5918 <title>Functions</title>
5923 Add new regular expression functions
5924 <function>regexp_matches()</function>,
5925 <function>regexp_split_to_array()</function>, and
5926 <function>regexp_split_to_table()</function> (Jeremy Drake, Neil)
5930 These functions provide extraction of regular expression
5931 subexpressions and allow splitting a string using a POSIX regular
5938 Add <function>lo_truncate()</function> for large object truncation
5945 Implement <function>width_bucket()</function> for the <type>float8</>
5952 Add <function>pg_stat_clear_snapshot()</function> to discard
5953 statistics snapshots collected during the current transaction
5958 The first request for statistics in a transaction takes a statistics
5959 snapshot that does not change during the transaction. This function
5960 allows the snapshot to be discarded and a new snapshot loaded during
5961 the next statistics query. This is particularly useful for PL/PgSQL
5962 functions, which are confined to a single transaction.
5968 Add <literal>isodow</> option to <function>EXTRACT()</> and
5969 <function>date_part()</> (Bruce)
5973 This returns the day of the week, with Sunday as seven.
5974 (<literal>dow</> returns Sunday as zero.)
5980 Add <literal>ID</> (ISO day of week) and <literal>IDDD</> (ISO
5981 day of year) format codes for <function>to_char()</>,
5982 <function>to_date()</>, and <function>to_timestamp()</> (Brendan
5989 Make <function>to_timestamp()</> and <function>to_date()</>
5990 assume <literal>TM</literal> (trim) option for potentially
5991 variable-width fields (Bruce)
5995 This matches <productname>Oracle</>'s behavior.
6001 Fix off-by-one conversion error in
6002 <function>to_date()</function>/<function>to_timestamp()</function>
6003 <literal>D</> (non-ISO day of week) fields (Bruce)
6009 Make <function>setseed()</function> return void, rather than a
6010 useless integer value (Neil)
6016 Add a hash function for <type>NUMERIC</type> (Neil)
6020 This allows hash indexes and hash-based plans to be used with
6021 <type>NUMERIC</type> columns.
6027 Improve efficiency of
6028 <literal>LIKE</literal>/<literal>ILIKE</literal>, especially for
6029 multi-byte character sets like UTF-8 (Andrew, Itagaki Takahiro)
6035 Make <function>currtid()</function> functions require
6036 <literal>SELECT</literal> privileges on the target table (Tom)
6042 Add several <function>txid_*()</function> functions to query
6043 active transaction IDs (Jan)
6047 This is useful for various replication solutions.
6056 <title>PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language</title>
6061 Add scrollable cursor support, including directional control in
6062 <command>FETCH</command> (Pavel Stehule)
6068 Allow <literal>IN</literal> as an alternative to
6069 <literal>FROM</literal> in PL/PgSQL's <command>FETCH</command>
6070 statement, for consistency with the backend's
6071 <command>FETCH</command> command (Pavel Stehule)
6077 Add <command>MOVE</command> to PL/PgSQL (Magnus, Pavel Stehule,
6084 Implement <command>RETURN QUERY</command> (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
6088 This adds convenient syntax for PL/PgSQL set-returning functions
6089 that want to return the result of a query. <command>RETURN QUERY</>
6090 is easier and more efficient than a loop
6091 around <command>RETURN NEXT</command>.
6097 Allow function parameter names to be qualified with the
6098 function's name (Tom)
6102 For example, <literal>myfunc.myvar</>. This is particularly
6103 useful for specifying variables in a query where the variable
6104 name might match a column name.
6110 Make qualification of variables with block labels work properly (Tom)
6114 Formerly, outer-level block labels could unexpectedly interfere with
6115 recognition of inner-level record or row references.
6121 Tighten requirements for <literal>FOR</literal> loop
6122 <literal>STEP</> values (Tom)
6126 Prevent non-positive <literal>STEP</> values, and handle
6133 Improve accuracy when reporting syntax error locations (Tom)
6142 <title>Other Server-Side Languages</title>
6147 Allow type-name arguments to PL/Perl
6148 <function>spi_prepare()</function> to be data type aliases in
6149 addition to names found in <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
6155 Allow type-name arguments to PL/Python
6156 <function>plpy.prepare()</function> to be data type aliases in
6157 addition to names found in <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
6163 Allow type-name arguments to PL/Tcl <function>spi_prepare</> to
6164 be data type aliases in addition to names found in
6165 <literal>pg_type</literal> (Andrew)
6171 Enable PL/PythonU to compile on Python 2.5 (Marko Kreen)
6177 Support a true PL/Python boolean type in compatible Python versions
6178 (Python 2.3 and later) (Marko Kreen)
6184 Fix PL/Tcl problems with thread-enabled <filename>libtcl</> spawning
6185 multiple threads within the backend (Steve Marshall, Paul Bayer,
6190 This caused all sorts of unpleasantness.
6199 <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link></title>
6204 List disabled triggers separately in <literal>\d</literal> output
6211 In <literal>\d</literal> patterns, always match <literal>$</literal>
6218 Show aggregate return types in <literal>\da</literal> output
6219 (Greg Sabino Mullane)
6225 Add the function's volatility status to the output of
6226 <literal>\df+</literal> (Neil)
6232 Add <literal>\prompt</literal> capability (Chad Wagner)
6238 Allow <literal>\pset</literal>, <literal>\t</literal>, and
6239 <literal>\x</literal> to specify <literal>on</> or <literal>off</>,
6240 rather than just toggling (Chad Wagner)
6246 Add <literal>\sleep</> capability (Jan)
6252 Enable <literal>\timing</> output for <literal>\copy</> (Andrew)
6258 Improve <literal>\timing</literal> resolution on Windows
6265 Flush <literal>\o</> output after each backslash command (Tom)
6271 Correctly detect and report errors while reading a <literal>-f</>
6278 Remove <literal>-u</> option (this option has long been deprecated)
6288 <title><link linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link></title>
6293 Add <literal>--tablespaces-only</> and <literal>--roles-only</>
6294 options to <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
6300 Add an output file option to
6301 <application>pg_dumpall</application> (Dave Page)
6305 This is primarily useful on Windows, where output redirection of
6306 child <application>pg_dump</application> processes does not work.
6312 Allow <application>pg_dumpall</> to accept an initial-connection
6313 database name rather than the default
6314 <literal>template1</literal> (Dave Page)
6320 In <literal>-n</> and <literal>-t</> switches, always match
6321 <literal>$</literal> literally (Tom)
6327 Improve performance when a database has thousands of objects (Tom)
6333 Remove <literal>-u</> option (this option has long been deprecated)
6343 <title>Other Client Applications</title>
6348 In <application>initdb</>, allow the location of the
6349 <filename>pg_xlog</filename> directory to be specified
6350 (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
6356 Enable server core dump generation in <application>pg_regress</>
6357 on supported operating systems (Andrew)
6363 Add a <literal>-t</> (timeout) parameter to <application>pg_ctl</>
6368 This controls how long <application>pg_ctl</> will wait when waiting
6369 for server startup or shutdown. Formerly the timeout was hard-wired
6376 Add a <application>pg_ctl</> option to control generation
6377 of server core dumps (Andrew)
6383 Allow Control-C to cancel <application>clusterdb</>,
6384 <application>reindexdb</>, and <application>vacuumdb</> (Itagaki
6391 Suppress command tag output for <application>createdb</>,
6392 <application>createuser</>, <application>dropdb</>, and
6393 <application>dropuser</> (Peter)
6397 The <literal>--quiet</> option is ignored and will be removed in 8.4.
6398 Progress messages when acting on all databases now go to stdout
6399 instead of stderr because they are not actually errors.
6408 <title><link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link></title>
6413 Interpret the <literal>dbName</> parameter of
6414 <function>PQsetdbLogin()</> as a <literal>conninfo</> string if
6415 it contains an equals sign (Andrew)
6419 This allows use of <literal>conninfo</> strings in client
6420 programs that still use <literal>PQsetdbLogin()</>.
6426 Support a global <acronym>SSL</> configuration file (Victor
6433 Add environment variable <varname>PGSSLKEY</> to control
6434 <acronym>SSL</> hardware keys (Victor Wagner)
6440 Add <function>lo_truncate()</function> for large object
6441 truncation (Kris Jurka)
6447 Add <function>PQconnectionNeedsPassword()</function> that returns
6448 true if the server required a password but none was supplied
6453 If this returns true after a failed connection attempt, a client
6454 application should prompt the user for a password. In the past
6455 applications have had to check for a specific error message string to
6456 decide whether a password is needed; that approach is now
6463 Add <function>PQconnectionUsedPassword()</function> that returns
6464 true if the supplied password was actually used
6469 This is useful in some security contexts where it is important
6470 to know whether a user-supplied password is actually valid.
6479 <title><link linkend="ecpg"><application>ecpg</></link></title>
6484 Use V3 frontend/backend protocol (Michael)
6488 This adds support for server-side prepared statements.
6494 Use native threads, instead of pthreads, on Windows (Magnus)
6500 Improve thread-safety of ecpglib (Itagaki Takahiro)
6506 Make the ecpg libraries export only necessary API symbols (Michael)
6515 <title><application>Windows</> Port</title>
6520 Allow the whole <productname>PostgreSQL</> distribution to be compiled
6521 with <productname>Microsoft Visual C++</> (Magnus and others)
6525 This allows Windows-based developers to use familiar development
6526 and debugging tools.
6527 Windows executables made with Visual C++ might also have better
6528 stability and performance than those made with other tool sets.
6529 The client-only Visual C++ build scripts have been removed.
6535 Drastically reduce postmaster's memory usage when it has many child
6542 Allow regression tests to be started by an administrative
6549 Add native shared memory implementation (Magnus)
6558 <title>Server Programming Interface (<acronym>SPI</>)</title>
6563 Add cursor-related functionality in SPI (Pavel Stehule)
6567 Allow access to the cursor-related planning options, and add
6568 <command>FETCH</>/<command>MOVE</> routines.
6574 Allow execution of cursor commands through
6575 <function>SPI_execute</function> (Tom)
6579 The macro <literal>SPI_ERROR_CURSOR</> still exists but will
6586 SPI plan pointers are now declared as <literal>SPIPlanPtr</> instead of
6587 <literal>void *</> (Tom)
6591 This does not break application code, but switching is
6592 recommended to help catch simple programming mistakes.
6601 <title>Build Options</title>
6606 Add <application>configure</> option <literal>--enable-profiling</>
6607 to enable code profiling (works only with <application>gcc</>)
6608 (Korry Douglas and Nikhil Sontakke)
6614 Add <application>configure</> option <literal>--with-system-tzdata</>
6615 to use the operating system's time zone database (Peter)
6621 Fix <acronym>PGXS</> so extensions can be built against PostgreSQL
6622 installations whose <application>pg_config</> program does not
6623 appear first in the <varname>PATH</> (Tom)
6629 Support <command>gmake draft</command> when building the
6630 <acronym>SGML</> documentation (Bruce)
6634 Unless <literal>draft</> is used, the documentation build will
6635 now be repeated if necessary to ensure the index is up-to-date.
6644 <title>Source Code</title>
6649 Rename macro <literal>DLLIMPORT</> to <literal>PGDLLIMPORT</> to
6650 avoid conflicting with third party includes (like Tcl) that
6651 define <literal>DLLIMPORT</> (Magnus)
6657 Create <quote>operator families</quote> to improve planning of
6658 queries involving cross-data-type comparisons (Tom)
6664 Update GIN <function>extractQuery()</> API to allow signalling
6665 that nothing can satisfy the query (Teodor)
6671 Move <literal>NAMEDATALEN</> definition from
6672 <filename>postgres_ext.h</> to <filename>pg_config_manual.h</>
6679 Provide <function>strlcpy()</function> and
6680 <function>strlcat()</function> on all platforms, and replace
6681 error-prone uses of <function>strncpy()</function>,
6682 <function>strncat()</function>, etc (Peter)
6688 Create hooks to let an external plugin monitor (or even replace) the
6689 planner and create plans for hypothetical situations (Gurjeet
6696 Create a function variable <literal>join_search_hook</> to let plugins
6697 override the join search order portion of the planner (Julius
6704 Add <function>tas()</> support for Renesas' M32R processor
6711 <function>quote_identifier()</function> and
6712 <application>pg_dump</application> no longer quote keywords that are
6713 unreserved according to the grammar (Tom)
6719 Change the on-disk representation of the <type>NUMERIC</type>
6720 data type so that the <structfield>sign_dscale</> word comes
6721 before the weight (Tom)
6727 Use <acronym>SYSV</> semaphores rather than POSIX on Darwin
6728 >= 6.0, i.e., OS X 10.2 and up (Chris Marcellino)
6734 Add <link linkend="acronyms">acronym</link> and <link
6735 linkend="creating-cluster-nfs">NFS</link> documentation
6742 "Postgres" is now documented as an accepted alias for
6743 "PostgreSQL" (Peter)
6749 Add documentation about preventing database server spoofing when
6750 the server is down (Bruce)
6759 <title>Contrib</title>
6764 Move <filename>contrib</> <filename>README</> content into the
6765 main <productname>PostgreSQL</> documentation (Albert Cervera i
6772 Add <filename>contrib/pageinspect</filename> module for low-level
6773 page inspection (Simon, Heikki)
6779 Add <filename>contrib/pg_standby</filename> module for controlling
6780 warm standby operation (Simon)
6786 Add <filename>contrib/uuid-ossp</filename> module for generating
6787 <type>UUID</> values using the OSSP UUID library (Peter)
6791 Use <application>configure</>
6792 <literal>--with-ossp-uuid</literal> to activate. This takes
6793 advantage of the new <type>UUID</type> builtin type.
6799 Add <filename>contrib/dict_int</filename>,
6800 <filename>contrib/dict_xsyn</filename>, and
6801 <filename>contrib/test_parser</filename> modules to provide
6802 sample add-on text search dictionary templates and parsers
6809 Allow <application>contrib/pgbench</> to set the fillfactor (Pavan
6816 Add timestamps to <application>contrib/pgbench</> <literal>-l</>
6823 Add usage count statistics to
6824 <filename>contrib/pgbuffercache</filename> (Greg Smith)
6830 Add GIN support for <filename>contrib/hstore</> (Teodor)
6836 Add GIN support for <filename>contrib/pg_trgm</> (Guillaume Smet, Teodor)
6842 Update OS/X startup scripts in
6843 <filename>contrib/start-scripts</filename> (Mark Cotner, David
6850 Restrict <function>pgrowlocks()</function> and
6851 <function>dblink_get_pkey()</function> to users who have
6852 <literal>SELECT</literal> privilege on the target table (Tom)
6858 Restrict <filename>contrib/pgstattuple</filename> functions to
6865 <filename>contrib/xml2</filename> is deprecated and planned for
6866 removal in 8.4 (Peter)
6870 The new XML support in core PostgreSQL supersedes this module.
6880 <sect1 id="release-8-2-13">
6881 <title>Release 8.2.13</title>
6884 <title>Release date</title>
6885 <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
6889 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.12.
6890 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
6891 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
6895 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.13</title>
6898 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
6899 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11,
6900 see the release notes for 8.2.11.
6906 <title>Changes</title>
6912 Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
6916 This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
6917 related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
6918 for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
6919 <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
6920 potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
6921 error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
6922 conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
6923 if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
6930 Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
6931 for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
6935 This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
6936 The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
6937 failures in the same area.
6943 Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
6944 are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
6950 Fix possible failure in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> when C locale is
6951 used with a multi-byte encoding (Teodor)
6955 Crashes were possible on platforms where <type>wchar_t</> is narrower
6956 than <type>int</>; Windows in particular.
6962 Fix extreme inefficiency in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> parser's
6963 handling of an email-like string containing multiple <literal>@</>
6970 Fix decompilation of <literal>CASE WHEN</> with an implicit coercion
6975 This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build,
6976 or an <quote>unexpected CASE WHEN clause</> error message in other
6977 cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.
6983 Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)
6987 If <command>CLUSTER</> or a rewriting variant of <command>ALTER TABLE</>
6988 were executed by someone other than the table owner, the
6989 <structname>pg_type</> entry for the table's TOAST table would end up
6990 marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems,
6991 since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any
6992 ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected
6993 failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command
6994 (in 8.1 or 8.2), or <quote>owner of data type appears to be invalid</>
6995 warnings from <application>pg_dump</> after having done so (in 8.3).
7001 Fix PL/pgSQL to not treat <literal>INTO</> after <command>INSERT</> as
7002 an INTO-variables clause anywhere in the string, not only at the start;
7003 in particular, don't fail for <command>INSERT INTO</> within
7004 <command>CREATE RULE</> (Tom)
7010 Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit
7011 (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)
7015 This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause
7016 the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.
7022 Retry failed calls to <function>CallNamedPipe()</> on Windows
7023 (Steve Marshall, Magnus)
7027 It appears that this function can sometimes fail transiently;
7028 we previously treated any failure as a hard error, which could
7029 confuse <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</> as well as other
7036 Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
7037 of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
7046 <sect1 id="release-8-2-12">
7047 <title>Release 8.2.12</title>
7050 <title>Release date</title>
7051 <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
7055 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.11.
7056 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
7057 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
7061 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.12</title>
7064 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
7065 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11,
7066 see the release notes for 8.2.11.
7072 <title>Changes</title>
7078 Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
7084 Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
7091 Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
7092 conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
7093 specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
7099 Fix possible Assert failure if a statement executed in PL/pgSQL is
7100 rewritten into another kind of statement, for example if an
7101 <command>INSERT</> is rewritten into an <command>UPDATE</> (Heikki)
7107 Ensure that a snapshot is available to datatype input functions (Tom)
7111 This primarily affects domains that are declared with <literal>CHECK</>
7112 constraints involving user-defined stable or immutable functions. Such
7113 functions typically fail if no snapshot has been set.
7119 Make it safer for SPI-using functions to be used within datatype I/O;
7120 in particular, to be used in domain check constraints (Tom)
7126 Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
7133 Fix a problem that made <literal>UPDATE RETURNING tableoid</>
7134 return zero instead of the correct OID (Tom)
7140 Fix planner misestimation of selectivity when transitive equality
7141 is applied to an outer-join clause (Tom)
7145 This could result in bad plans for queries like
7146 <literal>... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42 ...</>
7152 Improve optimizer's handling of long <literal>IN</> lists (Tom)
7156 This change avoids wasting large amounts of time on such lists
7157 when constraint exclusion is enabled.
7163 Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the
7164 contents of TOAST tables (Tom)
7168 Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented
7169 as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped
7170 before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then
7171 vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor,
7172 but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.
7178 Fix memory leak when a set-returning function is terminated without
7179 reading its whole result (Tom)
7185 Fix <filename>contrib/dblink</>'s
7186 <function>dblink_get_result(text,bool)</> function (Joe)
7192 Fix possible garbage output from <filename>contrib/sslinfo</> functions
7199 Fix <application>configure</> script to properly report failure when
7200 unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)
7206 Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
7207 <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
7208 now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
7215 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
7216 Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
7225 <sect1 id="release-8-2-11">
7226 <title>Release 8.2.11</title>
7229 <title>Release date</title>
7230 <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
7234 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.10.
7235 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
7236 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
7240 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.11</title>
7243 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
7244 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
7245 see the release notes for 8.2.7. Also, if you were running a previous
7246 8.2.X release, it is recommended to <command>REINDEX</> all GiST
7247 indexes after the upgrade.
7253 <title>Changes</title>
7259 Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry
7260 <quote>dead</> after a deletion (Teodor)
7264 This would result in index searches failing to find rows they
7265 should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with
7266 <command>REINDEX</>.
7272 Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
7277 We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
7278 the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
7279 be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
7280 ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
7286 Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
7293 Improve optimization of <replaceable>expression</> <literal>IN</>
7294 (<replaceable>expression-list</>) queries (Tom, per an idea from Robert
7299 Cases in which there are query variables on the right-hand side had been
7300 handled less efficiently in 8.2.x and 8.3.x than in prior versions.
7301 The fix restores 8.1 behavior for such cases.
7307 Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-<literal>SELECT</> appears
7308 in a function call in <literal>FROM</>, a multi-row <literal>VALUES</>
7309 list, or a <literal>RETURNING</> list (Tom)
7313 The usual symptom of this problem is an <quote>unrecognized node type</>
7320 Fix memory leak during rescan of a hashed aggregation plan (Neil)
7326 Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
7327 function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
7333 Prevent possible collision of <structfield>relfilenode</> numbers
7334 when moving a table to another tablespace with <command>ALTER SET
7335 TABLESPACE</> (Heikki)
7339 The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of
7340 picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.
7346 Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query
7347 item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
7353 Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
7354 using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
7361 Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
7362 behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
7363 different numbers of columns (Tom)
7367 This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
7368 but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
7369 The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
7375 Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE ROLE</> (Michael)
7381 Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
7387 Ensure <filename>pg_control</> is opened in binary mode
7392 <application>pg_controldata</> and <application>pg_resetxlog</>
7393 did this incorrectly, and so could fail on Windows.
7399 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
7400 DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
7409 <sect1 id="release-8-2-10">
7410 <title>Release 8.2.10</title>
7413 <title>Release date</title>
7414 <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
7418 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.9.
7419 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
7420 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
7424 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.10</title>
7427 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
7428 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
7429 see the release notes for 8.2.7.
7435 <title>Changes</title>
7441 Fix bug in btree WAL recovery code (Heikki)
7445 Recovery failed if the WAL ended partway through a page split operation.
7451 Fix potential miscalculation of <structfield>datfrozenxid</> (Alvaro)
7455 This error may explain some recent reports of failure to remove old
7456 <structname>pg_clog</> data.
7462 Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
7466 This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
7467 sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
7468 already held</> errors.
7474 Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)
7480 Fix missed permissions checks when a view contains a simple
7481 <literal>UNION ALL</> construct (Heikki)
7485 Permissions for the referenced tables were checked properly, but not
7486 permissions for the view itself.
7492 Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
7493 <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
7494 current rowtype (Tom)
7498 <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</>, followed by re-use of a previously
7499 cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects
7500 against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.
7506 Fix possible repeated drops during <command>DROP OWNED</> (Tom)
7510 This would typically result in strange errors such as <quote>cache
7511 lookup failed for relation NNN</>.
7517 Fix <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> to first try to interpret its timezone
7518 argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone
7519 name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)
7523 The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names
7524 in this order. Making <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> do so as well improves
7525 consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1:
7526 in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did,
7527 since in the older versions <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> accepted
7528 <emphasis>only</> abbreviations.
7534 Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
7535 running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
7541 Prevent integer overflows during units conversion when displaying a
7542 configuration parameter that has units (Tom)
7548 Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
7554 Allow spaces in the suffix part of an LDAP URL in
7555 <filename>pg_hba.conf</> (Tom)
7561 Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
7568 Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)
7572 If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query,
7573 but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated
7574 for new parent query rows.
7580 Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
7581 boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
7582 expressions' contents (Tom)
7586 This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
7587 BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
7588 <literal>IS NULL</>.
7594 Fix PL/PgSQL to not fail when a <literal>FOR</> loop's target variable
7595 is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)
7601 Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
7602 about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
7608 On Windows, work around a Microsoft bug by preventing
7609 <application>libpq</> from trying to send more than 64kB per system call
7616 Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
7617 error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
7623 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
7624 command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
7630 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
7631 DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
7632 Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
7641 <sect1 id="release-8-2-9">
7642 <title>Release 8.2.9</title>
7645 <title>Release date</title>
7646 <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
7650 This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.2.8.
7651 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
7652 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
7656 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.9</title>
7659 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
7660 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
7661 see the release notes for 8.2.7.
7667 <title>Changes</title>
7673 Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
7677 Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
7678 as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
7679 be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
7680 Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
7681 another recent patch to cause
7682 <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
7683 <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
7684 <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
7685 as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
7686 output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
7692 Make <command>ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO</> update
7693 <structname>pg_shdepend</> (Tom)
7697 This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later
7698 involved in a <command>DROP OWNED</> or <command>REASSIGN OWNED</>
7708 <sect1 id="release-8-2-8">
7709 <title>Release 8.2.8</title>
7712 <title>Release date</title>
7713 <simpara>never released</simpara>
7717 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.7.
7718 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
7719 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
7723 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.8</title>
7726 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
7727 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7,
7728 see the release notes for 8.2.7.
7734 <title>Changes</title>
7740 Fix <literal>ERRORDATA_STACK_SIZE exceeded</literal> crash that
7741 occurred on Windows when using UTF-8 database encoding and a different
7742 client encoding (Tom)
7748 Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
7749 column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
7750 non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
7754 Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
7760 Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
7761 <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
7762 inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
7768 Fix <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> to show the alias, if any, attached
7769 to the target table of an <command>UPDATE</> or <command>DELETE</>
7776 Fix GIN bug that could result in a <literal>too many LWLocks
7777 taken</literal> failure (Teodor)
7783 Avoid possible crash when decompressing corrupted data
7790 Repair two places where SIGTERM exit of a backend could leave corrupted
7791 state in shared memory (Tom)
7795 Neither case is very important if SIGTERM is used to shut down the
7796 whole database cluster together, but there was a problem if someone
7797 tried to SIGTERM individual backends.
7803 Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
7804 Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
7805 two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
7811 Fix several datatype input functions, notably <function>array_in()</>,
7812 that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
7813 uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
7817 This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
7818 values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
7819 about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
7826 Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
7827 (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
7828 <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
7832 The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
7833 the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
7834 subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
7835 <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
7836 This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
7837 it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
7844 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
7845 DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, and
7852 Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
7853 <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
7859 Fix broken GiST comparison function for <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>'s
7860 <type>tsquery</> type (Teodor)
7866 Fix possible crashes in <filename>contrib/cube</> functions (Tom)
7872 Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
7873 <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
7880 Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
7881 <literal>CFLAGS</> (Tom)
7887 Fix <literal>DatumGetBool</> macro to not fail with <application>gcc</>
7892 This problem affects <quote>old style</> (V0) C functions that
7893 return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to
7894 back-patch it was not realized at the time.
7903 <sect1 id="release-8-2-7">
7904 <title>Release 8.2.7</title>
7907 <title>Release date</title>
7908 <simpara>2008-03-17</simpara>
7912 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.6.
7913 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
7914 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
7918 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.7</title>
7921 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
7922 However, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
7923 columns after updating, if you are affected by the Windows locale
7924 issue described below.
7930 <title>Changes</title>
7936 Fix character string comparison for Windows locales that consider
7937 different character combinations as equal (Tom)
7941 This fix applies only on Windows and only when using UTF-8
7942 database encoding. The same fix was made for all other cases
7943 over two years ago, but Windows with UTF-8 uses a separate code
7944 path that was not updated. If you are using a locale that
7945 considers some non-identical strings as equal, you may need to
7946 <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on textual columns.
7952 Repair potential deadlock between concurrent <command>VACUUM FULL</>
7953 operations on different system catalogs (Tom)
7959 Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
7960 race condition (Tom)
7964 In rare cases a session that had just executed a
7965 <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
7966 one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
7967 <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
7971 A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
7972 a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
7973 row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
7974 should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
7975 was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
7976 some applications depend on the old behavior.
7982 Disallow <command>LISTEN</> and <command>UNLISTEN</> within a
7983 prepared transaction (Tom)
7987 This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant
7988 consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit
7989 as long as an <command>UNLISTEN</> remained uncommitted.
7995 Disallow dropping a temporary table within a
7996 prepared transaction (Heikki)
8000 This was correctly disallowed by 8.1, but the check was inadvertently
8007 Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
8014 Fix memory leaks in certain usages of set-returning functions (Neil)
8020 Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
8024 The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
8030 Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
8031 <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
8037 Ensure <structname>pg_stat_activity</>.<structfield>waiting</> flag
8038 is cleared when a lock wait is aborted (Tom)
8044 Fix handling of process permissions on Windows Vista (Dave, Magnus)
8048 In particular, this fix allows starting the server as the Administrator
8055 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008a
8056 (in particular, recent Chile changes); adjust timezone abbreviation
8057 <literal>VET</> (Venezuela) to mean UTC-4:30, not UTC-4:00 (Tom)
8063 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
8064 number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
8068 Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
8069 postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
8076 Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
8077 in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
8081 This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
8082 with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
8089 Correctly enforce <varname>statement_timeout</> values longer
8090 than <literal>INT_MAX</> microseconds (about 35 minutes) (Tom)
8094 This bug affects only builds with <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>.
8100 Fix <quote>unexpected PARAM_SUBLINK ID</> planner error when
8101 constant-folding simplifies a sub-select (Tom)
8107 Fix logical errors in constraint-exclusion handling of <literal>IS
8108 NULL</> and <literal>NOT</> expressions (Tom)
8112 The planner would sometimes exclude partitions that should not
8113 have been excluded because of the possibility of NULL results.
8119 Fix another cause of <quote>failed to build any N-way joins</>
8120 planner errors (Tom)
8124 This could happen in cases where a clauseless join needed to be
8125 forced before a join clause could be exploited.
8131 Fix incorrect constant propagation in outer-join planning (Tom)
8135 The planner could sometimes incorrectly conclude that a variable
8136 could be constrained to be equal to a constant, leading
8137 to wrong query results.
8143 Fix display of constant expressions in <literal>ORDER BY</>
8144 and <literal>GROUP BY</> (Tom)
8148 An explictly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could
8149 for example lead to corruption of a view definition during
8156 Fix <application>libpq</> to handle NOTICE messages correctly
8157 during COPY OUT (Tom)
8161 This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined
8162 datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no
8163 guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.
8172 <sect1 id="release-8-2-6">
8173 <title>Release 8.2.6</title>
8176 <title>Release date</title>
8177 <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
8181 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.5,
8182 including fixes for significant security issues.
8183 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
8184 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
8188 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.6</title>
8191 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
8197 <title>Changes</title>
8203 Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
8204 the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
8208 Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
8209 predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
8210 long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
8211 execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
8212 (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
8213 same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
8214 because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
8215 such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
8216 automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
8217 can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
8218 trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
8219 The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
8220 (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
8221 and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
8222 the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
8223 used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
8224 this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
8225 AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
8226 <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
8232 Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)
8236 Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes,
8237 infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption,
8238 all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that
8239 accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources.
8240 (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)
8246 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
8247 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
8251 The fix that appeared for this in 8.2.5 was incomplete, as it plugged
8252 the hole for only some <filename>dblink</> functions. (CVE-2007-6601,
8259 Fix bugs in WAL replay for GIN indexes (Teodor)
8265 Fix GIN index build to work properly when
8266 <varname>maintenance_work_mem</> is 4GB or more (Tom)
8272 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2007k
8273 (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)
8279 Improve planner's handling of LIKE/regex estimation in non-C locales
8286 Fix planning-speed problem for deep outer-join nests, as well as
8287 possible poor choice of join order (Tom)
8293 Fix planner failure in some cases of <literal>WHERE false AND var IN
8294 (SELECT ...)</> (Tom)
8300 Make <command>CREATE TABLE ... SERIAL</> and
8301 <command>ALTER SEQUENCE ... OWNED BY</> not change the
8302 <function>currval()</> state of the sequence (Tom)
8308 Preserve the tablespace and storage parameters of indexes that are
8309 rebuilt by <command>ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> (Tom)
8315 Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only
8316 when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)
8320 This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing
8321 archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner
8322 than the original definition.
8328 Make <command>VACUUM</> not use all of <varname>maintenance_work_mem</>
8329 when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)
8335 Fix potential crash in <function>translate()</> when using a multibyte
8336 database encoding (Tom)
8342 Make <function>corr()</> return the correct result for negative
8343 correlation values (Neil)
8349 Fix overflow in <literal>extract(epoch from interval)</> for intervals
8350 exceeding 68 years (Tom)
8356 Fix PL/Perl to not fail when a UTF-8 regular expression is used
8357 in a trusted function (Andrew)
8363 Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type <literal>bool</>
8364 as <literal>int</> rather than <literal>char</> (Tom)
8368 While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of
8369 Perl did things this way ... until <productname>Mac OS X</> 10.5.
8375 Fix PL/Python to work correctly with Python 2.5 on 64-bit machines
8382 Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)
8388 Fix <application>pg_dump</> to correctly handle inheritance child tables
8389 that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)
8395 Fix <application>libpq</> crash when <varname>PGPASSFILE</> refers
8396 to a file that is not a plain file (Martin Pitt)
8402 <application>ecpg</> parser fixes (Michael)
8408 Make <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</> defend against
8409 <application>OpenSSL</> libraries that fail on keys longer than 128
8410 bits; which is the case at least on some Solaris versions (Marko Kreen)
8416 Make <filename>contrib/tablefunc</>'s <function>crosstab()</> handle
8417 NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)
8423 Fix <type>tsvector</> and <type>tsquery</> output routines to
8424 escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)
8430 Fix crash of <function>to_tsvector()</> on huge input strings (Teodor)
8436 Require a specific version of <productname>Autoconf</> to be used
8437 when re-generating the <command>configure</> script (Peter)
8441 This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made
8442 to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of
8443 <productname>Autoconf</> and <productname>PostgreSQL</> versions.
8444 You can remove the version check if you really want to use a
8445 different <productname>Autoconf</> version, but it's
8446 your responsibility whether the result works or not.
8452 Update <function>gettimeofday</> configuration check so that
8453 <productname>PostgreSQL</> can be built on newer versions of
8454 <productname>MinGW</> (Magnus)
8463 <sect1 id="release-8-2-5">
8464 <title>Release 8.2.5</title>
8467 <title>Release date</title>
8468 <simpara>2007-09-17</simpara>
8472 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.4.
8473 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
8474 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
8478 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.5</title>
8481 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
8487 <title>Changes</title>
8493 Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and
8494 then aborts close to the end of a concurrent <command>VACUUM</>
8495 on the same table (Tom)
8501 Fix <literal>ALTER DOMAIN ADD CONSTRAINT</> for cases involving
8502 domains over domains (Tom)
8508 Make <command>CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL</> work properly (Tom)
8514 Fix some planner problems with outer joins, notably poor
8515 size estimation for <literal>t1 LEFT JOIN t2 WHERE t2.col IS NULL</>
8522 Allow the <type>interval</> data type to accept input consisting only of
8523 milliseconds or microseconds (Neil)
8529 Allow timezone name to appear before the year in <type>timestamp</> input (Tom)
8535 Fixes for <acronym>GIN</> indexes used by <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> (Teodor)
8541 Speed up rtree index insertion (Teodor)
8547 Fix excessive logging of <acronym>SSL</> error messages (Tom)
8553 Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using
8554 the syslogger process (Andrew)
8560 Fix crash when <varname>log_min_error_statement</> logging runs out
8567 Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)
8573 Fix <function>stddev_pop(numeric)</> and <function>var_pop(numeric)</> (Tom)
8579 Prevent <command>REINDEX</> and <command>CLUSTER</> from failing
8580 due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)
8586 Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)
8592 Windows socket and semaphore improvements (Magnus)
8598 Make <command>pg_ctl -w</> work properly in Windows service mode (Dave Page)
8604 Fix memory allocation bug when using <application>MIT Kerberos</> on Windows (Magnus)
8610 Suppress timezone name (<literal>%Z</>) in log timestamps on Windows
8611 because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)
8617 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
8618 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
8624 Restrict <filename>/contrib/pgstattuple</> functions to superusers, for security reasons (Tom)
8630 Do not let <filename>/contrib/intarray</> try to make its GIN opclass
8631 the default (this caused problems at dump/restore) (Tom)
8640 <sect1 id="release-8-2-4">
8641 <title>Release 8.2.4</title>
8644 <title>Release date</title>
8645 <simpara>2007-04-23</simpara>
8649 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.3,
8650 including a security fix.
8651 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
8652 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
8656 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.4</title>
8659 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
8665 <title>Changes</title>
8671 Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within
8672 <varname>search_path</>, and disable searching it for functions
8677 This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a
8678 truly secure value of <varname>search_path</>. Without it,
8679 an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code
8680 with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138).
8681 See <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> for more information.
8687 Fix <varname>shared_preload_libraries</> for Windows
8688 by forcing reload in each backend (Korry Douglas)
8694 Fix <function>to_char()</> so it properly upper/lower cases localized day or month
8695 names (Pavel Stehule)
8701 <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> crash fixes (Teodor)
8707 Require <command>COMMIT PREPARED</> to be executed in the same
8708 database as the transaction was prepared in (Heikki)
8714 Allow <command>pg_dump</> to do binary backups larger than two gigabytes
8721 New traditional (Taiwan) Chinese <acronym>FAQ</> (Zhou Daojing)
8727 Prevent the statistics collector from writing to disk too frequently (Tom)
8733 Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how <command>VACUUM FULL</> handles
8734 <command>UPDATE</> chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)
8740 Fix bug in domains that use array types (Tom)
8746 Fix <command>pg_dump</> so it can dump a serial column's sequence
8747 using <option>-t</> when not also dumping the owning table
8754 Planner fixes, including improving outer join and bitmap scan
8755 selection logic (Tom)
8761 Fix possible wrong answers or crash when a PL/pgSQL function tries
8762 to <literal>RETURN</> from within an <literal>EXCEPTION</> block
8769 Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (Tom)
8775 Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)
8784 <sect1 id="release-8-2-3">
8785 <title>Release 8.2.3</title>
8788 <title>Release date</title>
8789 <simpara>2007-02-07</simpara>
8793 This release contains two fixes from 8.2.2.
8794 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
8795 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
8799 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.3</title>
8802 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
8808 <title>Changes</title>
8814 Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and
8815 functional indexes(Tom)
8821 Fix optimization so MIN/MAX in subqueries can again use indexes (Tom)
8830 <sect1 id="release-8-2-2">
8831 <title>Release 8.2.2</title>
8834 <title>Release date</title>
8835 <simpara>2007-02-05</simpara>
8839 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.1, including
8841 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
8842 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
8846 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.2</title>
8849 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.
8855 <title>Changes</title>
8861 Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users
8862 to read backend memory (Tom)
8866 The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL
8867 function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the
8868 data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These
8869 errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in
8870 principle might be used to read database content that the user
8871 should not be able to access.
8877 Fix not-so-rare-anymore bug wherein btree index page splits could fail
8878 due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)
8884 Fix Borland C compile scripts (L Bayuk)
8890 Properly handle <function>to_char('CC')</> for years ending in
8891 <literal>00</> (Tom)
8895 Year 2000 is in the twentieth century, not the twenty-first.
8901 <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> localization improvements (Tatsuo, Teodor)
8907 Fix incorrect permission check in
8908 <literal>information_schema.key_column_usage</> view (Tom)
8912 The symptom is <quote>relation with OID nnnnn does not exist</> errors.
8913 To get this fix without using <command>initdb</>, use <command>CREATE OR
8914 REPLACE VIEW</> to install the corrected definition found in
8915 <filename>share/information_schema.sql</>. Note you will need to do
8916 this in each database.
8922 Improve <command>VACUUM</> performance for databases with many tables (Tom)
8928 Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by <literal>UNION</> (Tom)
8934 Fix potentially incorrect results from index searches using
8935 <literal>ROW</> inequality conditions (Tom)
8941 Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences
8942 over three bytes long (Tom)
8948 Fix bogus <quote>permission denied</> failures occurring on Windows
8949 due to attempts to fsync already-deleted files (Magnus, Tom)
8955 Fix bug that could cause the statistics collector
8956 to hang on Windows (Magnus)
8960 This would in turn lead to autovacuum not working.
8966 Fix possible crashes when an already-in-use PL/pgSQL function is
8973 Improve PL/pgSQL handling of domain types (Sergiy Vyshnevetskiy, Tom)
8979 Fix possible errors in processing PL/pgSQL exception blocks (Tom)
8988 <sect1 id="release-8-2-1">
8989 <title>Release 8.2.1</title>
8992 <title>Release date</title>
8993 <simpara>2007-01-08</simpara>
8997 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.
8998 For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see
8999 <xref linkend="release-8-2">.
9003 <title>Migration to Version 8.2.1</title>
9006 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.
9012 <title>Changes</title>
9018 Fix crash with <literal>SELECT</> ... <literal>LIMIT ALL</> (also
9019 <literal>LIMIT NULL</>) (Tom)
9025 <filename>Several /contrib/tsearch2</> fixes (Teodor)
9031 On Windows, make log messages coming from the operating system use
9032 <acronym>ASCII</> encoding (Hiroshi Saito)
9036 This fixes a conversion problem when there is a mismatch between
9037 the encoding of the operating system and database server.
9043 Fix Windows linking of <application>pg_dump</> using
9044 <filename>win32.mak</>
9051 Fix planner mistakes for outer join queries (Tom)
9057 Fix several problems in queries involving sub-SELECTs (Tom)
9063 Fix potential crash in SPI during subtransaction abort (Tom)
9067 This affects all PL functions since they all use SPI.
9073 Improve build speed of <acronym>PDF</> documentation (Peter)
9079 Re-add <acronym>JST</> (Japan) timezone abbreviation (Tom)
9085 Improve optimization decisions related to index scans (Tom)
9091 Have <application>psql</> print multi-byte combining characters as
9092 before, rather than output as <literal>\u</> (Tom)
9098 Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)
9102 This improves <application>psql</> <literal>\d</> performance also.
9108 Make <application>pg_dumpall</> assume that databases have public
9109 <literal>CONNECT</> privilege, when dumping from a pre-8.2 server (Tom)
9113 This preserves the previous behavior that anyone can connect to a
9114 database if allowed by <filename>pg_hba.conf</>.
9123 <sect1 id="release-8-2">
9124 <title>Release 8.2</title>
9127 <title>Release date</title>
9128 <simpara>2006-12-05</simpara>
9132 <title>Overview</title>
9135 This release adds many functionality and performance improvements that
9136 were requested by users, including:
9142 Query language enhancements including <command>INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE
9143 RETURNING</command>, multirow <literal>VALUES</literal> lists, and
9144 optional target-table alias in
9145 <command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</command>
9151 Index creation without blocking concurrent
9152 <command>INSERT</>/<command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE</>
9159 Many query optimization improvements, including support for
9160 reordering outer joins
9166 Improved sorting performance with lower memory usage
9172 More efficient locking with better concurrency
9178 More efficient vacuuming
9184 Easier administration of warm standby servers
9190 New <literal>FILLFACTOR</literal> support for tables and indexes
9196 Monitoring, logging, and performance tuning additions
9202 More control over creating and dropping objects
9208 Table inheritance relationships can be defined
9209 for and removed from pre-existing tables
9215 <command>COPY TO</command> can copy the output of an arbitrary
9216 <command>SELECT</command> statement
9222 Array improvements, including nulls in arrays
9228 Aggregate-function improvements, including multiple-input
9229 aggregates and SQL:2003 statistical functions
9235 Many <filename>contrib/</filename> improvements
9246 <title>Migration to Version 8.2</title>
9249 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
9250 required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
9255 Observe the following incompatibilities:
9263 linkend="guc-escape-string-warning"><varname>escape_string_warning</></link>
9264 to <literal>on</> by default (Bruce)
9268 This issues a warning if backslash escapes are used in
9269 <link linkend="sql-syntax-strings">non-escape (non-<literal>E''</>)
9276 Change the <link linkend="sql-syntax-row-constructors">row
9277 constructor syntax</link> (<literal>ROW(...)</>) so that
9278 list elements <literal>foo.*</> will be expanded to a list
9279 of their member fields, rather than creating a nested
9280 row type field as formerly (Tom)
9284 The new behavior is substantially more useful since it
9285 allows, for example, triggers to check for data changes
9286 with <literal>IF row(new.*) IS DISTINCT FROM row(old.*)</>.
9287 The old behavior is still available by omitting <literal>.*</>.
9293 Make <link linkend="row-wise-comparison">row comparisons</link>
9294 follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics and allow them
9295 to be used in index scans (Tom)
9299 Previously, row = and <> comparisons followed the
9300 standard but < <= > >= did not. A row comparison
9301 can now be used as an index constraint for a multicolumn
9302 index matching the row value.
9308 Make <link linkend="functions-comparison">row <literal>IS <optional>NOT</> NULL</literal></link>
9309 tests follow <acronym>SQL</> standard semantics (Tom)
9313 The former behavior conformed to the standard for simple cases
9314 with <literal>IS NULL</>, but <literal>IS NOT NULL</> would return
9315 true if any row field was non-null, whereas the standard says it
9316 should return true only when all fields are non-null.
9322 Make <link linkend="SQL-SET-CONSTRAINTS"><command>SET
9323 CONSTRAINT</></link> affect only one constraint (Kris Jurka)
9327 In previous releases, <command>SET CONSTRAINT</> modified
9328 all constraints with a matching name. In this release,
9329 the schema search path is used to modify only the first
9330 matching constraint. A schema specification is also
9331 supported. This more nearly conforms to the SQL standard.
9337 Remove <literal>RULE</> permission for tables, for security reasons
9342 As of this release, only a table's owner can create or modify
9343 rules for the table. For backwards compatibility,
9344 <command>GRANT</>/<command>REVOKE RULE</> is still accepted,
9345 but it does nothing.
9351 Array comparison improvements (Tom)
9355 Now array dimensions are also compared.
9361 Change <link linkend="functions-array">array concatenation</link>
9362 to match documented behavior (Tom)
9366 This changes the previous behavior where concatenation
9367 would modify the array lower bound.
9373 Make command-line options of <application>postmaster</>
9374 and <link linkend="app-postgres"><application>postgres</></link>
9379 This allows the postmaster to pass arguments to each backend
9380 without using <literal>-o</>. Note that some options are now
9381 only available as long-form options, because there were conflicting
9382 single-letter options.
9388 Deprecate use of <application>postmaster</> symbolic link (Peter)
9392 <application>postmaster</> and <application>postgres</>
9393 commands now act identically, with the behavior determined
9394 by command-line options. The <application>postmaster</> symbolic link is
9395 kept for compatibility, but is not really needed.
9402 linkend="guc-log-duration"><varname>log_duration</></link>
9403 to output even if the query is not output (Tom)
9407 In prior releases, <varname>log_duration</> only printed if
9408 the query appeared earlier in the log.
9415 linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(time)</></link>
9417 linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(interval)</></link>
9418 treat <literal>HH</> and <literal>HH12</> as 12-hour
9423 Most applications should use <literal>HH24</> unless they
9424 want a 12-hour display.
9430 Zero unmasked bits in conversion from <link
9431 linkend="datatype-inet"><type>INET</></link> to <link
9432 linkend="datatype-inet"><type>CIDR</></link> (Tom)
9436 This ensures that the converted value is actually valid for
9443 Remove <varname>australian_timezones</> configuration variable
9448 This variable has been superseded by a more general facility
9449 for configuring timezone abbreviations.
9455 Improve cost estimation for nested-loop index scans (Tom)
9459 This might eliminate the need to set unrealistically small
9461 linkend="guc-random-page-cost"><varname>random_page_cost</></link>.
9462 If you have been using a very small <varname>random_page_cost</>,
9463 please recheck your test cases.
9469 Change behavior of <command>pg_dump</> <literal>-n</> and
9470 <literal>-t</> options. (Greg Sabino Mullane)
9473 See the <command>pg_dump</> manual page for details.
9479 Change <link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link>
9480 <function>PQdsplen()</> to return a useful value (Martijn
9487 Declare <link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link>
9488 <function>PQgetssl()</> as returning <literal>void *</>,
9489 rather than <literal>SSL *</> (Martijn van Oosterhout)
9493 This allows applications to use the function without including
9494 the OpenSSL headers.
9500 C-language loadable modules must now include a
9501 <link linkend="xfunc-c-dynload"><literal>PG_MODULE_MAGIC</></link>
9502 macro call for version compatibility checking
9503 (Martijn van Oosterhout)
9509 For security's sake, modules used by a PL/PerlU function are no
9510 longer available to PL/Perl functions (Andrew)
9514 This also implies that data can no longer be shared between a PL/Perl
9515 function and a PL/PerlU function.
9516 Some Perl installations have not been compiled with the correct flags
9517 to allow multiple interpreters to exist within a single process.
9518 In this situation PL/Perl and PL/PerlU cannot both be used in a
9519 single backend. The solution is to get a Perl installation which
9520 supports multiple interpreters.
9527 In <filename>contrib/xml2/</>, rename <function>xml_valid()</> to
9528 <function>xml_is_well_formed()</> (Tom)
9532 <function>xml_valid()</> will remain for backward compatibility,
9533 but its behavior will change to do schema checking in a future
9540 Remove <filename>contrib/ora2pg/</>, now at <ulink
9541 url="http://www.samse.fr/GPL/ora2pg"></ulink>
9547 Remove contrib modules that have been migrated to PgFoundry:
9548 <filename>adddepend</>, <filename>dbase</>, <filename>dbmirror</>,
9549 <filename>fulltextindex</>, <filename>mac</>, <filename>userlock</>
9555 Remove abandoned contrib modules:
9556 <filename>mSQL-interface</>, <filename>tips</>
9562 Remove <acronym>QNX</> and <acronym>BEOS</> ports (Bruce)
9566 These ports no longer had active maintainers.
9574 <title>Changes</title>
9577 Below you will find a detailed account of the
9578 changes between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.2 and
9579 the previous major release.
9583 <title>Performance Improvements</title>
9588 Allow the planner to reorder <link linkend="queries-join">outer
9589 joins</link> in some circumstances (Tom)
9593 In previous releases, outer joins would always be evaluated in
9594 the order written in the query. This change allows the
9595 query optimizer to consider reordering outer joins, in cases where
9596 it can determine that the join order can be changed without
9597 altering the meaning of the query. This can make a
9598 considerable performance difference for queries involving
9599 multiple outer joins or mixed inner and outer joins.
9605 Improve efficiency of <link
9606 linkend="functions-comparisons"><literal>IN</>
9607 (list-of-expressions)</link> clauses (Tom)
9613 Improve sorting speed and reduce memory usage (Simon, Tom)
9619 Improve subtransaction performance (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro,
9626 Add <literal>FILLFACTOR</> to <link
9627 linkend="SQL-CREATETABLE">table</link> and <link
9628 linkend="SQL-CREATEINDEX">index</link> creation (ITAGAKI
9633 This leaves extra free space in each table or index page,
9634 allowing improved performance as the database grows. This
9635 is particularly valuable to maintain clustering.
9641 Increase default values for <link
9642 linkend="guc-shared-buffers"><varname>shared_buffers</></link>
9643 and <varname>max_fsm_pages</>
9650 Improve locking performance by breaking the lock manager tables into
9656 This allows locking to be more fine-grained, reducing
9663 Reduce locking requirements of sequential scans (Qingqing
9670 Reduce locking required for database creation and destruction
9677 Improve the optimizer's selectivity estimates for <link
9678 linkend="functions-like"><literal>LIKE</></link>, <link
9679 linkend="functions-like"><literal>ILIKE</></link>, and
9680 <link linkend="functions-posix-regexp">regular expression</link>
9687 Improve planning of joins to <link linkend="ddl-inherit">inherited
9688 tables</link> and <link linkend="queries-union"><literal>UNION
9689 ALL</></link> views (Tom)
9695 Allow <link linkend="guc-constraint-exclusion">constraint
9696 exclusion</link> to be applied to <link
9697 linkend="ddl-inherit">inherited</link> <command>UPDATE</> and
9698 <command>DELETE</> queries (Tom)
9702 <command>SELECT</> already honored constraint exclusion.
9708 Improve planning of constant <literal>WHERE</> clauses, such as
9709 a condition that depends only on variables inherited from an
9710 outer query level (Tom)
9716 Protocol-level unnamed prepared statements are re-planned
9717 for each set of <literal>BIND</> values (Tom)
9721 This improves performance because the exact parameter values
9722 can be used in the plan.
9728 Speed up vacuuming of B-Tree indexes (Heikki Linnakangas,
9735 Avoid extra scan of tables without indexes during <link
9736 linkend="SQL-VACUUM"><command>VACUUM</></link> (Greg Stark)
9742 Improve multicolumn <link linkend="GiST"><acronym>GiST</></link>
9743 indexing (Oleg, Teodor)
9749 Remove dead index entries before B-Tree page split (Junji
9759 <title>Server Changes</title>
9764 Allow a forced switch to a new transaction log file (Simon, Tom)
9768 This is valuable for keeping warm standby slave servers
9769 in sync with the master. Transaction log file switching now also happens
9770 automatically during <link
9771 linkend="functions-admin"><function>pg_stop_backup()</></link>.
9772 This ensures that all
9773 transaction log files needed for recovery can be archived immediately.
9779 Add <acronym>WAL</> informational functions (Simon)
9783 Add functions for interrogating the current transaction log insertion
9784 point and determining <acronym>WAL</> filenames from the
9785 hex <acronym>WAL</> locations displayed by <link
9786 linkend="functions-admin"><function>pg_stop_backup()</></link>
9787 and related functions.
9793 Improve recovery from a crash during <acronym>WAL</> replay (Simon)
9797 The server now does periodic checkpoints during <acronym>WAL</>
9798 recovery, so if there is a crash, future <acronym>WAL</>
9799 recovery is shortened. This also eliminates the need for
9800 warm standby servers to replay the entire log since the
9801 base backup if they crash.
9807 Improve reliability of long-term <acronym>WAL</> replay
9808 (Heikki, Simon, Tom)
9812 Formerly, trying to roll forward through more than 2 billion
9813 transactions would not work due to XID wraparound. This meant
9814 warm standby servers had to be reloaded
9815 from fresh base backups periodically.
9822 linkend="guc-archive-timeout"><varname>archive_timeout</></link>
9823 to force transaction log file switches at a given interval (Simon)
9827 This enforces a maximum replication delay for warm standby servers.
9833 Add native <link linkend="auth-ldap"><acronym>LDAP</></link>
9834 authentication (Magnus Hagander)
9838 This is particularly useful for platforms that do not
9839 support <acronym>PAM</>, such as Windows.
9845 Add <link linkend="sql-grant-description-objects"><literal>GRANT
9846 CONNECT ON DATABASE</></link> (Gevik Babakhani)
9850 This gives SQL-level control over database access. It works as
9851 an additional filter on top of the existing
9852 <link linkend="auth-pg-hba-conf"><filename>pg_hba.conf</></link>
9859 Add support for <link linkend="ssl-tcp"><acronym>SSL</>
9860 Certificate Revocation List</link> (<acronym>CRL</>) files
9861 (Libor Hohoš)
9865 The server and <application>libpq</> both recognize <acronym>CRL</>
9872 <link linkend="GiST"><acronym>GiST</></link> indexes are
9873 now clusterable (Teodor)
9879 Remove routine autovacuum server log entries (Bruce)
9884 linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_activity</></link>
9885 now shows autovacuum activity.
9891 Track maximum XID age within individual tables, instead of whole databases (Alvaro)
9895 This reduces the overhead involved in preventing transaction
9896 ID wraparound, by avoiding unnecessary VACUUMs.
9902 Add last vacuum and analyze timestamp columns to the stats
9903 collector (Larry Rosenman)
9907 These values now appear in the <link
9908 linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_*_tables</></link>
9915 Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially
9916 <varname>stats_command_string</>
9921 This release enables <varname>stats_command_string</> by
9922 default, now that its overhead is minimal. This means
9924 linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_activity</></link>
9925 will now show all active queries by default.
9931 Add a <literal>waiting</> column to <link
9932 linkend="monitoring-stats-views-table"><literal>pg_stat_activity</></link>
9937 This allows <structname>pg_stat_activity</> to show all the
9938 information included in the <application>ps</> display.
9944 Add configuration parameter <link
9945 linkend="guc-update-process-title"><varname>update_process_title</></link>
9946 to control whether the <application>ps</> display is updated
9947 for every command (Bruce)
9951 On platforms where it is expensive to update the <application>ps</>
9952 display, it might be worthwhile to turn this off and rely solely on
9953 <structname>pg_stat_activity</> for status information.
9959 Allow units to be specified in configuration settings
9964 For example, you can now set <link
9965 linkend="guc-shared-buffers"><varname>shared_buffers</></link>
9966 to <literal>32MB</> rather than mentally converting sizes.
9972 Add support for <link linkend="config-setting">include
9973 directives</link> in <filename>postgresql.conf</> (Joachim
9980 Improve logging of protocol-level prepare/bind/execute
9981 messages (Bruce, Tom)
9985 Such logging now shows statement names, bind parameter
9986 values, and the text of the query being executed. Also,
9987 the query text is properly included in logged error messages
9988 when enabled by <varname>log_min_error_statement</>.
9995 linkend="guc-max-stack-depth"><varname>max_stack_depth</></link>
9996 from being set to unsafe values
10000 On platforms where we can determine the actual kernel stack depth
10001 limit (which is most), make sure that the initial default value of
10002 <varname>max_stack_depth</> is safe, and reject attempts to set it
10003 to unsafely large values.
10009 Enable highlighting of error location in query in more
10014 The server is now able to report a specific error location for
10015 some semantic errors (such as unrecognized column name), rather
10016 than just for basic syntax errors as before.
10022 Fix <quote>failed to re-find parent key</> errors in
10023 <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
10029 Clean out <filename>pg_internal.init</> cache files during server
10034 This avoids a hazard that the cache files might contain stale
10035 data after PITR recovery.
10041 Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a
10042 gigabyte boundary by <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
10048 Fix bug causing needless deadlock errors on row-level locks (Tom)
10054 Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)
10060 Each backend process is now its own process group leader (Tom)
10064 This allows query cancel to abort subprocesses invoked from a
10065 backend or archive/recovery process.
10074 <title>Query Changes</title>
10079 Add <link linkend="SQL-INSERT"><command>INSERT</></link>/<link
10080 linkend="SQL-UPDATE"><command>UPDATE</></link>/<link
10081 linkend="SQL-DELETE"><command>DELETE</></link>
10082 <literal>RETURNING</> (Jonah Harris, Tom)
10086 This allows these commands to return values, such as the
10087 computed serial key for a new row. In the <command>UPDATE</>
10088 case, values from the updated version of the row are returned.
10094 Add support for multiple-row <link
10095 linkend="queries-values"><literal>VALUES</></link> clauses,
10096 per SQL standard (Joe, Tom)
10100 This allows <command>INSERT</> to insert multiple rows of
10101 constants, or queries to generate result sets using constants.
10102 For example, <literal>INSERT ... VALUES (...), (...),
10103 ....</>, and <literal>SELECT * FROM (VALUES (...), (...),
10104 ....) AS alias(f1, ...)</>.
10110 Allow <link linkend="SQL-UPDATE"><command>UPDATE</></link>
10111 and <link linkend="SQL-DELETE"><command>DELETE</></link>
10112 to use an alias for the target table (Atsushi Ogawa)
10116 The SQL standard does not permit an alias in these commands, but
10117 many database systems allow one anyway for notational convenience.
10123 Allow <link linkend="SQL-UPDATE"><command>UPDATE</></link>
10124 to set multiple columns with a list of values (Susanne
10129 This is basically a short-hand for assigning the columns
10130 and values in pairs. The syntax is <literal>UPDATE tab
10131 SET (<replaceable>column</>, ...) = (<replaceable>val</>, ...)</>.
10137 Make row comparisons work per standard (Tom)
10141 The forms <, <=, >, >= now compare rows lexicographically,
10142 that is, compare the first elements, if equal compare the second
10143 elements, and so on. Formerly they expanded to an AND condition
10144 across all the elements, which was neither standard nor very useful.
10150 Add <link linkend="SQL-TRUNCATE"><literal>CASCADE</></link>
10151 option to <command>TRUNCATE</> (Joachim Wieland)
10155 This causes <command>TRUNCATE</> to automatically include all tables
10156 that reference the specified table(s) via foreign keys. While
10157 convenient, this is a dangerous tool — use with caution!
10163 Support <literal>FOR UPDATE</> and <literal>FOR SHARE</>
10164 in the same <link linkend="SQL-INSERT"><literal>SELECT</></link>
10171 Add <link linkend="functions-comparisons"><literal>IS NOT
10172 DISTINCT FROM</></link> (Pavel Stehule)
10176 This operator is similar to equality (<literal>=</>), but
10177 evaluates to true when both left and right operands are
10178 <literal>NULL</>, and to false when just one is, rather than
10179 yielding <literal>NULL</> in these cases.
10185 Improve the length output used by <link
10186 linkend="queries-union"><literal>UNION</></link>/<literal>INTERSECT</>/<literal>EXCEPT</>
10191 When all corresponding columns are of the same defined length, that
10192 length is used for the result, rather than a generic length.
10198 Allow <link linkend="functions-like"><literal>ILIKE</></link>
10199 to work for multi-byte encodings (Tom)
10203 Internally, <literal>ILIKE</> now calls <function>lower()</>
10204 and then uses <literal>LIKE</>. Locale-specific regular
10205 expression patterns still do not work in these encodings.
10212 linkend="guc-standard-conforming-strings"><varname>standard_conforming_strings</></link>
10213 to be turned <literal>on</> (Kevin Grittner)
10217 This allows backslash escaping in strings to be disabled,
10218 making <productname>PostgreSQL</> more
10219 standards-compliant. The default is <literal>off</> for backwards
10220 compatibility, but future releases will default this to <literal>on</>.
10226 Do not flatten subqueries that contain <literal>volatile</>
10227 functions in their target lists (Jaime Casanova)
10231 This prevents surprising behavior due to multiple evaluation
10232 of a <literal>volatile</> function (such as <function>random()</>
10233 or <function>nextval()</>). It might cause performance
10234 degradation in the presence of functions that are unnecessarily
10235 marked as <literal>volatile</>.
10241 Add system views <link
10242 linkend="view-pg-prepared-statements"><literal>pg_prepared_statements</></link>
10244 linkend="view-pg-cursors"><literal>pg_cursors</></link>
10245 to show prepared statements and open cursors (Joachim Wieland, Neil)
10249 These are very useful in pooled connection setups.
10255 Support portal parameters in <link
10256 linkend="SQL-EXPLAIN"><command>EXPLAIN</></link> and <link
10257 linkend="SQL-EXECUTE"><command>EXECUTE</></link> (Tom)
10261 This allows, for example, <acronym>JDBC</> <literal>?</> parameters to
10262 work in these commands.
10268 If <acronym>SQL</>-level <link
10269 linkend="SQL-PREPARE"><command>PREPARE</></link> parameters
10270 are unspecified, infer their types from the content of the
10275 Protocol-level <command>PREPARE</> already did this.
10281 Allow <literal>LIMIT</> and <literal>OFFSET</> to exceed
10282 two billion (Dhanaraj M)
10291 <title>Object Manipulation Changes</title>
10296 Add <literal>TABLESPACE</> clause to <link
10297 linkend="SQL-CREATETABLEAS"><command>CREATE TABLE AS</></link>
10302 This allows a tablespace to be specified for the new table.
10308 Add <literal>ON COMMIT</> clause to <link
10309 linkend="SQL-CREATETABLEAS"><command>CREATE TABLE AS</></link>
10314 This allows temporary tables to be truncated or dropped on
10315 transaction commit. The default behavior is for the table
10316 to remain until the session ends.
10322 Add <literal>INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS</> to <link
10323 linkend="SQL-CREATETABLE"><command>CREATE TABLE LIKE</></link>
10328 This allows easy copying of <literal>CHECK</> constraints to a new
10335 Allow the creation of placeholder (shell) <link
10336 linkend="SQL-CREATETYPE">types</link> (Martijn van Oosterhout)
10340 A shell type declaration creates a type name, without specifying
10341 any of the details of the type. Making a shell type is useful
10342 because it allows cleaner declaration of the type's input/output
10343 functions, which must exist before the type can be defined <quote>for
10344 real</>. The syntax is <command>CREATE TYPE <replaceable
10345 class="parameter">typename</replaceable></>.
10351 <link linkend="SQL-CREATEAGGREGATE">Aggregate functions</link>
10352 now support multiple input parameters (Sergey Koposov, Tom)
10358 Add new aggregate creation <link
10359 linkend="SQL-CREATEAGGREGATE">syntax</link> (Tom)
10363 The new syntax is <command>CREATE AGGREGATE
10364 <replaceable>aggname</> (<replaceable>input_type</>)
10365 (<replaceable>parameter_list</>)</command>. This more
10366 naturally supports the new multi-parameter aggregate
10367 functionality. The previous syntax is still supported.
10374 linkend="SQL-ALTERROLE"><command>ALTER ROLE PASSWORD NULL</></link>
10375 to remove a previously set role password (Peter)
10381 Add <command>DROP</> object <literal>IF EXISTS</> for many
10382 object types (Andrew)
10386 This allows <command>DROP</> operations on non-existent
10387 objects without generating an error.
10393 Add <link linkend="SQL-DROP-OWNED"><literal>DROP OWNED</></link>
10394 to drop all objects owned by a role (Alvaro)
10400 Add <link linkend="SQL-REASSIGN-OWNED"><literal>REASSIGN
10401 OWNED</></link> to reassign ownership of all objects owned
10406 This, and <literal>DROP OWNED</> above, facilitate dropping
10413 Add <link linkend="SQL-GRANT"><command>GRANT ON SEQUENCE</></link>
10418 This was added for setting sequence-specific permissions.
10419 <literal>GRANT ON TABLE</> for sequences is still supported
10420 for backward compatibility.
10426 Add <link linkend="SQL-GRANT"><literal>USAGE</></link>
10427 permission for sequences that allows only <function>currval()</>
10428 and <function>nextval()</>, not <function>setval()</>
10433 <literal>USAGE</> permission allows more fine-grained
10434 control over sequence access. Granting <literal>USAGE</>
10435 allows users to increment
10436 a sequence, but prevents them from setting the sequence to
10437 an arbitrary value using <function>setval()</>.
10443 Add <link linkend="SQL-ALTERTABLE"><literal>ALTER TABLE
10444 [ NO ] INHERIT</></link> (Greg Stark)
10448 This allows inheritance to be adjusted dynamically, rather than
10449 just at table creation and destruction. This is very valuable
10450 when using inheritance to implement table partitioning.
10456 Allow <link linkend="SQL-COMMENT">comments</link> on global
10457 objects to be stored globally (Kris Jurka)
10461 Previously, comments attached to databases were stored in individual
10462 databases, making them ineffective, and there was no provision
10463 at all for comments on roles or tablespaces. This change adds a new
10464 shared catalog <link
10465 linkend="catalog-pg-shdescription"><structname>pg_shdescription</structname></link>
10466 and stores comments on databases, roles, and tablespaces therein.
10475 <title>Utility Command Changes</title>
10480 Add option to allow indexes to be created without blocking
10481 concurrent writes to the table (Greg Stark, Tom)
10485 The new syntax is <link linkend="SQL-CREATEINDEX"><command>CREATE
10486 INDEX CONCURRENTLY</></link>. The default behavior is
10487 still to block table modification while a index is being
10494 Provide <link linkend="functions-advisory-locks">advisory
10495 locking</link> functionality (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Tom)
10499 This is a new locking API designed to replace what used to be
10500 in /contrib/userlock. The userlock code is now on pgfoundry.
10506 Allow <link linkend="SQL-COPY"><command>COPY</></link> to
10507 dump a <command>SELECT</> query (Zoltan Boszormenyi, Karel
10512 This allows <command>COPY</> to dump arbitrary <acronym>SQL</>
10513 queries. The syntax is <literal>COPY (SELECT ...) TO</>.
10519 Make the <link linkend="SQL-COPY"><command>COPY</></link>
10520 command return a command tag that includes the number of
10521 rows copied (Volkan YAZICI)
10527 Allow <link linkend="SQL-VACUUM"><command>VACUUM</></link>
10528 to expire rows without being affected by other concurrent
10529 <command>VACUUM</> operations (Hannu Krossing, Alvaro, Tom)
10535 Make <link linkend="APP-INITDB"><application>initdb</></link>
10536 detect the operating system locale and set the default
10537 <varname>DateStyle</> accordingly (Peter)
10541 This makes it more likely that the installed
10542 <filename>postgresql.conf</> <varname>DateStyle</> value will
10549 Reduce number of progress messages displayed by <application>initdb</> (Tom)
10558 <title>Date/Time Changes</title>
10563 Allow full timezone names in <link
10564 linkend="datatype-datetime"><type>timestamp</></link> input values
10569 For example, <literal>'2006-05-24 21:11
10570 America/New_York'::timestamptz</>.
10576 Support configurable timezone abbreviations (Joachim Wieland)
10580 A desired set of timezone abbreviations can be chosen via the
10581 configuration parameter <link
10582 linkend="guc-timezone-abbreviations"><varname>timezone_abbreviations</></link>.
10589 linkend="view-pg-timezone-abbrevs"><varname>pg_timezone_abbrevs</></link>
10591 linkend="view-pg-timezone-names"><varname>pg_timezone_names</></link>
10592 views to show supported timezones (Magnus Hagander)
10599 linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>clock_timestamp()</></link>,
10601 linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>statement_timestamp()</></link>,
10603 linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>transaction_timestamp()</></link>
10608 <function>clock_timestamp()</> is the current wall-clock time,
10609 <function>statement_timestamp()</> is the time the current
10610 statement arrived at the server, and
10611 <function>transaction_timestamp()</> is an alias for
10612 <function>now()</>.
10619 linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char()</></link>
10620 to print localized month and day names (Euler Taveira de
10628 linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(time)</></link>
10630 linkend="functions-formatting"><function>to_char(interval)</></link>
10631 to output <acronym>AM</>/<acronym>PM</> specifications
10636 Intervals and times are treated as 24-hour periods, e.g.
10637 <literal>25 hours</> is considered <acronym>AM</>.
10643 Add new function <link
10644 linkend="functions-datetime-table"><function>justify_interval()</></link>
10645 to adjust interval units (Mark Dilger)
10651 Allow timezone offsets up to 14:59 away from GMT
10655 Kiribati uses GMT+14, so we'd better accept that.
10661 Interval computation improvements (Michael Glaesemann, Bruce)
10670 <title>Other Data Type and Function Changes</title>
10675 Allow arrays to contain <literal>NULL</> elements (Tom)
10681 Allow assignment to array elements not contiguous with the existing
10686 The intervening array positions will be filled with nulls.
10687 This is per SQL standard.
10693 New built-in <link linkend="functions-array">operators</link>
10694 for array-subset comparisons (<literal>@></>,
10695 <literal><@</>, <literal>&&</>) (Teodor, Tom)
10699 These operators can be indexed for many data types using
10700 <acronym>GiST</> or <acronym>GIN</> indexes.
10706 Add convenient arithmetic <link
10707 linkend="cidr-inet-operators-table">operations</link> on
10708 <type>INET</>/<type>CIDR</> values (Stephen R. van den
10713 The new operators are <literal>&</> (and), <literal>|</>
10714 (or), <literal>~</> (not), <type>inet</> <literal>+</> <type>int8</>,
10715 <type>inet</> <literal>-</> <type>int8</>, and
10716 <type>inet</> <literal>-</> <type>inet</>.
10723 linkend="functions-aggregate-statistics-table">aggregate functions</link>
10724 from SQL:2003 (Neil)
10728 The new functions are <function>var_pop()</>,
10729 <function>var_samp()</>, <function>stddev_pop()</>, and
10730 <function>stddev_samp()</>. <function>var_samp()</> and
10731 <function>stddev_samp()</> are merely renamings of the
10732 existing aggregates <function>variance()</> and
10733 <function>stddev()</>. The latter names remain available
10734 for backward compatibility.
10740 Add SQL:2003 statistical <link
10741 linkend="functions-aggregate-statistics-table">aggregates</link>
10746 New functions: <function>regr_intercept()</>,
10747 <function>regr_slope()</>, <function>regr_r2()</>,
10748 <function>corr()</>, <function>covar_samp()</>,
10749 <function>covar_pop()</>, <function>regr_avgx()</>,
10750 <function>regr_avgy()</>, <function>regr_sxy()</>,
10751 <function>regr_sxx()</>, <function>regr_syy()</>,
10752 <function>regr_count()</>.
10758 Allow <link linkend="SQL-CREATEDOMAIN">domains</link> to be
10759 based on other domains (Tom)
10765 Properly enforce domain <link
10766 linkend="ddl-constraints"><literal>CHECK</></link> constraints
10767 everywhere (Neil, Tom)
10771 For example, the result of a user-defined function that is
10772 declared to return a domain type is now checked against the
10773 domain's constraints. This closes a significant hole in the domain
10780 Fix problems with dumping renamed <link
10781 linkend="datatype-serial"><type>SERIAL</></link> columns
10786 The fix is to dump a <type>SERIAL</> column by explicitly
10787 specifying its <literal>DEFAULT</> and sequence elements,
10788 and reconstructing the <type>SERIAL</> column on reload
10789 using a new <link linkend="SQL-ALTERSEQUENCE"><command>ALTER
10790 SEQUENCE OWNED BY</></link> command. This also allows
10791 dropping a <type>SERIAL</> column specification.
10797 Add a server-side sleep function <link
10798 linkend="functions-datetime-delay"><function>pg_sleep()</></link>
10805 Add all comparison operators for the <link
10806 linkend="datatype-oid"><type>tid</></link> (tuple id) data
10807 type (Mark Kirkwood, Greg Stark, Tom)
10816 <title>PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language Changes</title>
10821 Add <literal>TG_table_name</> and <literal>TG_table_schema</> to
10822 trigger parameters (Andrew)
10826 <literal>TG_relname</> is now deprecated. Comparable
10827 changes have been made in the trigger parameters for the other
10834 Allow <literal>FOR</> statements to return values to scalars
10835 as well as records and row types (Pavel Stehule)
10841 Add a <literal>BY</> clause to the <literal>FOR</> loop,
10842 to control the iteration increment (Jaime Casanova)
10848 Add <literal>STRICT</> to <link
10849 linkend="plpgsql-statements-sql-onerow"><command>SELECT
10850 INTO</></link> (Matt Miller)
10854 <literal>STRICT</> mode throws an exception if more or less
10855 than one row is returned by the <command>SELECT</>, for
10856 <productname>Oracle PL/SQL</> compatibility.
10865 <title>PL/Perl Server-Side Language Changes</title>
10870 Add <literal>table_name</> and <literal>table_schema</> to
10871 trigger parameters (Adam Sjøgren)
10877 Add prepared queries (Dmitry Karasik)
10883 Make <literal>$_TD</> trigger data a global variable (Andrew)
10887 Previously, it was lexical, which caused unexpected sharing
10894 Run PL/Perl and PL/PerlU in separate interpreters, for security
10898 In consequence, they can no longer share data nor loaded modules.
10899 Also, if Perl has not been compiled with the requisite flags to
10900 allow multiple interpreters, only one of these languages can be used
10901 in any given backend process.
10910 <title>PL/Python Server-Side Language Changes</title>
10915 Named parameters are passed as ordinary variables, as well as in the
10916 <literal>args[]</> array (Sven Suursoho)
10922 Add <literal>table_name</> and <literal>table_schema</> to
10923 trigger parameters (Andrew)
10929 Allow returning of composite types and result sets (Sven Suursoho)
10935 Return result-set as <literal>list</>, <literal>iterator</>,
10936 or <literal>generator </>(Sven Suursoho)
10942 Allow functions to return <literal>void</> (Neil)
10948 Python 2.5 is now supported (Tom)
10957 <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link> Changes</title>
10962 Add new command <literal>\password</> for changing role
10963 password with client-side password encryption (Peter)
10969 Allow <literal>\c</> to connect to a new host and port
10970 number (David, Volkan YAZICI)
10976 Add tablespace display to <literal>\l+</> (Philip Yarra)
10982 Improve <literal>\df</> slash command to include the argument
10983 names and modes (<literal>OUT</> or <literal>INOUT</>) of
10984 the function (David Fetter)
10990 Support binary <command>COPY</> (Andreas Pflug)
10996 Add option to run the entire session in a single transaction
11001 Use option <literal>-1</> or <literal>--single-transaction</>.
11007 Support for automatically retrieving <command>SELECT</>
11008 results in batches using a cursor (Chris Mair)
11012 This is enabled using <command>\set FETCH_COUNT
11013 <replaceable>n</></command>. This
11014 feature allows large result sets to be retrieved in
11015 <application>psql</> without attempting to buffer the entire
11016 result set in memory.
11022 Make multi-line values align in the proper column
11023 (Martijn van Oosterhout)
11027 Field values containing newlines are now displayed in a more
11034 Save multi-line statements as a single entry, rather than
11035 one line at a time (Sergey E. Koposov)
11039 This makes up-arrow recall of queries easier. (This is
11040 not available on Windows, because that platform uses the native
11041 command-line editing present in the operating system.)
11047 Make the line counter 64-bit so it can handle files with more
11048 than two billion lines (David Fetter)
11054 Report both the returned data and the command status tag
11055 for <command>INSERT</>/<command>UPDATE</>/<command>DELETE
11065 <title><link linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link> Changes</title>
11070 Allow complex selection of objects to be included or excluded
11071 by <application>pg_dump</> (Greg Sabino Mullane)
11075 <application>pg_dump</> now supports multiple <literal>-n</>
11076 (schema) and <literal>-t</> (table) options, and adds
11077 <literal>-N</> and <literal>-T</> options to exclude objects.
11078 Also, the arguments of these switches can now be wild-card expressions
11079 rather than single object names, for example
11080 <literal>-t 'foo*'</>, and a schema can be part of
11081 a <literal>-t</> or <literal>-T</> switch, for example
11082 <literal>-t schema1.table1</>.
11088 Add <link linkend="APP-PGRESTORE"><application>pg_restore</></link>
11089 <literal>--no-data-for-failed-tables</> option to suppress
11090 loading data if table creation failed (i.e., the table already
11091 exists) (Martin Pitt)
11097 Add <link linkend="APP-PGRESTORE"><application>pg_restore</></link>
11098 option to run the entire session in a single transaction
11103 Use option <literal>-1</> or <literal>--single-transaction</>.
11112 <title><link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link> Changes</title>
11118 linkend="libpq-misc"><function>PQencryptPassword()</></link>
11119 to encrypt passwords (Tom)
11123 This allows passwords to be sent pre-encrypted for commands
11124 like <link linkend="SQL-ALTERROLE"><command>ALTER ROLE ...
11125 PASSWORD</></link>.
11132 linkend="libpq-threading"><function>PQisthreadsafe()</></link>
11137 This allows applications to query the thread-safety status
11145 linkend="libpq-exec-main"><function>PQdescribePrepared()</></link>,
11147 linkend="libpq-exec-main"><function>PQdescribePortal()</></link>,
11148 and related functions to return information about previously
11149 prepared statements and open cursors (Volkan YAZICI)
11155 Allow <link linkend="libpq-ldap"><acronym>LDAP</></link> lookups
11157 linkend="libpq-pgservice"><filename>pg_service.conf</></link>
11164 Allow a hostname in <link
11165 linkend="libpq-pgpass"><filename>~/.pgpass</></link>
11166 to match the default socket directory (Bruce)
11170 A blank hostname continues to match any Unix-socket connection,
11171 but this addition allows entries that are specific to one of
11172 several postmasters on the machine.
11181 <title><link linkend="ecpg"><application>ecpg</></link> Changes</title>
11186 Allow <link linkend="SQL-SHOW"><command>SHOW</></link> to
11187 put its result into a variable (Joachim Wieland)
11193 Add <link linkend="SQL-COPY"><command>COPY TO STDOUT</></link>
11200 Add regression tests (Joachim Wieland, Michael)
11206 Major source code cleanups (Joachim Wieland, Michael)
11215 <title><application>Windows</> Port</title>
11220 Allow <acronym>MSVC</> to compile the <productname>PostgreSQL</>
11221 server (Magnus, Hiroshi Saito)
11227 Add <acronym>MSVC</> support for utility commands and <link
11228 linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link> (Hiroshi
11235 Add support for Windows code pages <literal>1253</>,
11236 <literal>1254</>, <literal>1255</>, and <literal>1257</>
11243 Drop privileges on startup, so that the server can be started from
11244 an administrative account (Magnus)
11250 Stability fixes (Qingqing Zhou, Magnus)
11256 Add native semaphore implementation (Qingqing Zhou)
11260 The previous code mimicked SysV semaphores.
11269 <title>Source Code Changes</title>
11274 Add <link linkend="GIN"><acronym>GIN</></link> (Generalized
11275 Inverted iNdex) index access method (Teodor, Oleg)
11281 Remove R-tree indexing (Tom)
11285 Rtree has been re-implemented using <link
11286 linkend="GiST"><acronym>GiST</></link>. Among other
11287 differences, this means that rtree indexes now have support
11288 for crash recovery via write-ahead logging (WAL).
11294 Reduce libraries needlessly linked into the backend (Martijn
11295 van Oosterhout, Tom)
11301 Add a configure flag to allow libedit to be preferred over
11302 <acronym>GNU</> readline (Bruce)
11306 Use configure <link
11307 linkend="configure"><literal>--with-libedit-preferred</></link>.
11313 Allow installation into directories containing spaces
11320 Improve ability to relocate installation directories (Tom)
11326 Add support for <productname>Solaris x86_64</> using the
11327 <productname>Solaris</> compiler (Pierre Girard, Theo
11328 Schlossnagle, Bruce)
11334 Add <application>DTrace</> support (Robert Lor)
11340 Add <literal>PG_VERSION_NUM</> for use by third-party
11341 applications wanting to test the backend version in C using >
11342 and < comparisons (Bruce)
11348 Add <literal>XLOG_BLCKSZ</> as independent from <literal>BLCKSZ</>
11355 Add <literal>LWLOCK_STATS</> define to report locking
11362 Emit warnings for unknown <application>configure</> options
11363 (Martijn van Oosterhout)
11369 Add server support for <quote>plugin</> libraries
11370 that can be used for add-on tasks such as debugging and performance
11371 measurement (Korry Douglas)
11375 This consists of two features: a table of <quote>rendezvous
11376 variables</> that allows separately-loaded shared libraries to
11377 communicate, and a new configuration parameter <link
11378 linkend="guc-local-preload-libraries"><varname>local_preload_libraries</></link>
11379 that allows libraries to be loaded into specific sessions without
11380 explicit cooperation from the client application. This allows
11381 external add-ons to implement features such as a PL/PgSQL debugger.
11387 Rename existing configuration parameter
11388 <varname>preload_libraries</> to <link
11389 linkend="guc-shared-preload-libraries"><varname>shared_preload_libraries</></link>
11394 This was done for clarity in comparison to
11395 <varname>local_preload_libraries</>.
11401 Add new configuration parameter <link
11402 linkend="guc-server-version-num"><varname>server_version_num</></link>
11403 (Greg Sabino Mullane)
11407 This is like <varname>server_version</varname>, but is an
11408 integer, e.g. <literal>80200</>. This allows applications to
11409 make version checks more easily.
11415 Add a configuration parameter <link
11416 linkend="guc-seq-page-cost"><varname>seq_page_cost</></link>
11423 Re-implement the <link linkend="regress">regression test</link> script as a C program
11430 Allow loadable modules to allocate shared memory and
11431 lightweight locks (Marc Munro)
11437 Add automatic initialization and finalization of dynamically
11438 loaded libraries (Ralf Engelschall, Tom)
11442 New <link linkend="xfunc-c-dynload">functions</link>
11443 <function>_PG_init()</> and <function>_PG_fini()</> are
11444 called if the library defines such symbols. Hence we no
11445 longer need to specify an initialization function in
11446 <varname>shared_preload_libraries</>; we can assume that
11447 the library used the <function>_PG_init()</> convention
11455 linkend="xfunc-c-dynload"><literal>PG_MODULE_MAGIC</></link>
11456 header block to all shared object files (Martijn van
11461 The magic block prevents version mismatches between loadable object
11468 Add shared library support for AIX (Laurenz Albe)
11474 New <link linkend="datatype-xml"><acronym>XML</></link>
11475 documentation section (Bruce)
11484 <title>Contrib Changes</title>
11489 Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor)
11496 multibyte encoding support, including <acronym>UTF8</>
11501 query rewriting support
11506 improved ranking functions
11511 thesaurus dictionary support
11516 Ispell dictionaries now recognize <application>MySpell</>
11517 format, used by <application>OpenOffice</>
11522 <acronym>GIN</> support
11532 Add adminpack module containing <application>Pgadmin</> administration
11537 These functions provide additional file system access
11538 routines not present in the default <productname>PostgreSQL</>
11545 Add sslinfo module (Victor Wagner)
11549 Reports information about the current connection's <acronym>SSL</>
11556 Add pgrowlocks module (Tatsuo)
11560 This shows row locking information for a specified table.
11566 Add hstore module (Oleg, Teodor)
11572 Add isn module, replacing isbn_issn (Jeremy Kronuz)
11576 This new implementation supports <acronym>EAN13</>, <acronym>UPC</>,
11577 <acronym>ISBN</> (books), <acronym>ISMN</> (music), and
11578 <acronym>ISSN</> (serials).
11584 Add index information functions to pgstattuple (ITAGAKI Takahiro,
11591 Add pg_freespacemap module to display free space map information
11598 pgcrypto now has all planned functionality (Marko Kreen)
11603 Include iMath library in pgcrypto to have the public-key encryption
11604 functions always available.
11609 Add SHA224 algorithm that was missing in OpenBSD code.
11614 Activate builtin code for SHA224/256/384/512 hashes on older
11615 OpenSSL to have those algorithms always available.
11620 New function gen_random_bytes() that returns cryptographically strong
11621 randomness. Useful for generating encryption keys.
11626 Remove digest_exists(), hmac_exists() and cipher_exists() functions.
11634 Improvements to cube module (Joshua Reich)
11638 New functions are <function>cube(float[])</>,
11639 <function>cube(float[], float[])</>, and
11640 <function>cube_subset(cube, int4[])</>.
11646 Add async query capability to dblink (Kai Londenberg,
11653 New operators for array-subset comparisons (<literal>@></>,
11654 <literal><@</>, <literal>&&</>) (Tom)
11658 Various contrib packages already had these operators for their
11659 datatypes, but the naming wasn't consistent. We have now added
11660 consistently named array-subset comparison operators to the core code
11661 and all the contrib packages that have such functionality.
11662 (The old names remain available, but are deprecated.)
11668 Add uninstall scripts for all contrib packages that have install
11669 scripts (David, Josh Drake)
11680 <sect1 id="release-8-1-17">
11681 <title>Release 8.1.17</title>
11684 <title>Release date</title>
11685 <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
11689 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.16.
11690 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
11691 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
11695 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.17</title>
11698 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
11699 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15,
11700 see the release notes for 8.1.15.
11706 <title>Changes</title>
11712 Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
11716 This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
11717 related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
11718 for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
11719 <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
11720 potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
11721 error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
11722 conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
11723 if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
11730 Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
11731 for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
11735 This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
11736 The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
11737 failures in the same area.
11743 Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
11744 are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
11750 Fix decompilation of <literal>CASE WHEN</> with an implicit coercion
11755 This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build,
11756 or an <quote>unexpected CASE WHEN clause</> error message in other
11757 cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.
11763 Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)
11767 If <command>CLUSTER</> or a rewriting variant of <command>ALTER TABLE</>
11768 were executed by someone other than the table owner, the
11769 <structname>pg_type</> entry for the table's TOAST table would end up
11770 marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems,
11771 since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any
11772 ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected
11773 failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command
11774 (in 8.1 or 8.2), or <quote>owner of data type appears to be invalid</>
11775 warnings from <application>pg_dump</> after having done so (in 8.3).
11781 Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit
11782 (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)
11786 This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause
11787 the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.
11793 Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
11794 of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
11803 <sect1 id="release-8-1-16">
11804 <title>Release 8.1.16</title>
11807 <title>Release date</title>
11808 <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
11812 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.15.
11813 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
11814 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
11818 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.16</title>
11821 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
11822 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15,
11823 see the release notes for 8.1.15.
11829 <title>Changes</title>
11835 Fix crash in autovacuum (Alvaro)
11839 The crash occurs only after vacuuming a whole database for
11840 anti-transaction-wraparound purposes, which means that it occurs
11841 infrequently and is hard to track down.
11847 Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
11853 Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
11860 Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
11861 conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
11862 specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
11868 Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
11875 Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the
11876 contents of TOAST tables (Tom)
11880 Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented
11881 as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped
11882 before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then
11883 vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor,
11884 but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.
11890 Fix uninitialized variables in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>'s
11891 <function>get_covers()</> function (Teodor)
11897 Fix <application>configure</> script to properly report failure when
11898 unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)
11904 Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
11905 <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
11906 now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
11907 mailing lists (Tom)
11913 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
11914 Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
11923 <sect1 id="release-8-1-15">
11924 <title>Release 8.1.15</title>
11927 <title>Release date</title>
11928 <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
11932 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.14.
11933 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
11934 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
11938 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.15</title>
11941 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
11942 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
11943 see the release notes for 8.1.2. Also, if you were running a previous
11944 8.1.X release, it is recommended to <command>REINDEX</> all GiST
11945 indexes after the upgrade.
11951 <title>Changes</title>
11957 Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry
11958 <quote>dead</> after a deletion (Teodor)
11962 This would result in index searches failing to find rows they
11963 should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with
11964 <command>REINDEX</>.
11970 Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
11971 error message (Tom)
11975 We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
11976 the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
11977 be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
11978 ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
11984 Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
11991 Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-<literal>SELECT</> appears
11992 in a function call in <literal>FROM</>, a multi-row <literal>VALUES</>
11993 list, or a <literal>RETURNING</> list (Tom)
11997 The usual symptom of this problem is an <quote>unrecognized node type</>
12004 Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
12005 function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
12011 Prevent possible collision of <structfield>relfilenode</> numbers
12012 when moving a table to another tablespace with <command>ALTER SET
12013 TABLESPACE</> (Heikki)
12017 The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of
12018 picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.
12024 Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query
12025 item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
12031 Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
12032 using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
12039 Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
12040 behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
12041 different numbers of columns (Tom)
12045 This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
12046 but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
12047 The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
12053 Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE ROLE</> (Michael)
12059 Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
12065 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
12066 DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
12075 <sect1 id="release-8-1-14">
12076 <title>Release 8.1.14</title>
12079 <title>Release date</title>
12080 <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
12084 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.13.
12085 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
12086 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
12090 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.14</title>
12093 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
12094 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
12095 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
12101 <title>Changes</title>
12107 Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
12111 This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
12112 sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
12113 already held</> errors.
12119 Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)
12125 Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
12126 <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
12127 current rowtype (Tom)
12131 <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</>, followed by re-use of a previously
12132 cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects
12133 against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.
12139 Fix <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> to first try to interpret its timezone
12140 argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone
12141 name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)
12145 The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names
12146 in this order. Making <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> do so as well improves
12147 consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1:
12148 in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did,
12149 since in the older versions <literal>AT TIME ZONE</> accepted
12150 <emphasis>only</> abbreviations.
12156 Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
12157 running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
12163 Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
12169 Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
12176 Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)
12180 If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query,
12181 but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated
12182 for new parent query rows.
12188 Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
12189 boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
12190 expressions' contents (Tom)
12194 This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
12195 BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
12196 <literal>IS NULL</>.
12202 Fix PL/PgSQL to not fail when a <literal>FOR</> loop's target variable
12203 is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)
12209 Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
12210 about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
12216 Fix PL/Python to work with Python 2.5
12220 This is a back-port of fixes made during the 8.2 development cycle.
12226 Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
12227 error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
12233 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
12234 command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
12240 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
12241 DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
12242 Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
12251 <sect1 id="release-8-1-13">
12252 <title>Release 8.1.13</title>
12255 <title>Release date</title>
12256 <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
12260 This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.1.12.
12261 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
12262 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
12266 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.13</title>
12269 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
12270 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
12271 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
12277 <title>Changes</title>
12283 Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
12287 Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
12288 as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
12289 be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
12290 Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
12291 another recent patch to cause
12292 <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
12293 <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
12294 <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
12295 as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
12296 output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
12302 Make <command>ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO</> update
12303 <structname>pg_shdepend</> (Tom)
12307 This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later
12308 involved in a <command>DROP OWNED</> or <command>REASSIGN OWNED</>
12318 <sect1 id="release-8-1-12">
12319 <title>Release 8.1.12</title>
12322 <title>Release date</title>
12323 <simpara>never released</simpara>
12327 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.11.
12328 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
12329 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
12333 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.12</title>
12336 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
12337 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
12338 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
12344 <title>Changes</title>
12350 Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
12351 column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
12352 non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
12356 Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
12362 Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
12363 <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
12364 inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
12370 Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
12371 Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
12372 two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
12378 Fix a few datatype input functions
12379 that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
12380 uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
12384 This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
12385 values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
12386 about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
12393 Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
12394 (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
12395 <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
12399 The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
12400 the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
12401 subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
12402 <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
12403 This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
12404 it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
12411 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
12412 DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba,
12413 Argentina/San_Luis, and Chile)
12419 Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
12420 <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
12426 Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
12427 <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
12434 Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
12435 <literal>CFLAGS</> (Tom)
12441 Fix <literal>DatumGetBool</> macro to not fail with <application>gcc</>
12446 This problem affects <quote>old style</> (V0) C functions that
12447 return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to
12448 back-patch it was not realized at the time.
12454 Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
12455 race condition (Tom)
12459 In rare cases a session that had just executed a
12460 <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
12461 one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
12462 <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
12466 A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
12467 a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
12468 row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
12469 should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
12470 was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
12471 some applications depend on the old behavior.
12477 Disallow <command>LISTEN</> and <command>UNLISTEN</> within a
12478 prepared transaction (Tom)
12482 This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant
12483 consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit
12484 as long as an <command>UNLISTEN</> remained uncommitted.
12490 Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
12497 Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
12501 The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
12507 Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
12508 <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
12514 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
12515 number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
12519 Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
12520 postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
12527 Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
12528 in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
12532 This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
12533 with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
12539 Fix display of constant expressions in <literal>ORDER BY</>
12540 and <literal>GROUP BY</> (Tom)
12544 An explictly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could
12545 for example lead to corruption of a view definition during
12552 Fix <application>libpq</> to handle NOTICE messages correctly
12553 during COPY OUT (Tom)
12557 This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined
12558 datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no
12559 guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.
12568 <sect1 id="release-8-1-11">
12569 <title>Release 8.1.11</title>
12572 <title>Release date</title>
12573 <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
12577 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.10,
12578 including fixes for significant security issues.
12579 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
12580 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
12584 This is the last 8.1.X release for which the <productname>PostgreSQL</>
12585 community will produce binary packages for <productname>Windows</>.
12586 Windows users are encouraged to move to 8.2.X or later,
12587 since there are Windows-specific fixes in 8.2.X that
12588 are impractical to back-port. 8.1.X will continue to
12589 be supported on other platforms.
12593 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.11</title>
12596 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
12597 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
12598 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
12604 <title>Changes</title>
12610 Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
12611 the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
12615 Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
12616 predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
12617 long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
12618 execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
12619 (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
12620 same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
12621 because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
12622 such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
12623 automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
12624 can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
12625 trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
12626 The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
12627 (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
12628 and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
12629 the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
12630 used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
12631 this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
12632 AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
12633 <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
12639 Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)
12643 Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes,
12644 infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption,
12645 all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that
12646 accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources.
12647 (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)
12653 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
12654 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
12658 The fix that appeared for this in 8.1.10 was incomplete, as it plugged
12659 the hole for only some <filename>dblink</> functions. (CVE-2007-6601,
12666 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2007k
12667 (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)
12673 Improve planner's handling of LIKE/regex estimation in non-C locales
12680 Fix planner failure in some cases of <literal>WHERE false AND var IN
12681 (SELECT ...)</> (Tom)
12687 Preserve the tablespace of indexes that are
12688 rebuilt by <command>ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> (Tom)
12694 Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only
12695 when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)
12699 This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing
12700 archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner
12701 than the original definition.
12707 Make <command>VACUUM</> not use all of <varname>maintenance_work_mem</>
12708 when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)
12714 Fix potential crash in <function>translate()</> when using a multibyte
12715 database encoding (Tom)
12721 Fix overflow in <literal>extract(epoch from interval)</> for intervals
12722 exceeding 68 years (Tom)
12728 Fix PL/Perl to not fail when a UTF-8 regular expression is used
12729 in a trusted function (Andrew)
12735 Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type <literal>bool</>
12736 as <literal>int</> rather than <literal>char</> (Tom)
12740 While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of
12741 Perl did things this way ... until <productname>Mac OS X</> 10.5.
12747 Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)
12753 Fix <application>pg_dump</> to correctly handle inheritance child tables
12754 that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)
12760 Fix <application>libpq</> crash when <varname>PGPASSFILE</> refers
12761 to a file that is not a plain file (Martin Pitt)
12767 <application>ecpg</> parser fixes (Michael)
12773 Make <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</> defend against
12774 <application>OpenSSL</> libraries that fail on keys longer than 128
12775 bits; which is the case at least on some Solaris versions (Marko Kreen)
12781 Make <filename>contrib/tablefunc</>'s <function>crosstab()</> handle
12782 NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)
12788 Fix <type>tsvector</> and <type>tsquery</> output routines to
12789 escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)
12795 Fix crash of <function>to_tsvector()</> on huge input strings (Teodor)
12801 Require a specific version of <productname>Autoconf</> to be used
12802 when re-generating the <command>configure</> script (Peter)
12806 This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made
12807 to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of
12808 <productname>Autoconf</> and <productname>PostgreSQL</> versions.
12809 You can remove the version check if you really want to use a
12810 different <productname>Autoconf</> version, but it's
12811 your responsibility whether the result works or not.
12820 <sect1 id="release-8-1-10">
12821 <title>Release 8.1.10</title>
12824 <title>Release date</title>
12825 <simpara>2007-09-17</simpara>
12829 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.9.
12830 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
12831 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
12835 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.10</title>
12838 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
12839 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
12840 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
12846 <title>Changes</title>
12852 Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and
12853 then aborts close to the end of a concurrent <command>VACUUM</>
12854 on the same table (Tom)
12860 Make <command>CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL</> work properly (Tom)
12866 Allow the <type>interval</> data type to accept input consisting only of
12867 milliseconds or microseconds (Neil)
12873 Speed up rtree index insertion (Teodor)
12879 Fix excessive logging of <acronym>SSL</> error messages (Tom)
12885 Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using
12886 the syslogger process (Andrew)
12892 Fix crash when <varname>log_min_error_statement</> logging runs out
12899 Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)
12905 Prevent <command>REINDEX</> and <command>CLUSTER</> from failing
12906 due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)
12912 Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)
12918 Windows socket improvements (Magnus)
12924 Suppress timezone name (<literal>%Z</>) in log timestamps on Windows
12925 because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)
12931 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
12932 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
12941 <sect1 id="release-8-1-9">
12942 <title>Release 8.1.9</title>
12945 <title>Release date</title>
12946 <simpara>2007-04-23</simpara>
12950 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.8,
12951 including a security fix.
12952 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
12953 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
12957 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.9</title>
12960 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
12961 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
12962 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
12968 <title>Changes</title>
12974 Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within
12975 <varname>search_path</>, and disable searching it for functions
12976 and operators (Tom)
12979 This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a
12980 truly secure value of <varname>search_path</>. Without it,
12981 an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code
12982 with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138).
12983 See <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> for more information.
12989 <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> crash fixes (Teodor)
12995 Require <command>COMMIT PREPARED</> to be executed in the same
12996 database as the transaction was prepared in (Heikki)
13002 Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how <command>VACUUM FULL</> handles
13003 <command>UPDATE</> chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)
13009 Planner fixes, including improving outer join and bitmap scan
13010 selection logic (Tom)
13016 Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (bug introduced in 8.1.6)
13023 Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)
13032 <sect1 id="release-8-1-8">
13033 <title>Release 8.1.8</title>
13036 <title>Release date</title>
13037 <simpara>2007-02-07</simpara>
13041 This release contains one fix from 8.1.7.
13042 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13043 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13047 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.8</title>
13050 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13051 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
13052 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
13058 <title>Changes</title>
13064 Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and
13065 functional indexes(Tom)
13074 <sect1 id="release-8-1-7">
13075 <title>Release 8.1.7</title>
13078 <title>Release date</title>
13079 <simpara>2007-02-05</simpara>
13083 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.6, including
13085 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13086 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13090 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.7</title>
13093 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13094 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
13095 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
13101 <title>Changes</title>
13107 Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users
13108 to read backend memory (Tom)
13111 The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL
13112 function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the
13113 data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These
13114 errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in
13115 principle might be used to read database content that the user
13116 should not be able to access.
13122 Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail
13123 due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)
13129 Improve <command>VACUUM</> performance for databases with many tables (Tom)
13135 Fix autovacuum to avoid leaving non-permanent transaction IDs in
13136 non-connectable databases (Alvaro)
13140 This bug affects the 8.1 branch only.
13146 Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by <literal>UNION</> (Tom)
13152 Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences
13153 over three bytes long (Tom)
13159 Fix bogus <quote>permission denied</> failures occurring on Windows
13160 due to attempts to fsync already-deleted files (Magnus, Tom)
13166 Fix possible crashes when an already-in-use PL/pgSQL function is
13176 <sect1 id="release-8-1-6">
13177 <title>Release 8.1.6</title>
13180 <title>Release date</title>
13181 <simpara>2007-01-08</simpara>
13185 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.5.
13186 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13187 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13191 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.6</title>
13194 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13195 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
13196 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
13202 <title>Changes</title>
13208 Improve handling of <function>getaddrinfo()</> on AIX (Tom)
13212 This fixes a problem with starting the statistics collector,
13213 among other things.
13219 Fix <application>pg_restore</> to handle a tar-format backup
13220 that contains large objects (blobs) with comments (Tom)
13226 Fix <quote>failed to re-find parent key</> errors in
13227 <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
13233 Clean out <filename>pg_internal.init</> cache files during server
13238 This avoids a hazard that the cache files might contain stale
13239 data after PITR recovery.
13245 Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a
13246 gigabyte boundary by <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
13252 Fix bug causing needless deadlock errors on row-level locks (Tom)
13258 Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)
13264 Fix possible deadlock in Windows signal handling (Teodor)
13270 Fix error when constructing an <literal>ARRAY[]</> made up of multiple
13271 empty elements (Tom)
13277 Fix ecpg memory leak during connection (Michael)
13283 Fix for Darwin (OS X) compilation (Tom)
13289 <function>to_number()</> and <function>to_char(numeric)</>
13290 are now <literal>STABLE</>, not <literal>IMMUTABLE</>, for
13291 new <application>initdb</> installs (Tom)
13295 This is because <varname>lc_numeric</> can potentially
13296 change the output of these functions.
13302 Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)
13306 This improves <application>psql</> <literal>\d</> performance also.
13312 Update timezone database
13316 This affects Australian and Canadian daylight-savings rules in
13326 <sect1 id="release-8-1-5">
13327 <title>Release 8.1.5</title>
13330 <title>Release date</title>
13331 <simpara>2006-10-16</simpara>
13335 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.4.
13336 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13337 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13341 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.5</title>
13344 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13345 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
13346 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
13352 <title>Changes</title>
13355 <listitem><para>Disallow aggregate functions in <command>UPDATE</>
13356 commands, except within sub-SELECTs (Tom)</para>
13357 <para>The behavior of such an aggregate was unpredictable, and in 8.1.X
13358 could cause a crash, so it has been disabled. The SQL standard does not allow
13359 this either.</para></listitem>
13360 <listitem><para>Fix core dump when an untyped literal is taken as
13361 ANYARRAY</para></listitem>
13362 <listitem><para>Fix core dump in duration logging for extended query protocol
13363 when a <command>COMMIT</> or <command>ROLLBACK</> is
13364 executed</para></listitem>
13365 <listitem><para>Fix mishandling of AFTER triggers when query contains a SQL
13366 function returning multiple rows (Tom)</para></listitem>
13367 <listitem><para>Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ... TYPE</> to recheck
13368 <literal>NOT NULL</> for <literal>USING</> clause (Tom)</para></listitem>
13369 <listitem><para>Fix <function>string_to_array()</> to handle overlapping
13370 matches for the separator string</para>
13371 <para>For example, <literal>string_to_array('123xx456xxx789', 'xx')</>.
13373 <listitem><para>Fix <function>to_timestamp()</> for
13374 <literal>AM</>/<literal>PM</> formats (Bruce)</para></listitem>
13375 <listitem><para>Fix autovacuum's calculation that decides whether
13376 <command>ANALYZE</> is needed (Alvaro)</para></listitem>
13377 <listitem><para>Fix corner cases in pattern matching for
13378 <application>psql</>'s <literal>\d</> commands</para></listitem>
13379 <listitem><para>Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree
13380 (Teodor)</para></listitem>
13381 <listitem><para>Numerous robustness fixes in <application>ecpg</> (Joachim
13382 Wieland)</para></listitem>
13383 <listitem><para>Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror</para></listitem>
13384 <listitem><para>Minor fixes in /contrib/dblink and /contrib/tsearch2</para>
13386 <listitem><para>Efficiency improvements in hash tables and bitmap index scans
13387 (Tom)</para></listitem>
13388 <listitem><para>Fix instability of statistics collection on Windows (Tom, Andrew)</para></listitem>
13389 <listitem><para>Fix <varname>statement_timeout</> to use the proper
13390 units on Win32 (Bruce)</para>
13391 <para>In previous Win32 8.1.X versions, the delay was off by a factor of
13392 100.</para></listitem>
13393 <listitem><para>Fixes for <acronym>MSVC</> and <productname>Borland C++</>
13394 compilers (Hiroshi Saito)</para></listitem>
13395 <listitem><para>Fixes for <systemitem class="osname">AIX</> and
13396 <productname>Intel</> compilers (Tom)</para></listitem>
13397 <listitem><para>Fix rare bug in continuous archiving (Tom)</para></listitem>
13403 <sect1 id="release-8-1-4">
13404 <title>Release 8.1.4</title>
13407 <title>Release date</title>
13408 <simpara>2006-05-23</simpara>
13412 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.3,
13413 including patches for extremely serious security issues.
13414 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13415 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13419 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.4</title>
13422 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13423 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
13424 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
13428 Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in
13429 CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application
13430 code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings
13431 into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to
13432 ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In
13433 most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by
13434 libraries or drivers (such as <application>libpq</>'s
13435 <function>PQescapeStringConn()</>) to perform string escaping,
13436 rather than relying on <foreignphrase>ad hoc</> code to do it.
13441 <title>Changes</title>
13444 <listitem><para>Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte
13445 characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)</para>
13446 <para>While <productname>PostgreSQL</> has been moving in this direction for
13447 some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all
13448 textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change
13449 defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.
13452 <listitem><para>Reject unsafe uses of <literal>\'</> in string literals</para>
13453 <para>As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type
13454 described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts <literal>''</> and not
13455 <literal>\'</> as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string
13456 literals. By default, <literal>\'</> is rejected only when
13457 <varname>client_encoding</> is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK,
13458 GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible.
13459 A new configuration parameter <varname>backslash_quote</> is available to
13460 adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against
13461 CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of
13462 <varname>backslash_quote</> is in part to make it obvious that insecure
13463 clients are insecure.
13466 <listitem><para>Modify <application>libpq</>'s string-escaping routines to be
13467 aware of encoding considerations and
13468 <varname>standard_conforming_strings</></para>
13469 <para>This fixes <application>libpq</>-using applications for the security
13470 issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314, and also future-proofs
13471 them against the planned changeover to SQL-standard string literal syntax.
13472 Applications that use multiple <productname>PostgreSQL</> connections
13473 concurrently should migrate to <function>PQescapeStringConn()</> and
13474 <function>PQescapeByteaConn()</> to ensure that escaping is done correctly
13475 for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that
13476 do string escaping <quote>by hand</> should be modified to rely on library
13480 <listitem><para>Fix weak key selection in pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)</para>
13481 <para>Errors in fortuna PRNG reseeding logic could cause a predictable
13482 session key to be selected by <function>pgp_sym_encrypt()</> in some cases.
13483 This only affects non-OpenSSL-using builds.
13486 <listitem><para>Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions</para>
13487 <para><function>win1251_to_iso</>, <function>win866_to_iso</>,
13488 <function>euc_tw_to_big5</>, <function>euc_tw_to_mic</>,
13489 <function>mic_to_euc_tw</> were all broken to varying
13493 <listitem><para>Clean up stray remaining uses of <literal>\'</> in strings
13494 (Bruce, Jan)</para></listitem>
13496 <listitem><para>Make autovacuum visible in <structname>pg_stat_activity</>
13497 (Alvaro)</para></listitem>
13499 <listitem><para>Disable <literal>full_page_writes</> (Tom)</para>
13500 <para>In certain cases, having <literal>full_page_writes</> off would cause
13501 crash recovery to fail. A proper fix will appear in 8.2; for now it's just
13505 <listitem><para>Various planner fixes, particularly for bitmap index scans and
13506 MIN/MAX optimization (Tom)</para></listitem>
13508 <listitem><para>Fix incorrect optimization in merge join (Tom)</para>
13509 <para>Outer joins could sometimes emit multiple copies of unmatched rows.
13512 <listitem><para>Fix crash from using and modifying a plpgsql function in the
13513 same transaction</para></listitem>
13515 <listitem><para>Fix WAL replay for case where a B-Tree index has been
13516 truncated</para></listitem>
13518 <listitem><para>Fix <literal>SIMILAR TO</> for patterns involving
13519 <literal>|</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
13521 <listitem><para>Fix <command>SELECT INTO</> and <command>CREATE TABLE AS</> to
13522 create tables in the default tablespace, not the base directory (Kris
13523 Jurka)</para></listitem>
13525 <listitem><para>Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael
13526 Fuhr)</para></listitem>
13528 <listitem><para>Improve qsort performance (Dann Corbit)</para>
13529 <para>Currently this code is only used on Solaris.
13532 <listitem><para>Fix for OS/X Bonjour on x86 systems (Ashley Clark)</para></listitem>
13534 <listitem><para>Fix various minor memory leaks</para></listitem>
13536 <listitem><para>Fix problem with password prompting on some Win32 systems
13537 (Robert Kinberg)</para></listitem>
13539 <listitem><para>Improve <application>pg_dump</>'s handling of default values
13540 for domains</para></listitem>
13542 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_dumpall</> to handle identically-named
13543 users and groups reasonably (only possible when dumping from a pre-8.1 server)
13545 <para>The user and group will be merged into a single role with
13546 <literal>LOGIN</> permission. Formerly the merged role wouldn't have
13547 <literal>LOGIN</> permission, making it unusable as a user.
13550 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_restore</> <literal>-n</> to work as
13551 documented (Tom)</para></listitem>
13557 <sect1 id="release-8-1-3">
13558 <title>Release 8.1.3</title>
13561 <title>Release date</title>
13562 <simpara>2006-02-14</simpara>
13566 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.2,
13567 including one very serious security issue.
13568 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13569 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13573 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.3</title>
13576 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13577 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2,
13578 see the release notes for 8.1.2.
13583 <title>Changes</title>
13587 <listitem><para>Fix bug that allowed any logged-in user to <command>SET
13588 ROLE</> to any other database user id (CVE-2006-0553)</para>
13589 <para>Due to inadequate validity checking, a user could exploit the special
13590 case that <command>SET ROLE</> normally uses to restore the previous role
13591 setting after an error. This allowed ordinary users to acquire superuser
13592 status, for example.
13593 The escalation-of-privilege risk exists only in 8.1.0-8.1.2.
13594 However, in all releases back to 7.3 there is a related bug in <command>SET
13595 SESSION AUTHORIZATION</> that allows unprivileged users to crash the server,
13596 if it has been compiled with Asserts enabled (which is not the default).
13597 Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.
13600 <listitem><para>Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted
13602 <para>Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command
13603 could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug
13604 created in 8.0.4, 7.4.9, and 7.3.11 releases.
13607 <listitem><para>Fix race condition that could lead to <quote>file already
13608 exists</> errors during pg_clog and pg_subtrans file creation
13609 (Tom)</para></listitem>
13611 <listitem><para>Fix cases that could lead to crashes if a cache-invalidation
13612 message arrives at just the wrong time (Tom)</para></listitem>
13614 <listitem><para>Properly check <literal>DOMAIN</> constraints for
13615 <literal>UNKNOWN</> parameters in prepared statements
13616 (Neil)</para></listitem>
13618 <listitem><para>Ensure <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> will process
13619 <literal>FOREIGN KEY</>, <literal>UNIQUE</>, and <literal>PRIMARY KEY</>
13620 constraints in the proper order (Nakano Yoshihisa)</para></listitem>
13622 <listitem><para>Fixes to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema
13623 references to custom operators or operator classes (Tom)</para></listitem>
13625 <listitem><para>Allow <application>pg_restore</> to continue properly after a
13626 <command>COPY</> failure; formerly it tried to treat the remaining
13627 <command>COPY</> data as SQL commands (Stephen Frost)</para></listitem>
13629 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_ctl</> <literal>unregister</> crash
13630 when the data directory is not specified (Magnus)</para></listitem>
13632 <listitem><para>Fix <application>libpq</> <function>PQprint</> HTML tags
13633 (Christoph Zwerschke)</para></listitem>
13635 <listitem><para>Fix <application>ecpg</> crash on AMD64 and PPC
13636 (Neil)</para></listitem>
13638 <listitem><para>Allow <literal>SETOF</> and <literal>%TYPE</> to be used
13639 together in function result type declarations</para></listitem>
13641 <listitem><para>Recover properly if error occurs during argument passing
13642 in <application>PL/python</> (Neil)</para></listitem>
13644 <listitem><para>Fix memory leak in <function>plperl_return_next</>
13645 (Neil)</para></listitem>
13647 <listitem><para>Fix <application>PL/perl</>'s handling of locales on
13648 Win32 to match the backend (Andrew)</para></listitem>
13650 <listitem><para>Various optimizer fixes (Tom)</para></listitem>
13652 <listitem><para>Fix crash when <literal>log_min_messages</> is set to
13653 <literal>DEBUG3</> or above in <filename>postgresql.conf</> on Win32
13654 (Bruce)</para></listitem>
13656 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pgxs</> <literal>-L</> library path
13657 specification for Win32, Cygwin, OS X, AIX (Bruce)</para></listitem>
13659 <listitem><para>Check that SID is enabled while checking for Win32 admin
13660 privileges (Magnus)</para></listitem>
13662 <listitem><para>Properly reject out-of-range date inputs (Kris
13663 Jurka)</para></listitem>
13665 <listitem><para>Portability fix for testing presence of <function>finite</>
13666 and <function>isinf</> during configure (Tom)</para></listitem>
13668 <listitem><para>Improve speed of <command>COPY IN</> via libpq, by
13669 avoiding a kernel call per data line (Alon Goldshuv)</para></listitem>
13671 <listitem><para>Improve speed of <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> index
13672 creation (Tom)</para></listitem>
13679 <sect1 id="release-8-1-2">
13680 <title>Release 8.1.2</title>
13683 <title>Release date</title>
13684 <simpara>2006-01-09</simpara>
13688 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.1.
13689 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13690 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13694 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.2</title>
13697 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13698 However, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
13699 columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or
13700 <application>plperl</> issues described below.
13705 <title>Changes</title>
13709 <listitem><para>Fix Windows code so that postmaster will continue rather
13710 than exit if there is no more room in ShmemBackendArray (Magnus)</para>
13711 <para>The previous behavior could lead to a denial-of-service situation if too
13712 many connection requests arrive close together. This applies
13713 <emphasis>only</> to the Windows port.</para></listitem>
13715 <listitem><para>Fix bug introduced in 8.0 that could allow ReadBuffer
13716 to return an already-used page as new, potentially causing loss of
13717 recently-committed data (Tom)</para></listitem>
13719 <listitem><para>Fix for protocol-level Describe messages issued
13720 outside a transaction or in a failed transaction (Tom)</para></listitem>
13722 <listitem><para>Fix character string comparison for locales that consider
13723 different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)</para>
13724 <para>This might require <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
13725 textual columns.</para></listitem>
13727 <listitem><para>Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup
13728 to ensure that <application>plperl</> won't change the locale later</para>
13729 <para>This fixes a problem that occurred if the <application>postmaster</> was
13730 started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what
13731 <application>initdb</> had been told. Under these conditions, any use of
13732 <application>plperl</> was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need
13733 <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
13734 textual columns if this has happened to you.</para></listitem>
13736 <listitem><para>Allow more flexible relocation of installation
13737 directories (Tom)</para>
13738 <para>Previous releases supported relocation only if all installation
13739 directory paths were the same except for the last component.</para></listitem>
13741 <listitem><para>Prevent crashes caused by the use of
13742 <literal>ISO-8859-5</> and <literal>ISO-8859-9</> encodings
13743 (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
13745 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression
13746 handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)
13749 <listitem><para>Fix bug where COPY CSV mode considered any
13750 <literal>\.</> to terminate the copy data</para> <para>The new code
13751 requires <literal>\.</> to appear alone on a line, as per
13752 documentation.</para></listitem>
13754 <listitem><para>Make COPY CSV mode quote a literal data value of
13755 <literal>\.</> to ensure it cannot be interpreted as the
13756 end-of-data marker (Bruce)</para></listitem>
13758 <listitem><para>Various fixes for functions returning <literal>RECORD</>s
13759 (Tom) </para></listitem>
13761 <listitem><para>Fix processing of <filename>postgresql.conf</> so a
13762 final line with no newline is processed properly (Tom)
13765 <listitem><para>Fix bug in <filename>/contrib/pgcrypto</> gen_salt,
13766 which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and
13767 XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)</para>
13768 <para>Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.</para></listitem>
13770 <listitem><para>Fix autovacuum crash when processing expression indexes
13773 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to throw an error,
13774 rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from
13775 what's actually returned by the query (Joe)</para></listitem>
13782 <sect1 id="release-8-1-1">
13783 <title>Release 8.1.1</title>
13786 <title>Release date</title>
13787 <simpara>2005-12-12</simpara>
13791 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.0.
13792 For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see
13793 <xref linkend="release-8-1">.
13797 <title>Migration to Version 8.1.1</title>
13800 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.
13805 <title>Changes</title>
13808 <listitem><para>Fix incorrect optimizations of outer-join conditions
13809 (Tom)</para></listitem>
13811 <listitem><para>Fix problems with wrong reported column names in cases
13812 involving sub-selects flattened by the optimizer (Tom)</para></listitem>
13814 <listitem><para>Fix update failures in scenarios involving CHECK constraints,
13815 toasted columns, <emphasis>and</> indexes (Tom)</para></listitem>
13817 <listitem><para>Fix bgwriter problems after recovering from errors
13820 The background writer was found to leak buffer pins after write errors.
13821 While not fatal in itself, this might lead to mysterious blockages of
13822 later VACUUM commands.
13826 <listitem><para>Prevent failure if client sends Bind protocol message
13827 when current transaction is already aborted</para></listitem>
13829 <listitem><para><filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> and <filename>/contrib/ltree</>
13830 fixes (Teodor)</para></listitem>
13832 <listitem><para>Fix problems with translated error messages in
13833 languages that require word reordering, such as Turkish; also problems with
13834 unexpected truncation of output strings and wrong display of the smallest
13835 possible bigint value (Andrew, Tom)</para>
13837 These problems only appeared on platforms that were using our
13838 <filename>port/snprintf.c</> code, which includes BSD variants if
13839 <literal>--enable-nls</> was given, and perhaps others. In addition,
13840 a different form of the translated-error-message problem could appear
13841 on Windows depending on which version of <filename>libintl</> was used.
13844 <listitem><para>Re-allow <literal>AM</>/<literal>PM</>, <literal>HH</>,
13845 <literal>HH12</>, and <literal>D</> format specifiers for
13846 <function>to_char(time)</> and <function>to_char(interval)</>.
13847 (<function>to_char(interval)</> should probably use
13848 <literal>HH24</>.) (Bruce)</para></listitem>
13850 <listitem><para>AIX, HPUX, and MSVC compile fixes (Tom, Hiroshi
13851 Saito)</para></listitem>
13853 <listitem><para>Optimizer improvements (Tom)</para></listitem>
13855 <listitem><para>Retry file reads and writes after Windows
13856 NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES error (Qingqing Zhou)</para></listitem>
13858 <listitem><para>Prevent <application>autovacuum</> from crashing during
13859 ANALYZE of expression index (Alvaro)</para></listitem>
13861 <listitem><para>Fix problems with ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS temp
13862 tables</para></listitem>
13864 <listitem><para>Fix problems when a trigger alters the output of a SELECT
13865 DISTINCT query</para></listitem>
13867 <listitem><para>Add 8.1.0 release note item on how to migrate invalid
13868 <literal>UTF-8</> byte sequences (Paul Lindner)</para></listitem>
13874 <sect1 id="release-8-1">
13875 <title>Release 8.1</title>
13878 <title>Release date</title>
13879 <simpara>2005-11-08</simpara>
13883 <title>Overview</title>
13886 Major changes in this release:
13893 Improve concurrent access to the shared buffer cache (Tom)
13898 Access to the shared buffer cache was identified as a
13899 significant scalability problem, particularly on multi-CPU
13900 systems. In this release, the way that locking is done in the
13901 buffer manager has been overhauled to reduce lock contention
13902 and improve scalability. The buffer manager has also been
13903 changed to use a <quote>clock sweep</quote> replacement
13911 Allow index scans to use an intermediate in-memory bitmap (Tom)
13916 In previous releases, only a single index could be used to do
13917 lookups on a table. With this feature, if a query has
13918 <command>WHERE tab.col1 = 4 and tab.col2 = 9</>, and there is
13919 no multicolumn index on <literal>col1</> and <literal>col2</>,
13920 but there is an index on <literal>col1</> and another on
13921 <literal>col2</>, it is possible to search both indexes and
13922 combine the results in memory, then do heap fetches for only
13923 the rows matching both the <literal>col1</> and
13924 <literal>col2</> restrictions. This is very useful in
13925 environments that have a lot of unstructured queries where it
13926 is impossible to create indexes that match all possible access
13927 conditions. Bitmap scans are useful even with a single index,
13928 as they reduce the amount of random access needed; a bitmap
13929 index scan is efficient for retrieving fairly large fractions
13930 of the complete table, whereas plain index scans are not.
13937 Add two-phase commit (Heikki Linnakangas, Alvaro, Tom)
13942 Two-phase commit allows transactions to be "prepared" on several
13943 computers, and once all computers have successfully prepared
13944 their transactions (none failed), all transactions can be
13945 committed. Even if a machine crashes after a prepare, the
13946 prepared transaction can be committed after the machine is
13947 restarted. New syntax includes <command>PREPARE TRANSACTION</> and
13948 <command>COMMIT/ROLLBACK PREPARED</>. A new system view
13949 <literal>pg_prepared_xacts</> has also been added.
13956 Create a new role system that replaces users and groups
13962 Roles are a combination of users and groups. Like users, they
13963 can have login capability, and like groups, a role can have
13964 other roles as members. Roles basically remove the distinction
13965 between users and groups. For example, a role can:
13972 Have login capability (optionally)
13984 Hold access permissions for database objects
13990 Inherit permissions from other roles it is a member of
13996 Once a user logs into a role, she obtains capabilities of
13997 the login role plus any inherited roles, and can use
13998 <command>SET ROLE</> to switch to other roles she is a member of.
13999 This feature is a generalization of the SQL standard's concept of
14001 This change also replaces <structname>pg_shadow</> and
14002 <structname>pg_group</> by new role-capable catalogs
14003 <structname>pg_authid</> and <structname>pg_auth_members</>. The old
14004 tables are redefined as read-only views on the new role tables.
14011 Automatically use indexes for <function>MIN()</> and
14012 <function>MAX()</> (Tom)
14017 In previous releases, the only way to use an index for
14018 <function>MIN()</> or <function>MAX()</> was to rewrite the
14019 query as <command>SELECT col FROM tab ORDER BY col LIMIT 1</>.
14020 Index usage now happens automatically.
14027 Move <filename>/contrib/pg_autovacuum</> into the main server
14033 Integrating autovacuum into the server allows it to be
14034 automatically started and stopped in sync with the database
14035 server, and allows autovacuum to be configured from
14036 <filename>postgresql.conf</>.
14043 Add shared row level locks using <command>SELECT ... FOR SHARE</>
14049 While <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>'s MVCC locking
14050 allows <command>SELECT</> to never be blocked by writers and
14051 therefore does not need shared row locks for typical operations,
14052 shared locks are useful for applications that require shared row
14053 locking. In particular this reduces the locking requirements
14054 imposed by referential integrity checks.
14061 Add dependencies on shared objects, specifically roles
14067 This extension of the dependency mechanism prevents roles from
14068 being dropped while there are still database objects they own.
14069 Formerly it was possible to accidentally <quote>orphan</> objects by
14070 deleting their owner. While this could be recovered from, it
14071 was messy and unpleasant.
14078 Improve performance for partitioned tables (Simon)
14083 The new <varname>constraint_exclusion</varname> configuration
14084 parameter avoids lookups on child tables where constraints indicate
14085 that no matching rows exist in the child table.
14088 This allows for a basic type of table partitioning. If child tables
14089 store separate key ranges and this is enforced using appropriate
14090 <command>CHECK</> constraints, the optimizer will skip child
14091 table accesses when the constraint guarantees no matching rows
14092 exist in the child table.
14101 <title>Migration to Version 8.1</title>
14104 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is required
14105 for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.
14109 The 8.0 release announced that the <function>to_char()</> function
14110 for intervals would be removed in 8.1. However, since no better API
14111 has been suggested, <function>to_char(interval)</> has been enhanced in
14112 8.1 and will remain in the server.
14116 Observe the following incompatibilities:
14123 <varname>add_missing_from</> is now false by default (Neil)
14126 By default, we now generate an error if a table is used in a query
14127 without a <literal>FROM</> reference. The old behavior is still
14128 available, but the parameter must be set to 'true' to obtain it.
14132 It might be necessary to set <varname>add_missing_from</> to true
14133 in order to load an existing dump file, if the dump contains any
14134 views or rules created using the implicit-<literal>FROM</> syntax.
14135 This should be a one-time annoyance, because
14136 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.1 will convert
14137 such views and rules to standard explicit-<literal>FROM</> syntax.
14138 Subsequent dumps will therefore not have the problem.
14144 Cause input of a zero-length string (<literal>''</literal>) for
14145 <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type>/<type>oid</type>
14146 to throw an error, rather than treating it as a zero (Neil)
14149 This change is consistent with the current handling of
14150 zero-length strings for integers. The schedule for this change
14151 was announced in 8.0.
14157 <varname>default_with_oids</> is now false by default (Neil)
14160 With this option set to false, user-created tables no longer
14161 have an OID column unless <command>WITH OIDS</> is specified in
14162 <command>CREATE TABLE</>. Though OIDs have existed in all
14163 releases of <productname>PostgreSQL</>, their use is limited
14164 because they are only four bytes long and the counter is shared
14165 across all installed databases. The preferred way of uniquely
14166 identifying rows is via sequences and the <type>SERIAL</> type,
14167 which have been supported since <productname>PostgreSQL</> 6.4.
14173 Add <literal>E''</> syntax so eventually ordinary strings can
14174 treat backslashes literally (Bruce)
14177 Currently <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> processes a
14178 backslash in a string literal as introducing a special escape sequence,
14179 e.g. <literal>\n</> or <literal>\010</>.
14180 While this allows easy entry of special values, it is
14181 nonstandard and makes porting of applications from other
14182 databases more difficult. For this reason, the
14183 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> project is planning to
14184 remove the special meaning of backslashes in strings. For
14185 backward compatibility and for users who want special backslash
14186 processing, a new string syntax has been created. This new string
14187 syntax is formed by writing an <literal>E</> immediately preceding the
14188 single quote that starts the string, e.g. <literal>E'hi\n'</>. While
14189 this release does not change the handling of backslashes in strings, it
14190 does add new configuration parameters to help users migrate applications
14191 for future releases:
14197 <varname>standard_conforming_strings</> — does this release
14198 treat backslashes literally in ordinary strings?
14204 <varname>escape_string_warning</> — warn about backslashes in
14205 ordinary (non-E) strings
14212 The <varname>standard_conforming_strings</> value is read-only.
14213 Applications can retrieve the value to know how backslashes are
14214 processed. (Presence of the parameter can also be taken as an
14215 indication that <literal>E''</> string syntax is supported.)
14216 In a future release, <varname>standard_conforming_strings</>
14217 will be true, meaning backslashes will be treated literally in
14218 non-E strings. To prepare for this change, use <literal>E''</>
14219 strings in places that need special backslash processing, and
14220 turn on <varname>escape_string_warning</> to find additional
14221 strings that need to be converted to use <literal>E''</>.
14222 Also, use two single-quotes (<literal>''</>) to embed a literal
14223 single-quote in a string, rather than the
14224 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>-supported syntax of
14225 backslash single-quote (<literal>\'</>). The former is
14226 standards-conforming and does not require the use of the
14227 <literal>E''</> string syntax. You can also use the
14228 <literal>$$</> string syntax, which does not treat backslashes
14235 Make <command>REINDEX DATABASE</> reindex all indexes in the
14239 Formerly, <command>REINDEX DATABASE</> reindexed only
14240 system tables. This new behavior seems more intuitive. A new
14241 command <command>REINDEX SYSTEM</> provides the old functionality
14242 of reindexing just the system tables.
14248 Read-only large object descriptors now obey MVCC snapshot semantics
14251 When a large object is opened with <literal>INV_READ</> (and not
14252 <literal>INV_WRITE</>), the data read from the descriptor will now
14253 reflect a <quote>snapshot</> of the large object's state at the
14254 time of the transaction snapshot in use by the query that called
14255 <function>lo_open()</>. To obtain the old behavior of always
14256 returning the latest committed data, include <literal>INV_WRITE</>
14257 in the mode flags for <function>lo_open()</>.
14263 Add proper dependencies for arguments of sequence functions (Tom)
14266 In previous releases, sequence names passed to <function>nextval()</>,
14267 <function>currval()</>, and <function>setval()</> were stored as
14268 simple text strings, meaning that renaming or dropping a
14269 sequence used in a <literal>DEFAULT</> clause made the clause
14270 invalid. This release stores all newly-created sequence function
14271 arguments as internal OIDs, allowing them to track sequence
14272 renaming, and adding dependency information that prevents
14273 improper sequence removal. It also makes such <literal>DEFAULT</>
14274 clauses immune to schema renaming and search path changes.
14277 Some applications might rely on the old behavior of
14278 run-time lookup for sequence names. This can still be done by
14279 explicitly casting the argument to <type>text</>, for example
14280 <literal>nextval('myseq'::text)</>.
14283 Pre-8.1 database dumps loaded into 8.1 will use the old text-based
14284 representation and therefore will not have the features of
14285 OID-stored arguments. However, it is possible to update a
14286 database containing text-based <literal>DEFAULT</> clauses.
14287 First, save this query into a file, such as <filename>fixseq.sql</>:
14289 SELECT 'ALTER TABLE ' ||
14290 pg_catalog.quote_ident(n.nspname) || '.' ||
14291 pg_catalog.quote_ident(c.relname) ||
14292 ' ALTER COLUMN ' || pg_catalog.quote_ident(a.attname) ||
14294 regexp_replace(d.adsrc,
14295 $$val\(\(('[^']*')::text\)::regclass$$,
14299 FROM pg_namespace n, pg_class c, pg_attribute a, pg_attrdef d
14300 WHERE n.oid = c.relnamespace AND
14301 c.oid = a.attrelid AND
14302 a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND
14303 a.attnum = d.adnum AND
14304 d.adsrc ~ $$val\(\('[^']*'::text\)::regclass$$;
14306 Next, run the query against a database to find what
14307 adjustments are required, like this for database <literal>db1</>:
14309 psql -t -f fixseq.sql db1
14311 This will show the <command>ALTER TABLE</> commands needed to
14312 convert the database to the newer OID-based representation.
14313 If the commands look reasonable, run this to update the database:
14315 psql -t -f fixseq.sql db1 | psql -e db1
14317 This process must be repeated in each database to be updated.
14323 In <application>psql</application>, treat unquoted
14324 <literal>\{digit}+</> sequences as octal (Bruce)
14327 In previous releases, <literal>\{digit}+</> sequences were
14328 treated as decimal, and only <literal>\0{digit}+</> were treated
14329 as octal. This change was made for consistency.
14335 Remove grammar productions for prefix and postfix <literal>%</>
14336 and <literal>^</> operators
14340 These have never been documented and complicated the use of the
14341 modulus operator (<literal>%</>) with negative numbers.
14347 Make <literal>&<</> and <literal>&></> for polygons
14348 consistent with the box "over" operators (Tom)
14354 <command>CREATE LANGUAGE</> can ignore the provided arguments
14355 in favor of information from <structname>pg_pltemplate</>
14359 A new system catalog <structname>pg_pltemplate</> has been defined
14360 to carry information about the preferred definitions of procedural
14361 languages (such as whether they have validator functions). When
14362 an entry exists in this catalog for the language being created,
14363 <command>CREATE LANGUAGE</> will ignore all its parameters except the
14364 language name and instead use the catalog information. This measure
14365 was taken because of increasing problems with obsolete language
14366 definitions being loaded by old dump files. As of 8.1,
14367 <application>pg_dump</> will dump procedural language definitions as
14368 just <command>CREATE LANGUAGE <replaceable>name</></command>, relying
14369 on a template entry to exist at load time. We expect this will be a
14370 more future-proof representation.
14376 Make <function>pg_cancel_backend(int)</function> return a
14377 <type>boolean</type> rather than an <type>integer</type> (Neil)
14383 Some users are having problems loading UTF-8 data into 8.1.X.
14384 This is because previous versions allowed invalid UTF-8 byte
14385 sequences to be entered into the database, and this release
14386 properly accepts only valid UTF-8 sequences. One way to correct a
14387 dumpfile is to run the command <command>iconv -c -f UTF-8 -t
14388 UTF-8 -o cleanfile.sql dumpfile.sql</>. The <literal>-c</> option
14389 removes invalid character sequences. A diff of the two files will
14390 show the sequences that are invalid. <command>iconv</> reads the
14391 entire input file into memory so it might be necessary to use
14392 <application>split</> to break up the dump into multiple smaller
14393 files for processing.
14401 <title>Additional Changes</title>
14404 Below you will find a detailed account of the additional changes
14405 between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.1 and the
14406 previous major release.
14410 <title>Performance Improvements</title>
14415 Improve GiST and R-tree index performance (Neil)
14421 Improve the optimizer, including auto-resizing of hash joins
14428 Overhaul internal API in several areas
14434 Change WAL record CRCs from 64-bit to 32-bit (Tom)
14437 We determined that the extra cost of computing 64-bit CRCs was
14438 significant, and the gain in reliability too marginal to justify it.
14444 Prevent writing large empty gaps in WAL pages (Tom)
14450 Improve spinlock behavior on SMP machines, particularly Opterons (Tom)
14456 Allow nonconsecutive index columns to be used in a multicolumn
14460 For example, this allows an index on columns a,b,c to be used in
14461 a query with <command>WHERE a = 4 and c = 10</>.
14467 Skip WAL logging for <command>CREATE TABLE AS</> /
14468 <command>SELECT INTO</> (Simon)
14471 Since a crash during <command>CREATE TABLE AS</> would cause the
14472 table to be dropped during recovery, there is no reason to WAL
14473 log as the table is loaded. (Logging still happens if WAL
14474 archiving is enabled, however.)
14480 Allow concurrent GiST index access (Teodor, Oleg)
14486 Add configuration parameter <varname>full_page_writes</> to
14487 control writing full pages to WAL (Bruce)
14490 To prevent partial disk writes from corrupting the database,
14491 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> writes a complete copy of
14492 each database disk page to WAL the first time it is modified
14493 after a checkpoint. This option turns off that functionality for more
14494 speed. This is safe to use with battery-backed disk caches where
14495 partial page writes cannot happen.
14501 Use <literal>O_DIRECT</> if available when using
14502 <literal>O_SYNC</> for <varname>wal_sync_method</varname>
14506 <literal>O_DIRECT</> causes disk writes to bypass the kernel
14507 cache, and for WAL writes, this improves performance.
14513 Improve <command>COPY FROM</> performance (Alon Goldshuv)
14516 This was accomplished by reading <command>COPY</> input in
14517 larger chunks, rather than character by character.
14523 Improve the performance of <function>COUNT()</function>,
14524 <function>SUM</function>, <function>AVG()</function>,
14525 <function>STDDEV()</function>, and
14526 <function>VARIANCE()</function> (Neil, Tom)
14533 <title>Server Changes</title>
14538 Prevent problems due to transaction ID (XID) wraparound (Tom)
14541 The server will now warn when the transaction counter approaches
14542 the wraparound point. If the counter becomes too close to wraparound,
14543 the server will stop accepting queries. This ensures that data is
14544 not lost before needed vacuuming is performed.
14550 Fix problems with object IDs (OIDs) conflicting with existing system
14551 objects after the OID counter has wrapped around (Tom)
14557 Add warning about the need to increase
14558 <varname>max_fsm_relations</> and <varname>max_fsm_pages</>
14559 during <command>VACUUM</> (Ron Mayer)
14565 Add <varname>temp_buffers</> configuration parameter to allow
14566 users to determine the size of the local buffer area for
14567 temporary table access (Tom)
14573 Add session start time and client IP address to
14574 <literal>pg_stat_activity</> (Magnus)
14580 Adjust <literal>pg_stat</> views for bitmap scans (Tom)
14583 The meanings of some of the fields have changed slightly.
14589 Enhance <literal>pg_locks</> view (Tom)
14595 Log queries for client-side <command>PREPARE</> and
14596 <command>EXECUTE</> (Simon)
14602 Allow Kerberos name and user name case sensitivity to be
14603 specified in <filename>postgresql.conf</> (Magnus)
14609 Add configuration parameter <varname>krb_server_hostname</> so
14610 that the server host name can be specified as part of service
14611 principal (Todd Kover)
14614 If not set, any service principal matching an entry in the
14615 keytab can be used. This is new Kerberos matching behavior in
14622 Add <varname>log_line_prefix</> options for millisecond
14623 timestamps (<literal>%m</>) and remote host (<literal>%h</>) (Ed
14630 Add WAL logging for GiST indexes (Teodor, Oleg)
14633 GiST indexes are now safe for crash and point-in-time recovery.
14639 Remove old <filename>*.backup</> files when we do
14640 <function>pg_stop_backup()</> (Bruce)
14643 This prevents a large number of <filename>*.backup</> files from
14644 existing in <filename>pg_xlog/</>.
14650 Add configuration parameters to control TCP/IP keep-alive
14651 times for idle, interval, and count (Oliver Jowett)
14655 These values can be changed to allow more rapid detection of
14656 lost client connections.
14662 Add per-user and per-database connection limits (Petr Jelinek)
14665 Using <command>ALTER USER</> and <command>ALTER DATABASE</>,
14666 limits can now be enforced on the maximum number of sessions that
14667 can concurrently connect as a specific user or to a specific database.
14668 Setting the limit to zero disables user or database connections.
14674 Allow more than two gigabytes of shared memory and per-backend
14675 work memory on 64-bit machines (Koichi Suzuki)
14681 New system catalog <structname>pg_pltemplate</> allows overriding
14682 obsolete procedural-language definitions in dump files (Tom)
14691 <title>Query Changes</title>
14696 Add temporary views (Koju Iijima, Neil)
14702 Fix <command>HAVING</> without any aggregate functions or
14703 <command>GROUP BY</> so that the query returns a single group (Tom)
14706 Previously, such a case would treat the <command>HAVING</>
14707 clause the same as a <command>WHERE</> clause. This was not per spec.
14713 Add <command>USING</> clause to allow additional tables to be
14714 specified to <command>DELETE</> (Euler Taveira de Oliveira, Neil)
14717 In prior releases, there was no clear method for specifying
14718 additional tables to be used for joins in a <command>DELETE</>
14719 statement. <command>UPDATE</> already has a <literal>FROM</>
14720 clause for this purpose.
14726 Add support for <literal>\x</> hex escapes in backend and ecpg
14730 This is just like the standard C <literal>\x</> escape syntax.
14731 Octal escapes were already supported.
14737 Add <command>BETWEEN SYMMETRIC</> query syntax (Pavel Stehule)
14740 This feature allows <command>BETWEEN</> comparisons without
14741 requiring the first value to be less than the second. For
14742 example, <command>2 BETWEEN [ASYMMETRIC] 3 AND 1</> returns
14743 false, while <command>2 BETWEEN SYMMETRIC 3 AND 1</> returns
14744 true. <command>BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC</> was already supported.
14750 Add <command>NOWAIT</> option to <command>SELECT ... FOR
14751 UPDATE/SHARE</> (Hans-Juergen Schoenig)
14754 While the <varname>statement_timeout</> configuration
14755 parameter allows a query taking more than a certain amount of
14756 time to be cancelled, the <command>NOWAIT</> option allows a
14757 query to be canceled as soon as a <command>SELECT ... FOR
14758 UPDATE/SHARE</> command cannot immediately acquire a row lock.
14766 <title>Object Manipulation Changes</title>
14771 Track dependencies of shared objects (Alvaro)
14774 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> allows global tables
14775 (users, databases, tablespaces) to reference information in
14776 multiple databases. This addition adds dependency information
14777 for global tables, so, for example, user ownership can be
14778 tracked across databases, so a user who owns something in any
14779 database can no longer be removed. Dependency tracking already
14780 existed for database-local objects.
14786 Allow limited <command>ALTER OWNER</> commands to be performed
14787 by the object owner (Stephen Frost)
14790 Prior releases allowed only superusers to change object owners.
14791 Now, ownership can be transferred if the user executing the command
14792 owns the object and would be able to create it as the new owner
14793 (that is, the user is a member of the new owning role and that role
14794 has the CREATE permission that would be needed to create the object
14801 Add <command>ALTER</> object <command>SET SCHEMA</> capability
14802 for some object types (tables, functions, types) (Bernd Helmle)
14805 This allows objects to be moved to different schemas.
14811 Add <command>ALTER TABLE ENABLE/DISABLE TRIGGER</command> to
14812 disable triggers (Satoshi Nagayasu)
14821 <title>Utility Command Changes</title>
14826 Allow <command>TRUNCATE</> to truncate multiple tables in a
14827 single command (Alvaro)
14830 Because of referential integrity checks, it is not allowed to
14831 truncate a table that is part of a referential integrity
14832 constraint. Using this new functionality, <command>TRUNCATE</>
14833 can be used to truncate such tables, if both tables involved in
14834 a referential integrity constraint are truncated in a single
14835 <command>TRUNCATE</> command.
14841 Properly process carriage returns and line feeds in
14842 <command>COPY CSV</> mode (Andrew)
14845 In release 8.0, carriage returns and line feeds in <command>CSV
14846 COPY TO</> were processed in an inconsistent manner. (This was
14847 documented on the TODO list.)
14853 Add <command>COPY WITH CSV HEADER</> to allow a header line as
14854 the first line in <command>COPY</> (Andrew)
14857 This allows handling of the common <command>CSV</> usage of
14858 placing the column names on the first line of the data file. For
14859 <command>COPY TO</>, the first line contains the column names,
14860 and for <command>COPY FROM</>, the first line is ignored.
14866 On Windows, display better sub-second precision in
14867 <command>EXPLAIN ANALYZE</> (Magnus)
14873 Add trigger duration display to <command>EXPLAIN ANALYZE</>
14877 Prior releases included trigger execution time as part of the
14878 total execution time, but did not show it separately. It is now
14879 possible to see how much time is spent in each trigger.
14885 Add support for <literal>\x</> hex escapes in <command>COPY</>
14889 Previous releases only supported octal escapes.
14895 Make <command>SHOW ALL</> include variable descriptions
14899 <command>SHOW</> varname still only displays the variable's
14900 value and does not include the description.
14906 Make <application>initdb</application> create a new standard
14907 database called <literal>postgres</>, and convert utilities to
14908 use <literal>postgres</> rather than <literal>template1</> for
14909 standard lookups (Dave)
14912 In prior releases, <literal>template1</> was used both as a
14913 default connection for utilities like
14914 <application>createuser</application>, and as a template for
14915 new databases. This caused <command>CREATE DATABASE</> to
14916 sometimes fail, because a new database cannot be created if
14917 anyone else is in the template database. With this change, the
14918 default connection database is now <literal>postgres</>,
14919 meaning it is much less likely someone will be using
14920 <literal>template1</> during <command>CREATE DATABASE</>.
14926 Create new <application>reindexdb</application> command-line
14927 utility by moving <filename>/contrib/reindexdb</> into the
14928 server (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
14937 <title>Data Type and Function Changes</title>
14942 Add <function>MAX()</> and <function>MIN()</> aggregates for
14943 array types (Koju Iijima)
14949 Fix <function>to_date()</> and <function>to_timestamp()</> to
14950 behave reasonably when <literal>CC</> and <literal>YY</> fields
14951 are both used (Karel Zak)
14954 If the format specification contains <literal>CC</> and a year
14955 specification is <literal>YYY</> or longer, ignore the
14956 <literal>CC</>. If the year specification is <literal>YY</> or
14957 shorter, interpret <literal>CC</> as the previous century.
14963 Add <function>md5(bytea)</> (Abhijit Menon-Sen)
14966 <function>md5(text)</> already existed.
14972 Add support for <command>numeric ^ numeric</> based on
14973 <function>power(numeric, numeric)</>
14976 The function already existed, but there was no operator assigned
14983 Fix <type>NUMERIC</> modulus by properly truncating the quotient
14984 during computation (Bruce)
14987 In previous releases, modulus for large values sometimes
14988 returned negative results due to rounding of the quotient.
14994 Add a function <function>lastval()</> (Dennis Björklund)
14997 <function>lastval()</> is a simplified version of
14998 <function>currval()</>. It automatically determines the proper
14999 sequence name based on the most recent <function>nextval()</> or
15000 <function>setval()</> call performed by the current session.
15006 Add <function>to_timestamp(DOUBLE PRECISION) (Michael Glaesemann)</>
15009 Converts Unix seconds since 1970 to a <type>TIMESTAMP WITH
15016 Add <function>pg_postmaster_start_time()</> function (Euler
15017 Taveira de Oliveira, Matthias Schmidt)
15023 Allow the full use of time zone names in <command>AT TIME
15024 ZONE</>, not just the short list previously available (Magnus)
15027 Previously, only a predefined list of time zone names were
15028 supported by <command>AT TIME ZONE</>. Now any supported time
15029 zone name can be used, e.g.:
15031 SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AT TIME ZONE 'Europe/London';
15033 In the above query, the time zone used is adjusted based on the
15034 daylight saving time rules that were in effect on the supplied
15041 Add <function>GREATEST()</> and <function>LEAST()</> variadic
15042 functions (Pavel Stehule)
15045 These functions take a variable number of arguments and return
15046 the greatest or least value among the arguments.
15052 Add <function>pg_column_size()</> (Mark Kirkwood)
15055 This returns storage size of a column, which might be compressed.
15061 Add <function>regexp_replace()</> (Atsushi Ogawa)
15064 This allows regular expression replacement, like sed. An optional
15065 flag argument allows selection of global (replace all) and
15066 case-insensitive modes.
15072 Fix interval division and multiplication (Bruce)
15075 Previous versions sometimes returned unjustified results, like
15076 <command>'4 months'::interval / 5</> returning <command>'1 mon
15083 Fix roundoff behavior in timestamp, time, and interval output (Tom)
15086 This fixes some cases in which the seconds field would be shown as
15087 <literal>60</> instead of incrementing the higher-order fields.
15093 Add a separate day field to type <type>interval</> so a one day
15094 interval can be distinguished from a 24 hour interval (Michael
15098 Days that contain a daylight saving time adjustment are not 24
15099 hours long, but typically 23 or 25 hours. This change creates a
15100 conceptual distinction between intervals of <quote>so many days</>
15101 and intervals of <quote>so many hours</>. Adding
15102 <literal>1 day</> to a timestamp now gives the same local time on
15103 the next day even if a daylight saving time adjustment occurs
15104 between, whereas adding <literal>24 hours</> will give a different
15105 local time when this happens. For example, under US DST rules:
15107 '2005-04-03 00:00:00-05' + '1 day' = '2005-04-04 00:00:00-04'
15108 '2005-04-03 00:00:00-05' + '24 hours' = '2005-04-04 01:00:00-04'
15115 Add <function>justify_days()</> and <function>justify_hours()</>
15116 (Michael Glaesemann)
15119 These functions, respectively, adjust days to an appropriate
15120 number of full months and days, and adjust hours to an
15121 appropriate number of full days and hours.
15127 Move <filename>/contrib/dbsize</> into the backend, and rename
15128 some of the functions (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)
15135 <function>pg_tablespace_size()</>
15141 <function>pg_database_size()</>
15147 <function>pg_relation_size()</>
15153 <function>pg_total_relation_size()</>
15159 <function>pg_size_pretty()</>
15166 <function>pg_total_relation_size()</> includes indexes and TOAST
15173 Add functions for read-only file access to the cluster directory
15174 (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)
15181 <function>pg_stat_file()</>
15187 <function>pg_read_file()</>
15193 <function>pg_ls_dir()</>
15203 Add <function>pg_reload_conf()</> to force reloading of the
15204 configuration files (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)
15210 Add <function>pg_rotate_logfile()</> to force rotation of the
15211 server log file (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)
15217 Change <literal>pg_stat_*</> views to include TOAST tables (Tom)
15226 <title>Encoding and Locale Changes</title>
15231 Rename some encodings to be more consistent and to follow
15232 international standards (Bruce)
15239 <literal>UNICODE</> is now <literal>UTF8</>
15245 <literal>ALT</> is now <literal>WIN866</>
15251 <literal>WIN</> is now <literal>WIN1251</>
15257 <literal>TCVN</> is now <literal>WIN1258</>
15265 The original names still work.
15271 Add support for <literal>WIN1252</> encoding (Roland Volkmann)
15277 Add support for four-byte <literal>UTF8</> characters (John
15281 Previously only one, two, and three-byte <literal>UTF8</> characters
15282 were supported. This is particularly important for support for
15283 some Chinese character sets.
15289 Allow direct conversion between <literal>EUC_JP</> and
15290 <literal>SJIS</> to improve performance (Atsushi Ogawa)
15296 Allow the UTF8 encoding to work on Windows (Magnus)
15299 This is done by mapping UTF8 to the Windows-native UTF16
15309 <title>General Server-Side Language Changes</title>
15314 Fix <command>ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME</> (Sergey Yatskevich)
15320 Allow function characteristics, like strictness and volatility,
15321 to be modified via <command>ALTER FUNCTION</> (Neil)
15327 Increase the maximum number of function arguments to 100 (Tom)
15333 Allow SQL and PL/PgSQL functions to use <command>OUT</> and
15334 <command>INOUT</> parameters (Tom)
15337 <command>OUT</> is an alternate way for a function to return
15338 values. Instead of using <command>RETURN</>, values can be
15339 returned by assigning to parameters declared as <command>OUT</> or
15340 <command>INOUT</>. This is notationally simpler in some cases,
15341 particularly so when multiple values need to be returned.
15342 While returning multiple values from a function
15343 was possible in previous releases, this greatly simplifies the
15344 process. (The feature will be extended to other server-side
15345 languages in future releases.)
15351 Move language handler functions into the <literal>pg_catalog</> schema
15354 This makes it easier to drop the public schema if desired.
15360 Add <function>SPI_getnspname()</function> to SPI (Neil)
15368 <title>PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language Changes</title>
15373 Overhaul the memory management of PL/PgSQL functions (Neil)
15376 The parsetree of each function is now stored in a separate
15377 memory context. This allows this memory to be easily reclaimed
15378 when it is no longer needed.
15384 Check function syntax at <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> time,
15385 rather than at runtime (Neil)
15388 Previously, most syntax errors were reported only when the
15389 function was executed.
15395 Allow <command>OPEN</> to open non-<command>SELECT</> queries
15396 like <command>EXPLAIN</> and <command>SHOW</> (Tom)
15402 No longer require functions to issue a <command>RETURN</>
15406 This is a byproduct of the newly added <command>OUT</> and
15407 <command>INOUT</> functionality. <command>RETURN</> can
15408 be omitted when it is not needed to provide the function's
15415 Add support for an optional <command>INTO</> clause to
15416 PL/PgSQL's <command>EXECUTE</> statement (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
15422 Make <command>CREATE TABLE AS</> set <command>ROW_COUNT</> (Tom)
15428 Define <literal>SQLSTATE</> and <literal>SQLERRM</> to return
15429 the <literal>SQLSTATE</> and error message of the current
15430 exception (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
15433 These variables are only defined inside exception blocks.
15439 Allow the parameters to the <command>RAISE</> statement to be
15440 expressions (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
15446 Add a loop <command>CONTINUE</> statement (Pavel Stehule, Neil)
15452 Allow block and loop labels (Pavel Stehule)
15461 <title>PL/Perl Server-Side Language Changes</title>
15466 Allow large result sets to be returned efficiently (Abhijit
15470 This allows functions to use <function>return_next()</> to avoid
15471 building the entire result set in memory.
15477 Allow one-row-at-a-time retrieval of query results (Abhijit Menon-Sen)
15480 This allows functions to use <function>spi_query()</> and
15481 <function>spi_fetchrow()</> to avoid accumulating the entire
15482 result set in memory.
15488 Force PL/Perl to handle strings as <literal>UTF8</> if the
15489 server encoding is <literal>UTF8</> (David Kamholz)
15495 Add a validator function for PL/Perl (Andrew)
15498 This allows syntax errors to be reported at definition time,
15499 rather than execution time.
15505 Allow PL/Perl to return a Perl array when the function returns
15506 an array type (Andrew)
15509 This basically maps <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> arrays
15516 Allow Perl nonfatal warnings to generate <command>NOTICE</>
15523 Allow Perl's <literal>strict</> mode to be enabled (Andrew)
15532 <title><application>psql</> Changes</title>
15537 Add <command>\set ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK</> to allow statements in
15538 a transaction to error without affecting the rest of the
15539 transaction (Greg Sabino Mullane)
15542 This is basically implemented by wrapping every statement in a
15549 Add support for <literal>\x</> hex strings in
15550 <application>psql</> variables (Bruce)
15553 Octal escapes were already supported.
15559 Add support for <command>troff -ms</> output format (Roger
15566 Allow the history file location to be controlled by
15567 <envar>HISTFILE</> (Andreas Seltenreich)
15570 This allows configuration of per-database history storage.
15576 Prevent <command>\x</> (expanded mode) from affecting
15577 the output of <command>\d tablename</> (Neil)
15583 Add <option>-L</> option to <application>psql</application> to
15584 log sessions (Lorne Sunley)
15587 This option was added because some operating systems do not have
15588 simple command-line activity logging functionality.
15594 Make <command>\d</> show the tablespaces of indexes (Qingqing
15601 Allow <application>psql</application> help (<command>\h</>) to
15602 make a best guess on the proper help information (Greg Sabino
15606 This allows the user to just add <command>\h</> to the front of
15607 the syntax error query and get help on the supported syntax.
15608 Previously any additional query text beyond the command name
15609 had to be removed to use <command>\h</>.
15615 Add <command>\pset numericlocale</> to allow numbers to be
15616 output in a locale-aware format (Eugen Nedelcu)
15619 For example, using <literal>C</> locale <literal>100000</> would
15620 be output as <literal>100,000.0</> while a European locale might
15621 output this value as <literal>100.000,0</>.
15627 Make startup banner show both server version number and
15628 <application>psql</>'s version number, when they are different (Bruce)
15631 Also, a warning will be shown if the server and <application>psql</>
15632 are from different major releases.
15641 <title><application>pg_dump</> Changes</title>
15646 Add <option>-n</> / <option>--schema</> switch to
15647 <application>pg_restore</> (Richard van den Berg)
15650 This allows just the objects in a specified schema to be restored.
15656 Allow <application>pg_dump</> to dump large objects even in
15660 With this change, large objects are now always dumped; the former
15661 <option>-b</> switch is a no-op.
15667 Allow <application>pg_dump</> to dump a consistent snapshot of
15668 large objects (Tom)
15674 Dump comments for large objects (Tom)
15680 Add <option>--encoding</> to <application>pg_dump</>
15684 This allows a database to be dumped in an encoding that is
15685 different from the server's encoding. This is valuable when
15686 transferring the dump to a machine with a different encoding.
15692 Rely on <structname>pg_pltemplate</> for procedural languages (Tom)
15695 If the call handler for a procedural language is in the
15696 <literal>pg_catalog</> schema, <application>pg_dump</> does not
15697 dump the handler. Instead, it dumps the language using just
15698 <command>CREATE LANGUAGE <replaceable>name</></command>,
15699 relying on the <structname>pg_pltemplate</> catalog to provide
15700 the language's creation parameters at load time.
15709 <title><application>libpq</application> Changes</title>
15714 Add a <envar>PGPASSFILE</> environment variable to specify the
15715 password file's filename (Andrew)
15721 Add <function>lo_create()</>, that is similar to
15722 <function>lo_creat()</> but allows the OID of the large object
15723 to be specified (Tom)
15729 Make <application>libpq</application> consistently return an error
15730 to the client application on <function>malloc()</function>
15739 <title>Source Code Changes</title>
15744 Fix <application>pgxs</> to support building against a relocated
15751 Add spinlock support for the Itanium processor using Intel
15752 compiler (Vikram Kalsi)
15758 Add Kerberos 5 support for Windows (Magnus)
15764 Add Chinese FAQ (laser@pgsqldb.com)
15770 Rename Rendezvous to Bonjour to match OS/X feature renaming
15777 Add support for <literal>fsync_writethrough</literal> on
15778 Darwin (Chris Campbell)
15784 Streamline the passing of information within the server, the
15785 optimizer, and the lock system (Tom)
15791 Allow <application>pg_config</> to be compiled using MSVC (Andrew)
15794 This is required to build DBD::Pg using <application>MSVC</>.
15800 Remove support for Kerberos V4 (Magnus)
15803 Kerberos 4 had security vulnerabilities and is no longer
15810 Code cleanups (Coverity static analysis performed by
15817 Modify <filename>postgresql.conf</> to use documentation defaults
15818 <literal>on</>/<literal>off</> rather than
15819 <literal>true</>/<literal>false</> (Bruce)
15825 Enhance <application>pg_config</> to be able to report more
15826 build-time values (Tom)
15832 Allow <application>libpq</application> to be built thread-safe
15833 on Windows (Dave Page)
15839 Allow IPv6 connections to be used on Windows (Andrew)
15845 Add Server Administration documentation about I/O subsystem
15846 reliability (Bruce)
15852 Move private declarations from <filename>gist.h</filename> to
15853 <filename>gist_private.h</filename> (Neil)
15857 In previous releases, <filename>gist.h</> contained both the
15858 public GiST API (intended for use by authors of GiST index
15859 implementations) as well as some private declarations used by
15860 the implementation of GiST itself. The latter have been moved
15861 to a separate file, <filename>gist_private.h</>. Most GiST
15862 index implementations should be unaffected.
15868 Overhaul GiST memory management (Neil)
15872 GiST methods are now always invoked in a short-lived memory
15873 context. Therefore, memory allocated via <function>palloc()</>
15874 will be reclaimed automatically, so GiST index implementations
15875 do not need to manually release allocated memory via
15876 <function>pfree()</>.
15884 <title>Contrib Changes</title>
15889 Add <filename>/contrib/pg_buffercache</> contrib module (Mark
15893 This displays the contents of the buffer cache, for debugging and
15894 performance tuning purposes.
15900 Remove <filename>/contrib/array</> because it is obsolete (Tom)
15906 Clean up the <filename>/contrib/lo</> module (Tom)
15912 Move <filename>/contrib/findoidjoins</> to
15913 <filename>/src/tools</> (Tom)
15919 Remove the <literal><<</>, <literal>>></>,
15920 <literal>&<</>, and <literal>&></> operators from
15921 <filename>/contrib/cube</>
15924 These operators were not useful.
15930 Improve <filename>/contrib/btree_gist</> (Janko Richter)
15936 Improve <filename>/contrib/pgbench</> (Tomoaki Sato, Tatsuo)
15939 There is now a facility for testing with SQL command scripts given
15940 by the user, instead of only a hard-wired command sequence.
15946 Improve <filename>/contrib/pgcrypto</> (Marko Kreen)
15953 Implementation of OpenPGP symmetric-key and public-key encryption
15956 Both RSA and Elgamal public-key algorithms are supported.
15962 Stand alone build: include SHA256/384/512 hashes, Fortuna PRNG
15968 OpenSSL build: support 3DES, use internal AES with OpenSSL < 0.9.7
15974 Take build parameters (OpenSSL, zlib) from <filename>configure</> result
15977 There is no need to edit the <filename>Makefile</> anymore.
15983 Remove support for <filename>libmhash</> and <filename>libmcrypt</>
15996 <sect1 id="release-8-0-21">
15997 <title>Release 8.0.21</title>
16000 <title>Release date</title>
16001 <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
16005 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.20.
16006 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16007 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16011 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.21</title>
16014 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X.
16015 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6,
16016 see the release notes for 8.0.6.
16022 <title>Changes</title>
16028 Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
16032 This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
16033 related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
16034 for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
16035 <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
16036 potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
16037 error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
16038 conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
16039 if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
16046 Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
16047 for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
16051 This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
16052 The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
16053 failures in the same area.
16059 Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
16060 are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
16066 Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
16067 of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
16076 <sect1 id="release-8-0-20">
16077 <title>Release 8.0.20</title>
16080 <title>Release date</title>
16081 <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
16085 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.19.
16086 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16087 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16091 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.20</title>
16094 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X.
16095 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6,
16096 see the release notes for 8.0.6.
16102 <title>Changes</title>
16108 Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
16114 Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
16121 Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
16122 conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
16123 specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
16129 Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
16136 Fix uninitialized variables in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>'s
16137 <function>get_covers()</> function (Teodor)
16143 Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
16144 <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
16145 now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
16146 mailing lists (Tom)
16152 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2009a (for
16153 Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)
16162 <sect1 id="release-8-0-19">
16163 <title>Release 8.0.19</title>
16166 <title>Release date</title>
16167 <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
16171 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.18.
16172 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16173 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16177 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.19</title>
16180 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X.
16181 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6,
16182 see the release notes for 8.0.6.
16188 <title>Changes</title>
16194 Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
16195 error message (Tom)
16199 We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
16200 the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
16201 be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
16202 ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
16208 Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from
16215 Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger
16216 function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)
16222 Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query
16223 item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
16229 Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
16230 using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
16237 Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
16238 behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
16239 different numbers of columns (Tom)
16243 This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
16244 but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
16245 The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
16251 Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE USER</> (Michael)
16257 Fix recent breakage of <literal>pg_ctl restart</> (Tom)
16263 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008i (for
16264 DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)
16273 <sect1 id="release-8-0-18">
16274 <title>Release 8.0.18</title>
16277 <title>Release date</title>
16278 <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
16282 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.17.
16283 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16284 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16288 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.18</title>
16291 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X.
16292 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6,
16293 see the release notes for 8.0.6.
16299 <title>Changes</title>
16305 Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)
16309 This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in
16310 sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected <quote>lock is
16311 already held</> errors.
16317 Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an
16318 <command>INSERT</> or <command>UPDATE</> will match the target table's
16319 current rowtype (Tom)
16323 <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</>, followed by re-use of a previously
16324 cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects
16325 against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.
16331 Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
16332 running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
16338 Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
16344 Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
16351 Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
16352 boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
16353 expressions' contents (Tom)
16357 This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
16358 BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
16359 <literal>IS NULL</>.
16365 Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful
16366 about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)
16372 Fix PL/Python to work with Python 2.5
16376 This is a back-port of fixes made during the 8.2 development cycle.
16382 Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
16383 error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
16389 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to properly preserve postmaster
16390 command-line arguments across a <literal>restart</> (Bruce)
16396 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008f (for
16397 DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco,
16398 Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)
16407 <sect1 id="release-8-0-17">
16408 <title>Release 8.0.17</title>
16411 <title>Release date</title>
16412 <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
16416 This release contains one serious bug fix over 8.0.16.
16417 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16418 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16422 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.17</title>
16425 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X.
16426 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6,
16427 see the release notes for 8.0.6.
16433 <title>Changes</title>
16439 Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
16443 Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
16444 as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
16445 be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
16446 Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
16447 another recent patch to cause
16448 <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
16449 <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
16450 <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
16451 as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
16452 output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
16461 <sect1 id="release-8-0-16">
16462 <title>Release 8.0.16</title>
16465 <title>Release date</title>
16466 <simpara>never released</simpara>
16470 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.15.
16471 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16472 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16476 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.16</title>
16479 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X.
16480 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6,
16481 see the release notes for 8.0.6.
16487 <title>Changes</title>
16493 Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY</> so that the new
16494 column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all
16495 non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)
16499 Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.
16505 Fix possible <command>CREATE TABLE</> failure when inheriting the
16506 <quote>same</> constraint from multiple parent relations that
16507 inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)
16513 Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
16514 Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
16515 two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
16521 Fix a few datatype input functions
16522 that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
16523 uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
16527 This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
16528 values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
16529 about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
16536 Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
16537 (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
16538 <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
16542 The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
16543 the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
16544 subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
16545 <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
16546 This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
16547 it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
16554 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2008c (for
16555 DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba,
16556 Argentina/San_Luis, and Chile)
16562 Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
16563 <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
16569 Fix core dump in <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s
16570 <function>xpath_table()</> function when the input query returns a
16577 Fix <filename>contrib/xml2</>'s makefile to not override
16578 <literal>CFLAGS</> (Tom)
16584 Fix <literal>DatumGetBool</> macro to not fail with <application>gcc</>
16589 This problem affects <quote>old style</> (V0) C functions that
16590 return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to
16591 back-patch it was not realized at the time.
16597 Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
16598 race condition (Tom)
16602 In rare cases a session that had just executed a
16603 <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
16604 one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
16605 <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
16609 A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
16610 a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
16611 row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
16612 should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
16613 was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
16614 some applications depend on the old behavior.
16620 Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index
16627 Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)
16631 The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.
16637 Fix <quote>unrecognized node type</> error in some variants of
16638 <command>ALTER OWNER</> (Tom)
16644 Fix <application>pg_ctl</> to correctly extract the postmaster's port
16645 number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)
16649 Previously, <literal>pg_ctl start -w</> could try to contact the
16650 postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup
16657 Use <option>-fwrapv</> to defend against possible misoptimization
16658 in recent <application>gcc</> versions (Tom)
16662 This is known to be necessary when building <productname>PostgreSQL</>
16663 with <application>gcc</> 4.3 or later.
16669 Fix display of constant expressions in <literal>ORDER BY</>
16670 and <literal>GROUP BY</> (Tom)
16674 An explictly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could
16675 for example lead to corruption of a view definition during
16682 Fix <application>libpq</> to handle NOTICE messages correctly
16683 during COPY OUT (Tom)
16687 This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined
16688 datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no
16689 guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.
16698 <sect1 id="release-8-0-15">
16699 <title>Release 8.0.15</title>
16702 <title>Release date</title>
16703 <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
16707 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.14,
16708 including fixes for significant security issues.
16709 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16710 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16714 This is the last 8.0.X release for which the <productname>PostgreSQL</>
16715 community will produce binary packages for <productname>Windows</>.
16716 Windows users are encouraged to move to 8.2.X or later,
16717 since there are Windows-specific fixes in 8.2.X that
16718 are impractical to back-port. 8.0.X will continue to
16719 be supported on other platforms.
16723 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.15</title>
16726 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
16727 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
16734 <title>Changes</title>
16740 Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
16741 the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
16745 Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
16746 predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
16747 long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
16748 execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
16749 (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
16750 same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
16751 because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
16752 such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
16753 automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
16754 can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
16755 trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
16756 The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
16757 (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
16758 and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
16759 the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
16760 used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
16761 this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
16762 AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
16763 <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
16769 Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)
16773 Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes,
16774 infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption,
16775 all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that
16776 accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources.
16777 (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)
16783 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
16784 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
16788 The fix that appeared for this in 8.0.14 was incomplete, as it plugged
16789 the hole for only some <filename>dblink</> functions. (CVE-2007-6601,
16796 Update time zone data files to <application>tzdata</> release 2007k
16797 (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)
16803 Fix planner failure in some cases of <literal>WHERE false AND var IN
16804 (SELECT ...)</> (Tom)
16810 Preserve the tablespace of indexes that are
16811 rebuilt by <command>ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> (Tom)
16817 Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only
16818 when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)
16822 This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing
16823 archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner
16824 than the original definition.
16830 Make <command>VACUUM</> not use all of <varname>maintenance_work_mem</>
16831 when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)
16837 Fix potential crash in <function>translate()</> when using a multibyte
16838 database encoding (Tom)
16844 Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type <literal>bool</>
16845 as <literal>int</> rather than <literal>char</> (Tom)
16849 While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of
16850 Perl did things this way ... until <productname>Mac OS X</> 10.5.
16856 Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)
16862 Fix <application>pg_dump</> to correctly handle inheritance child tables
16863 that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)
16869 <application>ecpg</> parser fixes (Michael)
16875 Make <filename>contrib/tablefunc</>'s <function>crosstab()</> handle
16876 NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)
16882 Fix <type>tsvector</> and <type>tsquery</> output routines to
16883 escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)
16889 Fix crash of <function>to_tsvector()</> on huge input strings (Teodor)
16895 Require a specific version of <productname>Autoconf</> to be used
16896 when re-generating the <command>configure</> script (Peter)
16900 This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made
16901 to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of
16902 <productname>Autoconf</> and <productname>PostgreSQL</> versions.
16903 You can remove the version check if you really want to use a
16904 different <productname>Autoconf</> version, but it's
16905 your responsibility whether the result works or not.
16914 <sect1 id="release-8-0-14">
16915 <title>Release 8.0.14</title>
16918 <title>Release date</title>
16919 <simpara>2007-09-17</simpara>
16923 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.13.
16924 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
16925 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
16929 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.14</title>
16932 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
16933 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
16940 <title>Changes</title>
16946 Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and
16947 then aborts close to the end of a concurrent <command>VACUUM</>
16948 on the same table (Tom)
16954 Make <command>CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL</> work properly (Tom)
16960 Fix excessive logging of <acronym>SSL</> error messages (Tom)
16966 Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using
16967 the syslogger process (Andrew)
16973 Fix crash when <varname>log_min_error_statement</> logging runs out
16980 Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)
16986 Prevent <command>CLUSTER</> from failing
16987 due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)
16993 Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)
16999 Windows socket improvements (Magnus)
17005 Suppress timezone name (<literal>%Z</>) in log timestamps on Windows
17006 because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)
17012 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
17013 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
17022 <sect1 id="release-8-0-13">
17023 <title>Release 8.0.13</title>
17026 <title>Release date</title>
17027 <simpara>2007-04-23</simpara>
17031 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.12,
17032 including a security fix.
17033 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17034 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17038 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.13</title>
17041 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17042 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17049 <title>Changes</title>
17055 Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within
17056 <varname>search_path</>, and disable searching it for functions
17057 and operators (Tom)
17060 This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a
17061 truly secure value of <varname>search_path</>. Without it,
17062 an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code
17063 with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138).
17064 See <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> for more information.
17070 <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> crash fixes (Teodor)
17076 Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how <command>VACUUM FULL</> handles
17077 <command>UPDATE</> chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)
17083 Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (bug introduced in 8.0.10)
17090 Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)
17099 <sect1 id="release-8-0-12">
17100 <title>Release 8.0.12</title>
17103 <title>Release date</title>
17104 <simpara>2007-02-07</simpara>
17108 This release contains one fix from 8.0.11.
17109 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17110 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17114 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.12</title>
17117 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17118 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17125 <title>Changes</title>
17131 Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and
17132 functional indexes(Tom)
17141 <sect1 id="release-8-0-11">
17142 <title>Release 8.0.11</title>
17145 <title>Release date</title>
17146 <simpara>2007-02-05</simpara>
17150 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.10, including
17152 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17153 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17157 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.11</title>
17160 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17161 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17168 <title>Changes</title>
17174 Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users
17175 to read backend memory (Tom)
17178 The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL
17179 function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the
17180 data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These
17181 errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in
17182 principle might be used to read database content that the user
17183 should not be able to access.
17189 Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail
17190 due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)
17196 Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by <literal>UNION</> (Tom)
17202 Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences
17203 over three bytes long (Tom)
17212 <sect1 id="release-8-0-10">
17213 <title>Release 8.0.10</title>
17216 <title>Release date</title>
17217 <simpara>2007-01-08</simpara>
17221 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.9.
17222 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17223 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17227 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.10</title>
17230 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17231 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17238 <title>Changes</title>
17244 Improve handling of <function>getaddrinfo()</> on AIX (Tom)
17248 This fixes a problem with starting the statistics collector,
17249 among other things.
17255 Fix <quote>failed to re-find parent key</> errors in
17256 <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
17262 Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a
17263 gigabyte boundary by <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
17269 Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)
17275 Fix possible deadlock in Windows signal handling (Teodor)
17281 Fix error when constructing an <literal>ARRAY[]</> made up of multiple
17282 empty elements (Tom)
17288 Fix ecpg memory leak during connection (Michael)
17294 <function>to_number()</> and <function>to_char(numeric)</>
17295 are now <literal>STABLE</>, not <literal>IMMUTABLE</>, for
17296 new <application>initdb</> installs (Tom)
17300 This is because <varname>lc_numeric</> can potentially
17301 change the output of these functions.
17307 Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)
17311 This improves <application>psql</> <literal>\d</> performance also.
17317 Update timezone database
17321 This affects Australian and Canadian daylight-savings rules in
17331 <sect1 id="release-8-0-9">
17332 <title>Release 8.0.9</title>
17335 <title>Release date</title>
17336 <simpara>2006-10-16</simpara>
17340 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.8.
17341 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17342 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17346 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.9</title>
17349 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17350 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17357 <title>Changes</title>
17360 <listitem><para>Fix crash when referencing <literal>NEW</> row
17361 values in rule WHERE expressions (Tom)</para></listitem>
17362 <listitem><para>Fix core dump when an untyped literal is taken as
17363 ANYARRAY</para></listitem>
17364 <listitem><para>Fix mishandling of AFTER triggers when query contains a SQL
17365 function returning multiple rows (Tom)</para></listitem>
17366 <listitem><para>Fix <command>ALTER TABLE ... TYPE</> to recheck
17367 <literal>NOT NULL</> for <literal>USING</> clause (Tom)</para></listitem>
17368 <listitem><para>Fix <function>string_to_array()</> to handle overlapping
17369 matches for the separator string</para>
17370 <para>For example, <literal>string_to_array('123xx456xxx789', 'xx')</>.
17372 <listitem><para>Fix corner cases in pattern matching for
17373 <application>psql</>'s <literal>\d</> commands</para></listitem>
17374 <listitem><para>Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree
17375 (Teodor)</para></listitem>
17376 <listitem><para>Numerous robustness fixes in <application>ecpg</> (Joachim
17377 Wieland)</para></listitem>
17378 <listitem><para>Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror</para></listitem>
17379 <listitem><para>Fix instability of statistics collection on Win32 (Tom, Andrew)</para></listitem>
17380 <listitem><para>Fixes for <systemitem class="osname">AIX</> and
17381 <productname>Intel</> compilers (Tom)</para></listitem>
17387 <sect1 id="release-8-0-8">
17388 <title>Release 8.0.8</title>
17391 <title>Release date</title>
17392 <simpara>2006-05-23</simpara>
17396 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.7,
17397 including patches for extremely serious security issues.
17398 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17399 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17403 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.8</title>
17406 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17407 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17412 Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in
17413 CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application
17414 code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings
17415 into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to
17416 ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In
17417 most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by
17418 libraries or drivers (such as <application>libpq</>'s
17419 <function>PQescapeStringConn()</>) to perform string escaping,
17420 rather than relying on <foreignphrase>ad hoc</> code to do it.
17425 <title>Changes</title>
17428 <listitem><para>Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte
17429 characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)</para>
17430 <para>While <productname>PostgreSQL</> has been moving in this direction for
17431 some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all
17432 textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change
17433 defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.
17436 <listitem><para>Reject unsafe uses of <literal>\'</> in string literals</para>
17437 <para>As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type
17438 described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts <literal>''</> and not
17439 <literal>\'</> as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string
17440 literals. By default, <literal>\'</> is rejected only when
17441 <varname>client_encoding</> is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK,
17442 GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible.
17443 A new configuration parameter <varname>backslash_quote</> is available to
17444 adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against
17445 CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of
17446 <varname>backslash_quote</> is in part to make it obvious that insecure
17447 clients are insecure.
17450 <listitem><para>Modify <application>libpq</>'s string-escaping routines to be
17451 aware of encoding considerations and
17452 <varname>standard_conforming_strings</></para>
17453 <para>This fixes <application>libpq</>-using applications for the security
17454 issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314, and also future-proofs
17455 them against the planned changeover to SQL-standard string literal syntax.
17456 Applications that use multiple <productname>PostgreSQL</> connections
17457 concurrently should migrate to <function>PQescapeStringConn()</> and
17458 <function>PQescapeByteaConn()</> to ensure that escaping is done correctly
17459 for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that
17460 do string escaping <quote>by hand</> should be modified to rely on library
17464 <listitem><para>Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions</para>
17465 <para><function>win1251_to_iso</>, <function>alt_to_iso</>,
17466 <function>euc_tw_to_big5</>, <function>euc_tw_to_mic</>,
17467 <function>mic_to_euc_tw</> were all broken to varying
17471 <listitem><para>Clean up stray remaining uses of <literal>\'</> in strings
17472 (Bruce, Jan)</para></listitem>
17474 <listitem><para>Fix bug that sometimes caused OR'd index scans to
17475 miss rows they should have returned</para></listitem>
17477 <listitem><para>Fix WAL replay for case where a btree index has been
17478 truncated</para></listitem>
17480 <listitem><para>Fix <literal>SIMILAR TO</> for patterns involving
17481 <literal>|</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
17483 <listitem><para>Fix <command>SELECT INTO</> and <command>CREATE TABLE AS</> to
17484 create tables in the default tablespace, not the base directory (Kris
17485 Jurka)</para></listitem>
17487 <listitem><para>Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael
17488 Fuhr)</para></listitem>
17490 <listitem><para>Fix for Bonjour on Intel Macs (Ashley Clark)</para></listitem>
17492 <listitem><para>Fix various minor memory leaks</para></listitem>
17494 <listitem><para>Fix problem with password prompting on some Win32 systems
17495 (Robert Kinberg)</para></listitem>
17501 <sect1 id="release-8-0-7">
17502 <title>Release 8.0.7</title>
17505 <title>Release date</title>
17506 <simpara>2006-02-14</simpara>
17510 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.6.
17511 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17512 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17516 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.7</title>
17519 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17520 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see the release
17526 <title>Changes</title>
17530 <listitem><para>Fix potential crash in <command>SET
17531 SESSION AUTHORIZATION</> (CVE-2006-0553)</para>
17532 <para>An unprivileged user could crash the server process, resulting in
17533 momentary denial of service to other users, if the server has been compiled
17534 with Asserts enabled (which is not the default).
17535 Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.
17538 <listitem><para>Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted
17540 <para>Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command
17541 could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug
17542 created in 8.0.4, 7.4.9, and 7.3.11 releases.
17545 <listitem><para>Fix race condition that could lead to <quote>file already
17546 exists</> errors during pg_clog and pg_subtrans file creation
17547 (Tom)</para></listitem>
17549 <listitem><para>Fix cases that could lead to crashes if a cache-invalidation
17550 message arrives at just the wrong time (Tom)</para></listitem>
17552 <listitem><para>Properly check <literal>DOMAIN</> constraints for
17553 <literal>UNKNOWN</> parameters in prepared statements
17554 (Neil)</para></listitem>
17556 <listitem><para>Ensure <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> will process
17557 <literal>FOREIGN KEY</>, <literal>UNIQUE</>, and <literal>PRIMARY KEY</>
17558 constraints in the proper order (Nakano Yoshihisa)</para></listitem>
17560 <listitem><para>Fixes to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema
17561 references to custom operators or operator classes (Tom)</para></listitem>
17563 <listitem><para>Allow <application>pg_restore</> to continue properly after a
17564 <command>COPY</> failure; formerly it tried to treat the remaining
17565 <command>COPY</> data as SQL commands (Stephen Frost)</para></listitem>
17567 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_ctl</> <literal>unregister</> crash
17568 when the data directory is not specified (Magnus)</para></listitem>
17570 <listitem><para>Fix <application>ecpg</> crash on AMD64 and PPC
17571 (Neil)</para></listitem>
17573 <listitem><para>Recover properly if error occurs during argument passing
17574 in <application>PL/python</> (Neil)</para></listitem>
17576 <listitem><para>Fix <application>PL/perl</>'s handling of locales on
17577 Win32 to match the backend (Andrew)</para></listitem>
17579 <listitem><para>Fix crash when <literal>log_min_messages</> is set to
17580 <literal>DEBUG3</> or above in <filename>postgresql.conf</> on Win32
17581 (Bruce)</para></listitem>
17583 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pgxs</> <literal>-L</> library path
17584 specification for Win32, Cygwin, OS X, AIX (Bruce)</para></listitem>
17586 <listitem><para>Check that SID is enabled while checking for Win32 admin
17587 privileges (Magnus)</para></listitem>
17589 <listitem><para>Properly reject out-of-range date inputs (Kris
17590 Jurka)</para></listitem>
17592 <listitem><para>Portability fix for testing presence of <function>finite</>
17593 and <function>isinf</> during configure (Tom)</para></listitem>
17600 <sect1 id="release-8-0-6">
17601 <title>Release 8.0.6</title>
17604 <title>Release date</title>
17605 <simpara>2006-01-09</simpara>
17609 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.5.
17610 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17611 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17615 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.6</title>
17618 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17619 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.3, see the release
17621 Also, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
17622 columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or
17623 <application>plperl</> issues described below.
17628 <title>Changes</title>
17632 <listitem><para>Fix Windows code so that postmaster will continue rather
17633 than exit if there is no more room in ShmemBackendArray (Magnus)</para>
17634 <para>The previous behavior could lead to a denial-of-service situation if too
17635 many connection requests arrive close together. This applies
17636 <emphasis>only</> to the Windows port.</para></listitem>
17638 <listitem><para>Fix bug introduced in 8.0 that could allow ReadBuffer
17639 to return an already-used page as new, potentially causing loss of
17640 recently-committed data (Tom)</para></listitem>
17642 <listitem><para>Fix for protocol-level Describe messages issued
17643 outside a transaction or in a failed transaction (Tom)</para></listitem>
17645 <listitem><para>Fix character string comparison for locales that consider
17646 different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)</para>
17647 <para>This might require <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
17648 textual columns.</para></listitem>
17650 <listitem><para>Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup
17651 to ensure that <application>plperl</> won't change the locale later</para>
17652 <para>This fixes a problem that occurred if the <application>postmaster</> was
17653 started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what
17654 <application>initdb</> had been told. Under these conditions, any use of
17655 <application>plperl</> was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need
17656 <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
17657 textual columns if this has happened to you.</para></listitem>
17659 <listitem><para>Allow more flexible relocation of installation
17660 directories (Tom)</para>
17661 <para>Previous releases supported relocation only if all installation
17662 directory paths were the same except for the last component.</para></listitem>
17664 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression
17665 handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)
17668 <listitem><para>Various fixes for functions returning <literal>RECORD</>s
17669 (Tom) </para></listitem>
17671 <listitem><para>Fix bug in <filename>/contrib/pgcrypto</> gen_salt,
17672 which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and
17673 XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)</para>
17674 <para>Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.</para></listitem>
17676 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to throw an error,
17677 rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from
17678 what's actually returned by the query (Joe)</para></listitem>
17685 <sect1 id="release-8-0-5">
17686 <title>Release 8.0.5</title>
17689 <title>Release date</title>
17690 <simpara>2005-12-12</simpara>
17694 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.4.
17695 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17696 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17700 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.5</title>
17703 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17704 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.3, see the release
17710 <title>Changes</title>
17714 <listitem><para>Fix race condition in transaction log management</para>
17715 <para>There was a narrow window in which an I/O operation could be initiated
17716 for the wrong page, leading to an Assert failure or data
17720 <listitem><para>Fix bgwriter problems after recovering from errors
17723 The background writer was found to leak buffer pins after write errors.
17724 While not fatal in itself, this might lead to mysterious blockages of
17725 later VACUUM commands.
17729 <listitem><para>Prevent failure if client sends Bind protocol message
17730 when current transaction is already aborted</para></listitem>
17732 <listitem><para><filename>/contrib/ltree</> fixes (Teodor)</para></listitem>
17734 <listitem><para>AIX and HPUX compile fixes (Tom)</para></listitem>
17736 <listitem><para>Retry file reads and writes after Windows
17737 NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES error (Qingqing Zhou)</para></listitem>
17739 <listitem><para>Fix intermittent failure when <varname>log_line_prefix</>
17740 includes <literal>%i</></para></listitem>
17742 <listitem><para>Fix <application>psql</> performance issue with long scripts
17743 on Windows (Merlin Moncure)</para></listitem>
17745 <listitem><para>Fix missing updates of <filename>pg_group</> flat
17746 file</para></listitem>
17748 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding planning error for outer joins</para>
17749 <para>This bug sometimes caused a bogus error <quote>RIGHT JOIN is
17750 only supported with merge-joinable join conditions</>.</para></listitem>
17752 <listitem><para>Postpone timezone initialization until after
17753 <filename>postmaster.pid</> is created</para>
17754 <para>This avoids confusing startup scripts that expect the pid file to appear
17755 quickly.</para></listitem>
17757 <listitem><para>Prevent core dump in <application>pg_autovacuum</> when a
17758 table has been dropped</para></listitem>
17760 <listitem><para>Fix problems with whole-row references (<literal>foo.*</>)
17761 to subquery results</para></listitem>
17767 <sect1 id="release-8-0-4">
17768 <title>Release 8.0.4</title>
17771 <title>Release date</title>
17772 <simpara>2005-10-04</simpara>
17776 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.3.
17777 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17778 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17782 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.4</title>
17785 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17786 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.3, see the release
17792 <title>Changes</title>
17795 <listitem><para>Fix error that allowed <command>VACUUM</> to remove
17796 <literal>ctid</> chains too soon, and add more checking in code that follows
17797 <literal>ctid</> links</para>
17798 <para>This fixes a long-standing problem that could cause crashes in very rare
17799 circumstances.</para></listitem>
17800 <listitem><para>Fix <type>CHAR()</> to properly pad spaces to the specified
17801 length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)</para>
17802 <para>In prior releases, the padding of <type>CHAR()</> was incorrect
17803 because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without
17804 considering how many characters were stored.</para></listitem>
17805 <listitem><para>Force a checkpoint before committing <command>CREATE
17807 <para>This should fix recent reports of <quote>index is not a btree</>
17808 failures when a crash occurs shortly after <command>CREATE
17809 DATABASE</>.</para></listitem>
17810 <listitem><para>Fix the sense of the test for read-only transaction
17811 in <command>COPY</></para>
17812 <para>The code formerly prohibited <command>COPY TO</>, where it should
17813 prohibit <command>COPY FROM</>.
17815 <listitem><para>Handle consecutive embedded newlines in <command>COPY</>
17816 CSV-mode input</para></listitem>
17817 <listitem><para>Fix <function>date_trunc(week)</> for dates near year
17818 end</para></listitem>
17819 <listitem><para>Fix planning problem with outer-join ON clauses that reference
17820 only the inner-side relation</para></listitem>
17821 <listitem><para>Further fixes for <literal>x FULL JOIN y ON true</> corner
17822 cases</para></listitem>
17823 <listitem><para>Fix overenthusiastic optimization of <literal>x IN (SELECT
17824 DISTINCT ...)</> and related cases</para></listitem>
17825 <listitem><para>Fix mis-planning of queries with small <literal>LIMIT</>
17826 values due to poorly thought out <quote>fuzzy</> cost
17827 comparison</para></listitem>
17828 <listitem><para>Make <function>array_in</> and <function>array_recv</> more
17829 paranoid about validating their OID parameter</para></listitem>
17830 <listitem><para>Fix missing rows in queries like <literal>UPDATE a=... WHERE
17831 a...</> with GiST index on column <literal>a</></para></listitem>
17832 <listitem><para>Improve robustness of datetime parsing</para></listitem>
17833 <listitem><para>Improve checking for partially-written WAL
17834 pages</para></listitem>
17835 <listitem><para>Improve robustness of signal handling when SSL is
17836 enabled</para></listitem>
17837 <listitem><para>Improve MIPS and M68K spinlock code</para></listitem>
17838 <listitem><para>Don't try to open more than <literal>max_files_per_process</>
17839 files during postmaster startup</para></listitem>
17840 <listitem><para>Various memory leakage fixes</para></listitem>
17841 <listitem><para>Various portability improvements</para></listitem>
17842 <listitem><para>Update timezone data files</para></listitem>
17843 <listitem><para>Improve handling of DLL load failures on Windows</para></listitem>
17844 <listitem><para>Improve random-number generation on Windows</para></listitem>
17845 <listitem><para>Make <literal>psql -f filename</> return a nonzero exit code
17846 when opening the file fails</para></listitem>
17847 <listitem><para>Change <application>pg_dump</> to handle inherited check
17848 constraints more reliably</para></listitem>
17849 <listitem><para>Fix password prompting in <application>pg_restore</> on
17850 Windows</para></listitem>
17851 <listitem><para>Fix PL/PgSQL to handle <literal>var := var</> correctly when
17852 the variable is of pass-by-reference type</para></listitem>
17853 <listitem><para>Fix PL/Perl <literal>%_SHARED</> so it's actually
17854 shared</para></listitem>
17855 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>contrib/pg_autovacuum</> to allow sleep
17856 intervals over 2000 sec</para></listitem>
17857 <listitem><para>Update <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> to use current Snowball
17858 code</para></listitem>
17864 <sect1 id="release-8-0-3">
17865 <title>Release 8.0.3</title>
17868 <title>Release date</title>
17869 <simpara>2005-05-09</simpara>
17873 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.2, including several
17874 security-related issues.
17875 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17876 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17880 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.3</title>
17883 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However,
17884 it is one possible way of handling two significant security problems
17885 that have been found in the initial contents of 8.0.X system
17886 catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 8.0.3's initdb will
17887 automatically correct these problems.
17891 The larger security problem is that the built-in character set encoding
17892 conversion functions can be invoked from SQL commands by unprivileged
17893 users, but the functions were not designed for such use and are not
17894 secure against malicious choices of arguments. The fix involves changing
17895 the declared parameter list of these functions so that they can no longer
17896 be invoked from SQL commands. (This does not affect their normal use
17897 by the encoding conversion machinery.)
17901 The lesser problem is that the <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> module
17902 creates several functions that are improperly declared to return
17903 <type>internal</> when they do not accept <type>internal</> arguments.
17904 This breaks type safety for all functions using <type>internal</>
17909 It is strongly recommended that all installations repair these errors,
17910 either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedure given
17911 below. The errors at least allow unprivileged database users to crash
17912 their server process, and might allow unprivileged users to gain the
17913 privileges of a database superuser.
17917 If you wish not to do an initdb, perform the same manual repair
17918 procedures shown in the <link linkend="release-7-4-8">7.4.8 release
17924 <title>Changes</title>
17927 <listitem><para>Change encoding function signature to prevent
17928 misuse</para></listitem>
17929 <listitem><para>Change <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> to avoid unsafe use of
17930 <type>INTERNAL</> function results</para></listitem>
17931 <listitem><para>Guard against incorrect second parameter to
17932 <function>record_out</></para></listitem>
17933 <listitem><para>Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be
17934 seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner
17935 than for other purposes</para>
17936 <para>This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent
17937 data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.</para></listitem>
17938 <listitem><para>Repair race condition between relation extension and
17940 <para>This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of
17941 freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability.
17942 There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.
17944 <listitem><para>Fix comparisons of <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para>
17946 The comparison code was wrong in the case where the
17947 <literal>--enable-integer-datetimes</> configuration switch had been used.
17948 NOTE: if you have an index on a <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> column,
17949 it will need to be <command>REINDEX</>ed after installing this update, because
17950 the fix corrects the sort order of column values.
17952 <listitem><para>Fix <function>EXTRACT(EPOCH)</> for
17953 <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para></listitem>
17954 <listitem><para>Fix mis-display of negative fractional seconds in
17955 <type>INTERVAL</> values</para>
17957 This error only occurred when the
17958 <literal>--enable-integer-datetimes</> configuration switch had been used.
17960 <listitem><para>Fix pg_dump to dump trigger names containing <literal>%</>
17961 correctly (Neil)</para></listitem>
17962 <listitem><para>Still more 64-bit fixes for
17963 <filename>contrib/intagg</></para></listitem>
17964 <listitem><para>Prevent incorrect optimization of functions returning
17965 <type>RECORD</></para></listitem>
17966 <listitem><para>Prevent crash on <literal>COALESCE(NULL,NULL)</></para></listitem>
17967 <listitem><para>Fix Borland makefile for libpq</para></listitem>
17968 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>contrib/btree_gist</> for <type>timetz</> type
17969 (Teodor)</para></listitem>
17970 <listitem><para>Make <command>pg_ctl</> check the PID found in
17971 <filename>postmaster.pid</> to see if it is still a live
17972 process</para></listitem>
17973 <listitem><para>Fix <command>pg_dump</>/<command>pg_restore</> problems caused
17974 by addition of dump timestamps</para></listitem>
17975 <listitem><para>Fix interaction between materializing holdable cursors and
17976 firing deferred triggers during transaction commit</para></listitem>
17977 <listitem><para>Fix memory leak in SQL functions returning pass-by-reference
17978 data types</para></listitem>
17984 <sect1 id="release-8-0-2">
17985 <title>Release 8.0.2</title>
17988 <title>Release date</title>
17989 <simpara>2005-04-07</simpara>
17993 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.1.
17994 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
17995 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
17999 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.2</title>
18002 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.*.
18003 This release updates the major version number of the
18004 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> libraries, so it might be
18005 necessary to re-link some user applications if they cannot
18006 find the properly-numbered shared library.
18011 <title>Changes</title>
18014 <listitem><para>Increment the major version number of all interface
18015 libraries (Bruce)</para>
18017 This should have been done in 8.0.0. It is required so 7.4.X versions
18018 of PostgreSQL client applications, like <application>psql</>,
18019 can be used on the same machine as 8.0.X applications. This might require
18020 re-linking user applications that use these libraries.
18022 <listitem><para>Add Windows-only <varname>wal_sync_method</> setting of
18023 <option>fsync_writethrough</> (Magnus, Bruce)</para>
18025 This setting causes <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> to write through
18026 any disk-drive write cache when writing to WAL.
18027 This behavior was formerly called <option>fsync</>, but was
18028 renamed because it acts quite differently from <option>fsync</> on other
18032 <listitem><para>Enable the <varname>wal_sync_method</> setting of
18033 <option>open_datasync</> on Windows, and make it the default for that
18034 platform (Magnus, Bruce)</para>
18036 Because the default is no longer <option>fsync_writethrough</>,
18037 data loss is possible during a power failure if the disk drive has
18038 write caching enabled. To turn off the write cache on Windows,
18039 from the <application>Device Manager</>, choose the drive properties,
18040 then <literal>Policies</>.
18043 <listitem><para>New cache management algorithm <acronym>2Q</> replaces
18044 <acronym>ARC</> (Tom)</para>
18046 This was done to avoid a pending US patent on <acronym>ARC</>. The
18047 <acronym>2Q</> code might be a few percentage points slower than
18048 <acronym>ARC</> for some work loads. A better cache management algorithm
18049 will appear in 8.1.
18051 <listitem><para>Planner adjustments to improve behavior on freshly-created
18052 tables (Tom)</para></listitem>
18053 <listitem><para>Allow plpgsql to assign to an element of an array that is
18054 initially <literal>NULL</> (Tom)</para>
18056 Formerly the array would remain <literal>NULL</>, but now it becomes a
18057 single-element array. The main SQL engine was changed to handle
18058 <command>UPDATE</> of a null array value this way in 8.0, but the similar
18059 case in plpgsql was overlooked.
18062 <listitem><para>Convert <literal>\r\n</> and <literal>\r</> to <literal>\n</>
18063 in plpython function bodies (Michael Fuhr)</para>
18065 This prevents syntax errors when plpython code is written on a Windows or
18069 <listitem><para>Allow SPI cursors to handle utility commands that return rows,
18070 such as <command>EXPLAIN</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
18071 <listitem><para>Fix <command>CLUSTER</> failure after <command>ALTER TABLE
18072 SET WITHOUT OIDS</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
18073 <listitem><para>Reduce memory usage of <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN</>
18074 (Neil)</para></listitem>
18075 <listitem><para>Fix <command>ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
18076 <listitem><para>Document the Windows-only <literal>register</> and
18077 <literal>unregister</> options of <application>pg_ctl</> (Magnus)</para></listitem>
18078 <listitem><para>Ensure operations done during backend shutdown are counted by
18079 statistics collector</para>
18081 This is expected to resolve reports of <application>pg_autovacuum</>
18082 not vacuuming the system catalogs often enough — it was not being
18083 told about catalog deletions caused by temporary table removal during
18086 <listitem><para>Change the Windows default for configuration parameter
18087 <varname>log_destination</> to <option>eventlog</> (Magnus)</para>
18089 By default, a server running on Windows will now send log output to the
18090 Windows event logger rather than standard error.
18092 <listitem><para>Make Kerberos authentication work on Windows (Magnus)</para></listitem>
18093 <listitem><para>Allow <command>ALTER DATABASE RENAME</> by superusers
18094 who aren't flagged as having CREATEDB privilege (Tom)</para></listitem>
18095 <listitem><para>Modify WAL log entries for <command>CREATE</> and
18096 <command>DROP DATABASE</> to not specify absolute paths (Tom)</para>
18097 <para>This allows point-in-time recovery on a different machine with possibly
18098 different database location. Note that <command>CREATE TABLESPACE</> still
18099 poses a hazard in such situations.
18101 <listitem><para>Fix crash from a backend exiting with an open transaction
18102 that created a table and opened a cursor on it (Tom)</para></listitem>
18103 <listitem><para>Fix <function>array_map()</> so it can call PL functions
18104 (Tom)</para></listitem>
18105 <listitem><para>Several <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> and
18106 <filename>contrib/btree_gist</> fixes (Teodor)
18108 <listitem><para>Fix crash of some <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</>
18109 functions on some platforms (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
18110 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>contrib/intagg</> for 64-bit platforms
18111 (Tom)</para></listitem>
18112 <listitem><para>Fix ecpg bugs in parsing of <command>CREATE</> statement
18113 (Michael)</para></listitem>
18114 <listitem><para>Work around gcc bug on powerpc and amd64 causing problems in
18115 ecpg (Christof Petig)</para></listitem>
18116 <listitem><para>Do not use locale-aware versions of <function>upper()</>,
18117 <function>lower()</>, and <function>initcap()</> when the locale is
18118 <literal>C</> (Bruce)</para>
18120 This allows these functions to work on platforms that generate errors
18121 for non-7-bit data when the locale is <literal>C</>.
18123 <listitem><para>Fix <function>quote_ident()</> to quote names that match keywords (Tom)</para></listitem>
18124 <listitem><para>Fix <function>to_date()</> to behave reasonably when
18125 <literal>CC</> and <literal>YY</> fields are both used (Karel)</para></listitem>
18126 <listitem><para>Prevent <function>to_char(interval)</> from failing
18127 when given a zero-month interval (Tom)</para></listitem>
18128 <listitem><para>Fix wrong week returned by <function>date_trunc('week')</>
18131 <function>date_trunc('week')</>
18132 returned the wrong year for the first few days of January in some years.
18134 <listitem><para>Use the correct default mask length for class <literal>D</>
18135 addresses in <type>INET</> data types (Tom)</para></listitem>
18141 <sect1 id="release-8-0-1">
18142 <title>Release 8.0.1</title>
18145 <title>Release date</title>
18146 <simpara>2005-01-31</simpara>
18150 This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.0, including several
18151 security-related issues.
18152 For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see
18153 <xref linkend="release-8-0">.
18157 <title>Migration to Version 8.0.1</title>
18160 A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.0.
18165 <title>Changes</title>
18168 <listitem><para>Disallow <command>LOAD</> to non-superusers</para>
18170 On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a
18171 shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen),
18172 <command>LOAD</> can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code.
18173 Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.</para></listitem>
18174 <listitem><para>Check that creator of an aggregate function has the right to
18175 execute the specified transition functions</para>
18177 This oversight made it possible to bypass denial of EXECUTE
18178 permission on a function.</para></listitem>
18179 <listitem><para>Fix security and 64-bit issues in
18180 contrib/intagg</para></listitem>
18181 <listitem><para>Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris
18182 Jurka)</para></listitem>
18183 <listitem><para>Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too
18184 many parameters (Neil)</para></listitem>
18185 <listitem><para>Make <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN</> enforce domain
18186 constraints in all cases</para></listitem>
18187 <listitem><para>Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins</para>
18189 The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the
18190 left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but
18191 in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.
18193 <listitem><para>Improve planning of grouped aggregate queries</para></listitem>
18194 <listitem><para><command>ROLLBACK TO <replaceable>savepoint</></command>
18195 closes cursors created since the savepoint</para></listitem>
18196 <listitem><para>Fix inadequate backend stack size on Windows</para></listitem>
18197 <listitem><para>Avoid SHGetSpecialFolderPath() on Windows
18198 (Magnus)</para></listitem>
18199 <listitem><para>Fix some problems in running pg_autovacuum as a Windows
18200 service (Dave Page)</para></listitem>
18201 <listitem><para>Multiple minor bug fixes in
18202 pg_dump/pg_restore</para></listitem>
18203 <listitem><para>Fix ecpg segfault with named structs used in
18204 typedefs (Michael)</para></listitem>
18210 <sect1 id="release-8-0">
18211 <title>Release 8.0</title>
18214 <title>Release date</title>
18215 <simpara>2005-01-19</simpara>
18219 <title>Overview</title>
18222 Major changes in this release:
18228 Microsoft Windows Native Server
18233 This is the first <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> release
18234 to run natively on <trademark class="registered">Microsoft Windows</> as
18235 a server. It can run as a <productname>Windows</> service. This
18236 release supports NT-based Windows releases like
18237 <productname>Windows 2000 SP4</>, <productname>Windows XP</>, and
18238 <productname>Windows 2003</>. Older releases like
18239 <productname>Windows 95</>, <productname>Windows 98</>, and
18240 <productname>Windows ME</> are not supported because these operating
18241 systems do not have the infrastructure to support
18242 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>. A separate installer
18243 project has been created to ease installation on
18244 <productname>Windows</> — see <ulink
18245 url="http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/win32/"></ulink>.
18249 Although tested throughout our release cycle, the Windows port
18250 does not have the benefit of years of use in production
18251 environments that <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> has on
18252 Unix platforms. Therefore it should be treated with the same
18253 level of caution as you would a new product.
18257 Previous releases required the Unix emulation toolkit
18258 <productname>Cygwin</> in order to run the server on Windows
18259 operating systems. <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> has
18260 supported native clients on Windows for many years.
18272 Savepoints allow specific parts of a transaction to be aborted
18273 without affecting the remainder of the transaction. Prior
18274 releases had no such capability; there was no way to recover
18275 from a statement failure within a transaction except by
18276 aborting the whole transaction. This feature is valuable for
18277 application writers who require error recovery within a
18278 complex transaction.
18285 Point-In-Time Recovery
18290 In previous releases there was no way to recover from disk
18291 drive failure except to restore from a previous backup or use
18292 a standby replication server. Point-in-time recovery allows
18293 continuous backup of the server. You can recover either to
18294 the point of failure or to some transaction in the past.
18306 Tablespaces allow administrators to select different file systems
18307 for storage of individual tables, indexes, and databases.
18308 This improves performance and control over disk space
18309 usage. Prior releases used <application>initlocation</> and
18310 manual symlink management for such tasks.
18317 Improved Buffer Management, <command>CHECKPOINT</command>,
18318 <command>VACUUM</command>
18323 This release has a more intelligent buffer replacement strategy,
18324 which will make better use of available shared buffers and
18325 improve performance. The performance impact of vacuum and
18326 checkpoints is also lessened.
18333 Change Column Types
18338 A column's data type can now be changed with <command>ALTER
18346 New Perl Server-Side Language
18351 A new version of the <application>plperl</> server-side language now
18352 supports a persistent shared storage area, triggers, returning records
18353 and arrays of records, and SPI calls to access the database.
18360 Comma-separated-value (CSV) support in <command>COPY</command>
18365 <command>COPY</command> can now read and write
18366 comma-separated-value files. It has the flexibility to
18367 interpret nonstandard quoting and separation characters too.
18376 <title>Migration to Version 8.0</title>
18379 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
18380 required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
18385 Observe the following incompatibilities:
18392 In <option>READ COMMITTED</> serialization mode, volatile functions
18393 now see the results of concurrent transactions committed up to the
18394 beginning of each statement within the function, rather than up to the
18395 beginning of the interactive command that called the function.
18401 Functions declared <option>STABLE</> or <option>IMMUTABLE</> always
18402 use the snapshot of the calling query, and therefore do not see the
18403 effects of actions taken after the calling query starts, whether in
18404 their own transaction or other transactions. Such a function must be
18405 read-only, too, meaning that it cannot use any SQL commands other than
18406 <command>SELECT</>.
18412 Nondeferred <option>AFTER</> triggers are now fired immediately
18413 after completion of the triggering query, rather than upon
18414 finishing the current interactive command. This makes a
18415 difference when the triggering query occurred within a function:
18416 the trigger is invoked before the function proceeds to its next
18423 Server configuration parameters <varname>virtual_host</> and
18424 <varname>tcpip_socket</> have been replaced with a more general
18425 parameter <varname>listen_addresses</>. Also, the server now listens on
18426 <literal>localhost</> by default, which eliminates the need for the
18427 <literal>-i</> postmaster switch in many scenarios.
18433 Server configuration parameters <varname>SortMem</> and
18434 <varname>VacuumMem</> have been renamed to <varname>work_mem</>
18435 and <varname>maintenance_work_mem</> to better reflect their
18436 use. The original names are still supported in
18437 <command>SET</command> and <command>SHOW</command>.
18443 Server configuration parameters <varname>log_pid</>,
18444 <varname>log_timestamp</>, and <varname>log_source_port</> have been
18445 replaced with a more general parameter <varname>log_line_prefix</>.
18451 Server configuration parameter <varname>syslog</> has been
18452 replaced with a more logical <varname>log_destination</> variable to
18453 control the log output destination.
18459 Server configuration parameter <varname>log_statement</> has been
18460 changed so it can selectively log just database modification or
18461 data definition statements. Server configuration parameter
18462 <varname>log_duration</> now prints only when <varname>log_statement</>
18469 Server configuration parameter <varname>max_expr_depth</> parameter has
18470 been replaced with <varname>max_stack_depth</> which measures the
18471 physical stack size rather than the expression nesting depth. This
18472 helps prevent session termination due to stack overflow caused by
18473 recursive functions.
18479 The <function>length()</> function no longer counts trailing spaces in
18480 <type>CHAR(n)</> values.
18486 Casting an integer to <type>BIT(N)</> selects the rightmost N bits of the
18487 integer, not the leftmost N bits as before.
18493 Updating an element or slice of a NULL array value now produces
18494 a nonnull array result, namely an array containing
18495 just the assigned-to positions.
18501 Syntax checking of array input values has been tightened up
18502 considerably. Junk that was previously allowed in odd places with
18503 odd results now causes an error. Empty-string element values
18504 must now be written as <literal>""</>, rather than writing nothing.
18505 Also changed behavior with respect to whitespace surrounding
18506 array elements: trailing whitespace is now ignored, for symmetry
18507 with leading whitespace (which has always been ignored).
18513 Overflow in integer arithmetic operations is now detected and
18514 reported as an error.
18520 The arithmetic operators associated with the single-byte
18521 <type>"char"</> data type have been removed.
18527 The <function>extract()</> function (also called
18528 <function>date_part</>) now returns the proper year for BC dates.
18529 It previously returned one less than the correct year. The
18530 function now also returns the proper values for millennium and
18537 <type>CIDR</> values now must have their nonmasked bits be zero.
18538 For example, we no longer allow
18539 <literal>204.248.199.1/31</literal> as a <type>CIDR</> value. Such
18540 values should never have been accepted by
18541 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> and will now be rejected.
18547 <command>EXECUTE</command> now returns a completion tag that
18548 matches the executed statement.
18554 <application>psql</>'s <command>\copy</> command now reads or
18555 writes to the query's <literal>stdin/stdout</>, rather than
18556 <application>psql</>'s <literal>stdin/stdout</>. The previous
18557 behavior can be accessed via new
18558 <option>pstdin</>/<option>pstdout</> parameters.
18564 The JDBC client interface has been removed from the core
18565 distribution, and is now hosted at <ulink url=
18566 "http://jdbc.postgresql.org"></ulink>.
18572 The Tcl client interface has also been removed. There are several
18573 Tcl interfaces now hosted at <ulink url=
18574 "http://gborg.postgresql.org"></ulink>.
18580 The server now uses its own time zone database, rather than the
18581 one supplied by the operating system. This will provide consistent
18582 behavior across all platforms. In most cases, there should be
18583 little noticeable difference in time zone behavior, except that
18584 the time zone names used by <command>SET</>/<command>SHOW</>
18585 <varname>TimeZone</> might be different from what your platform provides.
18591 <application>Configure</>'s threading option no longer requires
18592 users to run tests or edit configuration files; threading options
18593 are now detected automatically.
18599 Now that tablespaces have been implemented,
18600 <application>initlocation</> has been removed.
18606 The API for user-defined GiST indexes has been changed. The
18607 Union and PickSplit methods are now passed a pointer to a
18608 special <structname>GistEntryVector</structname> structure,
18609 rather than a <type>bytea</type>.
18617 <title>Deprecated Features</title>
18620 Some aspects of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>'s behavior
18621 have been determined to be suboptimal. For the sake of backward
18622 compatibility these have not been removed in 8.0, but they are
18623 considered deprecated and will be removed in the next major
18630 The 8.1 release will remove the <function>to_char()</> function
18637 The server now warns of empty strings passed to
18638 <type>oid</type>/<type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type> data
18639 types, but continues to interpret them as zeroes as before.
18640 In the next major release, empty strings will be considered
18641 invalid input for these data types.
18647 By default, tables in <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.0
18648 and earlier are created with <type>OID</>s. In the next release,
18649 this will <emphasis>not</emphasis> be the case: to create a table
18650 that contains <type>OID</>s, the <option>WITH OIDS</> clause must
18651 be specified or the <varname>default_with_oids</varname>
18652 configuration parameter must be set. Users are encouraged to
18653 explicitly specify <option>WITH OIDS</> if their tables
18654 require OIDs for compatibility with future releases of
18655 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
18663 <title>Changes</title>
18666 Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between
18667 release 8.0 and the previous major release.
18671 <title>Performance Improvements</title>
18676 Support cross-data-type index usage (Tom)
18679 Before this change, many queries would not use an index if the data
18680 types did not match exactly. This improvement makes index usage more
18681 intuitive and consistent.
18687 New buffer replacement strategy that improves caching (Jan)
18690 Prior releases used a least-recently-used (LRU) cache to keep
18691 recently referenced pages in memory. The LRU algorithm
18692 did not consider the number of times a specific cache entry was
18693 accessed, so large table scans could force out useful cache pages.
18694 The new cache algorithm uses four separate lists to track most
18695 recently used and most frequently used cache pages and dynamically
18696 optimize their replacement based on the work load. This should
18697 lead to much more efficient use of the shared buffer cache.
18698 Administrators who have tested shared buffer sizes in the past
18699 should retest with this new cache replacement policy.
18705 Add subprocess to write dirty buffers periodically to reduce
18706 checkpoint writes (Jan)
18709 In previous releases, the checkpoint process, which runs every few
18710 minutes, would write all dirty buffers to the operating system's
18711 buffer cache then flush all dirty operating system buffers to
18712 disk. This resulted in a periodic spike in disk usage that often
18713 hurt performance. The new code uses a background writer to trickle
18714 disk writes at a steady pace so checkpoints have far fewer dirty
18715 pages to write to disk. Also, the new code does not issue a global
18716 <function>sync()</> call, but instead <function>fsync()</>s just
18717 the files written since the last checkpoint. This should improve
18718 performance and minimize degradation during checkpoints.
18724 Add ability to prolong vacuum to reduce performance impact (Jan)
18727 On busy systems, <command>VACUUM</command> performs many I/O
18728 requests which can hurt performance for other users. This
18729 release allows you to slow down <command>VACUUM</command> to
18730 reduce its impact on other users, though this increases the
18731 total duration of <command>VACUUM</command>.
18737 Improve B-tree index performance for duplicate keys (Dmitry Tkach, Tom)
18740 This improves the way indexes are scanned when many duplicate
18741 values exist in the index.
18747 Use dynamically-generated table size estimates while planning (Tom)
18750 Formerly the planner estimated table sizes using the values seen
18751 by the last <command>VACUUM</command> or <command>ANALYZE</command>,
18752 both as to physical table size (number of pages) and number of rows.
18753 Now, the current physical table size is obtained from the kernel,
18754 and the number of rows is estimated by multiplying the table size
18755 by the row density (rows per page) seen by the last
18756 <command>VACUUM</command> or <command>ANALYZE</command>. This should
18757 produce more reliable estimates in cases where the table size has
18758 changed significantly since the last housekeeping command.
18764 Improved index usage with <literal>OR</> clauses (Tom)
18767 This allows the optimizer to use indexes in statements with many OR
18768 clauses that would not have been indexed in the past. It can also use
18769 multi-column indexes where the first column is specified and the second
18770 column is part of an <literal>OR</> clause.
18776 Improve matching of partial index clauses (Tom)
18779 The server is now smarter about using partial indexes in queries
18780 involving complex <option>WHERE</> clauses.
18786 Improve performance of the GEQO optimizer (Tom)
18789 The GEQO optimizer is used to plan queries involving many tables (by
18790 default, twelve or more). This release speeds up the way queries are
18791 analyzed to decrease time spent in optimization.
18797 Miscellaneous optimizer improvements
18800 There is not room here to list all the minor improvements made, but
18801 numerous special cases work better than in prior releases.
18807 Improve lookup speed for C functions (Tom)
18810 This release uses a hash table to lookup information for dynamically
18811 loaded C functions. This improves their speed so they perform nearly as
18812 quickly as functions that are built into the server executable.
18818 Add type-specific <command>ANALYZE</command> statistics
18819 capability (Mark Cave-Ayland)
18822 This feature allows more flexibility in generating statistics
18823 for nonstandard data types.
18829 <command>ANALYZE</command> now collects statistics for
18830 expression indexes (Tom)
18833 Expression indexes (also called functional indexes) allow users to
18834 index not just columns but the results of expressions and function
18835 calls. With this release, the optimizer can gather and use statistics
18836 about the contents of expression indexes. This will greatly improve
18837 the quality of planning for queries in which an expression index is
18844 New two-stage sampling method for <command>ANALYZE</command>
18848 This gives better statistics when the density of valid rows is very
18849 different in different regions of a table.
18855 Speed up <command>TRUNCATE</command> (Tom)
18858 This buys back some of the performance loss observed in 7.4, while still
18859 keeping <command>TRUNCATE</command> transaction-safe.
18868 <title>Server Changes</title>
18873 Add WAL file archiving and point-in-time recovery (Simon Riggs)
18879 Add tablespaces so admins can control disk layout (Gavin)
18885 Add a built-in log rotation program (Andreas Pflug)
18888 It is now possible to log server messages conveniently without
18889 relying on either <application>syslog</> or an external log
18896 Add new read-only server configuration parameters to show server
18897 compile-time settings: <varname>block_size</>,
18898 <varname>integer_datetimes</>, <varname>max_function_args</>,
18899 <varname>max_identifier_length</>, <varname>max_index_keys</> (Joe)
18905 Make quoting of <literal>sameuser</>, <literal>samegroup</>, and
18906 <literal>all</> remove special meaning of these terms in
18907 <filename>pg_hba.conf</> (Andrew)
18913 Use clearer IPv6 name <literal>::1/128</> for
18914 <literal>localhost</> in default <filename>pg_hba.conf</> (Andrew)
18920 Use CIDR format in <filename>pg_hba.conf</> examples (Andrew)
18926 Rename server configuration parameters <varname>SortMem</> and
18927 <varname>VacuumMem</> to <varname>work_mem</> and
18928 <varname>maintenance_work_mem</> (Old names still supported) (Tom)
18931 This change was made to clarify that bulk operations such as index and
18932 foreign key creation use <varname>maintenance_work_mem</>, while
18933 <varname>work_mem</> is for workspaces used during query execution.
18939 Allow logging of session disconnections using server configuration
18940 <varname>log_disconnections</> (Andrew)
18946 Add new server configuration parameter <varname>log_line_prefix</> to
18947 allow control of information emitted in each log line (Andrew)
18950 Available information includes user name, database name, remote IP
18951 address, and session start time.
18957 Remove server configuration parameters <varname>log_pid</>,
18958 <varname>log_timestamp</>, <varname>log_source_port</>; functionality
18959 superseded by <varname>log_line_prefix</> (Andrew)
18965 Replace the <varname>virtual_host</> and <varname>tcpip_socket</>
18966 parameters with a unified <varname>listen_addresses</> parameter
18970 <varname>virtual_host</> could only specify a single IP address to
18971 listen on. <varname>listen_addresses</> allows multiple addresses
18978 Listen on localhost by default, which eliminates the need for the
18979 <option>-i</> postmaster switch in many scenarios (Andrew)
18982 Listening on localhost (<literal>127.0.0.1</>) opens no new
18983 security holes but allows configurations like Windows and JDBC,
18984 which do not support local sockets, to work without special
18991 Remove <varname>syslog</> server configuration parameter, and add more
18992 logical <varname>log_destination</> variable to control log output
18999 Change server configuration parameter <varname>log_statement</> to take
19000 values <varname>all</>, <varname>mod</>, <varname>ddl</>, or
19001 <varname>none</> to select which queries are logged (Bruce)
19004 This allows administrators to log only data definition changes or
19005 only data modification statements.
19011 Some logging-related configuration parameters could formerly be adjusted
19012 by ordinary users, but only in the <quote>more verbose</> direction.
19013 They are now treated more strictly: only superusers can set them.
19014 However, a superuser can use <command>ALTER USER</> to provide per-user
19015 settings of these values for non-superusers. Also, it is now possible
19016 for superusers to set values of superuser-only configuration parameters
19017 via <literal>PGOPTIONS</>.
19023 Allow configuration files to be placed outside the data directory (mlw)
19026 By default, configuration files are kept in the cluster's top directory.
19027 With this addition, configuration files can be placed outside the
19028 data directory, easing administration.
19034 Plan prepared queries only when first executed so constants can be
19035 used for statistics (Oliver Jowett)
19038 Prepared statements plan queries once and execute them many
19039 times. While prepared queries avoid the overhead of re-planning
19040 on each use, the quality of the plan suffers from not knowing the exact
19041 parameters to be used in the query. In this release, planning of
19042 unnamed prepared statements is delayed until the first execution,
19043 and the actual parameter values of that execution are used as
19044 optimization hints. This allows use of out-of-line parameter passing
19045 without incurring a performance penalty.
19051 Allow <command>DECLARE CURSOR</command> to take parameters
19055 It is now useful to issue <command>DECLARE CURSOR</command> in a
19056 <function>Parse</> message with parameters. The parameter values
19057 sent at <function>Bind</> time will be substituted into the
19058 execution of the cursor's query.
19064 Fix hash joins and aggregates of <type>inet</type> and
19065 <type>cidr</type> data types (Tom)
19068 Release 7.4 handled hashing of mixed <type>inet</type> and
19069 <type>cidr</type> values incorrectly. (This bug did not exist
19070 in prior releases because they wouldn't try to hash either
19077 Make <varname>log_duration</> print only when <varname>log_statement</>
19078 prints the query (Ed L.)
19087 <title>Query Changes</title>
19092 Add savepoints (nested transactions) (Alvaro)
19098 Unsupported isolation levels are now accepted and promoted to the
19099 nearest supported level (Peter)
19102 The SQL specification states that if a database doesn't support a
19103 specific isolation level, it should use the next more restrictive level.
19104 This change complies with that recommendation.
19110 Allow <command>BEGIN WORK</command> to specify transaction
19111 isolation levels like <command>START TRANSACTION</command> does
19118 Fix table permission checking for cases in which rules generate
19119 a query type different from the originally submitted query (Tom)
19125 Implement dollar quoting to simplify single-quote usage (Andrew, Tom,
19129 In previous releases, because single quotes had to be used to
19130 quote a function's body, the use of single quotes inside the
19131 function text required use of two single quotes or other error-prone
19132 notations. With this release we add the ability to use "dollar
19133 quoting" to quote a block of text. The ability to use different
19134 quoting delimiters at different nesting levels greatly simplifies
19135 the task of quoting correctly, especially in complex functions.
19136 Dollar quoting can be used anywhere quoted text is needed.
19142 Make <literal>CASE val WHEN compval1 THEN ...</> evaluate <literal>val</> only once (Tom)
19145 <option>CASE</> no longer evaluates the tested expression multiple
19146 times. This has benefits when the expression is complex or is
19153 Test <option>HAVING</> before computing target list of an
19154 aggregate query (Tom)
19157 Fixes improper failure of cases such as <literal>SELECT SUM(win)/SUM(lose)
19158 ... GROUP BY ... HAVING SUM(lose) > 0</>. This should work but formerly
19159 could fail with divide-by-zero.
19165 Replace <varname>max_expr_depth</> parameter with
19166 <varname>max_stack_depth</> parameter, measured in kilobytes of stack
19170 This gives us a fairly bulletproof defense against crashing due to
19171 runaway recursive functions. Instead of measuring the depth of expression
19172 nesting, we now directly measure the size of the execution stack.
19178 Allow arbitrary row expressions (Tom)
19181 This release allows SQL expressions to contain arbitrary composite
19182 types, that is, row values. It also allows functions to more easily
19183 take rows as arguments and return row values.
19189 Allow <option>LIKE</>/<option>ILIKE</> to be used as the operator
19190 in row and subselect comparisons (Fabien Coelho)
19196 Avoid locale-specific case conversion of basic ASCII letters in
19197 identifiers and keywords (Tom)
19200 This solves the <quote>Turkish problem</> with mangling of words
19201 containing <literal>I</> and <literal>i</>. Folding of characters
19202 outside the 7-bit-ASCII set is still locale-aware.
19208 Improve syntax error reporting (Fabien, Tom)
19211 Syntax error reports are more useful than before.
19217 Change <command>EXECUTE</command> to return a completion tag
19218 matching the executed statement (Kris Jurka)
19221 Previous releases return an <command>EXECUTE</command> tag for
19222 any <command>EXECUTE</command> call. In this release, the tag
19223 returned will reflect the command executed.
19229 Avoid emitting <option>NATURAL CROSS JOIN</> in rule listings (Tom)
19232 Such a clause makes no logical sense, but in some cases the rule
19233 decompiler formerly produced this syntax.
19242 <title>Object Manipulation Changes</title>
19247 Add <command>COMMENT ON</> for casts, conversions, languages,
19248 operator classes, and large objects (Christopher)
19254 Add new server configuration parameter <varname>default_with_oids</> to
19255 control whether tables are created with <type>OID</>s by default (Neil)
19258 This allows administrators to control whether <command>CREATE
19259 TABLE</command> commands create tables with or without <type>OID</>
19260 columns by default. (Note: the current factory default setting for
19261 <varname>default_with_oids</> is <literal>TRUE</>, but the default
19262 will become <literal>FALSE</> in future releases.)
19268 Add <option>WITH</> / <option>WITHOUT OIDS</> clause to
19269 <command>CREATE TABLE AS</command> (Neil)
19275 Allow <command>ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN</> to drop an <type>OID</>
19276 column (<command>ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS</> still works)
19283 Allow composite types as table columns (Tom)
19289 Allow <command>ALTER ... ADD COLUMN</> with defaults and
19290 <option>NOT NULL</> constraints; works per SQL spec (Rod)
19293 It is now possible for <option>ADD COLUMN</> to create a column
19294 that is not initially filled with NULLs, but with a specified
19301 Add <command>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> to change column's type (Rod)
19304 It is now possible to alter a column's data type without dropping
19305 and re-adding the column.
19311 Allow multiple <command>ALTER</> actions in a single <command>ALTER
19312 TABLE</command> command (Rod)
19315 This is particularly useful for <command>ALTER</> commands that
19316 rewrite the table (which include <option>ALTER COLUMN TYPE</> and
19317 <option>ADD COLUMN</> with a default). By grouping
19318 <command>ALTER</> commands together, the table need be rewritten
19325 Allow <command>ALTER TABLE</command> to add <type>SERIAL</type>
19329 This falls out from the new capability of specifying defaults for new
19336 Allow changing the owners of aggregates, conversions, databases,
19337 functions, operators, operator classes, schemas, types, and tablespaces
19338 (Christopher, Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
19341 Previously this required modifying the system tables directly.
19347 Allow temporary object creation to be limited to <option>SECURITY
19348 DEFINER</> functions (Sean Chittenden)
19354 Add <option>ALTER TABLE ... SET WITHOUT CLUSTER</> (Christopher)
19357 Prior to this release, there was no way to clear an auto-cluster
19358 specification except to modify the system tables.
19364 Constraint/Index/<type>SERIAL</> names are now
19365 <replaceable>table_column_type</>
19366 with numbers appended to guarantee uniqueness within the schema
19370 The SQL specification states that such names should be unique
19377 Add <function>pg_get_serial_sequence()</> to return a
19378 <type>SERIAL</> column's sequence name (Christopher)
19381 This allows automated scripts to reliably find the <type>SERIAL</>
19388 Warn when primary/foreign key data type mismatch requires costly lookup
19394 New <command>ALTER INDEX</> command to allow moving of indexes
19395 between tablespaces (Gavin)
19401 Make <command>ALTER TABLE OWNER</> change dependent sequence
19402 ownership too (Alvaro)
19412 <title>Utility Command Changes</title>
19417 Allow <command>CREATE SCHEMA</command> to create triggers,
19418 indexes, and sequences (Neil)
19424 Add <option>ALSO</> keyword to <command>CREATE RULE</command> (Fabien
19428 This allows <option>ALSO</> to be added to rule creation to contrast it with
19429 <option>INSTEAD</> rules.
19435 Add <option>NOWAIT</> option to <command>LOCK</command> (Tatsuo)
19438 This allows the <command>LOCK</command> command to fail if it
19439 would have to wait for the requested lock.
19445 Allow <command>COPY</command> to read and write
19446 comma-separated-value (CSV) files (Andrew, Bruce)
19452 Generate error if the <command>COPY</command> delimiter and NULL
19453 string conflict (Bruce)
19459 <command>GRANT</command>/<command>REVOKE</command> behavior
19460 follows the SQL spec more closely
19466 Avoid locking conflict between <command>CREATE INDEX</command>
19467 and <command>CHECKPOINT</command> (Tom)
19470 In 7.3 and 7.4, a long-running B-tree index build could block concurrent
19471 <command>CHECKPOINT</>s from completing, thereby causing WAL bloat because the
19472 WAL log could not be recycled.
19478 Database-wide <command>ANALYZE</command> does not hold locks
19479 across tables (Tom)
19482 This reduces the potential for deadlocks against other backends
19483 that want exclusive locks on tables. To get the benefit of this
19484 change, do not execute database-wide <command>ANALYZE</command>
19485 inside a transaction block (<command>BEGIN</command> block); it
19486 must be able to commit and start a new transaction for each
19493 <command>REINDEX</command> does not exclusively lock the index's
19494 parent table anymore
19497 The index itself is still exclusively locked, but readers of the
19498 table can continue if they are not using the particular index
19505 Erase MD5 user passwords when a user is renamed (Bruce)
19508 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> uses the user name as salt
19509 when encrypting passwords via MD5. When a user's name is changed,
19510 the salt will no longer match the stored MD5 password, so the
19511 stored password becomes useless. In this release a notice is
19512 generated and the password is cleared. A new password must then
19513 be assigned if the user is to be able to log in with a password.
19519 New <application>pg_ctl</> <option>kill</> option for Windows (Andrew)
19522 Windows does not have a <literal>kill</> command to send signals to
19523 backends so this capability was added to <application>pg_ctl</>.
19529 Information schema improvements
19535 Add <option>--pwfile</> option to
19536 <application>initdb</application> so the initial password can be
19537 set by GUI tools (Magnus)
19543 Detect locale/encoding mismatch in
19544 <application>initdb</application> (Peter)
19550 Add <option>register</> command to <application>pg_ctl</> to
19551 register Windows operating system service (Dave Page)
19560 <title>Data Type and Function Changes</title>
19565 More complete support for composite types (row types) (Tom)
19568 Composite values can be used in many places where only scalar values
19575 Reject nonrectangular array values as erroneous (Joe)
19578 Formerly, <function>array_in</> would silently build a
19585 Overflow in integer arithmetic operations is now detected (Tom)
19591 The arithmetic operators associated with the single-byte
19592 <type>"char"</> data type have been removed.
19595 Formerly, the parser would select these operators in many situations
19596 where an <quote>unable to select an operator</> error would be more
19597 appropriate, such as <literal>null * null</>. If you actually want
19598 to do arithmetic on a <type>"char"</> column, you can cast it to
19599 integer explicitly.
19605 Syntax checking of array input values considerably tightened up (Joe)
19608 Junk that was previously allowed in odd places with odd results
19609 now causes an <literal>ERROR</>, for example, non-whitespace
19610 after the closing right brace.
19616 Empty-string array element values must now be written as
19617 <literal>""</>, rather than writing nothing (Joe)
19620 Formerly, both ways of writing an empty-string element value were
19621 allowed, but now a quoted empty string is required. The case where
19622 nothing at all appears will probably be considered to be a NULL
19623 element value in some future release.
19629 Array element trailing whitespace is now ignored (Joe)
19632 Formerly leading whitespace was ignored, but trailing whitespace
19633 between an element value and the delimiter or right brace was
19634 significant. Now trailing whitespace is also ignored.
19640 Emit array values with explicit array bounds when lower bound is not one
19647 Accept <literal>YYYY-monthname-DD</> as a date string (Tom)
19653 Make <function>netmask</> and <function>hostmask</> functions
19654 return maximum-length mask length (Tom)
19660 Change factorial function to return <type>numeric</type> (Gavin)
19663 Returning <type>numeric</type> allows the factorial function to
19664 work for a wider range of input values.
19670 <function>to_char</>/<function>to_date()</> date conversion
19671 improvements (Kurt Roeckx, Fabien Coelho)
19677 Make <function>length()</> disregard trailing spaces in
19678 <type>CHAR(n)</> (Gavin)
19681 This change was made to improve consistency: trailing spaces are
19682 semantically insignificant in <type>CHAR(n)</> data, so they
19683 should not be counted by <function>length()</>.
19689 Warn about empty string being passed to
19690 <type>OID</>/<type>float4</>/<type>float8</> data types (Neil)
19693 8.1 will throw an error instead.
19699 Allow leading or trailing whitespace in
19700 <type>int2</>/<type>int4</>/<type>int8</>/<type>float4</>/<type>float8</>
19708 Better support for IEEE <literal>Infinity</> and <literal>NaN</>
19709 values in <type>float4</type>/<type>float8</type> (Neil)
19712 These should now work on all platforms that support IEEE-compliant
19713 floating point arithmetic.
19719 Add <option>week</> option to <function>date_trunc()</> (Robert Creager)
19725 Fix <function>to_char</function> for <literal>1 BC</>
19726 (previously it returned <literal>1 AD</>) (Bruce)
19732 Fix <function>date_part(year)</> for BC dates (previously it
19733 returned one less than the correct year) (Bruce)
19739 Fix <function>date_part()</> to return the proper millennium and
19740 century (Fabien Coelho)
19743 In previous versions, the century and millennium results had a wrong
19744 number and started in the wrong year, as compared to standard
19745 reckoning of such things.
19751 Add <function>ceiling()</> as an alias for <function>ceil()</>,
19752 and <function>power()</> as an alias for <function>pow()</> for
19753 standards compliance (Neil)
19759 Change <function>ln()</>, <function>log()</>,
19760 <function>power()</>, and <function>sqrt()</> to emit the correct
19761 <literal>SQLSTATE</> error codes for certain error conditions, as
19762 specified by SQL:2003 (Neil)
19768 Add <function>width_bucket()</> function as defined by SQL:2003 (Neil)
19774 Add <function>generate_series()</> functions to simplify working
19775 with numeric sets (Joe)
19781 Fix <function>upper/lower/initcap()</> functions to work with
19782 multibyte encodings (Tom)
19788 Add boolean and bitwise integer <option>AND</>/<option>OR</>
19789 aggregates (Fabien Coelho)
19795 New session information functions to return network addresses for client
19796 and server (Sean Chittenden)
19802 Add function to determine the area of a closed path (Sean Chittenden)
19808 Add function to send cancel request to other backends (Magnus)
19814 Add <type>interval</> plus <type>datetime</> operators (Tom)
19817 The reverse ordering, <type>datetime</> plus <type>interval</>,
19818 was already supported, but both are required by the SQL standard.
19824 Casting an integer to <type>BIT(N)</> selects the rightmost N bits
19829 In prior releases, the leftmost N bits were selected, but this was
19830 deemed unhelpful, not to mention inconsistent with casting from bit
19837 Require <type>CIDR</> values to have all nonmasked bits be zero
19847 <title>Server-Side Language Changes</title>
19852 In <literal>READ COMMITTED</> serialization mode, volatile functions
19853 now see the results of concurrent transactions committed up to the
19854 beginning of each statement within the function, rather than up to the
19855 beginning of the interactive command that called the function.
19861 Functions declared <literal>STABLE</> or <literal>IMMUTABLE</> always
19862 use the snapshot of the calling query, and therefore do not see the
19863 effects of actions taken after the calling query starts, whether in
19864 their own transaction or other transactions. Such a function must be
19865 read-only, too, meaning that it cannot use any SQL commands other than
19866 <command>SELECT</>. There is a considerable performance gain from
19867 declaring a function <literal>STABLE</> or <literal>IMMUTABLE</>
19868 rather than <literal>VOLATILE</>.
19874 Nondeferred <option>AFTER</> triggers are now fired immediately
19875 after completion of the triggering query, rather than upon
19876 finishing the current interactive command. This makes a difference
19877 when the triggering query occurred within a function: the trigger
19878 is invoked before the function proceeds to its next operation. For
19879 example, if a function inserts a new row into a table, any
19880 nondeferred foreign key checks occur before proceeding with the
19887 Allow function parameters to be declared with names (Dennis Björklund)
19890 This allows better documentation of functions. Whether the names
19891 actually do anything depends on the specific function language
19898 Allow PL/pgSQL parameter names to be referenced in the function (Dennis Björklund)
19901 This basically creates an automatic alias for each named parameter.
19907 Do minimal syntax checking of PL/pgSQL functions at creation time (Tom)
19910 This allows us to catch simple syntax errors sooner.
19916 More support for composite types (row and record variables) in PL/pgSQL
19919 For example, it now works to pass a rowtype variable to another function
19920 as a single variable.
19926 Default values for PL/pgSQL variables can now reference previously
19933 Improve parsing of PL/pgSQL FOR loops (Tom)
19936 Parsing is now driven by presence of <literal>".."</> rather than
19937 data type of <option>FOR</> variable. This makes no difference for
19938 correct functions, but should result in more understandable error
19939 messages when a mistake is made.
19945 Major overhaul of PL/Perl server-side language (Command Prompt, Andrew Dunstan)
19951 In PL/Tcl, SPI commands are now run in subtransactions. If an error
19952 occurs, the subtransaction is cleaned up and the error is reported
19953 as an ordinary Tcl error, which can be trapped with <literal>catch</>.
19954 Formerly, it was not possible to catch such errors.
19960 Accept <command>ELSEIF</> in PL/pgSQL (Neil)
19963 Previously PL/pgSQL only allowed <command>ELSIF</>, but many people
19964 are accustomed to spelling this keyword <command>ELSEIF</>.
19973 <title><application>psql</> Changes</title>
19978 Improve <application>psql</> information display about database
19979 objects (Christopher)
19985 Allow <application>psql</> to display group membership in
19986 <command>\du</> and <command>\dg</> (Markus Bertheau)
19992 Prevent <application>psql</> <command>\dn</command> from showing
19993 temporary schemas (Bruce)
19999 Allow <application>psql</> to handle tilde user expansion for file
20006 Allow <application>psql</> to display fancy prompts, including
20007 color, via <application>readline</> (Reece Hart, Chet Ramey)
20013 Make <application>psql</> <command>\copy</> match <command>COPY</command> command syntax
20020 Show the location of syntax errors (Fabien Coelho, Tom)
20026 Add <command>CLUSTER</command> information to <application>psql</>
20027 <command>\d</> display
20034 Change <application>psql</> <command>\copy stdin/stdout</> to read
20035 from command input/output (Bruce)
20041 Add <option>pstdin</>/<option>pstdout</> to read from
20042 <application>psql</>'s <literal>stdin</>/<literal>stdout</> (Mark
20049 Add global <application>psql</> configuration file, <filename>psqlrc.sample</filename>
20053 This allows a central file where global <application>psql</> startup commands can
20060 Have <application>psql</> <command>\d+</> indicate if the table
20061 has an <type>OID</> column (Neil)
20067 On Windows, use binary mode in <application>psql</> when reading files so control-Z
20068 is not seen as end-of-file
20074 Have <command>\dn+</> show permissions and description for schemas (Dennis
20081 Improve tab completion support (Stefan Kaltenbrunn, Greg Sabino Mullane)
20087 Allow boolean settings to be set using upper or lower case (Michael Paesold)
20096 <title><application>pg_dump</> Changes</title>
20101 Use dependency information to improve the reliability of
20102 <application>pg_dump</> (Tom)
20105 This should solve the longstanding problems with related objects
20106 sometimes being dumped in the wrong order.
20112 Have <application>pg_dump</> output objects in alphabetical order if possible (Tom)
20115 This should make it easier to identify changes between
20122 Allow <application>pg_restore</> to ignore some SQL errors (Fabien Coelho)
20125 This makes <application>pg_restore</>'s behavior similar to the
20126 results of feeding a <application>pg_dump</> output script to
20127 <application>psql</>. In most cases, ignoring errors and plowing
20128 ahead is the most useful thing to do. Also added was a pg_restore
20129 option to give the old behavior of exiting on an error.
20135 <application>pg_restore</> <option>-l</> display now includes
20136 objects' schema names
20142 New begin/end markers in <application>pg_dump</> text output (Bruce)
20148 Add start/stop times for
20149 <application>pg_dump</>/<application>pg_dumpall</> in verbose mode
20156 Allow most <application>pg_dump</> options in
20157 <application>pg_dumpall</> (Christopher)
20163 Have <application>pg_dump</> use <command>ALTER OWNER</> rather
20164 than <command>SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION</> by default
20174 <title>libpq Changes</title>
20179 Make libpq's <option>SIGPIPE</> handling thread-safe (Bruce)
20185 Add <function>PQmbdsplen()</> which returns the display length
20186 of a character (Tatsuo)
20192 Add thread locking to <application>SSL</> and
20193 <application>Kerberos</> connections (Manfred Spraul)
20199 Allow <function>PQoidValue()</>, <function>PQcmdTuples()</>, and
20200 <function>PQoidStatus()</> to work on <command>EXECUTE</command>
20207 Add <function>PQserverVersion()</> to provide more convenient
20208 access to the server version number (Greg Sabino Mullane)
20214 Add <function>PQprepare/PQsendPrepared()</> functions to support
20215 preparing statements without necessarily specifying the data types
20216 of their parameters (Abhijit Menon-Sen)
20222 Many ECPG improvements, including <command>SET DESCRIPTOR</> (Michael)
20231 <title>Source Code Changes</title>
20236 Allow the database server to run natively on Windows (Claudio, Magnus, Andrew)
20242 Shell script commands converted to C versions for Windows support (Andrew)
20248 Create an extension makefile framework (Fabien Coelho, Peter)
20251 This simplifies the task of building extensions outside the original
20258 Support relocatable installations (Bruce)
20261 Directory paths for installed files (such as the
20262 <filename>/share</> directory) are now computed relative to the
20263 actual location of the executables, so that an installation tree
20264 can be moved to another place without reconfiguring and
20271 Use <option>--with-docdir</> to choose installation location of documentation; also
20272 allow <option>--infodir</> (Peter)
20278 Add <option>--without-docdir</> to prevent installation of documentation (Peter)
20284 Upgrade to <application>DocBook</> V4.2 SGML (Peter)
20290 New <literal>PostgreSQL</> <application>CVS</> tag (Marc)
20293 This was done to make it easier for organizations to manage their
20294 own copies of the <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
20295 <application>CVS</> repository. File version stamps from the master
20296 repository will not get munged by checking into or out of a copied
20303 Clarify locking code (Manfred Koizar)
20309 Buffer manager cleanup (Neil)
20315 Decouple platform tests from CPU spinlock code (Bruce, Tom)
20321 Add inlined test-and-set code on PA-RISC for <application>gcc</>
20328 Improve i386 spinlock code (Manfred Spraul)
20334 Clean up spinlock assembly code to avoid warnings from newer
20335 <application>gcc</> releases (Tom)
20341 Remove JDBC from source tree; now a separate project
20347 Remove the libpgtcl client interface; now a separate project
20353 More accurately estimate memory and file descriptor usage (Tom)
20359 Improvements to the Mac OS X startup scripts (Ray A.)
20365 New <function>fsync()</> test program (Bruce)
20371 Major documentation improvements (Neil, Peter)
20377 Remove <application>pg_encoding</application>; not needed
20384 Remove <application>pg_id</application>; not needed anymore
20390 Remove <application>initlocation</application>; not needed
20397 Auto-detect thread flags (no more manual testing) (Bruce)
20403 Use Olson's public domain <application>timezone</> library (Magnus)
20409 With threading enabled, use thread flags on Unixware for
20410 backend executables too (Bruce)
20413 Unixware cannot mix threaded and nonthreaded object files in the
20414 same executable, so everything must be compiled as threaded.
20420 <application>psql</> now uses a <application>flex</>-generated
20421 lexical analyzer to process command strings
20427 Reimplement the linked list data structure used throughout the
20431 This improves performance by allowing list append and length
20432 operations to be more efficient.
20438 Allow dynamically loaded modules to create their own server configuration
20439 parameters (Thomas Hallgren)
20445 New Brazilian version of FAQ (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)
20451 Add French FAQ (Guillaume Lelarge)
20457 New <application>pgevent</> for Windows logging
20463 Make libpq and ECPG build as proper shared libraries on OS X (Tom)
20472 <title>Contrib Changes</title>
20477 Overhaul of <filename>contrib/dblink</> (Joe)
20483 <filename>contrib/dbmirror</> improvements (Steven Singer)
20489 New <filename>contrib/xml2</> (John Gray, Torchbox)
20495 Updated <filename>contrib/mysql</filename>
20501 New version of <filename>contrib/btree_gist</> (Teodor)
20507 New <filename>contrib/trgm</>, trigram matching for
20508 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> (Teodor)
20514 Many <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> improvements (Teodor)
20520 Add double metaphone to <filename>contrib/fuzzystrmatch</> (Andrew)
20526 Allow <filename>contrib/pg_autovacuum</> to run as a Windows service (Dave Page)
20532 Add functions to <filename>contrib/dbsize</> (Andreas Pflug)
20538 Removed <filename>contrib/pg_logger</>: obsoleted by integrated logging
20545 Removed <filename>contrib/rserv</>: obsoleted by various separate projects
20555 <sect1 id="release-7-4-25">
20556 <title>Release 7.4.25</title>
20559 <title>Release date</title>
20560 <simpara>2009-03-16</simpara>
20564 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.24.
20565 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
20566 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
20570 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.25</title>
20573 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
20574 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11,
20575 see the release notes for 7.4.11.
20581 <title>Changes</title>
20587 Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)
20591 This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for
20592 related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored
20593 for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that
20594 <emphasis>any</> error thrown by an encoding conversion function could
20595 potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the
20596 error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding
20597 conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message,
20598 if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation.
20605 Disallow <command>CREATE CONVERSION</> with the wrong encodings
20606 for the specified conversion function (Heikki)
20610 This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure.
20611 The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of
20612 failures in the same area.
20618 Fix core dump when <function>to_char()</> is given format codes that
20619 are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)
20625 Add <literal>MUST</> (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list
20626 of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)
20635 <sect1 id="release-7-4-24">
20636 <title>Release 7.4.24</title>
20639 <title>Release date</title>
20640 <simpara>2009-02-02</simpara>
20644 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.23.
20645 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
20646 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
20650 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.24</title>
20653 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
20654 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11,
20655 see the release notes for 7.4.11.
20661 <title>Changes</title>
20667 Improve handling of URLs in <function>headline()</> function (Teodor)
20673 Improve handling of overlength headlines in <function>headline()</>
20680 Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding
20681 conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the
20682 specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)
20688 Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in <command>VACUUM</>
20695 Fix uninitialized variables in <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>'s
20696 <function>get_covers()</> function (Teodor)
20702 Fix bug in <function>to_char()</>'s handling of <literal>TH</>
20703 format codes (Andreas Scherbaum)
20709 Make all documentation reference <literal>pgsql-bugs</> and/or
20710 <literal>pgsql-hackers</> as appropriate, instead of the
20711 now-decommissioned <literal>pgsql-ports</> and <literal>pgsql-patches</>
20712 mailing lists (Tom)
20721 <sect1 id="release-7-4-23">
20722 <title>Release 7.4.23</title>
20725 <title>Release date</title>
20726 <simpara>2008-11-03</simpara>
20730 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.22.
20731 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
20732 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
20736 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.23</title>
20739 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
20740 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11,
20741 see the release notes for 7.4.11.
20747 <title>Changes</title>
20753 Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized
20754 error message (Tom)
20758 We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if
20759 the <quote>character has no equivalent</> message itself couldn't
20760 be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain
20761 ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.
20767 Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query
20768 item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)
20774 Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when
20775 using a non-ISO datestyle in an <option>--enable-integer-datetimes</>
20782 Ensure <function>SPI_getvalue</> and <function>SPI_getbinval</>
20783 behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have
20784 different numbers of columns (Tom)
20788 This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed,
20789 but these two functions didn't handle it properly.
20790 The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.
20796 Fix <application>ecpg</>'s parsing of <command>CREATE USER</> (Michael)
20805 <sect1 id="release-7-4-22">
20806 <title>Release 7.4.22</title>
20809 <title>Release date</title>
20810 <simpara>2008-09-22</simpara>
20814 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.21.
20815 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
20816 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
20820 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.22</title>
20823 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
20824 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11,
20825 see the release notes for 7.4.11.
20831 <title>Changes</title>
20837 Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when
20838 running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)
20844 Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)
20850 Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a <literal>SELECT DISTINCT
20857 Fix planner to estimate that <literal>GROUP BY</> expressions yielding
20858 boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the
20859 expressions' contents (Tom)
20863 This is very substantially more accurate than the regular <literal>GROUP
20864 BY</> estimate for certain boolean tests like <replaceable>col</>
20865 <literal>IS NULL</>.
20871 Improve <application>pg_dump</> and <application>pg_restore</>'s
20872 error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)
20881 <sect1 id="release-7-4-21">
20882 <title>Release 7.4.21</title>
20885 <title>Release date</title>
20886 <simpara>2008-06-12</simpara>
20890 This release contains one serious bug fix over 7.4.20.
20891 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
20892 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
20896 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.21</title>
20899 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
20900 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11,
20901 see the release notes for 7.4.11.
20907 <title>Changes</title>
20913 Make <function>pg_get_ruledef()</> parenthesize negative constants (Tom)
20917 Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped
20918 as, say, <literal>-42::integer</>, which is subtly incorrect: it should
20919 be <literal>(-42)::integer</> due to operator precedence rules.
20920 Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with
20921 another recent patch to cause
20922 <productname>PostgreSQL</> to reject what had been a valid
20923 <command>SELECT DISTINCT</> view query. Since this could result in
20924 <application>pg_dump</> output failing to reload, it is being treated
20925 as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump
20926 output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.
20935 <sect1 id="release-7-4-20">
20936 <title>Release 7.4.20</title>
20939 <title>Release date</title>
20940 <simpara>never released</simpara>
20944 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.19.
20945 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
20946 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
20950 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.20</title>
20953 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
20954 However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11,
20955 see the release notes for 7.4.11.
20961 <title>Changes</title>
20967 Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle
20968 Cyrillic <quote>Yo</> characters (<literal>e</> and <literal>E</> with
20969 two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)
20975 Fix a few datatype input functions
20976 that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain
20977 uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)
20981 This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal
20982 values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining
20983 about unmatched <literal>ORDER BY</> and <literal>DISTINCT</>
20990 Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching
20991 (<literal>substring(<replaceable>string</> from
20992 <replaceable>pattern</>)</literal>) (Tom)
20996 The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but
20997 the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that
20998 subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is
20999 <literal>substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?')</>.
21000 This should return NULL, since <literal>(bar)</> isn't matched, but
21001 it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie,
21008 Fix incorrect result from <application>ecpg</>'s
21009 <function>PGTYPEStimestamp_sub()</> function (Michael)
21015 Fix <literal>DatumGetBool</> macro to not fail with <application>gcc</>
21020 This problem affects <quote>old style</> (V0) C functions that
21021 return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to
21022 back-patch it was not realized at the time.
21028 Fix longstanding <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</>
21029 race condition (Tom)
21033 In rare cases a session that had just executed a
21034 <command>LISTEN</> might not get a notification, even though
21035 one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing
21036 <command>NOTIFY</> was observed to commit later.
21040 A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed
21041 a not-yet-committed <command>LISTEN</> command will not see any
21042 row in <structname>pg_listener</> for the <command>LISTEN</>,
21043 should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior
21044 was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that
21045 some applications depend on the old behavior.
21051 Fix display of constant expressions in <literal>ORDER BY</>
21052 and <literal>GROUP BY</> (Tom)
21056 An explictly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could
21057 for example lead to corruption of a view definition during
21064 Fix <application>libpq</> to handle NOTICE messages correctly
21065 during COPY OUT (Tom)
21069 This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined
21070 datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no
21071 guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.
21080 <sect1 id="release-7-4-19">
21081 <title>Release 7.4.19</title>
21084 <title>Release date</title>
21085 <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
21089 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.18,
21090 including fixes for significant security issues.
21091 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21092 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21096 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.19</title>
21099 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21100 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21107 <title>Changes</title>
21113 Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
21114 the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
21118 Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
21119 predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
21120 long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
21121 execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
21122 (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
21123 same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
21124 because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
21125 such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
21126 automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
21127 can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
21128 trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
21129 The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
21130 (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
21131 and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
21132 the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
21133 used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
21134 this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
21135 AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
21136 <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
21142 Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)
21146 Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes,
21147 infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption,
21148 all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that
21149 accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources.
21150 (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)
21156 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
21157 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
21161 The fix that appeared for this in 7.4.18 was incomplete, as it plugged
21162 the hole for only some <filename>dblink</> functions. (CVE-2007-6601,
21169 Fix planner failure in some cases of <literal>WHERE false AND var IN
21170 (SELECT ...)</> (Tom)
21176 Fix potential crash in <function>translate()</> when using a multibyte
21177 database encoding (Tom)
21183 Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)
21189 <application>ecpg</> parser fixes (Michael)
21195 Make <filename>contrib/tablefunc</>'s <function>crosstab()</> handle
21196 NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)
21202 Fix <type>tsvector</> and <type>tsquery</> output routines to
21203 escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)
21209 Fix crash of <function>to_tsvector()</> on huge input strings (Teodor)
21215 Require a specific version of <productname>Autoconf</> to be used
21216 when re-generating the <command>configure</> script (Peter)
21220 This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made
21221 to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of
21222 <productname>Autoconf</> and <productname>PostgreSQL</> versions.
21223 You can remove the version check if you really want to use a
21224 different <productname>Autoconf</> version, but it's
21225 your responsibility whether the result works or not.
21234 <sect1 id="release-7-4-18">
21235 <title>Release 7.4.18</title>
21238 <title>Release date</title>
21239 <simpara>2007-09-17</simpara>
21243 This release contains fixes from 7.4.17.
21244 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21245 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21249 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.18</title>
21252 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21253 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21260 <title>Changes</title>
21266 Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and
21267 then aborts close to the end of a concurrent <command>VACUUM</>
21268 on the same table (Tom)
21274 Make <command>CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL</> work properly (Tom)
21280 Fix excessive logging of <acronym>SSL</> error messages (Tom)
21286 Fix crash when <varname>log_min_error_statement</> logging runs out
21293 Prevent <command>CLUSTER</> from failing
21294 due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)
21300 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
21301 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
21310 <sect1 id="release-7-4-17">
21311 <title>Release 7.4.17</title>
21314 <title>Release date</title>
21315 <simpara>2007-04-23</simpara>
21319 This release contains fixes from 7.4.16,
21320 including a security fix.
21321 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21322 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21326 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.17</title>
21329 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21330 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21337 <title>Changes</title>
21343 Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within
21344 <varname>search_path</>, and disable searching it for functions
21345 and operators (Tom)
21348 This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a
21349 truly secure value of <varname>search_path</>. Without it,
21350 an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code
21351 with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138).
21352 See <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> for more information.
21358 <filename>/contrib/tsearch2</> crash fixes (Teodor)
21364 Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how <command>VACUUM FULL</> handles
21365 <command>UPDATE</> chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)
21371 Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (bug introduced in 7.4.15)
21381 <sect1 id="release-7-4-16">
21382 <title>Release 7.4.16</title>
21385 <title>Release date</title>
21386 <simpara>2007-02-05</simpara>
21390 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.15, including
21392 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21393 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21397 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.16</title>
21400 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21401 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21408 <title>Changes</title>
21414 Remove security vulnerability that allowed connected users
21415 to read backend memory (Tom)
21418 The vulnerability involves suppressing the normal check that a SQL
21419 function returns the data type it's declared to, or changing the
21420 data type of a table column used in a SQL function (CVE-2007-0555).
21421 This error can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in
21422 principle might be used to read database content that the user
21423 should not be able to access.
21429 Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail
21430 due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)
21436 Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by <literal>UNION</> (Tom)
21442 Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences
21443 over three bytes long (Tom)
21452 <sect1 id="release-7-4-15">
21453 <title>Release 7.4.15</title>
21456 <title>Release date</title>
21457 <simpara>2007-01-08</simpara>
21461 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.14.
21462 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21463 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21467 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.15</title>
21470 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21471 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21478 <title>Changes</title>
21484 Improve handling of <function>getaddrinfo()</> on AIX (Tom)
21488 This fixes a problem with starting the statistics collector,
21489 among other things.
21495 Fix <quote>failed to re-find parent key</> errors in
21496 <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)
21502 Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)
21508 Fix error when constructing an <literal>ARRAY[]</> made up of multiple
21509 empty elements (Tom)
21515 <function>to_number()</> and <function>to_char(numeric)</>
21516 are now <literal>STABLE</>, not <literal>IMMUTABLE</>, for
21517 new <application>initdb</> installs (Tom)
21521 This is because <varname>lc_numeric</> can potentially
21522 change the output of these functions.
21528 Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)
21532 This improves <application>psql</> <literal>\d</> performance also.
21541 <sect1 id="release-7-4-14">
21542 <title>Release 7.4.14</title>
21545 <title>Release date</title>
21546 <simpara>2006-10-16</simpara>
21550 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.13.
21551 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21552 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21556 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.14</title>
21559 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21560 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21567 <title>Changes</title>
21570 <listitem><para>Fix core dump when an untyped literal is taken as
21571 ANYARRAY</para></listitem>
21572 <listitem><para>Fix <function>string_to_array()</> to handle overlapping
21573 matches for the separator string</para>
21574 <para>For example, <literal>string_to_array('123xx456xxx789', 'xx')</>.
21576 <listitem><para>Fix corner cases in pattern matching for
21577 <application>psql</>'s <literal>\d</> commands</para></listitem>
21578 <listitem><para>Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree
21579 (Teodor)</para></listitem>
21580 <listitem><para>Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror</para></listitem>
21581 <listitem><para>Adjust regression tests for recent changes in US DST laws
21582 </para> </listitem>
21588 <sect1 id="release-7-4-13">
21589 <title>Release 7.4.13</title>
21592 <title>Release date</title>
21593 <simpara>2006-05-23</simpara>
21597 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.12,
21598 including patches for extremely serious security issues.
21599 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21600 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21604 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.13</title>
21607 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21608 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21613 Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in
21614 CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application
21615 code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings
21616 into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to
21617 ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In
21618 most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by
21619 libraries or drivers (such as <application>libpq</>'s
21620 <function>PQescapeStringConn()</>) to perform string escaping,
21621 rather than relying on <foreignphrase>ad hoc</> code to do it.
21626 <title>Changes</title>
21629 <listitem><para>Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte
21630 characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)</para>
21631 <para>While <productname>PostgreSQL</> has been moving in this direction for
21632 some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all
21633 textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change
21634 defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.
21637 <listitem><para>Reject unsafe uses of <literal>\'</> in string literals</para>
21638 <para>As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type
21639 described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts <literal>''</> and not
21640 <literal>\'</> as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string
21641 literals. By default, <literal>\'</> is rejected only when
21642 <varname>client_encoding</> is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK,
21643 GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible.
21644 A new configuration parameter <varname>backslash_quote</> is available to
21645 adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against
21646 CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of
21647 <varname>backslash_quote</> is in part to make it obvious that insecure
21648 clients are insecure.
21651 <listitem><para>Modify <application>libpq</>'s string-escaping routines to be
21652 aware of encoding considerations and
21653 <varname>standard_conforming_strings</></para>
21654 <para>This fixes <application>libpq</>-using applications for the security
21655 issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314, and also future-proofs
21656 them against the planned changeover to SQL-standard string literal syntax.
21657 Applications that use multiple <productname>PostgreSQL</> connections
21658 concurrently should migrate to <function>PQescapeStringConn()</> and
21659 <function>PQescapeByteaConn()</> to ensure that escaping is done correctly
21660 for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that
21661 do string escaping <quote>by hand</> should be modified to rely on library
21665 <listitem><para>Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions</para>
21666 <para><function>win1251_to_iso</>, <function>alt_to_iso</>,
21667 <function>euc_tw_to_big5</>, <function>euc_tw_to_mic</>,
21668 <function>mic_to_euc_tw</> were all broken to varying
21672 <listitem><para>Clean up stray remaining uses of <literal>\'</> in strings
21673 (Bruce, Jan)</para></listitem>
21675 <listitem><para>Fix bug that sometimes caused OR'd index scans to
21676 miss rows they should have returned</para></listitem>
21678 <listitem><para>Fix WAL replay for case where a btree index has been
21679 truncated</para></listitem>
21681 <listitem><para>Fix <literal>SIMILAR TO</> for patterns involving
21682 <literal>|</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
21684 <listitem><para>Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael
21685 Fuhr)</para></listitem>
21687 <listitem><para>Fix for Bonjour on Intel Macs (Ashley Clark)</para></listitem>
21689 <listitem><para>Fix various minor memory leaks</para></listitem>
21695 <sect1 id="release-7-4-12">
21696 <title>Release 7.4.12</title>
21699 <title>Release date</title>
21700 <simpara>2006-02-14</simpara>
21704 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.11.
21705 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21706 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21710 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.12</title>
21713 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21714 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see the release
21720 <title>Changes</title>
21724 <listitem><para>Fix potential crash in <command>SET
21725 SESSION AUTHORIZATION</> (CVE-2006-0553)</para>
21726 <para>An unprivileged user could crash the server process, resulting in
21727 momentary denial of service to other users, if the server has been compiled
21728 with Asserts enabled (which is not the default).
21729 Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.
21732 <listitem><para>Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted
21734 <para>Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command
21735 could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug
21736 created in 7.4.9 and 7.3.11 releases.
21739 <listitem><para>Fix race condition that could lead to <quote>file already
21740 exists</> errors during pg_clog file creation
21741 (Tom)</para></listitem>
21743 <listitem><para>Properly check <literal>DOMAIN</> constraints for
21744 <literal>UNKNOWN</> parameters in prepared statements
21745 (Neil)</para></listitem>
21747 <listitem><para>Fix to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema
21748 references to custom operators (Tom)</para></listitem>
21750 <listitem><para>Portability fix for testing presence of <function>finite</>
21751 and <function>isinf</> during configure (Tom)</para></listitem>
21758 <sect1 id="release-7-4-11">
21759 <title>Release 7.4.11</title>
21762 <title>Release date</title>
21763 <simpara>2006-01-09</simpara>
21767 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.10.
21768 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21769 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21773 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.11</title>
21776 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21777 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.8, see the release
21779 Also, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
21780 columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or
21781 <application>plperl</> issues described below.
21786 <title>Changes</title>
21790 <listitem><para>Fix for protocol-level Describe messages issued
21791 outside a transaction or in a failed transaction (Tom)</para></listitem>
21793 <listitem><para>Fix character string comparison for locales that consider
21794 different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)</para>
21795 <para>This might require <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
21796 textual columns.</para></listitem>
21798 <listitem><para>Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup
21799 to ensure that <application>plperl</> won't change the locale later</para>
21800 <para>This fixes a problem that occurred if the <application>postmaster</> was
21801 started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what
21802 <application>initdb</> had been told. Under these conditions, any use of
21803 <application>plperl</> was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need
21804 <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
21805 textual columns if this has happened to you.</para></listitem>
21807 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression
21808 handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)
21811 <listitem><para>Fix bug in <filename>/contrib/pgcrypto</> gen_salt,
21812 which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and
21813 XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)</para>
21814 <para>Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.</para></listitem>
21816 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to throw an error,
21817 rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from
21818 what's actually returned by the query (Joe)</para></listitem>
21825 <sect1 id="release-7-4-10">
21826 <title>Release 7.4.10</title>
21829 <title>Release date</title>
21830 <simpara>2005-12-12</simpara>
21834 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.9.
21835 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21836 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21840 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.10</title>
21843 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21844 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.8, see the release
21850 <title>Changes</title>
21854 <listitem><para>Fix race condition in transaction log management</para>
21855 <para>There was a narrow window in which an I/O operation could be initiated
21856 for the wrong page, leading to an Assert failure or data
21860 <listitem><para>Prevent failure if client sends Bind protocol message
21861 when current transaction is already aborted</para></listitem>
21863 <listitem><para><filename>/contrib/ltree</> fixes (Teodor)</para></listitem>
21865 <listitem><para>AIX and HPUX compile fixes (Tom)</para></listitem>
21867 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding planning error for outer joins</para>
21868 <para>This bug sometimes caused a bogus error <quote>RIGHT JOIN is
21869 only supported with merge-joinable join conditions</>.</para></listitem>
21871 <listitem><para>Prevent core dump in <application>pg_autovacuum</> when a
21872 table has been dropped</para></listitem>
21878 <sect1 id="release-7-4-9">
21879 <title>Release 7.4.9</title>
21882 <title>Release date</title>
21883 <simpara>2005-10-04</simpara>
21887 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.8.
21888 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21889 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21893 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.9</title>
21896 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21897 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.8, see the release
21903 <title>Changes</title>
21906 <listitem><para>Fix error that allowed <command>VACUUM</> to remove
21907 <literal>ctid</> chains too soon, and add more checking in code that follows
21908 <literal>ctid</> links</para>
21909 <para>This fixes a long-standing problem that could cause crashes in very rare
21910 circumstances.</para></listitem>
21911 <listitem><para>Fix <type>CHAR()</> to properly pad spaces to the specified
21912 length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)</para>
21913 <para>In prior releases, the padding of <type>CHAR()</> was incorrect
21914 because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without
21915 considering how many characters were stored.</para></listitem>
21916 <listitem><para>Fix the sense of the test for read-only transaction
21917 in <command>COPY</></para>
21918 <para>The code formerly prohibited <command>COPY TO</>, where it should
21919 prohibit <command>COPY FROM</>.
21921 <listitem><para>Fix planning problem with outer-join ON clauses that reference
21922 only the inner-side relation</para></listitem>
21923 <listitem><para>Further fixes for <literal>x FULL JOIN y ON true</> corner
21924 cases</para></listitem>
21925 <listitem><para>Make <function>array_in</> and <function>array_recv</> more
21926 paranoid about validating their OID parameter</para></listitem>
21927 <listitem><para>Fix missing rows in queries like <literal>UPDATE a=... WHERE
21928 a...</> with GiST index on column <literal>a</></para></listitem>
21929 <listitem><para>Improve robustness of datetime parsing</para></listitem>
21930 <listitem><para>Improve checking for partially-written WAL
21931 pages</para></listitem>
21932 <listitem><para>Improve robustness of signal handling when SSL is
21933 enabled</para></listitem>
21934 <listitem><para>Don't try to open more than <literal>max_files_per_process</>
21935 files during postmaster startup</para></listitem>
21936 <listitem><para>Various memory leakage fixes</para></listitem>
21937 <listitem><para>Various portability improvements</para></listitem>
21938 <listitem><para>Fix PL/PgSQL to handle <literal>var := var</> correctly when
21939 the variable is of pass-by-reference type</para></listitem>
21940 <listitem><para>Update <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> to use current Snowball
21941 code</para></listitem>
21947 <sect1 id="release-7-4-8">
21948 <title>Release 7.4.8</title>
21951 <title>Release date</title>
21952 <simpara>2005-05-09</simpara>
21956 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.7, including several
21957 security-related issues.
21958 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
21959 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
21963 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.8</title>
21966 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
21967 it is one possible way of handling two significant security problems
21968 that have been found in the initial contents of 7.4.X system
21969 catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 7.4.8's initdb will
21970 automatically correct these problems.
21974 The larger security problem is that the built-in character set encoding
21975 conversion functions can be invoked from SQL commands by unprivileged
21976 users, but the functions were not designed for such use and are not
21977 secure against malicious choices of arguments. The fix involves changing
21978 the declared parameter list of these functions so that they can no longer
21979 be invoked from SQL commands. (This does not affect their normal use
21980 by the encoding conversion machinery.)
21984 The lesser problem is that the <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> module
21985 creates several functions that are misdeclared to return
21986 <type>internal</> when they do not accept <type>internal</> arguments.
21987 This breaks type safety for all functions using <type>internal</>
21992 It is strongly recommended that all installations repair these errors,
21993 either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedures given
21994 below. The errors at least allow unprivileged database users to crash
21995 their server process, and might allow unprivileged users to gain the
21996 privileges of a database superuser.
22000 If you wish not to do an initdb, perform the following procedures instead.
22001 As the database superuser, do:
22005 UPDATE pg_proc SET proargtypes[3] = 'internal'::regtype
22006 WHERE pronamespace = 11 AND pronargs = 5
22007 AND proargtypes[2] = 'cstring'::regtype;
22008 -- The command should report having updated 90 rows;
22009 -- if not, rollback and investigate instead of committing!
22013 Next, if you have installed <filename>contrib/tsearch2</>, do:
22017 UPDATE pg_proc SET proargtypes[0] = 'internal'::regtype
22019 'dex_init(text)'::regprocedure,
22020 'snb_en_init(text)'::regprocedure,
22021 'snb_ru_init(text)'::regprocedure,
22022 'spell_init(text)'::regprocedure,
22023 'syn_init(text)'::regprocedure
22025 -- The command should report having updated 5 rows;
22026 -- if not, rollback and investigate instead of committing!
22030 If this command fails with a message like <quote>function
22031 "dex_init(text)" does not exist</>, then either <filename>tsearch2</>
22032 is not installed in this database, or you already did the update.
22036 The above procedures must be carried out in <emphasis>each</> database
22037 of an installation, including <literal>template1</>, and ideally
22038 including <literal>template0</> as well. If you do not fix the
22039 template databases then any subsequently created databases will contain
22040 the same errors. <literal>template1</> can be fixed in the same way
22041 as any other database, but fixing <literal>template0</> requires
22042 additional steps. First, from any database issue:
22044 UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = true WHERE datname = 'template0';
22046 Next connect to <literal>template0</> and perform the above repair
22047 procedures. Finally, do:
22049 -- re-freeze template0:
22051 -- and protect it against future alterations:
22052 UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = false WHERE datname = 'template0';
22058 <title>Changes</title>
22061 <listitem><para>Change encoding function signature to prevent
22062 misuse</para></listitem>
22063 <listitem><para>Change <filename>contrib/tsearch2</> to avoid unsafe use of
22064 <type>INTERNAL</> function results</para></listitem>
22065 <listitem><para>Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be
22066 seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner
22067 than for other purposes</para>
22068 <para>This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent
22069 data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.</para></listitem>
22070 <listitem><para>Repair race condition between relation extension and
22072 <para>This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of
22073 freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability.
22074 There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.
22076 <listitem><para>Fix comparisons of <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para>
22078 The comparison code was wrong in the case where the
22079 <literal>--enable-integer-datetimes</> configuration switch had been used.
22080 NOTE: if you have an index on a <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> column,
22081 it will need to be <command>REINDEX</>ed after installing this update, because
22082 the fix corrects the sort order of column values.
22084 <listitem><para>Fix <function>EXTRACT(EPOCH)</> for
22085 <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para></listitem>
22086 <listitem><para>Fix mis-display of negative fractional seconds in
22087 <type>INTERVAL</> values</para>
22089 This error only occurred when the
22090 <literal>--enable-integer-datetimes</> configuration switch had been used.
22092 <listitem><para>Ensure operations done during backend shutdown are counted by
22093 statistics collector</para>
22095 This is expected to resolve reports of <application>pg_autovacuum</>
22096 not vacuuming the system catalogs often enough — it was not being
22097 told about catalog deletions caused by temporary table removal during
22100 <listitem><para>Additional buffer overrun checks in plpgsql
22101 (Neil)</para></listitem>
22102 <listitem><para>Fix pg_dump to dump trigger names containing <literal>%</>
22103 correctly (Neil)</para></listitem>
22104 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</> for newer OpenSSL builds
22105 (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
22106 <listitem><para>Still more 64-bit fixes for
22107 <filename>contrib/intagg</></para></listitem>
22108 <listitem><para>Prevent incorrect optimization of functions returning
22109 <type>RECORD</></para></listitem>
22110 <listitem><para>Prevent <function>to_char(interval)</> from dumping core for
22111 month-related formats</para></listitem>
22112 <listitem><para>Prevent crash on <literal>COALESCE(NULL,NULL)</></para></listitem>
22113 <listitem><para>Fix <function>array_map</> to call PL functions correctly</para></listitem>
22114 <listitem><para>Fix permission checking in <command>ALTER DATABASE RENAME</></para></listitem>
22115 <listitem><para>Fix <command>ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME</></para></listitem>
22116 <listitem><para>Make <function>RemoveFromWaitQueue</> clean up after itself</para>
22118 This fixes a lock management error that would only be visible if a transaction
22119 was kicked out of a wait for a lock (typically by query cancel) and then the
22120 holder of the lock released it within a very narrow window.
22122 <listitem><para>Fix problem with untyped parameter appearing in
22123 <command>INSERT ... SELECT</></para></listitem>
22124 <listitem><para>Fix <command>CLUSTER</> failure after
22125 <command>ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS</></para></listitem>
22131 <sect1 id="release-7-4-7">
22132 <title>Release 7.4.7</title>
22135 <title>Release date</title>
22136 <simpara>2005-01-31</simpara>
22140 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.6, including several
22141 security-related issues.
22142 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22143 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22147 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.7</title>
22150 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
22155 <title>Changes</title>
22158 <listitem><para>Disallow <command>LOAD</> to non-superusers</para>
22160 On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a
22161 shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen),
22162 <command>LOAD</> can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code.
22163 Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.</para></listitem>
22164 <listitem><para>Check that creator of an aggregate function has the right to
22165 execute the specified transition functions</para>
22167 This oversight made it possible to bypass denial of EXECUTE
22168 permission on a function.</para></listitem>
22169 <listitem><para>Fix security and 64-bit issues in
22170 contrib/intagg</para></listitem>
22171 <listitem><para>Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris
22172 Jurka)</para></listitem>
22173 <listitem><para>Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too
22174 many parameters (Neil)</para></listitem>
22175 <listitem><para>Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins</para>
22177 The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the
22178 left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but
22179 in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.
22181 <listitem><para>Fix plperl for quote marks in tuple fields</para></listitem>
22182 <listitem><para>Fix display of negative intervals in SQL and GERMAN
22183 datestyles</para></listitem>
22184 <listitem><para>Make age(timestamptz) do calculation in local timezone not
22185 GMT</para></listitem>
22191 <sect1 id="release-7-4-6">
22192 <title>Release 7.4.6</title>
22195 <title>Release date</title>
22196 <simpara>2004-10-22</simpara>
22200 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.5.
22201 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22202 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22207 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.6</title>
22210 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
22215 <title>Changes</title>
22218 <listitem><para>Repair possible failure to update hint bits on disk</para>
22220 Under rare circumstances this oversight could lead to
22221 <quote>could not access transaction status</> failures, which qualifies
22222 it as a potential-data-loss bug.
22224 <listitem><para>Ensure that hashed outer join does not miss tuples</para>
22226 Very large left joins using a hash join plan could fail to output unmatched
22227 left-side rows given just the right data distribution.
22229 <listitem><para>Disallow running <application>pg_ctl</> as root</para>
22231 This is to guard against any possible security issues.
22233 <listitem><para>Avoid using temp files in <filename>/tmp</> in <command>make_oidjoins_check</command></para>
22235 This has been reported as a security issue, though it's hardly worthy of
22236 concern since there is no reason for non-developers to use this script anyway.
22238 <listitem><para>Prevent forced backend shutdown from re-emitting prior command
22241 In rare cases, a client might think that its last command had succeeded when
22242 it really had been aborted by forced database shutdown.
22244 <listitem><para>Repair bug in <function>pg_stat_get_backend_idset</function></para>
22246 This could lead to misbehavior in some of the system-statistics views.
22248 <listitem><para>Fix small memory leak in postmaster</para></listitem>
22249 <listitem><para>Fix <quote>expected both swapped tables to have TOAST
22250 tables</> bug</para>
22252 This could arise in cases such as CLUSTER after ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN.
22254 <listitem><para>Prevent <literal>pg_ctl restart</> from adding <literal>-D</> multiple times</para></listitem>
22255 <listitem><para>Fix problem with NULL values in GiST indexes</para></listitem>
22256 <listitem><para><literal>::</> is no longer interpreted as a variable in an
22257 ECPG prepare statement</para></listitem>
22263 <sect1 id="release-7-4-5">
22264 <title>Release 7.4.5</title>
22267 <title>Release date</title>
22268 <simpara>2004-08-18</simpara>
22272 This release contains one serious bug fix over 7.4.4.
22273 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22274 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22279 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.5</title>
22282 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
22287 <title>Changes</title>
22290 <listitem><para>Repair possible crash during concurrent B-tree index insertions</para>
22292 This patch fixes a rare case in which concurrent insertions into a B-tree index
22293 could result in a server panic. No permanent damage would result, but it's
22294 still worth a re-release. The bug does not exist in pre-7.4 releases.
22301 <sect1 id="release-7-4-4">
22302 <title>Release 7.4.4</title>
22305 <title>Release date</title>
22306 <simpara>2004-08-16</simpara>
22310 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.3.
22311 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22312 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22317 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.4</title>
22320 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
22325 <title>Changes</title>
22328 <listitem><para>Prevent possible loss of committed transactions during crash</para>
22330 Due to insufficient interlocking between transaction commit and checkpointing,
22331 it was possible for transactions committed just before the most recent
22332 checkpoint to be lost, in whole or in part, following a database crash and
22333 restart. This is a serious bug that has existed
22334 since <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 7.1.
22336 <listitem><para>Check HAVING restriction before evaluating result list of an
22337 aggregate plan</para></listitem>
22338 <listitem><para>Avoid crash when session's current user ID is deleted</para></listitem>
22339 <listitem><para>Fix hashed crosstab for zero-rows case (Joe)</para></listitem>
22340 <listitem><para>Force cache update after renaming a column in a foreign key</para></listitem>
22341 <listitem><para>Pretty-print UNION queries correctly</para></listitem>
22342 <listitem><para>Make psql handle <literal>\r\n</> newlines properly in COPY IN</para></listitem>
22343 <listitem><para><application>pg_dump</> handled ACLs with grant options incorrectly</para></listitem>
22344 <listitem><para>Fix thread support for OS X and Solaris</para></listitem>
22345 <listitem><para>Updated JDBC driver (build 215) with various fixes</para></listitem>
22346 <listitem><para>ECPG fixes</para></listitem>
22347 <listitem><para>Translation updates (various contributors)</para></listitem>
22353 <sect1 id="release-7-4-3">
22354 <title>Release 7.4.3</title>
22357 <title>Release date</title>
22358 <simpara>2004-06-14</simpara>
22362 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.2.
22363 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22364 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22369 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.3</title>
22372 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.
22377 <title>Changes</title>
22380 <listitem><para>Fix temporary memory leak when using non-hashed aggregates (Tom)</para></listitem>
22381 <listitem><para>ECPG fixes, including some for Informix compatibility (Michael)</para></listitem>
22382 <listitem><para>Fixes for compiling with thread-safety, particularly Solaris (Bruce)</para></listitem>
22383 <listitem><para>Fix error in COPY IN termination when using the old network protocol (ljb)</para></listitem>
22384 <listitem><para>Several important fixes in pg_autovacuum, including fixes for
22385 large tables, unsigned oids, stability, temp tables, and debug mode
22386 (Matthew T. O'Connor)</para></listitem>
22387 <listitem><para>Fix problem with reading tar-format dumps on NetBSD and BSD/OS (Bruce)</para></listitem>
22388 <listitem><para>Several JDBC fixes</para></listitem>
22389 <listitem><para>Fix ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART where last_value equals the restart value (Tom)</para></listitem>
22390 <listitem><para>Repair failure to recalculate nested sub-selects (Tom)</para></listitem>
22391 <listitem><para>Fix problems with non-constant expressions in LIMIT/OFFSET</para></listitem>
22392 <listitem><para>Support FULL JOIN with no join clause, such as X FULL JOIN Y ON TRUE (Tom)</para></listitem>
22393 <listitem><para>Fix another zero-column table bug (Tom)</para></listitem>
22394 <listitem><para>Improve handling of non-qualified identifiers in GROUP BY clauses in sub-selects (Tom)</para>
22396 Select-list aliases within the sub-select will now take precedence over
22397 names from outer query levels.
22399 <listitem><para>Do not generate <quote>NATURAL CROSS JOIN</> when decompiling rules (Tom)</para></listitem>
22400 <listitem><para>Add checks for invalid field length in binary COPY (Tom)</para>
22402 This fixes a difficult-to-exploit security hole.
22404 <listitem><para>Avoid locking conflict between <command>ANALYZE</command> and <command>LISTEN</command>/<command>NOTIFY</command></para></listitem>
22405 <listitem><para>Numerous translation updates (various contributors)</para></listitem>
22411 <sect1 id="release-7-4-2">
22412 <title>Release 7.4.2</title>
22415 <title>Release date</title>
22416 <simpara>2004-03-08</simpara>
22420 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.1.
22421 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22422 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22427 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.2</title>
22430 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However,
22431 it might be advisable as the easiest method of incorporating fixes for
22432 two errors that have been found in the initial contents of 7.4.X system
22433 catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 7.4.2's initdb will
22434 automatically correct these problems.
22438 The more severe of the two errors is that data type <type>anyarray</>
22439 has the wrong alignment label; this is a problem because the
22440 <structname>pg_statistic</> system catalog uses <type>anyarray</>
22441 columns. The mislabeling can cause planner misestimations and even
22442 crashes when planning queries that involve <literal>WHERE</> clauses on
22443 double-aligned columns (such as <type>float8</> and <type>timestamp</>).
22444 It is strongly recommended that all installations repair this error,
22445 either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedure given
22450 The lesser error is that the system view <structname>pg_settings</>
22451 ought to be marked as having public update access, to allow
22452 <literal>UPDATE pg_settings</> to be used as a substitute for
22453 <command>SET</>. This can also be fixed either by initdb or manually,
22454 but it is not necessary to fix unless you want to use <literal>UPDATE
22459 If you wish not to do an initdb, the following procedure will work
22460 for fixing <structname>pg_statistic</>. As the database superuser,
22464 -- clear out old data in pg_statistic:
22465 DELETE FROM pg_statistic;
22466 VACUUM pg_statistic;
22467 -- this should update 1 row:
22468 UPDATE pg_type SET typalign = 'd' WHERE oid = 2277;
22469 -- this should update 6 rows:
22470 UPDATE pg_attribute SET attalign = 'd' WHERE atttypid = 2277;
22472 -- At this point you MUST start a fresh backend to avoid a crash!
22474 -- repopulate pg_statistic:
22478 This can be done in a live database, but beware that all backends
22479 running in the altered database must be restarted before it is safe to
22480 repopulate <structname>pg_statistic</>.
22484 To repair the <structname>pg_settings</> error, simply do:
22486 GRANT SELECT, UPDATE ON pg_settings TO PUBLIC;
22491 The above procedures must be carried out in <emphasis>each</> database
22492 of an installation, including <literal>template1</>, and ideally
22493 including <literal>template0</> as well. If you do not fix the
22494 template databases then any subsequently created databases will contain
22495 the same errors. <literal>template1</> can be fixed in the same way
22496 as any other database, but fixing <literal>template0</> requires
22497 additional steps. First, from any database issue:
22499 UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = true WHERE datname = 'template0';
22501 Next connect to <literal>template0</> and perform the above repair
22502 procedures. Finally, do:
22504 -- re-freeze template0:
22506 -- and protect it against future alterations:
22507 UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = false WHERE datname = 'template0';
22513 <title>Changes</title>
22516 Release 7.4.2 incorporates all the fixes included in release 7.3.6,
22517 plus the following fixes:
22521 <listitem><para>Fix <structname>pg_statistics</> alignment bug that could crash optimizer</para>
22522 <para>See above for details about this problem.</para></listitem>
22523 <listitem><para>Allow non-super users to update <structname>pg_settings</></para></listitem>
22524 <listitem><para>Fix several optimizer bugs, most of which led to
22525 <quote>variable not found in subplan target lists</> errors</para></listitem>
22526 <listitem><para>Avoid out-of-memory failure during startup of large multiple
22527 index scan</para></listitem>
22528 <listitem><para>Fix multibyte problem that could lead to <quote>out of
22529 memory</> error during <command>COPY IN</></para></listitem>
22530 <listitem><para>Fix problems with <command>SELECT INTO</> / <command>CREATE
22531 TABLE AS</> from tables without OIDs</para></listitem>
22532 <listitem><para>Fix problems with <filename>alter_table</> regression test
22533 during parallel testing</para></listitem>
22534 <listitem><para>Fix problems with hitting open file limit, especially on OS X (Tom)</para></listitem>
22535 <listitem><para>Partial fix for Turkish-locale issues</para>
22536 <para>initdb will succeed now in Turkish locale, but there are still some
22537 inconveniences associated with the <literal>i/I</> problem.</para></listitem>
22538 <listitem><para>Make pg_dump set client encoding on restore</para></listitem>
22539 <listitem><para>Other minor pg_dump fixes</para></listitem>
22540 <listitem><para>Allow ecpg to again use C keywords as column names (Michael)</para></listitem>
22541 <listitem><para>Added ecpg <literal>WHENEVER NOT_FOUND</> to
22542 <literal>SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE</> (Michael)</para></listitem>
22543 <listitem><para>Fix ecpg crash for queries calling set-returning functions (Michael)</para></listitem>
22544 <listitem><para>Various other ecpg fixes (Michael)</para></listitem>
22545 <listitem><para>Fixes for Borland compiler</para></listitem>
22546 <listitem><para>Thread build improvements (Bruce)</para></listitem>
22547 <listitem><para>Various other build fixes</para></listitem>
22548 <listitem><para>Various JDBC fixes</para></listitem>
22554 <sect1 id="release-7-4-1">
22555 <title>Release 7.4.1</title>
22558 <title>Release date</title>
22559 <simpara>2003-12-22</simpara>
22563 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.
22564 For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see
22565 <xref linkend="release-7-4">.
22570 <title>Migration to Version 7.4.1</title>
22573 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
22578 If you want to install the fixes in the information schema
22579 you need to reload it into the database.
22580 This is either accomplished by initializing a new cluster
22581 by running <command>initdb</command>, or by running the following
22582 sequence of SQL commands in each database (ideally including
22583 <literal>template1</literal>) as a superuser in
22584 <application>psql</application>, after installing the new release:
22586 DROP SCHEMA information_schema CASCADE;
22587 \i /usr/local/pgsql/share/information_schema.sql
22589 Substitute your installation path in the second command.
22595 <title>Changes</title>
22598 <listitem><para>Fixed bug in <command>CREATE SCHEMA</command> parsing in ECPG (Michael)</para></listitem>
22599 <listitem><para>Fix compile error when <option>--enable-thread-safety</option> and <option>--with-perl</option> are used together (Peter)</para></listitem>
22600 <listitem><para>Fix for subqueries that used hash joins (Tom)</para>
22602 Certain subqueries that used hash joins would crash because of
22603 improperly shared structures.
22605 <listitem><para>Fix free space map compaction bug (Tom)</para>
22607 This fixes a bug where compaction of the free space map could lead
22608 to a database server shutdown.
22611 <listitem><para>Fix for Borland compiler build of libpq (Bruce)</para></listitem>
22612 <listitem><para>Fix <function>netmask()</function> and <function>hostmask()</function> to return the maximum-length masklen (Tom)</para>
22614 Fix these functions to return values consistent with pre-7.4
22618 <listitem><para>Several <filename>contrib/pg_autovacuum</filename> fixes</para>
22620 Fixes include improper variable initialization, missing vacuum after
22621 <command>TRUNCATE</command>, and duration computation overflow for long vacuums.
22624 <listitem><para>Allow compile of <filename>contrib/cube</filename> under Cygwin (Jason Tishler)</para></listitem>
22625 <listitem><para>Fix Solaris use of password file when no passwords are defined (Tom)</para>
22627 Fix crash on Solaris caused by use of any type of password
22628 authentication when no passwords were defined.
22631 <listitem><para>JDBC fix for thread problems, other fixes</para></listitem>
22632 <listitem><para>Fix for <type>bytea</type> index lookups (Joe)</para></listitem>
22633 <listitem><para>Fix information schema for bit data types (Peter)</para></listitem>
22634 <listitem><para>Force zero_damaged_pages to be on during recovery from WAL</para></listitem>
22635 <listitem><para>Prevent some obscure cases of <quote>variable not in subplan target lists</quote></para></listitem>
22636 <listitem><para>Make <function>PQescapeBytea</function> and <function>byteaout</function> consistent with each other (Joe)</para></listitem>
22637 <listitem><para>Escape <type>bytea</type> output for bytes > 0x7e(Joe)</para>
22639 If different client encodings are used for <type>bytea</type> output and input, it
22640 is possible for <type>bytea</type> values to be corrupted by the differing
22641 encodings. This fix escapes all bytes that might be affected.
22644 <listitem><para>Added missing <function>SPI_finish()</function> calls to dblink's <function>get_tuple_of_interest()</function> (Joe)</para></listitem>
22645 <listitem><para>New Czech FAQ</para></listitem>
22646 <listitem><para>Fix information schema view <literal>constraint_column_usage</literal> for foreign keys (Peter)</para></listitem>
22647 <listitem><para>ECPG fixes (Michael)</para></listitem>
22648 <listitem><para>Fix bug with multiple <literal>IN</literal> subqueries and joins in the subqueries (Tom)</para></listitem>
22649 <listitem><para>Allow <literal>COUNT('x')</literal> to work (Tom)</para></listitem>
22650 <listitem><para>Install ECPG include files for Informix compatibility into separate directory (Peter)</para>
22652 Some names of ECPG include files for Informix compatibility conflicted with operating system include files.
22653 By installing them in their own directory, name conflicts have been reduced.
22656 <listitem><para>Fix SSL memory leak (Neil)</para>
22658 This release fixes a bug in 7.4 where SSL didn't free all memory it allocated.
22661 <listitem><para>Prevent <filename>pg_service.conf</filename> from using service name as default dbname (Bruce)</para></listitem>
22662 <listitem><para>Fix local ident authentication on FreeBSD (Tom)</para></listitem>
22668 <sect1 id="release-7-4">
22669 <title>Release 7.4</title>
22672 <title>Release date</title>
22673 <simpara>2003-11-17</simpara>
22677 <title>Overview</title>
22680 Major changes in this release:
22686 <literal>IN</literal> / <literal>NOT IN</literal> subqueries are
22687 now much more efficient
22692 In previous releases, <literal>IN</literal>/<literal>NOT
22693 IN</literal> subqueries were joined to the upper query by
22694 sequentially scanning the subquery looking for a match. The
22695 7.4 code uses the same sophisticated techniques used by
22696 ordinary joins and so is much faster. An
22697 <literal>IN</literal> will now usually be as fast as or faster
22698 than an equivalent <literal>EXISTS</literal> subquery; this
22699 reverses the conventional wisdom that applied to previous
22707 Improved <literal>GROUP BY</literal> processing by using hash buckets
22712 In previous releases, rows to be grouped had to be sorted
22713 first. The 7.4 code can do <literal>GROUP BY</literal>
22714 without sorting, by accumulating results into a hash table
22715 with one entry per group. It will still use the sort
22716 technique, however, if the hash table is estimated to be too
22717 large to fit in <varname>sort_mem</>.
22724 New multikey hash join capability
22729 In previous releases, hash joins could only occur on single
22730 keys. This release allows multicolumn hash joins.
22737 Queries using the explicit <literal>JOIN</literal> syntax are
22738 now better optimized
22743 Prior releases evaluated queries using the explicit
22744 <literal>JOIN</literal> syntax only in the order implied by
22745 the syntax. 7.4 allows full optimization of these queries,
22746 meaning the optimizer considers all possible join orderings
22747 and chooses the most efficient. Outer joins, however, must
22748 still follow the declared ordering.
22755 Faster and more powerful regular expression code
22760 The entire regular expression module has been replaced with a
22761 new version by Henry Spencer, originally written for Tcl. The
22762 code greatly improves performance and supports several flavors
22763 of regular expressions.
22770 Function-inlining for simple SQL functions
22775 Simple SQL functions can now be inlined by including their SQL
22776 in the main query. This improves performance by eliminating
22777 per-call overhead. That means simple SQL functions now
22778 behave like macros.
22785 Full support for IPv6 connections and IPv6 address data types
22790 Previous releases allowed only IPv4 connections, and the IP
22791 data types only supported IPv4 addresses. This release adds
22792 full IPv6 support in both of these areas.
22799 Major improvements in SSL performance and reliability
22804 Several people very familiar with the SSL API have overhauled
22805 our SSL code to improve SSL key negotiation and error
22813 Make free space map efficiently reuse empty index pages,
22814 and other free space management improvements
22819 In previous releases, B-tree index pages that were left empty
22820 because of deleted rows could only be reused by rows with
22821 index values similar to the rows originally indexed on that
22822 page. In 7.4, <command>VACUUM</command> records empty index
22823 pages and allows them to be reused for any future index rows.
22830 SQL-standard information schema
22835 The information schema provides a standardized and stable way
22836 to access information about the schema objects defined in a
22844 Cursors conform more closely to the SQL standard
22849 The commands <command>FETCH</command> and
22850 <command>MOVE</command> have been overhauled to conform more
22851 closely to the SQL standard.
22858 Cursors can exist outside transactions
22863 These cursors are also called holdable cursors.
22870 New client-to-server protocol
22875 The new protocol adds error codes, more status information,
22876 faster startup, better support for binary data transmission,
22877 parameter values separated from SQL commands, prepared
22878 statements available at the protocol level, and cleaner
22879 recovery from <command>COPY</command> failures. The older
22880 protocol is still supported by both server and clients.
22887 <application>libpq</application> and
22888 <application>ECPG</application> applications are now fully
22894 While previous <application>libpq</application> releases
22895 already supported threads, this release improves thread safety
22896 by fixing some non-thread-safe code that was used during
22897 database connection startup. The <command>configure</command>
22898 option <option>--enable-thread-safety</option> must be used to
22899 enable this feature.
22906 New version of full-text indexing
22911 A new full-text indexing suite is available in
22912 <filename>contrib/tsearch2</filename>.
22919 New autovacuum tool
22924 The new autovacuum tool in
22925 <filename>contrib/autovacuum</filename> monitors the database
22926 statistics tables for
22927 <command>INSERT</command>/<command>UPDATE</command>/<command>DELETE</command>
22928 activity and automatically vacuums tables when needed.
22935 Array handling has been improved and moved into the server core
22940 Many array limitations have been removed, and arrays behave
22941 more like fully-supported data types.
22950 <title>Migration to Version 7.4</title>
22953 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is
22954 required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
22959 Observe the following incompatibilities:
22965 The server-side autocommit setting was removed and
22966 reimplemented in client applications and languages.
22967 Server-side autocommit was causing too many problems with
22968 languages and applications that wanted to control their own
22969 autocommit behavior, so autocommit was removed from the server
22970 and added to individual client APIs as appropriate.
22976 Error message wording has changed substantially in this
22977 release. Significant effort was invested to make the messages
22978 more consistent and user-oriented. If your applications try to
22979 detect different error conditions by parsing the error message,
22980 you are strongly encouraged to use the new error code facility instead.
22986 Inner joins using the explicit <literal>JOIN</literal> syntax
22987 might behave differently because they are now better
22994 A number of server configuration parameters have been renamed
22995 for clarity, primarily those related to
23002 <literal>FETCH 0</literal> or <literal>MOVE 0</literal> now
23003 does nothing. In prior releases, <literal>FETCH 0</literal>
23004 would fetch all remaining rows, and <literal>MOVE 0</literal>
23005 would move to the end of the cursor.
23011 <command>FETCH</command> and <command>MOVE</command> now return
23012 the actual number of rows fetched/moved, or zero if at the
23013 beginning/end of the cursor. Prior releases would return the
23014 row count passed to the command, not the number of rows
23015 actually fetched or moved.
23021 <command>COPY</command> now can process files that use
23022 carriage-return or carriage-return/line-feed end-of-line
23023 sequences. Literal carriage-returns and line-feeds are no
23024 longer accepted in data values; use <literal>\r</literal> and
23025 <literal>\n</literal> instead.
23031 Trailing spaces are now trimmed when converting from type
23032 <type>char(<replaceable>n</>)</type> to
23033 <type>varchar(<replaceable>n</>)</type> or <type>text</type>.
23034 This is what most people always expected to happen anyway.
23040 The data type <type>float(<replaceable>p</>)</type> now
23041 measures <replaceable>p</> in binary digits, not decimal
23042 digits. The new behavior follows the SQL standard.
23048 Ambiguous date values now must match the ordering specified by
23049 the <varname>datestyle</varname> setting. In prior releases, a
23050 date specification of <literal>10/20/03</> was interpreted as a
23051 date in October even if <varname>datestyle</> specified that
23052 the day should be first. 7.4 will throw an error if a date
23053 specification is invalid for the current setting of
23054 <varname>datestyle</>.
23060 The functions <function>oidrand</function>,
23061 <function>oidsrand</function>, and
23062 <function>userfntest</function> have been removed. These
23063 functions were determined to be no longer useful.
23069 String literals specifying time-varying date/time values, such
23070 as <literal>'now'</literal> or <literal>'today'</literal> will
23071 no longer work as expected in column default expressions; they
23072 now cause the time of the table creation to be the default, not
23073 the time of the insertion. Functions such as
23074 <function>now()</>, <function>current_timestamp</>, or
23075 <function>current_date</function> should be used instead.
23079 In previous releases, there was special code so that strings
23080 such as <literal>'now'</literal> were interpreted at
23081 <command>INSERT</> time and not at table creation time, but
23082 this work around didn't cover all cases. Release 7.4 now
23083 requires that defaults be defined properly using functions such
23084 as <function>now()</> or <function>current_timestamp</>. These
23085 will work in all situations.
23091 The dollar sign (<literal>$</>) is no longer allowed in
23092 operator names. It can instead be a non-first character in
23093 identifiers. This was done to improve compatibility with other
23094 database systems, and to avoid syntax problems when parameter
23095 placeholders (<literal>$<replaceable>n</></>) are written
23096 adjacent to operators.
23104 <title>Changes</title>
23107 Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between
23108 release 7.4 and the previous major release.
23112 <title>Server Operation Changes</title>
23117 Allow IPv6 server connections (Nigel Kukard, Johan Jordaan,
23118 Bruce, Tom, Kurt Roeckx, Andrew Dunstan)
23124 Fix SSL to handle errors cleanly (Nathan Mueller)
23127 In prior releases, certain SSL API error reports were not
23128 handled correctly. This release fixes those problems.
23134 SSL protocol security and performance improvements (Sean Chittenden)
23137 SSL key renegotiation was happening too frequently, causing poor
23138 SSL performance. Also, initial key handling was improved.
23144 Print lock information when a deadlock is detected (Tom)
23147 This allows easier debugging of deadlock situations.
23153 Update <filename>/tmp</filename> socket modification times
23154 regularly to avoid their removal (Tom)
23157 This should help prevent <filename>/tmp</filename> directory
23158 cleaner administration scripts from removing server socket
23163 <listitem><para>Enable PAM for Mac OS X (Aaron Hillegass)</para></listitem>
23166 <para>Make B-tree indexes fully WAL-safe (Tom)</para>
23168 In prior releases, under certain rare cases, a server crash
23169 could cause B-tree indexes to become corrupt. This release
23170 removes those last few rare cases.
23174 <listitem><para>Allow B-tree index compaction and empty page reuse (Tom)</para></listitem>
23178 Fix inconsistent index lookups during split of first root page (Tom)
23181 In prior releases, when a single-page index split into two
23182 pages, there was a brief period when another database session
23183 could miss seeing an index entry. This release fixes that rare
23188 <listitem><para>Improve free space map allocation logic (Tom)</para></listitem>
23191 <para>Preserve free space information between server restarts (Tom)</para>
23193 In prior releases, the free space map was not saved when the
23194 postmaster was stopped, so newly started servers had no free
23195 space information. This release saves the free space map, and
23196 reloads it when the server is restarted.
23200 <listitem><para>Add start time to <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Neil)</para></listitem>
23201 <listitem><para>New code to detect corrupt disk pages; erase with <varname>zero_damaged_pages</varname> (Tom)</para></listitem>
23202 <listitem><para>New client/server protocol: faster, no username length limit, allow clean exit from <command>COPY</command> (Tom)</para></listitem>
23203 <listitem><para>Add transaction status, table ID, column ID to client/server protocol (Tom)</para></listitem>
23204 <listitem><para>Add binary I/O to client/server protocol (Tom)</para></listitem>
23205 <listitem><para>Remove autocommit server setting; move to client applications (Tom)</para></listitem>
23206 <listitem><para>New error message wording, error codes, and three levels of error detail (Tom, Joe, Peter)</para></listitem>
23211 <title>Performance Improvements</title>
23214 <listitem><para>Add hashing for <literal>GROUP BY</literal> aggregates (Tom)</para></listitem>
23215 <listitem><para>Make nested-loop joins be smarter about multicolumn indexes (Tom)</para></listitem>
23216 <listitem><para>Allow multikey hash joins (Tom)</para></listitem>
23217 <listitem><para>Improve constant folding (Tom)</para></listitem>
23218 <listitem><para>Add ability to inline simple SQL functions (Tom)</para></listitem>
23221 <para>Reduce memory usage for queries using complex functions (Tom)</para>
23223 In prior releases, functions returning allocated memory would
23224 not free it until the query completed. This release allows the
23225 freeing of function-allocated memory when the function call
23226 completes, reducing the total memory used by functions.
23231 <para>Improve GEQO optimizer performance (Tom)</para>
23233 This release fixes several inefficiencies in the way the GEQO optimizer
23234 manages potential query paths.
23240 Allow <literal>IN</>/<literal>NOT IN</> to be handled via hash
23247 Improve <literal>NOT IN (<replaceable>subquery</>)</literal>
23254 Allow most <literal>IN</literal> subqueries to be processed as
23261 Pattern matching operations can use indexes regardless of
23265 There is no way for non-ASCII locales to use the standard
23266 indexes for <literal>LIKE</literal> comparisons. This release
23267 adds a way to create a special index for
23268 <literal>LIKE</literal>.
23273 <para>Allow the postmaster to preload libraries using <varname>preload_libraries</varname> (Joe)</para>
23275 For shared libraries that require a long time to load, this
23276 option is available so the library can be preloaded in the
23277 postmaster and inherited by all database sessions.
23283 Improve optimizer cost computations, particularly for subqueries (Tom)
23289 Avoid sort when subquery <literal>ORDER BY</literal> matches upper query (Tom)
23295 Deduce that <literal>WHERE a.x = b.y AND b.y = 42</literal> also
23296 means <literal>a.x = 42</literal> (Tom)
23302 Allow hash/merge joins on complex joins (Tom)
23308 Allow hash joins for more data types (Tom)
23314 Allow join optimization of explicit inner joins, disable with
23315 <varname>join_collapse_limit</varname> (Tom)
23321 Add parameter <varname>from_collapse_limit</varname> to control
23322 conversion of subqueries to joins (Tom)
23328 Use faster and more powerful regular expression code from Tcl
23329 (Henry Spencer, Tom)
23335 Use bit-mapped relation sets in the optimizer (Tom)
23340 <para>Improve connection startup time (Tom)</para>
23342 The new client/server protocol requires fewer network packets to
23343 start a database session.
23349 Improve trigger/constraint performance (Stephan)
23355 Improve speed of <literal>col IN (const, const, const, ...)</literal> (Tom)
23361 Fix hash indexes which were broken in rare cases (Tom)
23365 <listitem><para>Improve hash index concurrency and speed (Tom)</para>
23367 Prior releases suffered from poor hash index performance,
23368 particularly for high concurrency situations. This release fixes
23369 that, and the development group is interested in reports
23370 comparing B-tree and hash index performance.
23375 <para>Align shared buffers on 32-byte boundary for copy speed improvement (Manfred Spraul)</para>
23377 Certain CPU's perform faster data copies when addresses are
23383 <para>Data type <type>numeric</type> reimplemented for better performance (Tom)</para>
23385 <type>numeric</type> used to be stored in base 100. The new code
23386 uses base 10000, for significantly better performance.
23393 <title>Server Configuration Changes</title>
23397 <para>Rename server parameter <varname>server_min_messages</> to <varname>log_min_messages</> (Bruce)</para>
23399 This was done so most parameters that control the server logs
23400 begin with <literal>log_</>.
23404 <listitem><para>Rename <varname>show_*_stats</> to <varname>log_*_stats</> (Bruce)</para></listitem>
23405 <listitem><para>Rename <varname>show_source_port</> to <varname>log_source_port</> (Bruce)</para></listitem>
23406 <listitem><para>Rename <varname>hostname_lookup</> to <varname>log_hostname</> (Bruce)</para></listitem>
23409 <para>Add <varname>checkpoint_warning</> to warn of excessive checkpointing (Bruce)</para>
23411 In prior releases, it was difficult to determine if checkpoint
23412 was happening too frequently. This feature adds a warning to the
23413 server logs when excessive checkpointing happens.
23417 <listitem><para>New read-only server parameters for localization (Tom)</para></listitem>
23421 Change debug server log messages to output as <literal>DEBUG</>
23422 rather than <literal>LOG</> (Bruce)
23427 <para>Prevent server log variables from being turned off by non-superusers (Bruce)</para>
23429 This is a security feature so non-superusers cannot disable
23430 logging that was enabled by the administrator.
23436 <varname>log_min_messages</>/<varname>client_min_messages</> now
23437 controls <varname>debug_*</> output (Bruce)
23440 This centralizes client debug information so all debug output
23441 can be sent to either the client or server logs.
23446 <para>Add Mac OS X Rendezvous server support (Chris Campbell)</para>
23448 This allows Mac OS X hosts to query the network for available
23449 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> servers.
23455 Add ability to print only slow statements using
23456 <varname>log_min_duration_statement</varname>
23460 This is an often requested debugging feature that allows
23461 administrators to see only slow queries in their server logs.
23466 <para>Allow <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename> to accept netmasks in CIDR format (Andrew Dunstan)</para>
23468 This allows administrators to merge the host IP address and
23469 netmask fields into a single CIDR field in <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename>.
23473 <listitem><para>New read-only parameter <varname>is_superuser</varname> (Tom)</para></listitem>
23476 <para>New parameter <varname>log_error_verbosity</varname> to control error detail (Tom)</para>
23478 This works with the new error reporting feature to supply
23479 additional error information like hints, file names and line
23485 <para><literal>postgres --describe-config</literal> now dumps server config variables (Aizaz Ahmed, Peter)</para>
23487 This option is useful for administration tools that need to know
23488 the configuration variable names and their minimums, maximums,
23489 defaults, and descriptions.
23495 Add new columns in <literal>pg_settings</literal>:
23496 <literal>context</>, <literal>type</>, <literal>source</>,
23497 <literal>min_val</>, <literal>max_val</> (Joe)
23503 Make default <varname>shared_buffers</> 1000 and
23504 <varname>max_connections</> 100, if possible (Tom)
23507 Prior versions defaulted to 64 shared buffers so <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
23508 would start on even very old systems. This release tests the
23509 amount of shared memory allowed by the platform and selects more
23510 reasonable default values if possible. Of course, users are
23511 still encouraged to evaluate their resource load and size
23512 <varname>shared_buffers</varname> accordingly.
23518 New <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename> record type
23519 <literal>hostnossl</> to prevent SSL connections (Jon
23523 In prior releases, there was no way to prevent SSL connections
23524 if both the client and server supported SSL. This option allows
23531 Remove parameter <varname>geqo_random_seed</varname>
23538 Add server parameter <varname>regex_flavor</varname> to control regular expression processing (Tom)
23544 Make <command>pg_ctl</command> better handle nonstandard ports (Greg)
23551 <title>Query Changes</title>
23554 <listitem><para>New SQL-standard information schema (Peter)</para></listitem>
23555 <listitem><para>Add read-only transactions (Peter)</para></listitem>
23556 <listitem><para>Print key name and value in foreign-key violation messages (Dmitry Tkach)</para></listitem>
23559 <para>Allow users to see their own queries in <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal> (Kevin Brown)</para>
23561 In prior releases, only the superuser could see query strings
23562 using <literal>pg_stat_activity</literal>. Now ordinary users
23563 can see their own query strings.
23568 <para>Fix aggregates in subqueries to match SQL standard (Tom)</para>
23570 The SQL standard says that an aggregate function appearing
23571 within a nested subquery belongs to the outer query if its
23572 argument contains only outer-query variables. Prior
23573 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> releases did not handle
23574 this fine point correctly.
23579 <para>Add option to prevent auto-addition of tables referenced in query (Nigel J. Andrews)</para>
23581 By default, tables mentioned in the query are automatically
23582 added to the <literal>FROM</> clause if they are not already
23583 there. This is compatible with historic
23584 <productname>POSTGRES</productname> behavior but is contrary to
23585 the SQL standard. This option allows selecting
23586 standard-compatible behavior.
23591 <para>Allow <literal>UPDATE ... SET col = DEFAULT</literal> (Rod)</para>
23593 This allows <command>UPDATE</command> to set a column to its
23594 declared default value.
23599 <para>Allow expressions to be used in <literal>LIMIT</>/<literal>OFFSET</> (Tom)</para>
23601 In prior releases, <literal>LIMIT</>/<literal>OFFSET</> could
23602 only use constants, not expressions.
23607 <para>Implement <literal>CREATE TABLE AS EXECUTE</literal> (Neil, Peter)</para>
23613 <title>Object Manipulation Changes</title>
23617 <para>Make <command>CREATE SEQUENCE</command> grammar more conforming to SQL:2003 (Neil)</para>
23621 <para>Add statement-level triggers (Neil)</para>
23623 While this allows a trigger to fire at the end of a statement,
23624 it does not allow the trigger to access all rows modified by the
23625 statement. This capability is planned for a future release.
23630 <para>Add check constraints for domains (Rod)</para>
23632 This greatly increases the usefulness of domains by allowing
23633 them to use check constraints.
23638 <para>Add <command>ALTER DOMAIN</command> (Rod)</para>
23640 This allows manipulation of existing domains.
23645 <para>Fix several zero-column table bugs (Tom)</para>
23647 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> supports zero-column tables. This fixes various bugs
23648 that occur when using such tables.
23653 <para>Have <literal>ALTER TABLE ... ADD PRIMARY KEY</literal> add not-null constraint (Rod)</para>
23655 In prior releases, <literal>ALTER TABLE ... ADD
23656 PRIMARY</literal> would add a unique index, but not a not-null
23657 constraint. That is fixed in this release.
23661 <listitem><para>Add <literal>ALTER TABLE ... WITHOUT OIDS</literal> (Rod)</para>
23663 This allows control over whether new and updated rows will have
23664 an OID column. This is most useful for saving storage space.
23670 Add <literal>ALTER SEQUENCE</literal> to modify minimum, maximum,
23671 increment, cache, cycle values (Rod)
23676 <para>Add <literal>ALTER TABLE ... CLUSTER ON</literal> (Alvaro Herrera)</para>
23678 This command is used by <command>pg_dump</command> to record the
23679 cluster column for each table previously clustered. This
23680 information is used by database-wide cluster to cluster all
23681 previously clustered tables.
23685 <listitem><para>Improve automatic type casting for domains (Rod, Tom)</para></listitem>
23686 <listitem><para>Allow dollar signs in identifiers, except as first character (Tom)</para></listitem>
23687 <listitem><para>Disallow dollar signs in operator names, so <literal>x=$1</> works (Tom)</para></listitem>
23691 Allow copying table schema using <literal>LIKE
23692 <replaceable>subtable</replaceable></literal>, also SQL:2003
23693 feature <literal>INCLUDING DEFAULTS</literal> (Rod)
23699 Add <literal>WITH GRANT OPTION</literal> clause to
23700 <command>GRANT</command> (Peter)
23703 This enabled <command>GRANT</command> to give other users the
23704 ability to grant privileges on a object.
23711 <title>Utility Command Changes</title>
23715 <para>Add <literal>ON COMMIT</literal> clause to <command>CREATE TABLE</command> for temporary tables (Gavin)</para>
23717 This adds the ability for a table to be dropped or all rows
23718 deleted on transaction commit.
23723 <para>Allow cursors outside transactions using <literal>WITH HOLD</literal> (Neil)</para>
23725 In previous releases, cursors were removed at the end of the
23726 transaction that created them. Cursors can now be created with
23727 the <literal>WITH HOLD</literal> option, which allows them to
23728 continue to be accessed after the creating transaction has
23734 <para><literal>FETCH 0</literal> and <literal>MOVE 0 </literal> now do nothing (Bruce)</para>
23736 In previous releases, <literal>FETCH 0</literal> fetched all
23737 remaining rows, and <literal>MOVE 0</literal> moved to the end
23744 Cause <command>FETCH</command> and <command>MOVE</command> to
23745 return the number of rows fetched/moved, or zero if at the
23746 beginning/end of cursor, per SQL standard (Bruce)
23749 In prior releases, the row count returned by
23750 <command>FETCH</command> and <command>MOVE</command> did not
23751 accurately reflect the number of rows processed.
23756 <para>Properly handle <literal>SCROLL</literal> with cursors, or
23757 report an error (Neil)</para>
23759 Allowing random access (both forward and backward scrolling) to
23760 some kinds of queries cannot be done without some additional
23761 work. If <literal>SCROLL</literal> is specified when the cursor
23762 is created, this additional work will be performed. Furthermore,
23763 if the cursor has been created with <literal>NO SCROLL</literal>,
23764 no random access is allowed.
23770 Implement SQL-compatible options <literal>FIRST</>,
23771 <literal>LAST</>, <literal>ABSOLUTE <replaceable>n</></>,
23772 <literal>RELATIVE <replaceable>n</></> for
23773 <command>FETCH</command> and <command>MOVE</command> (Tom)
23778 <para>Allow <command>EXPLAIN</command> on <command>DECLARE CURSOR</command> (Tom)</para>
23782 <para>Allow <command>CLUSTER</command> to use index marked as pre-clustered by default (Alvaro Herrera)</para>
23786 <para>Allow <command>CLUSTER</command> to cluster all tables (Alvaro Herrera)</para>
23788 This allows all previously clustered tables in a database to be
23789 reclustered with a single command.
23793 <listitem><para>Prevent <command>CLUSTER</command> on partial indexes (Tom)</para></listitem>
23795 <listitem><para>Allow DOS and Mac line-endings in <command>COPY</> files (Bruce)</para></listitem>
23799 Disallow literal carriage return as a data value,
23800 backslash-carriage-return and <literal>\r</> are still allowed
23806 <para><command>COPY</> changes (binary, <literal>\.</>) (Tom)</para>
23810 <para>Recover from <command>COPY</command> failure cleanly (Tom)</para>
23814 <para>Prevent possible memory leaks in <command>COPY</command> (Tom)</para>
23818 <para>Make <command>TRUNCATE</command> transaction-safe (Rod)</para>
23820 <command>TRUNCATE</command> can now be used inside a
23821 transaction. If the transaction aborts, the changes made by the
23822 <command>TRUNCATE</command> are automatically rolled back.
23828 Allow prepare/bind of utility commands like
23829 <command>FETCH</command> and <command>EXPLAIN</command> (Tom)
23834 <para>Add <command>EXPLAIN EXECUTE</command> (Neil)</para>
23838 <para>Improve <command>VACUUM</command> performance on indexes by reducing WAL traffic (Tom)</para>
23842 <para>Functional indexes have been generalized into indexes on expressions (Tom)</para>
23844 In prior releases, functional indexes only supported a simple
23845 function applied to one or more column names. This release
23846 allows any type of scalar expression.
23852 Have <command>SHOW TRANSACTION ISOLATION</command> match input
23853 to <command>SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION</command>
23860 Have <command>COMMENT ON DATABASE</command> on nonlocal
23861 database generate a warning, rather than an error (Rod)
23865 Database comments are stored in database-local tables so
23866 comments on a database have to be stored in each database.
23872 Improve reliability of <command>LISTEN</>/<command>NOTIFY</> (Tom)
23877 <para>Allow <command>REINDEX</command> to reliably reindex nonshared system catalog indexes (Tom)</para>
23879 This allows system tables to be reindexed without the
23880 requirement of a standalone session, which was necessary in
23881 previous releases. The only tables that now require a standalone
23882 session for reindexing are the global system tables
23883 <literal>pg_database</>, <literal>pg_shadow</>, and
23884 <literal>pg_group</>.
23891 <title>Data Type and Function Changes</title>
23896 New server parameter <varname>extra_float_digits</varname> to
23897 control precision display of floating-point numbers (Pedro
23901 This controls output precision which was causing regression
23906 <listitem><para>Allow <literal>+1300</literal> as a numeric time-zone specifier, for FJST (Tom)</para></listitem>
23910 Remove rarely used functions <function>oidrand</>,
23911 <function>oidsrand</>, and <function>userfntest</> functions
23917 <para>Add <function>md5()</> function to main server, already in <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</filename> (Joe)</para>
23919 An MD5 function was frequently requested. For more complex
23920 encryption capabilities, use
23921 <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</filename>.
23925 <listitem><para>Increase date range of <type>timestamp</type> (John Cochran)</para></listitem>
23929 Change <literal>EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM timestamp)</literal> so
23930 <type>timestamp without time zone</type> is assumed to be in
23931 local time, not GMT (Tom)
23935 <listitem><para>Trap division by zero in case the operating system doesn't prevent it (Tom)</para></listitem>
23936 <listitem><para>Change the <type>numeric</type> data type internally to base 10000 (Tom)</para></listitem>
23937 <listitem><para>New <function>hostmask()</function> function (Greg Wickham)</para></listitem>
23938 <listitem><para>Fixes for <function>to_char()</function> and <function>to_timestamp()</function> (Karel)</para></listitem>
23942 Allow functions that can take any argument data type and return
23943 any data type, using <type>anyelement</type> and
23944 <type>anyarray</type> (Joe)
23947 This allows the creation of functions that can work with any
23954 Arrays can now be specified as <literal>ARRAY[1,2,3]</literal>,
23955 <literal>ARRAY[['a','b'],['c','d']]</literal>, or
23956 <literal>ARRAY[ARRAY[ARRAY[2]]]</literal> (Joe)
23962 Allow proper comparisons for arrays, including <literal>ORDER
23963 BY</literal> and <literal>DISTINCT</literal> support
23968 <listitem><para>Allow indexes on array columns (Joe)</para></listitem>
23969 <listitem><para>Allow array concatenation with <literal>||</literal> (Joe)</para></listitem>
23973 Allow <literal>WHERE</literal> qualification
23974 <literal><replaceable>expr</> <replaceable>op</> ANY/SOME/ALL
23975 (<replaceable>array_expr</>)</literal> (Joe)
23978 This allows arrays to behave like a list of values, for purposes
23979 like <literal>SELECT * FROM tab WHERE col IN
23980 (array_val)</literal>.
23986 New array functions <function>array_append</>,
23987 <function>array_cat</>, <function>array_lower</>,
23988 <function>array_prepend</>, <function>array_to_string</>,
23989 <function>array_upper</>, <function>string_to_array</> (Joe)
23993 <listitem><para>Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe)</para></listitem>
23994 <listitem><para>Allow assignments to empty arrays (Joe)</para></listitem>
23998 Allow 60 in seconds fields of <type>time</type>,
23999 <type>timestamp</type>, and <type>interval</type> input values
24003 Sixty-second values are needed for leap seconds.
24007 <listitem><para>Allow <type>cidr</type> data type to be cast to <type>text</type> (Tom)</para></listitem>
24009 <listitem><para>Disallow invalid time zone names in SET TIMEZONE</para></listitem>
24013 Trim trailing spaces when <type>char</type> is cast to
24014 <type>varchar</> or <type>text</> (Tom)
24020 Make <type>float(<replaceable>p</>)</> measure the precision
24021 <replaceable>p</> in binary digits, not decimal digits
24027 <para>Add IPv6 support to the <type>inet</type> and <type>cidr</type> data types (Michael Graff)</para>
24031 <para>Add <function>family()</function> function to report whether address is IPv4 or IPv6 (Michael Graff)</para>
24036 Have <literal>SHOW datestyle</literal> generate output similar
24037 to that used by <literal>SET datestyle</literal> (Tom)
24043 Make <literal>EXTRACT(TIMEZONE)</literal> and <literal>SET/SHOW
24044 TIME ZONE</literal> follow the SQL convention for the sign of
24045 time zone offsets, i.e., positive is east from UTC (Tom)
24050 <para>Fix <literal>date_trunc('quarter', ...)</literal> (Böjthe Zoltán)</para>
24052 Prior releases returned an incorrect value for this function call.
24057 <para>Make <function>initcap()</function> more compatible with Oracle (Mike Nolan)</para>
24059 <function>initcap()</function> now uppercases a letter appearing
24060 after any non-alphanumeric character, rather than only after
24066 <para>Allow only <varname>datestyle</varname> field order for date values not in ISO-8601 format (Greg)</para>
24071 Add new <varname>datestyle</varname> values <literal>MDY</>,
24072 <literal>DMY</>, and <literal>YMD</> to set input field order;
24073 honor <literal>US</> and <literal>European</> for backward
24074 compatibility (Tom)
24080 String literals like <literal>'now'</literal> or
24081 <literal>'today'</literal> will no longer work as a column
24082 default. Use functions such as <function>now()</function>,
24083 <function>current_timestamp</function> instead. (change
24084 required for prepared statements) (Tom)
24089 <para>Treat NaN as larger than any other value in <function>min()</>/<function>max()</> (Tom)</para>
24091 NaN was already sorted after ordinary numeric values for most
24092 purposes, but <function>min()</> and <function>max()</> didn't
24098 <para>Prevent interval from suppressing <literal>:00</literal>
24099 seconds display</para>
24104 New functions <function>pg_get_triggerdef(prettyprint)</function>
24105 and <function>pg_conversion_is_visible()</function> (Christopher)
24110 <para>Allow time to be specified as <literal>040506</> or <literal>0405</> (Tom)</para>
24115 Input date order must now be <literal>YYYY-MM-DD</literal> (with 4-digit year) or
24116 match <varname>datestyle</varname>
24122 Make <function>pg_get_constraintdef</function> support
24123 unique, primary-key, and check constraints (Christopher)
24130 <title>Server-Side Language Changes</title>
24135 Prevent PL/pgSQL crash when <literal>RETURN NEXT</literal> is
24136 used on a zero-row record variable (Tom)
24142 Make PL/Python's <function>spi_execute</function> interface
24143 handle null values properly (Andrew Bosma)
24148 <para>Allow PL/pgSQL to declare variables of composite types without <literal>%ROWTYPE</literal> (Tom)</para>
24152 <para>Fix PL/Python's <function>_quote()</function> function to handle big integers</para>
24156 <para>Make PL/Python an untrusted language, now called <literal>plpythonu</literal> (Kevin Jacobs, Tom)</para>
24158 The Python language no longer supports a restricted execution
24159 environment, so the trusted version of PL/Python was removed. If
24160 this situation changes, a version of PL/Python that can be used
24161 by non-superusers will be readded.
24166 <para>Allow polymorphic PL/pgSQL functions (Joe, Tom)</para>
24170 <para>Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe)</para>
24175 Improved compiled function caching mechanism in PL/pgSQL with
24176 full support for polymorphism (Joe)
24182 Add new parameter <literal>$0</> in PL/pgSQL representing the
24183 function's actual return type (Joe)
24189 Allow PL/Tcl and PL/Python to use the same trigger on multiple tables (Tom)
24195 Fixed PL/Tcl's <function>spi_prepare</function> to accept fully
24196 qualified type names in the parameter type list
24204 <title>psql Changes</title>
24208 <para>Add <literal>\pset pager always</literal> to always use pager (Greg)</para>
24210 This forces the pager to be used even if the number of rows is
24211 less than the screen height. This is valuable for rows that
24212 wrap across several screen rows.
24216 <listitem><para>Improve tab completion (Rod, Ross Reedstrom, Ian Barwick)</para></listitem>
24217 <listitem><para>Reorder <literal>\?</> help into groupings (Harald Armin Massa, Bruce)</para></listitem>
24218 <listitem><para>Add backslash commands for listing schemas, casts, and conversions (Christopher)</para></listitem>
24222 <command>\encoding</> now changes based on the server parameter
24223 <varname>client_encoding</varname> (Tom)
24226 In previous versions, <command>\encoding</command> was not aware
24227 of encoding changes made using <literal>SET
24228 client_encoding</literal>.
24233 <para>Save editor buffer into readline history (Ross)</para>
24235 When <command>\e</> is used to edit a query, the result is saved
24236 in the readline history for retrieval using the up arrow.
24240 <listitem><para>Improve <command>\d</command> display (Christopher)</para></listitem>
24241 <listitem><para>Enhance HTML mode to be more standards-conforming (Greg)</para></listitem>
24244 <para>New <command>\set AUTOCOMMIT off</command> capability (Tom)</para>
24246 This takes the place of the removed server parameter <varname>autocommit</varname>.
24251 <para>New <command>\set VERBOSITY</command> to control error detail (Tom)</para>
24253 This controls the new error reporting details.
24257 <listitem><para>New prompt escape sequence <literal>%x</literal> to show transaction status (Tom)</para></listitem>
24258 <listitem><para>Long options for <application>psql</application> are now available on all platforms</para></listitem>
24263 <title>pg_dump Changes</title>
24266 <listitem><para>Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects</para></listitem>
24267 <listitem><para>Allow pg_dump to dump specific schemas (Neil)</para></listitem>
24270 <para>Make pg_dump preserve column storage characteristics (Christopher)</para>
24272 This preserves <literal>ALTER TABLE ... SET STORAGE</literal> information.
24276 <listitem><para>Make pg_dump preserve <command>CLUSTER</command> characteristics (Christopher)</para></listitem>
24280 Have pg_dumpall use <command>GRANT</>/<command>REVOKE</> to dump database-level privileges (Tom)
24286 Allow pg_dumpall to support the options <option>-a</>,
24287 <option>-s</>, <option>-x</> of pg_dump (Tom)
24291 <listitem><para>Prevent pg_dump from lowercasing identifiers specified on the command line (Tom)</para></listitem>
24295 pg_dump options <option>--use-set-session-authorization</option>
24296 and <option>--no-reconnect</option> now do nothing, all dumps
24297 use <command>SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION</command>
24300 pg_dump no longer reconnects to switch users, but instead always
24301 uses <command>SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION</command>. This will
24302 reduce password prompting during restores.
24307 <para>Long options for <application>pg_dump</application> are now available on all platforms</para>
24309 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> now includes its own
24310 long-option processing routines.
24317 <title>libpq Changes</title>
24322 Add function <function>PQfreemem</function> for freeing memory on
24323 Windows, suggested for <command>NOTIFY</command> (Bruce)
24326 Windows requires that memory allocated in a library be freed by
24327 a function in the same library, hence
24328 <function>free()</function> doesn't work for freeing memory
24329 allocated by libpq. <function>PQfreemem</function> is the proper
24330 way to free libpq memory, especially on Windows, and is
24331 recommended for other platforms as well.
24336 <para>Document service capability, and add sample file (Bruce)</para>
24338 This allows clients to look up connection information in a
24339 central file on the client machine.
24345 Make <function>PQsetdbLogin</function> have the same defaults as
24346 <function>PQconnectdb</function> (Tom)
24350 <listitem><para>Allow libpq to cleanly fail when result sets are too large (Tom)</para></listitem>
24354 Improve performance of function <function>PQunescapeBytea</function> (Ben Lamb)
24360 Allow thread-safe libpq with <filename>configure</filename>
24361 option <option>--enable-thread-safety</option> (Lee Kindness,
24368 Allow function <function>pqInternalNotice</function> to accept a
24369 format string and arguments instead of just a preformatted
24370 message (Tom, Sean Chittenden)
24376 Control SSL negotiation with <literal>sslmode</literal> values
24377 <literal>disable</literal>, <literal>allow</literal>,
24378 <literal>prefer</literal>, and <literal>require</literal> (Jon
24384 <para>Allow new error codes and levels of text (Tom)</para>
24388 <para>Allow access to the underlying table and column of a query result (Tom)</para>
24390 This is helpful for query-builder applications that want to know
24391 the underlying table and column names associated with a specific
24396 <listitem><para>Allow access to the current transaction status (Tom)</para></listitem>
24397 <listitem><para>Add ability to pass binary data directly to the server (Tom)</para></listitem>
24401 Add function <function>PQexecPrepared</function> and
24402 <function>PQsendQueryPrepared</function> functions which perform
24403 bind/execute of previously prepared statements (Tom)
24410 <title>JDBC Changes</title>
24413 <listitem><para>Allow <function>setNull</function> on updateable result sets</para></listitem>
24414 <listitem><para>Allow <function>executeBatch</function> on a prepared statement (Barry)</para></listitem>
24415 <listitem><para>Support SSL connections (Barry)</para></listitem>
24416 <listitem><para>Handle schema names in result sets (Paul Sorenson)</para></listitem>
24417 <listitem><para>Add refcursor support (Nic Ferrier)</para></listitem>
24422 <title>Miscellaneous Interface Changes</title>
24426 <para>Prevent possible memory leak or core dump during libpgtcl shutdown (Tom)</para>
24429 <para>Add Informix compatibility to ECPG (Michael)</para>
24431 This allows ECPG to process embedded C programs that were
24432 written using certain Informix extensions.
24437 <para>Add type <type>decimal</type> to ECPG that is fixed length, for Informix (Michael)</para>
24442 Allow thread-safe embedded SQL programs with
24443 <filename>configure</filename> option
24444 <option>--enable-thread-safety</option> (Lee Kindness, Bruce)
24447 This allows multiple threads to access the database at the same
24453 <para>Moved Python client PyGreSQL to <ulink url="http://www.pygresql.org"></ulink> (Marc)</para>
24459 <title>Source Code Changes</title>
24462 <listitem><para>Prevent need for separate platform geometry regression result files (Tom)</para></listitem>
24463 <listitem><para>Improved PPC locking primitive (Reinhard Max)</para></listitem>
24464 <listitem><para>New function <function>palloc0</function> to allocate and clear memory (Bruce)</para></listitem>
24465 <listitem><para>Fix locking code for s390x CPU (64-bit) (Tom)</para></listitem>
24466 <listitem><para>Allow OpenBSD to use local ident credentials (William Ahern)</para></listitem>
24467 <listitem><para>Make query plan trees read-only to executor (Tom)</para></listitem>
24468 <listitem><para>Add Darwin startup scripts (David Wheeler)</para></listitem>
24469 <listitem><para>Allow libpq to compile with Borland C++ compiler (Lester Godwin, Karl Waclawek)</para></listitem>
24470 <listitem><para>Use our own version of <function>getopt_long()</function> if needed (Peter)</para></listitem>
24471 <listitem><para>Convert administration scripts to C (Peter)</para></listitem>
24472 <listitem><para> Bison >= 1.85 is now required to build the <productname>PostgreSQL</> grammar, if building from CVS</para></listitem>
24473 <listitem><para>Merge documentation into one book (Peter)</para></listitem>
24474 <listitem><para>Add Windows compatibility functions (Bruce)</para></listitem>
24475 <listitem><para>Allow client interfaces to compile under MinGW (Bruce)</para></listitem>
24476 <listitem><para>New <function>ereport()</function> function for error reporting (Tom)</para></listitem>
24477 <listitem><para>Support Intel compiler on Linux (Peter)</para></listitem>
24478 <listitem><para>Improve Linux startup scripts (Slawomir Sudnik, Darko Prenosil)</para></listitem>
24479 <listitem><para>Add support for AMD Opteron and Itanium (Jeffrey W. Baker, Bruce)</para></listitem>
24481 <para>Remove <option>--enable-recode</option> option from <command>configure</command></para>
24483 This was no longer needed now that we have <command>CREATE CONVERSION</command>.
24487 <para>Generate a compile error if spinlock code is not found (Bruce)</para>
24489 Platforms without spinlock code will now fail to compile, rather
24490 than silently using semaphores. This failure can be disabled
24491 with a new <command>configure</command> option.
24498 <title>Contrib Changes</title>
24501 <listitem><para>Change dbmirror license to BSD</para></listitem>
24502 <listitem><para>Improve earthdistance (Bruno Wolff III)</para></listitem>
24503 <listitem><para>Portability improvements to pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
24504 <listitem><para>Prevent crash in xml (John Gray, Michael Richards)</para></listitem>
24505 <listitem><para>Update oracle</para></listitem>
24506 <listitem><para>Update mysql</para></listitem>
24507 <listitem><para>Update cube (Bruno Wolff III)</para></listitem>
24508 <listitem><para>Update earthdistance to use cube (Bruno Wolff III)</para></listitem>
24509 <listitem><para>Update btree_gist (Oleg)</para></listitem>
24510 <listitem><para>New tsearch2 full-text search module (Oleg, Teodor)</para></listitem>
24511 <listitem><para>Add hash-based crosstab function to tablefuncs (Joe)</para></listitem>
24512 <listitem><para>Add serial column to order <function>connectby()</> siblings in tablefuncs (Nabil Sayegh,Joe)</para></listitem>
24513 <listitem><para>Add named persistent connections to dblink (Shridhar Daithanka)</para></listitem>
24514 <listitem><para>New pg_autovacuum allows automatic <command>VACUUM</command> (Matthew T. O'Connor)</para></listitem>
24515 <listitem><para>Make pgbench honor environment variables <envar>PGHOST</>, <envar>PGPORT</>, <envar>PGUSER</> (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
24516 <listitem><para>Improve intarray (Teodor Sigaev)</para></listitem>
24517 <listitem><para>Improve pgstattuple (Rod)</para></listitem>
24518 <listitem><para>Fix bug in <function>metaphone()</function> in fuzzystrmatch</para></listitem>
24519 <listitem><para>Improve adddepend (Rod)</para></listitem>
24520 <listitem><para>Update spi/timetravel (Böjthe Zoltán)</para></listitem>
24521 <listitem><para>Fix dbase <option>-s</> option and improve non-ASCII handling (Thomas Behr, Márcio Smiderle)</para></listitem>
24522 <listitem><para>Remove array module because features now included by default (Joe)</para></listitem>
24528 <sect1 id="release-7-3-21">
24529 <title>Release 7.3.21</title>
24532 <title>Release date</title>
24533 <simpara>2008-01-07</simpara>
24537 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.20,
24538 including fixes for significant security issues.
24542 This is expected to be the last <productname>PostgreSQL</> release
24543 in the 7.3.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer
24544 release branch soon.
24548 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.21</title>
24551 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24552 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24559 <title>Changes</title>
24565 Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of
24566 the user running <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, etc (Tom)
24570 Functions used in index expressions and partial-index
24571 predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has
24572 long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code
24573 execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user.
24574 (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the
24575 same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger
24576 because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations
24577 such as <command>VACUUM FULL</>, which are commonly performed
24578 automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user
24579 can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a
24580 trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum.
24581 The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations
24582 (including <command>VACUUM</>, <command>ANALYZE</>, <command>REINDEX</>,
24583 and <command>CLUSTER</>) to execute as the table owner rather than
24584 the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already
24585 used for <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> functions. To prevent bypassing
24586 this security measure, execution of <command>SET SESSION
24587 AUTHORIZATION</> and <command>SET ROLE</> is now forbidden within a
24588 <literal>SECURITY DEFINER</> context. (CVE-2007-6600)
24594 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
24595 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
24599 The fix that appeared for this in 7.3.20 was incomplete, as it plugged
24600 the hole for only some <filename>dblink</> functions. (CVE-2007-6601,
24607 Fix potential crash in <function>translate()</> when using a multibyte
24608 database encoding (Tom)
24614 Make <filename>contrib/tablefunc</>'s <function>crosstab()</> handle
24615 NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)
24621 Require a specific version of <productname>Autoconf</> to be used
24622 when re-generating the <command>configure</> script (Peter)
24626 This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made
24627 to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of
24628 <productname>Autoconf</> and <productname>PostgreSQL</> versions.
24629 You can remove the version check if you really want to use a
24630 different <productname>Autoconf</> version, but it's
24631 your responsibility whether the result works or not.
24640 <sect1 id="release-7-3-20">
24641 <title>Release 7.3.20</title>
24644 <title>Release date</title>
24645 <simpara>2007-09-17</simpara>
24649 This release contains fixes from 7.3.19.
24653 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.20</title>
24656 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24657 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24664 <title>Changes</title>
24670 Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and
24671 then aborts close to the end of a concurrent <command>VACUUM</>
24672 on the same table (Tom)
24678 Make <command>CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL</> work properly (Tom)
24684 Fix crash when <varname>log_min_error_statement</> logging runs out
24691 Require non-superusers who use <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to use only
24692 password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)
24701 <sect1 id="release-7-3-19">
24702 <title>Release 7.3.19</title>
24705 <title>Release date</title>
24706 <simpara>2007-04-23</simpara>
24710 This release contains fixes from 7.3.18,
24711 including a security fix.
24715 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.19</title>
24718 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24719 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24726 <title>Changes</title>
24732 Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within
24733 <varname>search_path</>, and disable searching it for functions
24734 and operators (Tom)
24737 This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a
24738 truly secure value of <varname>search_path</>. Without it,
24739 an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code
24740 with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138).
24741 See <command>CREATE FUNCTION</> for more information.
24747 Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how <command>VACUUM FULL</> handles
24748 <command>UPDATE</> chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)
24757 <sect1 id="release-7-3-18">
24758 <title>Release 7.3.18</title>
24761 <title>Release date</title>
24762 <simpara>2007-02-05</simpara>
24766 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.17, including
24771 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.18</title>
24774 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24775 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24782 <title>Changes</title>
24788 Remove security vulnerability that allowed connected users
24789 to read backend memory (Tom)
24792 The vulnerability involves changing the
24793 data type of a table column used in a SQL function (CVE-2007-0555).
24794 This error can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in
24795 principle might be used to read database content that the user
24796 should not be able to access.
24802 Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail
24803 due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)
24809 Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences
24810 over three bytes long (Tom)
24819 <sect1 id="release-7-3-17">
24820 <title>Release 7.3.17</title>
24823 <title>Release date</title>
24824 <simpara>2007-01-08</simpara>
24828 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.16.
24832 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.17</title>
24835 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24836 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24843 <title>Changes</title>
24849 <function>to_number()</> and <function>to_char(numeric)</>
24850 are now <literal>STABLE</>, not <literal>IMMUTABLE</>, for
24851 new <application>initdb</> installs (Tom)
24855 This is because <varname>lc_numeric</> can potentially
24856 change the output of these functions.
24862 Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)
24866 This improves <application>psql</> <literal>\d</> performance also.
24875 <sect1 id="release-7-3-16">
24876 <title>Release 7.3.16</title>
24879 <title>Release date</title>
24880 <simpara>2006-10-16</simpara>
24884 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.15.
24888 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.16</title>
24891 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24892 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24899 <title>Changes</title>
24902 <listitem><para>Fix corner cases in pattern matching for
24903 <application>psql</>'s <literal>\d</> commands</para></listitem>
24904 <listitem><para>Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree
24905 (Teodor)</para></listitem>
24906 <listitem><para>Back-port 7.4 spinlock code to improve performance and support
24907 64-bit architectures better</para> </listitem>
24908 <listitem><para>Fix SSL-related memory leak in libpq</para> </listitem>
24909 <listitem><para>Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror</para></listitem>
24910 <listitem><para>Adjust regression tests for recent changes in US DST laws
24911 </para> </listitem>
24917 <sect1 id="release-7-3-15">
24918 <title>Release 7.3.15</title>
24921 <title>Release date</title>
24922 <simpara>2006-05-23</simpara>
24926 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.14,
24927 including patches for extremely serious security issues.
24931 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.15</title>
24934 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
24935 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
24940 Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in
24941 CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application
24942 code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings
24943 into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to
24944 ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In
24945 most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by
24946 libraries or drivers (such as <application>libpq</>'s
24947 <function>PQescapeStringConn()</>) to perform string escaping,
24948 rather than relying on <foreignphrase>ad hoc</> code to do it.
24953 <title>Changes</title>
24956 <listitem><para>Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte
24957 characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)</para>
24958 <para>While <productname>PostgreSQL</> has been moving in this direction for
24959 some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all
24960 textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change
24961 defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.
24964 <listitem><para>Reject unsafe uses of <literal>\'</> in string literals</para>
24965 <para>As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type
24966 described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts <literal>''</> and not
24967 <literal>\'</> as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string
24968 literals. By default, <literal>\'</> is rejected only when
24969 <varname>client_encoding</> is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK,
24970 GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible.
24971 A new configuration parameter <varname>backslash_quote</> is available to
24972 adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against
24973 CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of
24974 <varname>backslash_quote</> is in part to make it obvious that insecure
24975 clients are insecure.
24978 <listitem><para>Modify <application>libpq</>'s string-escaping routines to be
24979 aware of encoding considerations</para>
24980 <para>This fixes <application>libpq</>-using applications for the security
24981 issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314.
24982 Applications that use multiple <productname>PostgreSQL</> connections
24983 concurrently should migrate to <function>PQescapeStringConn()</> and
24984 <function>PQescapeByteaConn()</> to ensure that escaping is done correctly
24985 for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that
24986 do string escaping <quote>by hand</> should be modified to rely on library
24990 <listitem><para>Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions</para>
24991 <para><function>win1251_to_iso</>, <function>alt_to_iso</>,
24992 <function>euc_tw_to_big5</>, <function>euc_tw_to_mic</>,
24993 <function>mic_to_euc_tw</> were all broken to varying
24997 <listitem><para>Clean up stray remaining uses of <literal>\'</> in strings
24998 (Bruce, Jan)</para></listitem>
25000 <listitem><para>Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael
25001 Fuhr)</para></listitem>
25003 <listitem><para>Fix various minor memory leaks</para></listitem>
25009 <sect1 id="release-7-3-14">
25010 <title>Release 7.3.14</title>
25013 <title>Release date</title>
25014 <simpara>2006-02-14</simpara>
25018 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.13.
25022 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.14</title>
25025 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
25026 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see the release
25032 <title>Changes</title>
25036 <listitem><para>Fix potential crash in <command>SET
25037 SESSION AUTHORIZATION</> (CVE-2006-0553)</para>
25038 <para>An unprivileged user could crash the server process, resulting in
25039 momentary denial of service to other users, if the server has been compiled
25040 with Asserts enabled (which is not the default).
25041 Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.
25044 <listitem><para>Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted
25046 <para>Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command
25047 could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug
25048 created in 7.3.11 release.
25051 <listitem><para>Fix race condition that could lead to <quote>file already
25052 exists</> errors during pg_clog file creation
25053 (Tom)</para></listitem>
25055 <listitem><para>Fix to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema
25056 references to custom operators (Tom)</para></listitem>
25058 <listitem><para>Portability fix for testing presence of <function>finite</>
25059 and <function>isinf</> during configure (Tom)</para></listitem>
25066 <sect1 id="release-7-3-13">
25067 <title>Release 7.3.13</title>
25070 <title>Release date</title>
25071 <simpara>2006-01-09</simpara>
25075 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.12.
25079 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.13</title>
25082 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
25083 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.10, see the release
25085 Also, you might need to <command>REINDEX</> indexes on textual
25086 columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or
25087 <application>plperl</> issues described below.
25092 <title>Changes</title>
25096 <listitem><para>Fix character string comparison for locales that consider
25097 different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)</para>
25098 <para>This might require <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
25099 textual columns.</para></listitem>
25101 <listitem><para>Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup
25102 to ensure that <application>plperl</> won't change the locale later</para>
25103 <para>This fixes a problem that occurred if the <application>postmaster</> was
25104 started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what
25105 <application>initdb</> had been told. Under these conditions, any use of
25106 <application>plperl</> was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need
25107 <command>REINDEX</> to fix existing indexes on
25108 textual columns if this has happened to you.</para></listitem>
25110 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression
25111 handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)
25114 <listitem><para>Fix bug in <filename>/contrib/pgcrypto</> gen_salt,
25115 which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and
25116 XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)</para>
25117 <para>Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.</para></listitem>
25119 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>/contrib/dblink</> to throw an error,
25120 rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from
25121 what's actually returned by the query (Joe)</para></listitem>
25128 <sect1 id="release-7-3-12">
25129 <title>Release 7.3.12</title>
25132 <title>Release date</title>
25133 <simpara>2005-12-12</simpara>
25137 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.11.
25141 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.12</title>
25144 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
25145 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.10, see the release
25151 <title>Changes</title>
25155 <listitem><para>Fix race condition in transaction log management</para>
25156 <para>There was a narrow window in which an I/O operation could be initiated
25157 for the wrong page, leading to an Assert failure or data
25161 <listitem><para><filename>/contrib/ltree</> fixes (Teodor)</para></listitem>
25163 <listitem><para>Fix longstanding planning error for outer joins</para>
25164 <para>This bug sometimes caused a bogus error <quote>RIGHT JOIN is
25165 only supported with merge-joinable join conditions</>.</para></listitem>
25167 <listitem><para>Prevent core dump in <application>pg_autovacuum</> when a
25168 table has been dropped</para></listitem>
25175 <sect1 id="release-7-3-11">
25176 <title>Release 7.3.11</title>
25179 <title>Release date</title>
25180 <simpara>2005-10-04</simpara>
25184 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.10.
25188 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.11</title>
25191 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
25192 if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.10, see the release
25198 <title>Changes</title>
25201 <listitem><para>Fix error that allowed <command>VACUUM</> to remove
25202 <literal>ctid</> chains too soon, and add more checking in code that follows
25203 <literal>ctid</> links</para>
25204 <para>This fixes a long-standing problem that could cause crashes in very rare
25205 circumstances.</para></listitem>
25206 <listitem><para>Fix <type>CHAR()</> to properly pad spaces to the specified
25207 length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)</para>
25208 <para>In prior releases, the padding of <type>CHAR()</> was incorrect
25209 because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without
25210 considering how many characters were stored.</para></listitem>
25211 <listitem><para>Fix missing rows in queries like <literal>UPDATE a=... WHERE
25212 a...</> with GiST index on column <literal>a</></para></listitem>
25213 <listitem><para>Improve checking for partially-written WAL
25214 pages</para></listitem>
25215 <listitem><para>Improve robustness of signal handling when SSL is
25216 enabled</para></listitem>
25217 <listitem><para>Various memory leakage fixes</para></listitem>
25218 <listitem><para>Various portability improvements</para></listitem>
25219 <listitem><para>Fix PL/PgSQL to handle <literal>var := var</> correctly when
25220 the variable is of pass-by-reference type</para></listitem>
25226 <sect1 id="release-7-3-10">
25227 <title>Release 7.3.10</title>
25230 <title>Release date</title>
25231 <simpara>2005-05-09</simpara>
25235 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.9, including several
25236 security-related issues.
25240 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.10</title>
25243 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However,
25244 it is one possible way of handling a significant security problem
25245 that has been found in the initial contents of 7.3.X system
25246 catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 7.3.10's initdb will
25247 automatically correct this problem.
25251 The security problem is that the built-in character set encoding
25252 conversion functions can be invoked from SQL commands by unprivileged
25253 users, but the functions were not designed for such use and are not
25254 secure against malicious choices of arguments. The fix involves changing
25255 the declared parameter list of these functions so that they can no longer
25256 be invoked from SQL commands. (This does not affect their normal use
25257 by the encoding conversion machinery.)
25258 It is strongly recommended that all installations repair this error,
25259 either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedure given
25260 below. The error at least allows unprivileged database users to crash
25261 their server process, and might allow unprivileged users to gain the
25262 privileges of a database superuser.
25266 If you wish not to do an initdb, perform the following procedure instead.
25267 As the database superuser, do:
25271 UPDATE pg_proc SET proargtypes[3] = 'internal'::regtype
25272 WHERE pronamespace = 11 AND pronargs = 5
25273 AND proargtypes[2] = 'cstring'::regtype;
25274 -- The command should report having updated 90 rows;
25275 -- if not, rollback and investigate instead of committing!
25281 The above procedure must be carried out in <emphasis>each</> database
25282 of an installation, including <literal>template1</>, and ideally
25283 including <literal>template0</> as well. If you do not fix the
25284 template databases then any subsequently created databases will contain
25285 the same error. <literal>template1</> can be fixed in the same way
25286 as any other database, but fixing <literal>template0</> requires
25287 additional steps. First, from any database issue:
25289 UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = true WHERE datname = 'template0';
25291 Next connect to <literal>template0</> and perform the above repair
25292 procedure. Finally, do:
25294 -- re-freeze template0:
25296 -- and protect it against future alterations:
25297 UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = false WHERE datname = 'template0';
25303 <title>Changes</title>
25306 <listitem><para>Change encoding function signature to prevent
25307 misuse</para></listitem>
25308 <listitem><para>Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be
25309 seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner
25310 than for other purposes</para>
25311 <para>This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent
25312 data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.</para></listitem>
25313 <listitem><para>Repair race condition between relation extension and
25315 <para>This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of
25316 freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability.
25317 There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.
25319 <listitem><para>Fix comparisons of <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para>
25321 The comparison code was wrong in the case where the
25322 <literal>--enable-integer-datetimes</> configuration switch had been used.
25323 NOTE: if you have an index on a <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> column,
25324 it will need to be <command>REINDEX</>ed after installing this update, because
25325 the fix corrects the sort order of column values.
25327 <listitem><para>Fix <function>EXTRACT(EPOCH)</> for
25328 <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para></listitem>
25329 <listitem><para>Fix mis-display of negative fractional seconds in
25330 <type>INTERVAL</> values</para>
25332 This error only occurred when the
25333 <literal>--enable-integer-datetimes</> configuration switch had been used.
25335 <listitem><para>Additional buffer overrun checks in plpgsql
25336 (Neil)</para></listitem>
25337 <listitem><para>Fix pg_dump to dump trigger names containing <literal>%</>
25338 correctly (Neil)</para></listitem>
25339 <listitem><para>Prevent <function>to_char(interval)</> from dumping core for
25340 month-related formats</para></listitem>
25341 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</> for newer OpenSSL builds
25342 (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
25343 <listitem><para>Still more 64-bit fixes for
25344 <filename>contrib/intagg</></para></listitem>
25345 <listitem><para>Prevent incorrect optimization of functions returning
25346 <type>RECORD</></para></listitem>
25352 <sect1 id="release-7-3-9">
25353 <title>Release 7.3.9</title>
25356 <title>Release date</title>
25357 <simpara>2005-01-31</simpara>
25361 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.8, including several
25362 security-related issues.
25366 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.9</title>
25369 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X.
25374 <title>Changes</title>
25377 <listitem><para>Disallow <command>LOAD</> to non-superusers</para>
25379 On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a
25380 shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen),
25381 <command>LOAD</> can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code.
25382 Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.</para></listitem>
25383 <listitem><para>Check that creator of an aggregate function has the right to
25384 execute the specified transition functions</para>
25386 This oversight made it possible to bypass denial of EXECUTE
25387 permission on a function.</para></listitem>
25388 <listitem><para>Fix security and 64-bit issues in
25389 contrib/intagg</para></listitem>
25390 <listitem><para>Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris
25391 Jurka)</para></listitem>
25392 <listitem><para>Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too
25393 many parameters (Neil)</para></listitem>
25394 <listitem><para>Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins</para>
25396 The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the
25397 left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but
25398 in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.
25400 <listitem><para>Fix plperl for quote marks in tuple fields</para></listitem>
25401 <listitem><para>Fix display of negative intervals in SQL and GERMAN
25402 datestyles</para></listitem>
25408 <sect1 id="release-7-3-8">
25409 <title>Release 7.3.8</title>
25412 <title>Release date</title>
25413 <simpara>2004-10-22</simpara>
25417 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.7.
25422 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.8</title>
25425 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X.
25430 <title>Changes</title>
25433 <listitem><para>Repair possible failure to update hint bits on disk</para>
25435 Under rare circumstances this oversight could lead to
25436 <quote>could not access transaction status</> failures, which qualifies
25437 it as a potential-data-loss bug.
25439 <listitem><para>Ensure that hashed outer join does not miss tuples</para>
25441 Very large left joins using a hash join plan could fail to output unmatched
25442 left-side rows given just the right data distribution.
25444 <listitem><para>Disallow running pg_ctl as root</para>
25446 This is to guard against any possible security issues.
25448 <listitem><para>Avoid using temp files in /tmp in make_oidjoins_check</para>
25450 This has been reported as a security issue, though it's hardly worthy of
25451 concern since there is no reason for non-developers to use this script anyway.
25458 <sect1 id="release-7-3-7">
25459 <title>Release 7.3.7</title>
25462 <title>Release date</title>
25463 <simpara>2004-08-16</simpara>
25467 This release contains one critical fix over 7.3.6, and some minor items.
25472 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.7</title>
25475 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X.
25480 <title>Changes</title>
25483 <listitem><para>Prevent possible loss of committed transactions during crash</para>
25485 Due to insufficient interlocking between transaction commit and checkpointing,
25486 it was possible for transactions committed just before the most recent
25487 checkpoint to be lost, in whole or in part, following a database crash and
25488 restart. This is a serious bug that has existed
25489 since <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 7.1.
25491 <listitem><para>Remove asymmetrical word processing in tsearch (Teodor)</para></listitem>
25492 <listitem><para>Properly schema-qualify function names when pg_dump'ing a CAST</para></listitem>
25498 <sect1 id="release-7-3-6">
25499 <title>Release 7.3.6</title>
25502 <title>Release date</title>
25503 <simpara>2004-03-02</simpara>
25507 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.5.
25512 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.6</title>
25515 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
25522 <title>Changes</title>
25525 <listitem><para>Revert erroneous changes in rule permissions checking</para>
25526 <para>A patch applied in 7.3.3 to fix a corner case in rule permissions checks
25527 turns out to have disabled rule-related permissions checks in many
25528 not-so-corner cases. This would for example allow users to insert into views
25529 they weren't supposed to have permission to insert into. We have therefore
25530 reverted the 7.3.3 patch. The original bug will be fixed in 8.0.
25532 <listitem><para>Repair incorrect order of operations in
25533 GetNewTransactionId()</para>
25535 This bug could result in failure under out-of-disk-space conditions, including
25536 inability to restart even after disk space is freed.
25538 <listitem><para>Ensure configure selects -fno-strict-aliasing even when
25539 an external value for CFLAGS is supplied</para>
25541 On some platforms, building with -fstrict-aliasing causes bugs.
25543 <listitem><para>Make pg_restore handle 64-bit off_t correctly</para>
25545 This bug prevented proper restoration from archive files exceeding 4 GB.
25547 <listitem><para>Make contrib/dblink not assume that local and remote type OIDs
25548 match (Joe)</para></listitem>
25549 <listitem><para>Quote connectby()'s start_with argument properly (Joe)</para></listitem>
25550 <listitem><para>Don't crash when a rowtype argument to a plpgsql function is
25551 NULL</para></listitem>
25552 <listitem><para>Avoid generating invalid character encoding sequences in
25553 corner cases when planning LIKE operations</para></listitem>
25554 <listitem><para>Ensure text_position() cannot scan past end of source string
25555 in multibyte cases (Korea PostgreSQL Users' Group)</para></listitem>
25556 <listitem><para>Fix index optimization and selectivity estimates for LIKE
25557 operations on bytea columns (Joe)</para></listitem>
25563 <sect1 id="release-7-3-5">
25564 <title>Release 7.3.5</title>
25567 <title>Release date</title>
25568 <simpara>2003-12-03</simpara>
25572 This has a variety of fixes from 7.3.4.
25577 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.5</title>
25580 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
25586 <title>Changes</title>
25589 <listitem><para>Force zero_damaged_pages to be on during recovery from WAL</para></listitem>
25590 <listitem><para>Prevent some obscure cases of <quote>variable not in subplan target lists</quote></para></listitem>
25591 <listitem><para>Force stats processes to detach from shared memory, ensuring cleaner shutdown</para></listitem>
25592 <listitem><para>Make PQescapeBytea and byteaout consistent with each other (Joe)</para></listitem>
25593 <listitem><para>Added missing SPI_finish() calls to dblink's get_tuple_of_interest() (Joe)</para></listitem>
25594 <listitem><para>Fix for possible foreign key violation when rule rewrites INSERT (Jan)</para></listitem>
25595 <listitem><para>Support qualified type names in PL/Tcl's spi_prepare command (Jan)</para></listitem>
25596 <listitem><para>Make pg_dump handle a procedural language handler located in pg_catalog</para></listitem>
25597 <listitem><para>Make pg_dump handle cases where a custom opclass is in another schema</para></listitem>
25598 <listitem><para>Make pg_dump dump binary-compatible casts correctly (Jan)</para></listitem>
25599 <listitem><para>Fix insertion of expressions containing subqueries into rule bodies</para></listitem>
25600 <listitem><para>Fix incorrect argument processing in clusterdb script (Anand Ranganathan)</para></listitem>
25601 <listitem><para>Fix problems with dropped columns in plpython triggers</para></listitem>
25602 <listitem><para>Repair problems with to_char() reading past end of its input string (Karel)</para></listitem>
25603 <listitem><para>Fix GB18030 mapping errors (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
25604 <listitem><para>Fix several problems with SSL error handling and asynchronous SSL I/O</para></listitem>
25605 <listitem><para>Remove ability to bind a list of values to a single parameter in JDBC
25606 (prevents possible SQL-injection attacks)</para></listitem>
25607 <listitem><para>Fix some errors in HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP code paths</para></listitem>
25608 <listitem><para>Fix corner case for btree search in parallel with first root page split</para></listitem>
25614 <sect1 id="release-7-3-4">
25615 <title>Release 7.3.4</title>
25618 <title>Release date</title>
25619 <simpara>2003-07-24</simpara>
25623 This has a variety of fixes from 7.3.3.
25628 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.4</title>
25631 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
25637 <title>Changes</title>
25640 <listitem><para>Repair breakage in timestamp-to-date conversion for dates before 2000</para></listitem>
25641 <listitem><para>Prevent rare possibility of server startup failure (Tom)</para></listitem>
25642 <listitem><para>Fix bugs in interval-to-time conversion (Tom)</para></listitem>
25643 <listitem><para>Add constraint names in a few places in pg_dump (Rod)</para></listitem>
25644 <listitem><para>Improve performance of functions with many parameters (Tom)</para></listitem>
25645 <listitem><para>Fix to_ascii() buffer overruns (Tom)</para></listitem>
25646 <listitem><para>Prevent restore of database comments from throwing an error (Tom)</para></listitem>
25647 <listitem><para>Work around buggy strxfrm() present in some Solaris releases (Tom)</para></listitem>
25648 <listitem><para>Properly escape jdbc setObject() strings to improve security (Barry)</para></listitem>
25654 <sect1 id="release-7-3-3">
25655 <title>Release 7.3.3</title>
25658 <title>Release date</title>
25659 <simpara>2003-05-22</simpara>
25663 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.3.2.
25667 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.3</title>
25670 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
25671 running version 7.3.*.
25676 <title>Changes</title>
25679 <listitem><para>Repair sometimes-incorrect computation of StartUpID after a crash</para></listitem>
25680 <listitem><para>Avoid slowness with lots of deferred triggers in one transaction (Stephan)</para></listitem>
25681 <listitem><para>Don't lock referenced row when <command>UPDATE</command> doesn't change foreign key's value (Jan)</para></listitem>
25682 <listitem><para>Use <command>-fPIC</command> not <command>-fpic</command> on Sparc (Tom Callaway)</para></listitem>
25683 <listitem><para>Repair lack of schema-awareness in contrib/reindexdb</para></listitem>
25684 <listitem><para>Fix contrib/intarray error for zero-element result array (Teodor)</para></listitem>
25685 <listitem><para>Ensure createuser script will exit on control-C (Oliver)</para></listitem>
25686 <listitem><para>Fix errors when the type of a dropped column has itself been dropped</para></listitem>
25687 <listitem><para><command>CHECKPOINT</command> does not cause database panic on failure in noncritical steps</para></listitem>
25688 <listitem><para>Accept 60 in seconds fields of timestamp, time, interval input values</para></listitem>
25689 <listitem><para>Issue notice, not error, if <type>TIMESTAMP</type>,
25690 <type> TIME</type>, or <type>INTERVAL</type> precision too large</para></listitem>
25691 <listitem><para>Fix <function>abstime-to-time</function> cast function (fix is
25692 not applied unless you <application>initdb</application>)</para></listitem>
25693 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_proc</application> entry for
25694 <type>timestampt_izone</type> (fix is not applied unless you
25695 <application>initdb</application>)</para></listitem>
25696 <listitem><para>Make <function>EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM timestamp without time zone)</function> treat input as local time</para></listitem>
25697 <listitem><para><command>'now'::timestamptz</command> gave wrong answer if timezone changed earlier in transaction</para></listitem>
25698 <listitem><para><envar>HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP</envar> code for time with timezone overwrote its input</para></listitem>
25699 <listitem><para>Accept <command>GLOBAL TEMP/TEMPORARY</command> as a
25700 synonym for <command>TEMPORARY</command></para></listitem>
25701 <listitem><para>Avoid improper schema-privilege-check failure in foreign-key triggers</para></listitem>
25702 <listitem><para>Fix bugs in foreign-key triggers for <command>SET DEFAULT</command> action</para></listitem>
25703 <listitem><para>Fix incorrect time-qual check in row fetch for
25704 <command>UPDATE</command> and <command>DELETE</command> triggers</para></listitem>
25705 <listitem><para>Foreign-key clauses were parsed but ignored in
25706 <command>ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN</command></para></listitem>
25707 <listitem><para>Fix createlang script breakage for case where handler function already exists</para></listitem>
25708 <listitem><para>Fix misbehavior on zero-column tables in <application>pg_dump</application>, COPY, ANALYZE, other places</para></listitem>
25709 <listitem><para>Fix misbehavior of <function>func_error()</function> on type names containing '%'</para></listitem>
25710 <listitem><para>Fix misbehavior of <function>replace()</function> on strings containing '%'</para></listitem>
25711 <listitem><para>Regular-expression patterns containing certain multibyte characters failed</para></listitem>
25712 <listitem><para>Account correctly for <command>NULL</command>s in more cases in join size estimation</para></listitem>
25713 <listitem><para>Avoid conflict with system definition of <function>isblank()</function> function or macro</para></listitem>
25714 <listitem><para>Fix failure to convert large code point values in EUC_TW conversions (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
25715 <listitem><para>Fix error recovery for <function>SSL_read</function>/<function>SSL_write</function> calls</para></listitem>
25716 <listitem><para>Don't do early constant-folding of type coercion expressions</para></listitem>
25717 <listitem><para>Validate page header fields immediately after reading in any page</para></listitem>
25718 <listitem><para>Repair incorrect check for ungrouped variables in unnamed joins</para></listitem>
25719 <listitem><para>Fix buffer overrun in <function>to_ascii</function> (Guido Notari)</para></listitem>
25720 <listitem><para>contrib/ltree fixes (Teodor)</para></listitem>
25721 <listitem><para>Fix core dump in deadlock detection on machines where char is unsigned</para></listitem>
25722 <listitem><para>Avoid running out of buffers in many-way indexscan (bug introduced in 7.3)</para></listitem>
25723 <listitem><para>Fix planner's selectivity estimation functions to handle domains properly</para></listitem>
25724 <listitem><para>Fix <application>dbmirror</application> memory-allocation bug (Steven Singer)</para></listitem>
25725 <listitem><para>Prevent infinite loop in <function>ln(numeric)</function> due to roundoff error</para></listitem>
25726 <listitem><para><command>GROUP BY</command> got confused if there were multiple equal GROUP BY items</para></listitem>
25727 <listitem><para>Fix bad plan when inherited <command>UPDATE</command>/<command>DELETE</command> references another inherited table</para></listitem>
25728 <listitem><para>Prevent clustering on incomplete (partial or non-NULL-storing) indexes</para></listitem>
25729 <listitem><para>Service shutdown request at proper time if it arrives while still starting up</para></listitem>
25730 <listitem><para>Fix left-links in temporary indexes (could make backwards scans miss entries)</para></listitem>
25731 <listitem><para>Fix incorrect handling of client_encoding setting in postgresql.conf (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
25732 <listitem><para>Fix failure to respond to <command>pg_ctl stop -m fast</command> after Async_NotifyHandler runs</para></listitem>
25733 <listitem><para>Fix SPI for case where rule contains multiple statements of the same type</para></listitem>
25734 <listitem><para>Fix problem with checking for wrong type of access privilege in rule query</para></listitem>
25735 <listitem><para>Fix problem with <command>EXCEPT</command> in <command>CREATE RULE</command></para></listitem>
25736 <listitem><para>Prevent problem with dropping temp tables having serial columns</para></listitem>
25737 <listitem><para>Fix replace_vars_with_subplan_refs failure in complex views</para></listitem>
25738 <listitem><para>Fix regexp slowness in single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
25739 <listitem><para>Allow qualified type names in <command>CREATE CAST</command>
25740 and <command> DROP CAST</command></para></listitem>
25741 <listitem><para>Accept <function>SETOF type[]</function>, which formerly had to
25742 be written <function>SETOF _type</function></para></listitem>
25743 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_dump</application> core dump in some cases with procedural languages</para></listitem>
25744 <listitem><para>Force ISO datestyle in <application>pg_dump</application> output, for portability (Oliver)</para></listitem>
25745 <listitem><para><application>pg_dump</application> failed to handle error return
25746 from <function>lo_read</function> (Oleg Drokin)</para></listitem>
25747 <listitem><para><application>pg_dumpall</application> failed with groups having no members (Nick Eskelinen)</para></listitem>
25748 <listitem><para><application>pg_dumpall</application> failed to recognize --globals-only switch</para></listitem>
25749 <listitem><para>pg_restore failed to restore blobs if -X disable-triggers is specified</para></listitem>
25750 <listitem><para>Repair intrafunction memory leak in plpgsql</para></listitem>
25751 <listitem><para>pltcl's <command>elog</command> command dumped core if given wrong parameters (Ian Harding)</para></listitem>
25752 <listitem><para>plpython used wrong value of <envar>atttypmod</envar> (Brad McLean)</para></listitem>
25753 <listitem><para>Fix improper quoting of boolean values in Python interface (D'Arcy)</para></listitem>
25754 <listitem><para>Added <function>addDataType()</function> method to PGConnection interface for JDBC</para></listitem>
25755 <listitem><para>Fixed various problems with updateable ResultSets for JDBC (Shawn Green)</para></listitem>
25756 <listitem><para>Fixed various problems with DatabaseMetaData for JDBC (Kris Jurka, Peter Royal)</para></listitem>
25757 <listitem><para>Fixed problem with parsing table ACLs in JDBC</para></listitem>
25758 <listitem><para>Better error message for character set conversion problems in JDBC</para></listitem>
25764 <sect1 id="release-7-3-2">
25765 <title>Release 7.3.2</title>
25768 <title>Release date</title>
25769 <simpara>2003-02-04</simpara>
25773 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.3.1.
25778 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.2</title>
25781 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
25782 running version 7.3.*.
25787 <title>Changes</title>
25790 <listitem><para>Restore creation of OID column in CREATE TABLE AS / SELECT INTO</para></listitem>
25791 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_dump</> core dump when dumping views having comments</para></listitem>
25792 <listitem><para>Dump DEFERRABLE/INITIALLY DEFERRED constraints properly</para></listitem>
25793 <listitem><para>Fix UPDATE when child table's column numbering differs from parent</para></listitem>
25794 <listitem><para>Increase default value of max_fsm_relations</para></listitem>
25795 <listitem><para>Fix problem when fetching backwards in a cursor for a single-row query</para></listitem>
25796 <listitem><para>Make backward fetch work properly with cursor on SELECT DISTINCT query</para></listitem>
25797 <listitem><para>Fix problems with loading <application>pg_dump</> files containing contrib/lo usage</para></listitem>
25798 <listitem><para>Fix problem with all-numeric user names</para></listitem>
25799 <listitem><para>Fix possible memory leak and core dump during disconnect in libpgtcl</para></listitem>
25800 <listitem><para>Make plpython's spi_execute command handle nulls properly (Andrew Bosma)</para></listitem>
25801 <listitem><para>Adjust plpython error reporting so that its regression test passes again</para></listitem>
25802 <listitem><para>Work with bison 1.875</para></listitem>
25803 <listitem><para>Handle mixed-case names properly in plpgsql's %type (Neil)</para></listitem>
25804 <listitem><para>Fix core dump in pltcl when executing a query rewritten by a rule</para></listitem>
25805 <listitem><para>Repair array subscript overruns (per report from Yichen Xie)</para></listitem>
25806 <listitem><para>Reduce MAX_TIME_PRECISION from 13 to 10 in floating-point case</para></listitem>
25807 <listitem><para>Correctly case-fold variable names in per-database and per-user settings</para></listitem>
25808 <listitem><para>Fix coredump in plpgsql's RETURN NEXT when SELECT into record returns no rows</para></listitem>
25809 <listitem><para>Fix outdated use of pg_type.typprtlen in python client interface</para></listitem>
25810 <listitem><para>Correctly handle fractional seconds in timestamps in JDBC driver</para></listitem>
25811 <listitem><para>Improve performance of getImportedKeys() in JDBC</para></listitem>
25812 <listitem><para>Make shared-library symlinks work standardly on HPUX (Giles)</para></listitem>
25813 <listitem><para>Repair inconsistent rounding behavior for timestamp, time, interval</para></listitem>
25814 <listitem><para>SSL negotiation fixes (Nathan Mueller)</para></listitem>
25815 <listitem><para>Make libpq's ~/.pgpass feature work when connecting with PQconnectDB</para></listitem>
25816 <listitem><para>Update my2pg, ora2pg</para></listitem>
25817 <listitem><para>Translation updates</para></listitem>
25818 <listitem><para>Add casts between types lo and oid in contrib/lo</para></listitem>
25819 <listitem><para>fastpath code now checks for privilege to call function</para></listitem>
25825 <sect1 id="release-7-3-1">
25826 <title>Release 7.3.1</title>
25829 <title>Release date</title>
25830 <simpara>2002-12-18</simpara>
25834 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.3.
25839 <title>Migration to Version 7.3.1</title>
25842 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
25843 running version 7.3. However, it should be noted that the main
25844 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> interface library, libpq,
25845 has a new major version number for this release, which might require
25846 recompilation of client code in certain cases.
25851 <title>Changes</title>
25854 <listitem><para>Fix a core dump of COPY TO when client/server encodings don't match (Tom)</para></listitem>
25855 <listitem><para>Allow <application>pg_dump</> to work with pre-7.2 servers (Philip)</para></listitem>
25856 <listitem><para>contrib/adddepend fixes (Tom)</para></listitem>
25857 <listitem><para>Fix problem with deletion of per-user/per-database config settings (Tom)</para></listitem>
25858 <listitem><para>contrib/vacuumlo fix (Tom)</para></listitem>
25859 <listitem><para>Allow 'password' encryption even when pg_shadow contains MD5 passwords (Bruce)</para></listitem>
25860 <listitem><para>contrib/dbmirror fix (Steven Singer)</para></listitem>
25861 <listitem><para>Optimizer fixes (Tom)</para></listitem>
25862 <listitem><para>contrib/tsearch fixes (Teodor Sigaev, Magnus)</para></listitem>
25863 <listitem><para>Allow locale names to be mixed case (Nicolai Tufar)</para></listitem>
25864 <listitem><para>Increment libpq library's major version number (Bruce)</para></listitem>
25865 <listitem><para>pg_hba.conf error reporting fixes (Bruce, Neil)</para></listitem>
25866 <listitem><para>Add SCO Openserver 5.0.4 as a supported platform (Bruce)</para></listitem>
25867 <listitem><para>Prevent EXPLAIN from crashing server (Tom)</para></listitem>
25868 <listitem><para>SSL fixes (Nathan Mueller)</para></listitem>
25869 <listitem><para>Prevent composite column creation via ALTER TABLE (Tom)</para></listitem>
25875 <sect1 id="release-7-3">
25876 <title>Release 7.3</title>
25879 <title>Release date</title>
25880 <simpara>2002-11-27</simpara>
25884 <title>Overview</title>
25887 Major changes in this release:
25892 <term>Schemas</term>
25895 Schemas allow users to create objects in separate namespaces,
25896 so two people or applications can have tables with the same
25897 name. There is also a public schema for shared tables.
25898 Table/index creation can be restricted by removing privileges
25899 on the public schema.
25905 <term>Drop Column</term>
25908 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> now supports the
25909 <literal>ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN</literal> functionality.
25915 <term>Table Functions</term>
25918 Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are
25919 now much easier to use than before. You can call such a
25920 <quote>table function</quote> in the <literal>SELECT</literal>
25921 <literal>FROM</literal> clause, treating its output like a
25922 table. Also, <application>PL/pgSQL</application> functions can
25929 <term>Prepared Queries</term>
25932 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> now supports prepared
25933 queries, for improved performance.
25939 <term>Dependency Tracking</term>
25942 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> now records object
25943 dependencies, which allows improvements in many areas.
25944 <command>DROP</command> statements now take either
25945 <literal>CASCADE</> or <literal>RESTRICT</> to control whether
25946 dependent objects are also dropped.
25952 <term>Privileges</term>
25955 Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and
25956 functions can be defined to run with the privileges of their
25963 <term>Internationalization</term>
25966 Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.
25972 <term>Logging</term>
25975 A variety of logging options have been enhanced.
25981 <term>Interfaces</term>
25984 A large number of interfaces have been moved to <ulink
25985 url="http://gborg.postgresql.org">http://gborg.postgresql.org</>
25986 where they can be developed and released independently.
25992 <term>Functions/Identifiers</term>
25995 By default, functions can now take up to 32 parameters, and
25996 identifiers can be up to 63 bytes long. Also, <literal>OPAQUE</>
25997 is now deprecated: there are specific <quote>pseudo-datatypes</>
25998 to represent each of the former meanings of <literal>OPAQUE</>
25999 in function argument and result types.
26008 <title>Migration to Version 7.3</title>
26011 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</> is required for those
26012 wishing to migrate data from any previous release. If your
26013 application examines the system catalogs, additional changes will
26014 be required due to the introduction of schemas in 7.3; for more
26015 information, see: <ulink
26016 url="http://developer.postgresql.org/~momjian/upgrade_tips_7.3"></>.
26020 Observe the following incompatibilities:
26026 Pre-6.3 clients are no longer supported.
26032 <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename> now has a column for the user
26033 name and additional features. Existing files need to be
26040 Several <filename>postgresql.conf</filename> logging parameters
26047 <literal>LIMIT #,#</literal> has been disabled; use
26048 <literal>LIMIT # OFFSET #</literal>.
26054 <command>INSERT</command> statements with column lists must
26055 specify a value for each specified column. For example,
26056 <literal>INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1')</literal>
26057 is now invalid. It's still allowed to supply fewer columns than
26058 expected if the <command>INSERT</command> does not have a column list.
26064 <type>serial</type> columns are no longer automatically
26065 <literal>UNIQUE</>; thus, an index will not automatically be
26072 A <command>SET</command> command inside an aborted transaction
26073 is now rolled back.
26079 <command>COPY</command> no longer considers missing trailing
26080 columns to be null. All columns need to be specified.
26081 (However, one can achieve a similar effect by specifying a
26082 column list in the <command>COPY</command> command.)
26088 The data type <type>timestamp</type> is now equivalent to
26089 <type>timestamp without time zone</type>, instead of
26090 <type>timestamp with time zone</type>.
26096 Pre-7.3 databases loaded into 7.3 will not have the new object
26097 dependencies for <type>serial</type> columns, unique
26098 constraints, and foreign keys. See the directory
26099 <filename>contrib/adddepend/</filename> for a detailed
26100 description and a script that will add such dependencies.
26106 An empty string (<literal>''</literal>) is no longer allowed as
26107 the input into an integer field. Formerly, it was silently
26116 <title>Changes</title>
26119 <title>Server Operation</title>
26121 <listitem><para>Add pg_locks view to show locks (Neil)</para></listitem>
26122 <listitem><para>Security fixes for password negotiation memory allocation (Neil)</para></listitem>
26123 <listitem><para>Remove support for version 0 FE/BE protocol (<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 6.2 and earlier) (Tom)</para></listitem>
26124 <listitem><para>Reserve the last few backend slots for superusers, add parameter superuser_reserved_connections to control this (Nigel J. Andrews)</para></listitem>
26129 <title>Performance</title>
26131 <listitem><para>Improve startup by calling localtime() only once (Tom)</para></listitem>
26132 <listitem><para>Cache system catalog information in flat files for faster startup (Tom)</para></listitem>
26133 <listitem><para>Improve caching of index information (Tom)</para></listitem>
26134 <listitem><para>Optimizer improvements (Tom, Fernando Nasser)</para></listitem>
26135 <listitem><para>Catalog caches now store failed lookups (Tom)</para></listitem>
26136 <listitem><para>Hash function improvements (Neil)</para></listitem>
26137 <listitem><para>Improve performance of query tokenization and network handling (Peter)</para></listitem>
26138 <listitem><para>Speed improvement for large object restore (Mario Weilguni)</para></listitem>
26139 <listitem><para>Mark expired index entries on first lookup, saving later heap fetches (Tom)</para></listitem>
26140 <listitem><para>Avoid excessive NULL bitmap padding (Manfred Koizar)</para></listitem>
26141 <listitem><para>Add BSD-licensed qsort() for Solaris, for performance (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26142 <listitem><para>Reduce per-row overhead by four bytes (Manfred Koizar)</para></listitem>
26143 <listitem><para>Fix GEQO optimizer bug (Neil Conway)</para></listitem>
26144 <listitem><para>Make WITHOUT OID actually save four bytes per row (Manfred Koizar)</para></listitem>
26145 <listitem><para>Add default_statistics_target variable to specify ANALYZE buckets (Neil)</para></listitem>
26146 <listitem><para>Use local buffer cache for temporary tables so no WAL overhead (Tom)</para></listitem>
26147 <listitem><para>Improve free space map performance on large tables (Stephen Marshall, Tom)</para></listitem>
26148 <listitem><para>Improved WAL write concurrency (Tom)</para></listitem>
26153 <title>Privileges</title>
26155 <listitem><para>Add privileges on functions and procedural languages (Peter)</para></listitem>
26156 <listitem><para>Add OWNER to CREATE DATABASE so superusers can create databases on behalf of unprivileged users (Gavin Sherry, Tom)</para></listitem>
26157 <listitem><para>Add new object privilege bits EXECUTE and USAGE (Tom)</para></listitem>
26158 <listitem><para>Add SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION (Tom)</para></listitem>
26159 <listitem><para>Allow functions to be executed with the privilege of the function owner (Peter)</para></listitem>
26164 <title>Server Configuration</title>
26166 <listitem><para>Server log messages now tagged with LOG, not DEBUG (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26167 <listitem><para>Add user column to pg_hba.conf (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26168 <listitem><para>Have log_connections output two lines in log file (Tom)</para></listitem>
26169 <listitem><para>Remove debug_level from postgresql.conf, now server_min_messages (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26170 <listitem><para>New ALTER DATABASE/USER ... SET command for per-user/database initialization (Peter)</para></listitem>
26171 <listitem><para>New parameters server_min_messages and client_min_messages to control which messages are sent to the server logs or client applications (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26172 <listitem><para>Allow pg_hba.conf to specify lists of users/databases separated by commas, group names prepended with +, and file names prepended with @ (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26173 <listitem><para>Remove secondary password file capability and pg_password utility (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26174 <listitem><para>Add variable db_user_namespace for database-local user names (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26175 <listitem><para>SSL improvements (Bear Giles)</para></listitem>
26176 <listitem><para>Make encryption of stored passwords the default (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26177 <listitem><para>Allow pg_statistics to be reset by calling pg_stat_reset() (Christopher)</para></listitem>
26178 <listitem><para>Add log_duration parameter (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26179 <listitem><para>Rename debug_print_query to log_statement (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26180 <listitem><para>Rename show_query_stats to show_statement_stats (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26181 <listitem><para>Add param log_min_error_statement to print commands to logs on error (Gavin)</para></listitem>
26186 <title>Queries</title>
26188 <listitem><para>Make cursors insensitive, meaning their contents do not change (Tom)</para></listitem>
26189 <listitem><para>Disable LIMIT #,# syntax; now only LIMIT # OFFSET # supported (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26190 <listitem><para>Increase identifier length to 63 (Neil, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26191 <listitem><para>UNION fixes for merging >= 3 columns of different lengths (Tom)</para></listitem>
26192 <listitem><para>Add DEFAULT key word to INSERT, e.g., INSERT ... (..., DEFAULT, ...) (Rod)</para></listitem>
26193 <listitem><para>Allow views to have default values using ALTER COLUMN ... SET DEFAULT (Neil)</para></listitem>
26194 <listitem><para>Fail on INSERTs with column lists that don't supply all column values, e.g., INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1'); (Rod)</para></listitem>
26195 <listitem><para>Fix for join aliases (Tom)</para></listitem>
26196 <listitem><para>Fix for FULL OUTER JOINs (Tom)</para></listitem>
26197 <listitem><para>Improve reporting of invalid identifier and location (Tom, Gavin)</para></listitem>
26198 <listitem><para>Fix OPEN cursor(args) (Tom)</para></listitem>
26199 <listitem><para>Allow 'ctid' to be used in a view and currtid(viewname) (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
26200 <listitem><para>Fix for CREATE TABLE AS with UNION (Tom)</para></listitem>
26201 <listitem><para>SQL99 syntax improvements (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26202 <listitem><para>Add statement_timeout variable to cancel queries (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26203 <listitem><para>Allow prepared queries with PREPARE/EXECUTE (Neil)</para></listitem>
26204 <listitem><para>Allow FOR UPDATE to appear after LIMIT/OFFSET (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26205 <listitem><para>Add variable autocommit (Tom, David Van Wie)</para></listitem>
26210 <title>Object Manipulation</title>
26212 <listitem><para>Make equals signs optional in CREATE DATABASE (Gavin Sherry)</para></listitem>
26213 <listitem><para>Make ALTER TABLE OWNER change index ownership too (Neil)</para></listitem>
26214 <listitem><para>New ALTER TABLE tabname ALTER COLUMN colname SET STORAGE controls TOAST storage, compression (John Gray)</para></listitem>
26215 <listitem><para>Add schema support, CREATE/DROP SCHEMA (Tom)</para></listitem>
26216 <listitem><para>Create schema for temporary tables (Tom)</para></listitem>
26217 <listitem><para>Add variable search_path for schema search (Tom)</para></listitem>
26218 <listitem><para>Add ALTER TABLE SET/DROP NOT NULL (Christopher)</para></listitem>
26219 <listitem><para>New CREATE FUNCTION volatility levels (Tom)</para></listitem>
26220 <listitem><para>Make rule names unique only per table (Tom)</para></listitem>
26221 <listitem><para>Add 'ON tablename' clause to DROP RULE and COMMENT ON RULE (Tom)</para></listitem>
26222 <listitem><para>Add ALTER TRIGGER RENAME (Joe)</para></listitem>
26223 <listitem><para>New current_schema() and current_schemas() inquiry functions (Tom)</para></listitem>
26224 <listitem><para>Allow functions to return multiple rows (table functions) (Joe)</para></listitem>
26225 <listitem><para>Make WITH optional in CREATE DATABASE, for consistency (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26226 <listitem><para>Add object dependency tracking (Rod, Tom)</para></listitem>
26227 <listitem><para>Add RESTRICT/CASCADE to DROP commands (Rod)</para></listitem>
26228 <listitem><para>Add ALTER TABLE DROP for non-CHECK CONSTRAINT (Rod)</para></listitem>
26229 <listitem><para>Autodestroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL (Rod)</para></listitem>
26230 <listitem><para>Prevent column dropping if column is used by foreign key (Rod)</para></listitem>
26231 <listitem><para>Automatically drop constraints/functions when object is dropped (Rod)</para></listitem>
26232 <listitem><para>Add CREATE/DROP OPERATOR CLASS (Bill Studenmund, Tom)</para></listitem>
26233 <listitem><para>Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN (Christopher, Tom, Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
26234 <listitem><para>Prevent inherited columns from being removed or renamed (Alvaro Herrera)</para></listitem>
26235 <listitem><para>Fix foreign key constraints to not error on intermediate database states (Stephan)</para></listitem>
26236 <listitem><para>Propagate column or table renaming to foreign key constraints</para></listitem>
26237 <listitem><para>Add CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW (Gavin, Neil, Tom)</para></listitem>
26238 <listitem><para>Add CREATE OR REPLACE RULE (Gavin, Neil, Tom)</para></listitem>
26239 <listitem><para>Have rules execute alphabetically, returning more predictable values (Tom)</para></listitem>
26240 <listitem><para>Triggers are now fired in alphabetical order (Tom)</para></listitem>
26241 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/adddepend to handle pre-7.3 object dependencies (Rod)</para></listitem>
26242 <listitem><para>Allow better casting when inserting/updating values (Tom)</para></listitem>
26247 <title>Utility Commands</title>
26249 <listitem><para>Have COPY TO output embedded carriage returns and newlines as \r and \n (Tom)</para></listitem>
26250 <listitem><para>Allow DELIMITER in COPY FROM to be 8-bit clean (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26251 <listitem><para>Make <application>pg_dump</> use ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY, for performance (Neil)</para></listitem>
26252 <listitem><para>Disable brackets in multistatement rules (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26253 <listitem><para>Disable VACUUM from being called inside a function (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26254 <listitem><para>Allow dropdb and other scripts to use identifiers with spaces (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26255 <listitem><para>Restrict database comment changes to the current database</para></listitem>
26256 <listitem><para>Allow comments on operators, independent of the underlying function (Rod)</para></listitem>
26257 <listitem><para>Rollback SET commands in aborted transactions (Tom)</para></listitem>
26258 <listitem><para>EXPLAIN now outputs as a query (Tom)</para></listitem>
26259 <listitem><para>Display condition expressions and sort keys in EXPLAIN (Tom)</para></listitem>
26260 <listitem><para>Add 'SET LOCAL var = value' to set configuration variables for a single transaction (Tom)</para></listitem>
26261 <listitem><para>Allow ANALYZE to run in a transaction (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26262 <listitem><para>Improve COPY syntax using new WITH clauses, keep backward compatibility (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26263 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_dump</> to consistently output tags in non-ASCII dumps (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26264 <listitem><para>Make foreign key constraints clearer in dump file (Rod)</para></listitem>
26265 <listitem><para>Add COMMENT ON CONSTRAINT (Rod)</para></listitem>
26266 <listitem><para>Allow COPY TO/FROM to specify column names (Brent Verner)</para></listitem>
26267 <listitem><para>Dump UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY constraints as ALTER TABLE (Rod)</para></listitem>
26268 <listitem><para>Have SHOW output a query result (Joe)</para></listitem>
26269 <listitem><para>Generate failure on short COPY lines rather than pad NULLs (Neil)</para></listitem>
26270 <listitem><para>Fix CLUSTER to preserve all table attributes (Alvaro Herrera)</para></listitem>
26271 <listitem><para>New pg_settings table to view/modify GUC settings (Joe)</para></listitem>
26272 <listitem><para>Add smart quoting, portability improvements to <application>pg_dump</> output (Peter)</para></listitem>
26273 <listitem><para>Dump serial columns out as SERIAL (Tom)</para></listitem>
26274 <listitem><para>Enable large file support, >2G for <application>pg_dump</> (Peter, Philip Warner, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26275 <listitem><para>Disallow TRUNCATE on tables that are involved in referential constraints (Rod)</para></listitem>
26276 <listitem><para>Have TRUNCATE also auto-truncate the toast table of the relation (Tom)</para></listitem>
26277 <listitem><para>Add clusterdb utility that will auto-cluster an entire database based on previous CLUSTER operations (Alvaro Herrera)</para></listitem>
26278 <listitem><para>Overhaul pg_dumpall (Peter)</para></listitem>
26279 <listitem><para>Allow REINDEX of TOAST tables (Tom)</para></listitem>
26280 <listitem><para>Implemented START TRANSACTION, per SQL99 (Neil)</para></listitem>
26281 <listitem><para>Fix rare index corruption when a page split affects bulk delete (Tom)</para></listitem>
26282 <listitem><para>Fix ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN for inheritance (Alvaro Herrera)</para></listitem>
26287 <title>Data Types and Functions</title>
26289 <listitem><para>Fix factorial(0) to return 1 (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26290 <listitem><para>Date/time/timezone improvements (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26291 <listitem><para>Fix for array slice extraction (Tom)</para></listitem>
26292 <listitem><para>Fix extract/date_part to report proper microseconds for timestamp (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26293 <listitem><para>Allow text_substr() and bytea_substr() to read TOAST values more efficiently (John Gray)</para></listitem>
26294 <listitem><para>Add domain support (Rod)</para></listitem>
26295 <listitem><para>Make WITHOUT TIME ZONE the default for TIMESTAMP and TIME data types (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26296 <listitem><para>Allow alternate storage scheme of 64-bit integers for date/time types using --enable-integer-datetimes in configure (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26297 <listitem><para>Make timezone(timestamptz) return timestamp rather than a string (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26298 <listitem><para>Allow fractional seconds in date/time types for dates prior to 1BC (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26299 <listitem><para>Limit timestamp data types to 6 decimal places of precision (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26300 <listitem><para>Change timezone conversion functions from timetz() to timezone() (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26301 <listitem><para>Add configuration variables datestyle and timezone (Tom)</para></listitem>
26302 <listitem><para>Add OVERLAY(), which allows substitution of a substring in a string (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26303 <listitem><para>Add SIMILAR TO (Thomas, Tom)</para></listitem>
26304 <listitem><para>Add regular expression SUBSTRING(string FROM pat FOR escape) (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26305 <listitem><para>Add LOCALTIME and LOCALTIMESTAMP functions (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26306 <listitem><para>Add named composite types using CREATE TYPE typename AS (column) (Joe)</para></listitem>
26307 <listitem><para>Allow composite type definition in the table alias clause (Joe)</para></listitem>
26308 <listitem><para>Add new API to simplify creation of C language table functions (Joe)</para></listitem>
26309 <listitem><para>Remove ODBC-compatible empty parentheses from calls to SQL99 functions for which these parentheses do not match the standard (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26310 <listitem><para>Allow macaddr data type to accept 12 hex digits with no separators (Mike Wyer)</para></listitem>
26311 <listitem><para>Add CREATE/DROP CAST (Peter)</para></listitem>
26312 <listitem><para>Add IS DISTINCT FROM operator (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26313 <listitem><para>Add SQL99 TREAT() function, synonym for CAST() (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26314 <listitem><para>Add pg_backend_pid() to output backend pid (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26315 <listitem><para>Add IS OF / IS NOT OF type predicate (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26316 <listitem><para>Allow bit string constants without fully-specified length (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26317 <listitem><para>Allow conversion between 8-byte integers and bit strings (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26318 <listitem><para>Implement hex literal conversion to bit string literal (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26319 <listitem><para>Allow table functions to appear in the FROM clause (Joe)</para></listitem>
26320 <listitem><para>Increase maximum number of function parameters to 32 (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26321 <listitem><para>No longer automatically create index for SERIAL column (Tom)</para></listitem>
26322 <listitem><para>Add current_database() (Rod)</para></listitem>
26323 <listitem><para>Fix cash_words() to not overflow buffer (Tom)</para></listitem>
26324 <listitem><para>Add functions replace(), split_part(), to_hex() (Joe)</para></listitem>
26325 <listitem><para>Fix LIKE for bytea as a right-hand argument (Joe)</para></listitem>
26326 <listitem><para>Prevent crashes caused by SELECT cash_out(2) (Tom)</para></listitem>
26327 <listitem><para>Fix to_char(1,'FM999.99') to return a period (Karel)</para></listitem>
26328 <listitem><para>Fix trigger/type/language functions returning OPAQUE to return proper type (Tom)</para></listitem>
26333 <title>Internationalization</title>
26335 <listitem><para>Add additional encodings: Korean (JOHAB), Thai (WIN874), Vietnamese (TCVN), Arabic (WIN1256), Simplified Chinese (GBK), Korean (UHC) (Eiji Tokuya)</para></listitem>
26336 <listitem><para>Enable locale support by default (Peter)</para></listitem>
26337 <listitem><para>Add locale variables (Peter)</para></listitem>
26338 <listitem><para>Escape byes >= 0x7f for multibyte in PQescapeBytea/PQunescapeBytea (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26339 <listitem><para>Add locale awareness to regular expression character classes</para></listitem>
26340 <listitem><para>Enable multibyte support by default (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26341 <listitem><para>Add GB18030 multibyte support (Bill Huang)</para></listitem>
26342 <listitem><para>Add CREATE/DROP CONVERSION, allowing loadable encodings (Tatsuo, Kaori)</para></listitem>
26343 <listitem><para>Add pg_conversion table (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26344 <listitem><para>Add SQL99 CONVERT() function (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26345 <listitem><para>pg_dumpall, pg_controldata, and pg_resetxlog now national-language aware (Peter)</para></listitem>
26346 <listitem><para>New and updated translations</para></listitem>
26351 <title>Server-side Languages</title>
26353 <listitem><para>Allow recursive SQL function (Peter)</para></listitem>
26354 <listitem><para>Change PL/Tcl build to use configured compiler and Makefile.shlib (Peter)</para></listitem>
26355 <listitem><para>Overhaul the PL/pgSQL FOUND variable to be more Oracle-compatible (Neil, Tom)</para></listitem>
26356 <listitem><para>Allow PL/pgSQL to handle quoted identifiers (Tom)</para></listitem>
26357 <listitem><para>Allow set-returning PL/pgSQL functions (Neil)</para></listitem>
26358 <listitem><para>Make PL/pgSQL schema-aware (Joe)</para></listitem>
26359 <listitem><para>Remove some memory leaks (Nigel J. Andrews, Tom)</para></listitem>
26364 <title>psql</title>
26366 <listitem><para>Don't lowercase psql \connect database name for 7.2.0 compatibility (Tom)</para></listitem>
26367 <listitem><para>Add psql \timing to time user queries (Greg Sabino Mullane)</para></listitem>
26368 <listitem><para>Have psql \d show index information (Greg Sabino Mullane)</para></listitem>
26369 <listitem><para>New psql \dD shows domains (Jonathan Eisler)</para></listitem>
26370 <listitem><para>Allow psql to show rules on views (Paul ?)</para></listitem>
26371 <listitem><para>Fix for psql variable substitution (Tom)</para></listitem>
26372 <listitem><para>Allow psql \d to show temporary table structure (Tom)</para></listitem>
26373 <listitem><para>Allow psql \d to show foreign keys (Rod)</para></listitem>
26374 <listitem><para>Fix \? to honor \pset pager (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26375 <listitem><para>Have psql reports its version number on startup (Tom)</para></listitem>
26376 <listitem><para>Allow \copy to specify column names (Tom)</para></listitem>
26381 <title>libpq</title>
26383 <listitem><para>Add ~/.pgpass to store host/user password combinations (Alvaro Herrera)</para></listitem>
26384 <listitem><para>Add PQunescapeBytea() function to libpq (Patrick Welche)</para></listitem>
26385 <listitem><para>Fix for sending large queries over non-blocking connections (Bernhard Herzog)</para></listitem>
26386 <listitem><para>Fix for libpq using timers on Win9X (David Ford)</para></listitem>
26387 <listitem><para>Allow libpq notify to handle servers with different-length identifiers (Tom)</para></listitem>
26388 <listitem><para>Add libpq PQescapeString() and PQescapeBytea() to Windows (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26389 <listitem><para>Fix for SSL with non-blocking connections (Jack Bates)</para></listitem>
26390 <listitem><para>Add libpq connection timeout parameter (Denis A Ustimenko)</para></listitem>
26395 <title>JDBC</title>
26397 <listitem><para>Allow JDBC to compile with JDK 1.4 (Dave)</para></listitem>
26398 <listitem><para>Add JDBC 3 support (Barry)</para></listitem>
26399 <listitem><para>Allows JDBC to set loglevel by adding ?loglevel=X to the connection URL (Barry)</para></listitem>
26400 <listitem><para>Add Driver.info() message that prints out the version number (Barry)</para></listitem>
26401 <listitem><para>Add updateable result sets (Raghu Nidagal, Dave)</para></listitem>
26402 <listitem><para>Add support for callable statements (Paul Bethe)</para></listitem>
26403 <listitem><para>Add query cancel capability</para></listitem>
26404 <listitem><para>Add refresh row (Dave)</para></listitem>
26405 <listitem><para>Fix MD5 encryption handling for multibyte servers (Jun Kawai)</para></listitem>
26406 <listitem><para>Add support for prepared statements (Barry)</para></listitem>
26411 <title>Miscellaneous Interfaces</title>
26413 <listitem><para>Fixed ECPG bug concerning octal numbers in single quotes (Michael)</para></listitem>
26414 <listitem><para>Move src/interfaces/libpgeasy to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26415 <listitem><para>Improve Python interface (Elliot Lee, Andrew Johnson, Greg Copeland)</para></listitem>
26416 <listitem><para>Add libpgtcl connection close event (Gerhard Hintermayer)</para></listitem>
26417 <listitem><para>Move src/interfaces/libpq++ to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26418 <listitem><para>Move src/interfaces/odbc to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc)</para></listitem>
26419 <listitem><para>Move src/interfaces/libpgeasy to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26420 <listitem><para>Move src/interfaces/perl5 to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26421 <listitem><para>Remove src/bin/pgaccess from main tree, now at http://www.pgaccess.org (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26422 <listitem><para>Add pg_on_connection_loss command to libpgtcl (Gerhard Hintermayer, Tom)</para></listitem>
26427 <title>Source Code</title>
26429 <listitem><para>Fix for parallel make (Peter)</para></listitem>
26430 <listitem><para>AIX fixes for linking Tcl (Andreas Zeugswetter)</para></listitem>
26431 <listitem><para>Allow PL/Perl to build under Cygwin (Jason Tishler)</para></listitem>
26432 <listitem><para>Improve MIPS compiles (Peter, Oliver Elphick)</para></listitem>
26433 <listitem><para>Require Autoconf version 2.53 (Peter)</para></listitem>
26434 <listitem><para>Require readline and zlib by default in configure (Peter)</para></listitem>
26435 <listitem><para>Allow Solaris to use Intimate Shared Memory (ISM), for performance (Scott Brunza, P.J. Josh Rovero)</para></listitem>
26436 <listitem><para>Always enable syslog in compile, remove --enable-syslog option (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26437 <listitem><para>Always enable multibyte in compile, remove --enable-multibyte option (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26438 <listitem><para>Always enable locale in compile, remove --enable-locale option (Peter)</para></listitem>
26439 <listitem><para>Fix for Win9x DLL creation (Magnus Naeslund)</para></listitem>
26440 <listitem><para>Fix for link() usage by WAL code on Windows, BeOS (Jason Tishler)</para></listitem>
26441 <listitem><para>Add sys/types.h to c.h, remove from main files (Peter, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26442 <listitem><para>Fix AIX hang on SMP machines (Tomoyuki Niijima)</para></listitem>
26443 <listitem><para>AIX SMP hang fix (Tomoyuki Niijima)</para></listitem>
26444 <listitem><para>Fix pre-1970 date handling on newer glibc libraries (Tom)</para></listitem>
26445 <listitem><para>Fix PowerPC SMP locking (Tom)</para></listitem>
26446 <listitem><para>Prevent gcc -ffast-math from being used (Peter, Tom)</para></listitem>
26447 <listitem><para>Bison >= 1.50 now required for developer builds</para></listitem>
26448 <listitem><para>Kerberos 5 support now builds with Heimdal (Peter)</para></listitem>
26449 <listitem><para>Add appendix in the User's Guide which lists SQL features (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26450 <listitem><para>Improve loadable module linking to use RTLD_NOW (Tom)</para></listitem>
26451 <listitem><para>New error levels WARNING, INFO, LOG, DEBUG[1-5] (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26452 <listitem><para>New src/port directory holds replaced libc functions (Peter, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26453 <listitem><para>New pg_namespace system catalog for schemas (Tom)</para></listitem>
26454 <listitem><para>Add pg_class.relnamespace for schemas (Tom)</para></listitem>
26455 <listitem><para>Add pg_type.typnamespace for schemas (Tom)</para></listitem>
26456 <listitem><para>Add pg_proc.pronamespace for schemas (Tom)</para></listitem>
26457 <listitem><para>Restructure aggregates to have pg_proc entries (Tom)</para></listitem>
26458 <listitem><para>System relations now have their own namespace, pg_* test not required (Fernando Nasser)</para></listitem>
26459 <listitem><para>Rename TOAST index names to be *_index rather than *_idx (Neil)</para></listitem>
26460 <listitem><para>Add namespaces for operators, opclasses (Tom)</para></listitem>
26461 <listitem><para>Add additional checks to server control file (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26462 <listitem><para>New Polish FAQ (Marcin Mazurek)</para></listitem>
26463 <listitem><para>Add Posix semaphore support (Tom)</para></listitem>
26464 <listitem><para>Document need for reindex (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26465 <listitem><para>Rename some internal identifiers to simplify Windows compile (Jan, Katherine Ward)</para></listitem>
26466 <listitem><para>Add documentation on computing disk space (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26467 <listitem><para>Remove KSQO from GUC (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26468 <listitem><para>Fix memory leak in rtree (Kenneth Been)</para></listitem>
26469 <listitem><para>Modify a few error messages for consistency (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26470 <listitem><para>Remove unused system table columns (Peter)</para></listitem>
26471 <listitem><para>Make system columns NOT NULL where appropriate (Tom)</para></listitem>
26472 <listitem><para>Clean up use of sprintf in favor of snprintf() (Neil, Jukka Holappa)</para></listitem>
26473 <listitem><para>Remove OPAQUE and create specific subtypes (Tom)</para></listitem>
26474 <listitem><para>Cleanups in array internal handling (Joe, Tom)</para></listitem>
26475 <listitem><para>Disallow pg_atoi('') (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26476 <listitem><para>Remove parameter wal_files because WAL files are now recycled (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26477 <listitem><para>Add version numbers to heap pages (Tom)</para></listitem>
26482 <title>Contrib</title>
26484 <listitem><para>Allow inet arrays in /contrib/array (Neil)</para></listitem>
26485 <listitem><para>GiST fixes (Teodor Sigaev, Neil)</para></listitem>
26486 <listitem><para>Upgrade /contrib/mysql</para></listitem>
26487 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/dbsize which shows table sizes without vacuum (Peter)</para></listitem>
26488 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/intagg, integer aggregator routines (mlw)</para></listitem>
26489 <listitem><para>Improve /contrib/oid2name (Neil, Bruce)</para></listitem>
26490 <listitem><para>Improve /contrib/tsearch (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev)</para></listitem>
26491 <listitem><para>Cleanups of /contrib/rserver (Alexey V. Borzov)</para></listitem>
26492 <listitem><para>Update /contrib/oracle conversion utility (Gilles Darold)</para></listitem>
26493 <listitem><para>Update /contrib/dblink (Joe)</para></listitem>
26494 <listitem><para>Improve options supported by /contrib/vacuumlo (Mario Weilguni)</para></listitem>
26495 <listitem><para>Improvements to /contrib/intarray (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev, Andrey Oktyabrski)</para></listitem>
26496 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/reindexdb utility (Shaun Thomas)</para></listitem>
26497 <listitem><para>Add indexing to /contrib/isbn_issn (Dan Weston)</para></listitem>
26498 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/dbmirror (Steven Singer)</para></listitem>
26499 <listitem><para>Improve /contrib/pgbench (Neil)</para></listitem>
26500 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/tablefunc table function examples (Joe)</para></listitem>
26501 <listitem><para>Add /contrib/ltree data type for tree structures (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov)</para></listitem>
26502 <listitem><para>Move /contrib/pg_controldata, pg_resetxlog into main tree (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26503 <listitem><para>Fixes to /contrib/cube (Bruno Wolff)</para></listitem>
26504 <listitem><para>Improve /contrib/fulltextindex (Christopher)</para></listitem>
26511 <sect1 id="release-7-2-8">
26512 <title>Release 7.2.8</title>
26515 <title>Release date</title>
26516 <simpara>2005-05-09</simpara>
26520 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.7, including one
26521 security-related issue.
26525 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.8</title>
26528 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.
26533 <title>Changes</title>
26536 <listitem><para>Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be
26537 seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner
26538 than for other purposes</para>
26539 <para>This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent
26540 data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.</para></listitem>
26541 <listitem><para>Repair race condition between relation extension and
26543 <para>This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of
26544 freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability.
26545 There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.
26547 <listitem><para>Fix <function>EXTRACT(EPOCH)</> for
26548 <type>TIME WITH TIME ZONE</> values</para></listitem>
26549 <listitem><para>Additional buffer overrun checks in plpgsql
26550 (Neil)</para></listitem>
26551 <listitem><para>Fix pg_dump to dump index names and trigger names containing
26552 <literal>%</> correctly (Neil)</para></listitem>
26553 <listitem><para>Prevent <function>to_char(interval)</> from dumping core for
26554 month-related formats</para></listitem>
26555 <listitem><para>Fix <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</> for newer OpenSSL builds
26556 (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
26562 <sect1 id="release-7-2-7">
26563 <title>Release 7.2.7</title>
26566 <title>Release date</title>
26567 <simpara>2005-01-31</simpara>
26571 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.6, including several
26572 security-related issues.
26576 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.7</title>
26579 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.
26584 <title>Changes</title>
26587 <listitem><para>Disallow <command>LOAD</> to non-superusers</para>
26589 On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a
26590 shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen),
26591 <command>LOAD</> can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code.
26592 Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.</para></listitem>
26593 <listitem><para>Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris
26594 Jurka)</para></listitem>
26595 <listitem><para>Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too
26596 many parameters (Neil)</para></listitem>
26597 <listitem><para>Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins</para>
26599 The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the
26600 left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but
26601 in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.
26603 <listitem><para>Fix display of negative intervals in SQL and GERMAN
26604 datestyles</para></listitem>
26610 <sect1 id="release-7-2-6">
26611 <title>Release 7.2.6</title>
26614 <title>Release date</title>
26615 <simpara>2004-10-22</simpara>
26619 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.5.
26624 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.6</title>
26627 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.
26632 <title>Changes</title>
26635 <listitem><para>Repair possible failure to update hint bits on disk</para>
26637 Under rare circumstances this oversight could lead to
26638 <quote>could not access transaction status</> failures, which qualifies
26639 it as a potential-data-loss bug.
26641 <listitem><para>Ensure that hashed outer join does not miss tuples</para>
26643 Very large left joins using a hash join plan could fail to output unmatched
26644 left-side rows given just the right data distribution.
26646 <listitem><para>Disallow running pg_ctl as root</para>
26648 This is to guard against any possible security issues.
26650 <listitem><para>Avoid using temp files in /tmp in make_oidjoins_check</para>
26652 This has been reported as a security issue, though it's hardly worthy of
26653 concern since there is no reason for non-developers to use this script anyway.
26655 <listitem><para>Update to newer versions of Bison</para></listitem>
26661 <sect1 id="release-7-2-5">
26662 <title>Release 7.2.5</title>
26665 <title>Release date</title>
26666 <simpara>2004-08-16</simpara>
26670 This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.4.
26675 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.5</title>
26678 A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.
26683 <title>Changes</title>
26686 <listitem><para>Prevent possible loss of committed transactions during crash</para>
26688 Due to insufficient interlocking between transaction commit and checkpointing,
26689 it was possible for transactions committed just before the most recent
26690 checkpoint to be lost, in whole or in part, following a database crash and
26691 restart. This is a serious bug that has existed
26692 since <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 7.1.
26694 <listitem><para>Fix corner case for btree search in parallel with first root page split</para></listitem>
26695 <listitem><para>Fix buffer overrun in <function>to_ascii</function> (Guido Notari)</para></listitem>
26696 <listitem><para>Fix core dump in deadlock detection on machines where char is unsigned</para></listitem>
26697 <listitem><para>Fix failure to respond to <command>pg_ctl stop -m fast</command> after Async_NotifyHandler runs</para></listitem>
26698 <listitem><para>Repair memory leaks in pg_dump</para></listitem>
26699 <listitem><para>Avoid conflict with system definition of <function>isblank()</function> function or macro</para></listitem>
26704 <sect1 id="release-7-2-4">
26705 <title>Release 7.2.4</title>
26708 <title>Release date</title>
26709 <simpara>2003-01-30</simpara>
26713 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.3,
26714 including fixes to prevent possible data loss.
26718 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.4</title>
26721 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
26722 running version 7.2.*.
26727 <title>Changes</title>
26730 <listitem><para>Fix some additional cases of VACUUM "No one parent tuple was found" error</para></listitem>
26731 <listitem><para>Prevent VACUUM from being called inside a function (Bruce)</para></listitem>
26732 <listitem><para>Ensure pg_clog updates are sync'd to disk before marking checkpoint complete</para></listitem>
26733 <listitem><para>Avoid integer overflow during large hash joins</para></listitem>
26734 <listitem><para>Make GROUP commands work when pg_group.grolist is large enough to be toasted</para></listitem>
26735 <listitem><para>Fix errors in datetime tables; some timezone names weren't being recognized</para></listitem>
26736 <listitem><para>Fix integer overflows in circle_poly(), path_encode(), path_add() (Neil)</para></listitem>
26737 <listitem><para>Repair long-standing logic errors in lseg_eq(), lseg_ne(), lseg_center()</para></listitem>
26743 <sect1 id="release-7-2-3">
26744 <title>Release 7.2.3</title>
26747 <title>Release date</title>
26748 <simpara>2002-10-01</simpara>
26752 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.2,
26753 including fixes to prevent possible data loss.
26757 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.3</title>
26760 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
26761 running version 7.2.*.
26766 <title>Changes</title>
26769 <listitem><para>Prevent possible compressed transaction log loss (Tom)</para></listitem>
26770 <listitem><para>Prevent non-superuser from increasing most recent vacuum info (Tom)</para></listitem>
26771 <listitem><para>Handle pre-1970 date values in newer versions of glibc (Tom)</para></listitem>
26772 <listitem><para>Fix possible hang during server shutdown</para></listitem>
26773 <listitem><para>Prevent spinlock hangs on SMP PPC machines (Tomoyuki Niijima)</para></listitem>
26774 <listitem><para>Fix <application>pg_dump</> to properly dump FULL JOIN USING (Tom)</para></listitem>
26780 <sect1 id="release-7-2-2">
26781 <title>Release 7.2.2</title>
26784 <title>Release date</title>
26785 <simpara>2002-08-23</simpara>
26789 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.1.
26793 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.2</title>
26796 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
26797 running version 7.2.*.
26802 <title>Changes</title>
26805 <listitem><para>Allow EXECUTE of "CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT" in PL/pgSQL (Tom)</para></listitem>
26806 <listitem><para>Fix for compressed transaction log id wraparound (Tom)</para></listitem>
26807 <listitem><para>Fix PQescapeBytea/PQunescapeBytea so that they handle bytes > 0x7f (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26808 <listitem><para>Fix for psql and <application>pg_dump</> crashing when invoked with non-existent long options (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26809 <listitem><para>Fix crash when invoking geometric operators (Tom)</para></listitem>
26810 <listitem><para>Allow OPEN cursor(args) (Tom)</para></listitem>
26811 <listitem><para>Fix for rtree_gist index build (Teodor)</para></listitem>
26812 <listitem><para>Fix for dumping user-defined aggregates (Tom)</para></listitem>
26813 <listitem><para>contrib/intarray fixes (Oleg)</para></listitem>
26814 <listitem><para>Fix for complex UNION/EXCEPT/INTERSECT queries using parens (Tom)</para></listitem>
26815 <listitem><para>Fix to pg_convert (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26816 <listitem><para>Fix for crash with long DATA strings (Thomas, Neil)</para></listitem>
26817 <listitem><para>Fix for repeat(), lpad(), rpad() and long strings (Neil)</para></listitem>
26823 <sect1 id="release-7-2-1">
26824 <title>Release 7.2.1</title>
26827 <title>Release date</title>
26828 <simpara>2002-03-21</simpara>
26832 This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.
26836 <title>Migration to Version 7.2.1</title>
26839 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those
26840 running version 7.2.
26845 <title>Changes</title>
26848 <listitem><para>Ensure that sequence counters do not go backwards after a crash (Tom)</para></listitem>
26849 <listitem><para>Fix pgaccess kanji-conversion key binding (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26850 <listitem><para>Optimizer improvements (Tom)</para></listitem>
26851 <listitem><para>Cash I/O improvements (Tom)</para></listitem>
26852 <listitem><para>New Russian FAQ</para></listitem>
26853 <listitem><para>Compile fix for missing AuthBlockSig (Heiko)</para></listitem>
26854 <listitem><para>Additional time zones and time zone fixes (Thomas)</para></listitem>
26855 <listitem><para>Allow psql \connect to handle mixed case database and user names (Tom)</para></listitem>
26856 <listitem><para>Return proper OID on command completion even with ON INSERT rules (Tom)</para></listitem>
26857 <listitem><para>Allow COPY FROM to use 8-bit DELIMITERS (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26858 <listitem><para>Fix bug in extract/date_part for milliseconds/microseconds (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
26859 <listitem><para>Improve handling of multiple UNIONs with different lengths (Tom)</para></listitem>
26860 <listitem><para>contrib/btree_gist improvements (Teodor Sigaev)</para></listitem>
26861 <listitem><para>contrib/tsearch dictionary improvements, see README.tsearch for an additional installation step (Thomas T. Thai, Teodor Sigaev)</para></listitem>
26862 <listitem><para>Fix for array subscripts handling (Tom)</para></listitem>
26863 <listitem><para>Allow EXECUTE of "CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT" in PL/pgSQL (Tom)</para></listitem>
26869 <sect1 id="release-7-2">
26870 <title>Release 7.2</title>
26873 <title>Release date</title>
26874 <simpara>2002-02-04</simpara>
26878 <title>Overview</title>
26881 This release improves <productname>PostgreSQL</> for use in
26882 high-volume applications.
26886 Major changes in this release:
26891 <term>VACUUM</term>
26894 Vacuuming no longer locks tables, thus allowing normal user
26895 access during the vacuum. A new <command>VACUUM FULL</>
26896 command does old-style vacuum by locking the table and
26897 shrinking the on-disk copy of the table.
26903 <term>Transactions</term>
26906 There is no longer a problem with installations that exceed
26907 four billion transactions.
26916 OIDs are now optional. Users can now create tables without
26917 OIDs for cases where OID usage is excessive.
26923 <term>Optimizer</term>
26926 The system now computes histogram column statistics during
26927 <command>ANALYZE</>, allowing much better optimizer choices.
26933 <term>Security</term>
26936 A new MD5 encryption option allows more secure storage and
26937 transfer of passwords. A new Unix-domain socket
26938 authentication option is available on Linux and BSD systems.
26944 <term>Statistics</term>
26947 Administrators can use the new table access statistics module
26948 to get fine-grained information about table and index usage.
26954 <term>Internationalization</term>
26957 Program and library messages can now be displayed in several
26967 <title>Migration to Version 7.2</title>
26970 A dump/restore using <command>pg_dump</command> is required for
26971 those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.
26975 Observe the following incompatibilities:
26981 The semantics of the <command>VACUUM</command> command have
26982 changed in this release. You might wish to update your
26983 maintenance procedures accordingly.
26989 In this release, comparisons using <literal>= NULL</literal>
26990 will always return false (or NULL, more precisely). Previous
26991 releases automatically transformed this syntax to <literal>IS
26992 NULL</literal>. The old behavior can be re-enabled using a
26993 <filename>postgresql.conf</filename> parameter.
26999 The <filename>pg_hba.conf</> and <filename>pg_ident.conf</>
27000 configuration is now only reloaded after receiving a
27001 <systemitem>SIGHUP</> signal, not with each connection.
27007 The function <filename>octet_length()</> now returns the uncompressed data length.
27013 The date/time value <literal>'current'</literal> is no longer
27014 available. You will need to rewrite your applications.
27020 The <literal>timestamp()</literal>, <literal>time()</literal>,
27021 and <literal>interval()</literal> functions are no longer
27022 available. Instead of <literal>timestamp()</literal>, use
27023 <literal>timestamp 'string'</literal> or <literal>CAST</literal>.
27030 The <literal>SELECT ... LIMIT #,#</literal> syntax will be removed
27031 in the next release. You should change your queries to use
27032 separate LIMIT and OFFSET clauses, e.g. <literal>LIMIT 10 OFFSET
27038 <title>Changes</title>
27041 <title>Server Operation</title>
27043 <listitem><para>Create temporary files in a separate directory (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27044 <listitem><para>Delete orphaned temporary files on postmaster startup (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27045 <listitem><para>Added unique indexes to some system tables (Tom)</para></listitem>
27046 <listitem><para>System table operator reorganization (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Tom)</para></listitem>
27047 <listitem><para>Renamed pg_log to pg_clog (Tom)</para></listitem>
27048 <listitem><para>Enable SIGTERM, SIGQUIT to kill backends (Jan)</para></listitem>
27049 <listitem><para>Removed compile-time limit on number of backends (Tom)</para></listitem>
27050 <listitem><para>Better cleanup for semaphore resource failure (Tatsuo, Tom)</para></listitem>
27051 <listitem><para>Allow safe transaction ID wraparound (Tom)</para></listitem>
27052 <listitem><para>Removed OIDs from some system tables (Tom)</para></listitem>
27053 <listitem><para>Removed "triggered data change violation" error check (Tom)</para></listitem>
27054 <listitem><para>SPI portal creation of prepared/saved plans (Jan)</para></listitem>
27055 <listitem><para>Allow SPI column functions to work for system columns (Tom)</para></listitem>
27056 <listitem><para>Long value compression improvement (Tom)</para></listitem>
27057 <listitem><para>Statistics collector for table, index access (Jan)</para></listitem>
27058 <listitem><para>Truncate extra-long sequence names to a reasonable value (Tom)</para></listitem>
27059 <listitem><para>Measure transaction times in milliseconds (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27060 <listitem><para>Fix TID sequential scans (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27061 <listitem><para>Superuser ID now fixed at 1 (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27062 <listitem><para>New pg_ctl "reload" option (Tom)</para></listitem>
27067 <title>Performance</title>
27069 <listitem><para>Optimizer improvements (Tom)</para></listitem>
27070 <listitem><para>New histogram column statistics for optimizer (Tom)</para></listitem>
27071 <listitem><para>Reuse write-ahead log files rather than discarding them (Tom)</para></listitem>
27072 <listitem><para>Cache improvements (Tom)</para></listitem>
27073 <listitem><para>IS NULL, IS NOT NULL optimizer improvement (Tom)</para></listitem>
27074 <listitem><para>Improve lock manager to reduce lock contention (Tom)</para></listitem>
27075 <listitem><para>Keep relcache entries for index access support functions (Tom)</para></listitem>
27076 <listitem><para>Allow better selectivity with NaN and infinities in NUMERIC (Tom)</para></listitem>
27077 <listitem><para>R-tree performance improvements (Kenneth Been)</para></listitem>
27078 <listitem><para>B-tree splits more efficient (Tom)</para></listitem>
27083 <title>Privileges</title>
27085 <listitem><para>Change UPDATE, DELETE privileges to be distinct (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27086 <listitem><para>New REFERENCES, TRIGGER privileges (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27087 <listitem><para>Allow GRANT/REVOKE to/from more than one user at a time (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27088 <listitem><para>New has_table_privilege() function (Joe Conway)</para></listitem>
27089 <listitem><para>Allow non-superuser to vacuum database (Tom)</para></listitem>
27090 <listitem><para>New SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION command (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27091 <listitem><para>Fix bug in privilege modifications on newly created tables (Tom)</para></listitem>
27092 <listitem><para>Disallow access to pg_statistic for non-superuser, add user-accessible views (Tom)</para></listitem>
27097 <title>Client Authentication</title>
27099 <listitem><para>Fork postmaster before doing authentication to prevent hangs (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27100 <listitem><para>Add ident authentication over Unix domain sockets on Linux, *BSD (Helge Bahmann, Oliver Elphick, Teodor Sigaev, Bruce)</para></listitem>
27101 <listitem><para>Add a password authentication method that uses MD5 encryption (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27102 <listitem><para>Allow encryption of stored passwords using MD5 (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27103 <listitem><para>PAM authentication (Dominic J. Eidson)</para></listitem>
27104 <listitem><para>Load pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf only on startup and SIGHUP (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27109 <title>Server Configuration</title>
27111 <listitem><para>Interpretation of some time zone abbreviations as Australian rather than North American now settable at run time (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27112 <listitem><para>New parameter to set default transaction isolation level (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27113 <listitem><para>New parameter to enable conversion of "expr = NULL" into "expr IS NULL", off by default (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27114 <listitem><para>New parameter to control memory usage by VACUUM (Tom)</para></listitem>
27115 <listitem><para>New parameter to set client authentication timeout (Tom)</para></listitem>
27116 <listitem><para>New parameter to set maximum number of open files (Tom)</para></listitem>
27121 <title>Queries</title>
27123 <listitem><para>Statements added by INSERT rules now execute after the INSERT (Jan)</para></listitem>
27124 <listitem><para>Prevent unadorned relation names in target list (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27125 <listitem><para>NULLs now sort after all normal values in ORDER BY (Tom)</para></listitem>
27126 <listitem><para>New IS UNKNOWN, IS NOT UNKNOWN Boolean tests (Tom)</para></listitem>
27127 <listitem><para>New SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock mode (Tom)</para></listitem>
27128 <listitem><para>New EXPLAIN ANALYZE command that shows run times and row counts (Martijn van Oosterhout)</para></listitem>
27129 <listitem><para>Fix problem with LIMIT and subqueries (Tom)</para></listitem>
27130 <listitem><para>Fix for LIMIT, DISTINCT ON pushed into subqueries (Tom)</para></listitem>
27131 <listitem><para>Fix nested EXCEPT/INTERSECT (Tom)</para></listitem>
27136 <title>Schema Manipulation</title>
27138 <listitem><para>Fix SERIAL in temporary tables (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27139 <listitem><para>Allow temporary sequences (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27140 <listitem><para>Sequences now use int8 internally (Tom)</para></listitem>
27141 <listitem><para>New SERIAL8 creates int8 columns with sequences, default still SERIAL4 (Tom)</para></listitem>
27142 <listitem><para>Make OIDs optional using WITHOUT OIDS (Tom)</para></listitem>
27143 <listitem><para>Add %TYPE syntax to CREATE TYPE (Ian Lance Taylor)</para></listitem>
27144 <listitem><para>Add ALTER TABLE / DROP CONSTRAINT for CHECK constraints (Christopher Kings-Lynne)</para></listitem>
27145 <listitem><para>New CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION to alter existing function (preserving the function OID) (Gavin Sherry)</para></listitem>
27146 <listitem><para>Add ALTER TABLE / ADD [ UNIQUE | PRIMARY ] (Christopher Kings-Lynne)</para></listitem>
27147 <listitem><para>Allow column renaming in views</para></listitem>
27148 <listitem><para>Make ALTER TABLE / RENAME COLUMN update column names of indexes (Brent Verner)</para></listitem>
27149 <listitem><para>Fix for ALTER TABLE / ADD CONSTRAINT ... CHECK with inherited tables (Stephan Szabo)</para></listitem>
27150 <listitem><para>ALTER TABLE RENAME update foreign-key trigger arguments correctly (Brent Verner)</para></listitem>
27151 <listitem><para>DROP AGGREGATE and COMMENT ON AGGREGATE now accept an aggtype (Tom)</para></listitem>
27152 <listitem><para>Add automatic return type data casting for SQL functions (Tom)</para></listitem>
27153 <listitem><para>Allow GiST indexes to handle NULLs and multikey indexes (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Tom)</para></listitem>
27154 <listitem><para>Enable partial indexes (Martijn van Oosterhout)</para></listitem>
27159 <title>Utility Commands</title>
27161 <listitem><para>Add RESET ALL, SHOW ALL (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
27162 <listitem><para>CREATE/ALTER USER/GROUP now allow options in any order (Vince)</para></listitem>
27163 <listitem><para>Add LOCK A, B, C functionality (Neil Padgett)</para></listitem>
27164 <listitem><para>New ENCRYPTED/UNENCRYPTED option to CREATE/ALTER USER (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27165 <listitem><para>New light-weight VACUUM does not lock table; old semantics are available as VACUUM FULL (Tom)</para></listitem>
27166 <listitem><para>Disable COPY TO/FROM on views (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27167 <listitem><para>COPY DELIMITERS string must be exactly one character (Tom)</para></listitem>
27168 <listitem><para>VACUUM warning about index tuples fewer than heap now only appears when appropriate (Martijn van Oosterhout)</para></listitem>
27169 <listitem><para>Fix privilege checks for CREATE INDEX (Tom)</para></listitem>
27170 <listitem><para>Disallow inappropriate use of CREATE/DROP INDEX/TRIGGER/VIEW (Tom)</para></listitem>
27175 <title>Data Types and Functions</title>
27177 <listitem><para>SUM(), AVG(), COUNT() now uses int8 internally for speed (Tom)</para></listitem>
27178 <listitem><para>Add convert(), convert2() (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27179 <listitem><para>New function bit_length() (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27180 <listitem><para>Make the "n" in CHAR(n)/VARCHAR(n) represents letters, not bytes (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27181 <listitem><para>CHAR(), VARCHAR() now reject strings that are too long (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27182 <listitem><para>BIT VARYING now rejects bit strings that are too long (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27183 <listitem><para>BIT now rejects bit strings that do not match declared size (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27184 <listitem><para>INET, CIDR text conversion functions (Alex Pilosov)</para></listitem>
27185 <listitem><para>INET, CIDR operators << and <<= indexable (Alex Pilosov)</para></listitem>
27186 <listitem><para>Bytea \### now requires valid three digit octal number</para></listitem>
27187 <listitem><para>Bytea comparison improvements, now supports =, <>, >, >=, <, and <=</para></listitem>
27188 <listitem><para>Bytea now supports B-tree indexes</para></listitem>
27189 <listitem><para>Bytea now supports LIKE, LIKE...ESCAPE, NOT LIKE, NOT LIKE...ESCAPE</para></listitem>
27190 <listitem><para>Bytea now supports concatenation</para></listitem>
27191 <listitem><para>New bytea functions: position, substring, trim, btrim, and length</para></listitem>
27192 <listitem><para>New encode() function mode, "escaped", converts minimally escaped bytea to/from text</para></listitem>
27193 <listitem><para>Add pg_database_encoding_max_length() (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27194 <listitem><para>Add pg_client_encoding() function (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27195 <listitem><para>now() returns time with millisecond precision (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27196 <listitem><para>New TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIMEZONE data type (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27197 <listitem><para>Add ISO date/time specification with "T", yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27198 <listitem><para>New xid/int comparison functions (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27199 <listitem><para>Add precision to TIME, TIMESTAMP, and INTERVAL data types (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27200 <listitem><para>Modify type coercion logic to attempt binary-compatible functions first (Tom)</para></listitem>
27201 <listitem><para>New encode() function installed by default (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
27202 <listitem><para>Improved to_*() conversion functions (Karel Zak)</para></listitem>
27203 <listitem><para>Optimize LIKE/ILIKE when using single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27204 <listitem><para>New functions in contrib/pgcrypto: crypt(), hmac(), encrypt(), gen_salt() (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
27205 <listitem><para>Correct description of translate() function (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27206 <listitem><para>Add INTERVAL argument for SET TIME ZONE (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27207 <listitem><para>Add INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH (etc.) syntax (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27208 <listitem><para>Optimize length functions when using single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27209 <listitem><para>Fix path_inter, path_distance, path_length, dist_ppath to handle closed paths (Curtis Barrett, Tom)</para></listitem>
27210 <listitem><para>octet_length(text) now returns non-compressed length (Tatsuo, Bruce)</para></listitem>
27211 <listitem><para>Handle "July" full name in date/time literals (Greg Sabino Mullane)</para></listitem>
27212 <listitem><para>Some datatype() function calls now evaluated differently</para></listitem>
27213 <listitem><para>Add support for Julian and ISO time specifications (Thomas)</para></listitem>
27218 <title>Internationalization</title>
27220 <listitem><para>National language support in psql, <application>pg_dump</>, libpq, and server (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27221 <listitem><para>Message translations in Chinese (simplified, traditional), Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Swedish (Peter E, Serguei A. Mokhov, Karel Zak, Weiping He, Zhenbang Wei, Kovacs Zoltan)</para></listitem>
27222 <listitem><para>Make trim, ltrim, rtrim, btrim, lpad, rpad, translate multibyte aware (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27223 <listitem><para>Add LATIN5,6,7,8,9,10 support (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27224 <listitem><para>Add ISO 8859-5,6,7,8 support (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27225 <listitem><para>Correct LATIN5 to mean ISO-8859-9, not ISO-8859-5 (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27226 <listitem><para>Make mic2ascii() non-ASCII aware (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27227 <listitem><para>Reject invalid multibyte character sequences (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27232 <title><application>PL/pgSQL</></title>
27234 <listitem><para>Now uses portals for SELECT loops, allowing huge result sets (Jan)</para></listitem>
27235 <listitem><para>CURSOR and REFCURSOR support (Jan)</para></listitem>
27236 <listitem><para>Can now return open cursors (Jan)</para></listitem>
27237 <listitem><para>Add ELSEIF (Klaus Reger)</para></listitem>
27238 <listitem><para>Improve PL/pgSQL error reporting, including location of error (Tom)</para></listitem>
27239 <listitem><para>Allow IS or FOR key words in cursor declaration, for compatibility (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27240 <listitem><para>Fix for SELECT ... FOR UPDATE (Tom)</para></listitem>
27241 <listitem><para>Fix for PERFORM returning multiple rows (Tom)</para></listitem>
27242 <listitem><para>Make PL/pgSQL use the server's type coercion code (Tom)</para></listitem>
27243 <listitem><para>Memory leak fix (Jan, Tom)</para></listitem>
27244 <listitem><para>Make trailing semicolon optional (Tom)</para></listitem>
27249 <title>PL/Perl</title>
27251 <listitem><para>New untrusted PL/Perl (Alex Pilosov)</para></listitem>
27252 <listitem><para>PL/Perl is now built on some platforms even if libperl is not shared (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27257 <title>PL/Tcl</title>
27259 <listitem><para>Now reports errorInfo (Vsevolod Lobko)</para></listitem>
27260 <listitem><para>Add spi_lastoid function (bob@redivi.com)</para></listitem>
27265 <title>PL/Python</title>
27267 <listitem><para>...is new (Andrew Bosma)</para></listitem>
27272 <title><application>psql</></title>
27274 <listitem><para>\d displays indexes in unique, primary groupings (Christopher Kings-Lynne)</para></listitem>
27275 <listitem><para>Allow trailing semicolons in backslash commands (Greg Sabino Mullane)</para></listitem>
27276 <listitem><para>Read password from /dev/tty if possible</para></listitem>
27277 <listitem><para>Force new password prompt when changing user and database (Tatsuo, Tom)</para></listitem>
27278 <listitem><para>Format the correct number of columns for Unicode (Patrice)</para></listitem>
27283 <title><application>libpq</></title>
27285 <listitem><para>New function PQescapeString() to escape quotes in command strings (Florian Weimer)</para></listitem>
27286 <listitem><para>New function PQescapeBytea() escapes binary strings for use as SQL string literals</para></listitem>
27291 <title>JDBC</title>
27293 <listitem><para>Return OID of INSERT (Ken K)</para></listitem>
27294 <listitem><para>Handle more data types (Ken K)</para></listitem>
27295 <listitem><para>Handle single quotes and newlines in strings (Ken K)</para></listitem>
27296 <listitem><para>Handle NULL variables (Ken K)</para></listitem>
27297 <listitem><para>Fix for time zone handling (Barry Lind)</para></listitem>
27298 <listitem><para>Improved Druid support</para></listitem>
27299 <listitem><para>Allow eight-bit characters with non-multibyte server (Barry Lind)</para></listitem>
27300 <listitem><para>Support BIT, BINARY types (Ned Wolpert)</para></listitem>
27301 <listitem><para>Reduce memory usage (Michael Stephens, Dave Cramer)</para></listitem>
27302 <listitem><para>Update DatabaseMetaData (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27303 <listitem><para>Add DatabaseMetaData.getCatalogs() (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27304 <listitem><para>Encoding fixes (Anders Bengtsson)</para></listitem>
27305 <listitem><para>Get/setCatalog methods (Jason Davies)</para></listitem>
27306 <listitem><para>DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() now returns column defaults (Jason Davies)</para></listitem>
27307 <listitem><para>DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() performance improvement (Jeroen van Vianen)</para></listitem>
27308 <listitem><para>Some JDBC1 and JDBC2 merging (Anders Bengtsson)</para></listitem>
27309 <listitem><para>Transaction performance improvements (Barry Lind)</para></listitem>
27310 <listitem><para>Array fixes (Greg Zoller)</para></listitem>
27311 <listitem><para>Serialize addition </para></listitem>
27312 <listitem><para>Fix batch processing (Rene Pijlman)</para></listitem>
27313 <listitem><para>ExecSQL method reorganization (Anders Bengtsson)</para></listitem>
27314 <listitem><para>GetColumn() fixes (Jeroen van Vianen)</para></listitem>
27315 <listitem><para>Fix isWriteable() function (Rene Pijlman)</para></listitem>
27316 <listitem><para>Improved passage of JDBC2 conformance tests (Rene Pijlman)</para></listitem>
27317 <listitem><para>Add bytea type capability (Barry Lind)</para></listitem>
27318 <listitem><para>Add isNullable() (Rene Pijlman)</para></listitem>
27319 <listitem><para>JDBC date/time test suite fixes (Liam Stewart)</para></listitem>
27320 <listitem><para>Fix for SELECT 'id' AS xxx FROM table (Dave Cramer)</para></listitem>
27321 <listitem><para>Fix DatabaseMetaData to show precision properly (Mark Lillywhite)</para></listitem>
27322 <listitem><para>New getImported/getExported keys (Jason Davies)</para></listitem>
27323 <listitem><para>MD5 password encryption support (Jeremy Wohl)</para></listitem>
27324 <listitem><para>Fix to actually use type cache (Ned Wolpert)</para></listitem>
27329 <title>ODBC</title>
27331 <listitem><para>Remove query size limit (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27332 <listitem><para>Remove text field size limit (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27333 <listitem><para>Fix for SQLPrimaryKeys in multibyte mode (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27334 <listitem><para>Allow ODBC procedure calls (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27335 <listitem><para>Improve boolean handing (Aidan Mountford)</para></listitem>
27336 <listitem><para>Most configuration options now settable via DSN (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27337 <listitem><para>Multibyte, performance fixes (Hiroshi)</para></listitem>
27338 <listitem><para>Allow driver to be used with iODBC or unixODBC (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27339 <listitem><para>MD5 password encryption support (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27340 <listitem><para>Add more compatibility functions to odbc.sql (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27345 <title><application>ECPG</></title>
27347 <listitem><para>EXECUTE ... INTO implemented (Christof Petig)</para></listitem>
27348 <listitem><para>Multiple row descriptor support (e.g. CARDINALITY) (Christof Petig)</para></listitem>
27349 <listitem><para>Fix for GRANT parameters (Lee Kindness)</para></listitem>
27350 <listitem><para>Fix INITIALLY DEFERRED bug</para></listitem>
27351 <listitem><para>Various bug fixes (Michael, Christof Petig)</para></listitem>
27352 <listitem><para>Auto allocation for indicator variable arrays (int *ind_p=NULL)</para></listitem>
27353 <listitem><para>Auto allocation for string arrays (char **foo_pp=NULL)</para></listitem>
27354 <listitem><para>ECPGfree_auto_mem fixed</para></listitem>
27355 <listitem><para>All function names with external linkage are now prefixed by ECPG</para></listitem>
27356 <listitem><para>Fixes for arrays of structures (Michael)</para></listitem>
27361 <title>Misc. Interfaces</title>
27363 <listitem><para>Python fix fetchone() (Gerhard Haring)</para></listitem>
27364 <listitem><para>Use UTF, Unicode in Tcl where appropriate (Vsevolod Lobko, Reinhard Max)</para></listitem>
27365 <listitem><para>Add Tcl COPY TO/FROM (ljb)</para></listitem>
27366 <listitem><para>Prevent output of default index op class in <application>pg_dump</> (Tom)</para></listitem>
27367 <listitem><para>Fix libpgeasy memory leak (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27372 <title>Build and Install</title>
27374 <listitem><para>Configure, dynamic loader, and shared library fixes (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27375 <listitem><para>Fixes in QNX 4 port (Bernd Tegge)</para></listitem>
27376 <listitem><para>Fixes in Cygwin and Windows ports (Jason Tishler, Gerhard Haring, Dmitry Yurtaev, Darko Prenosil, Mikhail Terekhov)</para></listitem>
27377 <listitem><para>Fix for Windows socket communication failures (Magnus, Mikhail Terekhov)</para></listitem>
27378 <listitem><para>Hurd compile fix (Oliver Elphick)</para></listitem>
27379 <listitem><para>BeOS fixes (Cyril Velter)</para></listitem>
27380 <listitem><para>Remove configure --enable-unicode-conversion, now enabled by multibyte (Tatsuo)</para></listitem>
27381 <listitem><para>AIX fixes (Tatsuo, Andreas)</para></listitem>
27382 <listitem><para>Fix parallel make (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27383 <listitem><para>Install SQL language manual pages into OS-specific directories (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27384 <listitem><para>Rename config.h to pg_config.h (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27385 <listitem><para>Reorganize installation layout of header files (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27390 <title>Source Code</title>
27392 <listitem><para>Remove SEP_CHAR (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27393 <listitem><para>New GUC hooks (Tom)</para></listitem>
27394 <listitem><para>Merge GUC and command line handling (Marko Kreen)</para></listitem>
27395 <listitem><para>Remove EXTEND INDEX (Martijn van Oosterhout, Tom)</para></listitem>
27396 <listitem><para>New pgjindent utility to indent java code (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27397 <listitem><para>Remove define of true/false when compiling under C++ (Leandro Fanzone, Tom)</para></listitem>
27398 <listitem><para>pgindent fixes (Bruce, Tom)</para></listitem>
27399 <listitem><para>Replace strcasecmp() with strcmp() where appropriate (Peter E)</para></listitem>
27400 <listitem><para>Dynahash portability improvements (Tom)</para></listitem>
27401 <listitem><para>Add 'volatile' usage in spinlock structures</para></listitem>
27402 <listitem><para>Improve signal handling logic (Tom)</para></listitem>
27407 <title>Contrib</title>
27409 <listitem><para>New contrib/rtree_gist (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev)</para></listitem>
27410 <listitem><para>New contrib/tsearch full-text indexing (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev)</para></listitem>
27411 <listitem><para>Add contrib/dblink for remote database access (Joe Conway)</para></listitem>
27412 <listitem><para>contrib/ora2pg Oracle conversion utility (Gilles Darold)</para></listitem>
27413 <listitem><para>contrib/xml XML conversion utility (John Gray)</para></listitem>
27414 <listitem><para>contrib/fulltextindex fixes (Christopher Kings-Lynne)</para></listitem>
27415 <listitem><para>New contrib/fuzzystrmatch with levenshtein and metaphone, soundex merged (Joe Conway)</para></listitem>
27416 <listitem><para>Add contrib/intarray boolean queries, binary search, fixes (Oleg Bartunov)</para></listitem>
27417 <listitem><para>New pg_upgrade utility (Bruce)</para></listitem>
27418 <listitem><para>Add new pg_resetxlog options (Bruce, Tom)</para></listitem>
27425 <sect1 id="release-7-1-3">
27426 <title>Release 7.1.3</title>
27429 <title>Release date</title>
27430 <simpara>2001-08-15</simpara>
27434 <title>Migration to Version 7.1.3</title>
27437 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
27443 <title>Changes</title>
27447 Remove unused WAL segments of large transactions (Tom)
27448 Multiaction rule fix (Tom)
27449 PL/pgSQL memory allocation fix (Jan)
27450 VACUUM buffer fix (Tom)
27451 Regression test fixes (Tom)
27452 pg_dump fixes for GRANT/REVOKE/comments on views, user-defined types (Tom)
27453 Fix subselects with DISTINCT ON or LIMIT (Tom)
27455 Disable COPY TO/FROM a view (Tom)
27456 Cygwin build (Jason Tishler)
27463 <sect1 id="release-7-1-2">
27464 <title>Release 7.1.2</title>
27467 <title>Release date</title>
27468 <simpara>2001-05-11</simpara>
27472 This has one fix from 7.1.1.
27477 <title>Migration to Version 7.1.2</title>
27480 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
27486 <title>Changes</title>
27490 Fix PL/pgSQL SELECTs when returning no rows
27491 Fix for psql backslash core dump
27492 Referential integrity privilege fix
27501 <sect1 id="release-7-1-1">
27502 <title>Release 7.1.1</title>
27505 <title>Release date</title>
27506 <simpara>2001-05-05</simpara>
27510 This has a variety of fixes from 7.1.
27515 <title>Migration to Version 7.1.1</title>
27518 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
27524 <title>Changes</title>
27528 Fix for numeric MODULO operator (Tom)
27529 pg_dump fixes (Philip)
27530 pg_dump can dump 7.0 databases (Philip)
27531 readline 4.2 fixes (Peter E)
27533 AIX, MSWIN, VAX, N32K fixes (Tom)
27534 Multibytes fixes (Tom)
27535 Unicode fixes (Tatsuo)
27536 Optimizer improvements (Tom)
27537 Fix for whole rows in functions (Tom)
27538 Fix for pg_ctl and option strings with spaces (Peter E)
27539 ODBC fixes (Hiroshi)
27540 EXTRACT can now take string argument (Thomas)
27541 Python fixes (Darcy)
27548 <sect1 id="release-7-1">
27549 <title>Release 7.1</title>
27552 <title>Release date</title>
27553 <simpara>2001-04-13</simpara>
27557 This release focuses on removing limitations that have existed in the
27558 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> code for many years.
27562 Major changes in this release:
27568 Write-ahead Log (WAL)
27572 To maintain database consistency in case of an operating system crash,
27573 previous releases of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> have forced
27574 all data modifications to disk before each transaction commit. With
27575 WAL, only one log file must be flushed to disk, greatly improving
27576 performance. If you have been using -F in previous releases to
27577 disable disk flushes, you might want to consider discontinuing its use.
27588 TOAST - Previous releases had a compiled-in row length limit,
27589 typically 8k - 32k. This limit made storage of long text fields
27590 difficult. With TOAST, long rows of any length can be stored with good
27602 We now support outer joins. The UNION/NOT IN
27603 workaround for outer joins is no longer required. We use the SQL92
27615 The previous C function manager did not
27616 handle null values properly, nor did it support 64-bit <acronym>CPU</acronym>'s (Alpha). The new
27617 function manager does. You can continue using your old custom
27618 functions, but you might want to rewrite them in the future to use the new
27619 function manager call interface.
27630 A large number of complex queries that were
27631 unsupported in previous releases now work. Many combinations of views,
27632 aggregates, UNION, LIMIT, cursors, subqueries, and inherited tables
27633 now work properly. Inherited tables are now accessed by default.
27634 Subqueries in FROM are now supported.
27642 <title>Migration to Version 7.1</title>
27645 A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate
27646 data from any previous release.
27651 <title>Changes</title>
27657 Many multibyte/Unicode/locale fixes (Tatsuo and others)
27658 More reliable ALTER TABLE RENAME (Tom)
27659 Kerberos V fixes (David Wragg)
27660 Fix for INSERT INTO...SELECT where targetlist has subqueries (Tom)
27661 Prompt username/password on standard error (Bruce)
27662 Large objects inv_read/inv_write fixes (Tom)
27663 Fixes for to_char(), to_date(), to_ascii(), and to_timestamp() (Karel,
27665 Prevent query expressions from leaking memory (Tom)
27666 Allow UPDATE of arrays elements (Tom)
27667 Wake up lock waiters during cancel (Hiroshi)
27668 Fix rare cursor crash when using hash join (Tom)
27669 Fix for DROP TABLE/INDEX in rolled-back transaction (Hiroshi)
27670 Fix psql crash from \l+ if MULTIBYTE enabled (Peter E)
27671 Fix truncation of rule names during CREATE VIEW (Ross Reedstrom)
27672 Fix PL/perl (Alex Kapranoff)
27673 Disallow LOCK on views (Mark Hollomon)
27674 Disallow INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE on views (Mark Hollomon)
27675 Disallow DROP RULE, CREATE INDEX, TRUNCATE on views (Mark Hollomon)
27676 Allow PL/pgSQL accept non-ASCII identifiers (Tatsuo)
27677 Allow views to proper handle GROUP BY, aggregates, DISTINCT (Tom)
27678 Fix rare failure with TRUNCATE command (Tom)
27679 Allow UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT to be used with ALL, subqueries, views,
27680 DISTINCT, ORDER BY, SELECT...INTO (Tom)
27681 Fix parser failures during aborted transactions (Tom)
27682 Allow temporary relations to properly clean up indexes (Bruce)
27683 Fix VACUUM problem with moving rows in same page (Tom)
27684 Modify pg_dump to better handle user-defined items in template1 (Philip)
27685 Allow LIMIT in VIEW (Tom)
27686 Require cursor FETCH to honor LIMIT (Tom)
27687 Allow PRIMARY/FOREIGN Key definitions on inherited columns (Stephan)
27688 Allow ORDER BY, LIMIT in subqueries (Tom)
27689 Allow UNION in CREATE RULE (Tom)
27690 Make ALTER/DROP TABLE rollback-able (Vadim, Tom)
27691 Store initdb collation in pg_control so collation cannot be changed (Tom)
27692 Fix INSERT...SELECT with rules (Tom)
27693 Fix FOR UPDATE inside views and subselects (Tom)
27694 Fix OVERLAPS operators conform to SQL92 spec regarding NULLs (Tom)
27695 Fix lpad() and rpad() to handle length less than input string (Tom)
27696 Fix use of NOTIFY in some rules (Tom)
27697 Overhaul btree code (Tom)
27698 Fix NOT NULL use in Pl/pgSQL variables (Tom)
27699 Overhaul GIST code (Oleg)
27700 Fix CLUSTER to preserve constraints and column default (Tom)
27701 Improved deadlock detection handling (Tom)
27702 Allow multiple SERIAL columns in a table (Tom)
27703 Prevent occasional index corruption (Vadim)
27707 Add OUTER JOINs (Tom)
27708 Function manager overhaul (Tom)
27709 Allow ALTER TABLE RENAME on indexes (Tom)
27710 Improve CLUSTER (Tom)
27711 Improve ps status display for more platforms (Peter E, Marc)
27712 Improve CREATE FUNCTION failure message (Ross)
27713 JDBC improvements (Peter, Travis Bauer, Christopher Cain, William Webber,
27715 Grand Unified Configuration scheme/GUC. Many options can now be set in
27716 data/postgresql.conf, postmaster/postgres flags, or SET commands (Peter E)
27717 Improved handling of file descriptor cache (Tom)
27718 New warning code about auto-created table alias entries (Bruce)
27719 Overhaul initdb process (Tom, Peter E)
27720 Overhaul of inherited tables; inherited tables now accessed by default;
27721 new ONLY key word prevents it (Chris Bitmead, Tom)
27722 ODBC cleanups/improvements (Nick Gorham, Stephan Szabo, Zoltan Kovacs,
27724 Allow renaming of temp tables (Tom)
27725 Overhaul memory manager contexts (Tom)
27726 pg_dumpall uses CREATE USER or CREATE GROUP rather using COPY (Peter E)
27727 Overhaul pg_dump (Philip Warner)
27728 Allow pg_hba.conf secondary password file to specify only username (Peter E)
27729 Allow TEMPORARY or TEMP key word when creating temporary tables (Bruce)
27730 New memory leak checker (Karel)
27731 New SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS (Thomas)
27732 Allow nested block comments (Thomas)
27733 Add WITHOUT TIME ZONE type qualifier (Thomas)
27734 New ALTER TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT (Stephan)
27735 Use NUMERIC accumulators for INTEGER aggregates (Tom)
27736 Overhaul aggregate code (Tom)
27737 New VARIANCE and STDDEV() aggregates
27738 Improve dependency ordering of pg_dump (Philip)
27739 New pg_restore command (Philip)
27740 New pg_dump tar output option (Philip)
27741 New pg_dump of large objects (Philip)
27742 New ESCAPE option to LIKE (Thomas)
27743 New case-insensitive LIKE - ILIKE (Thomas)
27744 Allow functional indexes to use binary-compatible type (Tom)
27745 Allow SQL functions to be used in more contexts (Tom)
27746 New pg_config utility (Peter E)
27747 New PL/pgSQL EXECUTE command which allows dynamic SQL and utility statements
27749 New PL/pgSQL GET DIAGNOSTICS statement for SPI value access (Jan)
27750 New quote_identifiers() and quote_literal() functions (Jan)
27751 New ALTER TABLE table OWNER TO user command (Mark Hollomon)
27752 Allow subselects in FROM, i.e. FROM (SELECT ...) [AS] alias (Tom)
27753 Update PyGreSQL to version 3.1 (D'Arcy)
27754 Store tables as files named by OID (Vadim)
27755 New SQL function setval(seq,val,bool) for use in pg_dump (Philip)
27756 Require DROP VIEW to remove views, no DROP TABLE (Mark)
27757 Allow DROP VIEW view1, view2 (Mark)
27758 Allow multiple objects in DROP INDEX, DROP RULE, and DROP TYPE (Tom)
27759 Allow automatic conversion to/from Unicode (Tatsuo, Eiji)
27760 New /contrib/pgcrypto hashing functions (Marko Kreen)
27761 New pg_dumpall --globals-only option (Peter E)
27762 New CHECKPOINT command for WAL which creates new WAL log file (Vadim)
27763 New AT TIME ZONE syntax (Thomas)
27764 Allow location of Unix domain socket to be configurable (David J. MacKenzie)
27765 Allow postmaster to listen on a specific IP address (David J. MacKenzie)
27766 Allow socket path name to be specified in hostname by using leading slash
27767 (David J. MacKenzie)
27768 Allow CREATE DATABASE to specify template database (Tom)
27769 New utility to convert MySQL schema dumps to SQL92 and PostgreSQL (Thomas)
27770 New /contrib/rserv replication toolkit (Vadim)
27771 New file format for COPY BINARY (Tom)
27772 New /contrib/oid2name to map numeric files to table names (B Palmer)
27773 New "idle in transaction" ps status message (Marc)
27774 Update to pgaccess 0.98.7 (Constantin Teodorescu)
27775 pg_ctl now defaults to -w (wait) on shutdown, new -l (log) option
27776 Add rudimentary dependency checking to pg_dump (Philip)
27780 Fix INET/CIDR type ordering and add new functions (Tom)
27781 Make OID behave as an unsigned type (Tom)
27782 Allow BIGINT as synonym for INT8 (Peter E)
27783 New int2 and int8 comparison operators (Tom)
27784 New BIT and BIT VARYING types (Adriaan Joubert, Tom, Peter E)
27785 CHAR() no longer faster than VARCHAR() because of TOAST (Tom)
27786 New GIST seg/cube examples (Gene Selkov)
27787 Improved round(numeric) handling (Tom)
27788 Fix CIDR output formatting (Tom)
27789 New CIDR abbrev() function (Tom)
27793 Write-Ahead Log (WAL) to provide crash recovery with less performance
27795 ANALYZE stage of VACUUM no longer exclusively locks table (Bruce)
27796 Reduced file seeks (Denis Perchine)
27797 Improve BTREE code for duplicate keys (Tom)
27798 Store all large objects in a single table (Denis Perchine, Tom)
27799 Improve memory allocation performance (Karel, Tom)
27803 New function manager call conventions (Tom)
27804 SGI portability fixes (David Kaelbling)
27805 New configure --enable-syslog option (Peter E)
27806 New BSDI README (Bruce)
27807 configure script moved to top level, not /src (Peter E)
27808 Makefile/configuration/compilation overhaul (Peter E)
27809 New configure --with-python option (Peter E)
27810 Solaris cleanups (Peter E)
27811 Overhaul /contrib Makefiles (Karel)
27812 New OpenSSL configuration option (Magnus, Peter E)
27813 AIX fixes (Andreas)
27814 QNX fixes (Maurizio)
27815 New heap_open(), heap_openr() API (Tom)
27816 Remove colon and semi-colon operators (Thomas)
27817 New pg_class.relkind value for views (Mark Hollomon)
27818 Rename ichar() to chr() (Karel)
27819 New documentation for btrim(), ascii(), chr(), repeat() (Karel)
27820 Fixes for NT/Cygwin (Pete Forman)
27821 AIX port fixes (Andreas)
27822 New BeOS port (David Reid, Cyril Velter)
27823 Add proofreader's changes to docs (Addison-Wesley, Bruce)
27824 New Alpha spinlock code (Adriaan Joubert, Compaq)
27825 UnixWare port overhaul (Peter E)
27826 New Darwin/MacOS X port (Peter Bierman, Bruce Hartzler)
27827 New FreeBSD Alpha port (Alfred)
27828 Overhaul shared memory segments (Tom)
27829 Add IBM S/390 support (Neale Ferguson)
27830 Moved macmanuf to /contrib (Larry Rosenman)
27831 Syslog improvements (Larry Rosenman)
27832 New template0 database that contains no user additions (Tom)
27833 New /contrib/cube and /contrib/seg GIST sample code (Gene Selkov)
27834 Allow NetBSD's libedit instead of readline (Peter)
27835 Improved assembly language source code format (Bruce)
27836 New contrib/pg_logger
27837 New --template option to createdb
27838 New contrib/pg_control utility (Oliver)
27839 New FreeBSD tools ipc_check, start-scripts/freebsd
27846 <sect1 id="release-7-0-3">
27847 <title>Release 7.0.3</title>
27850 <title>Release date</title>
27851 <simpara>2000-11-11</simpara>
27855 This has a variety of fixes from 7.0.2.
27860 <title>Migration to Version 7.0.3</title>
27863 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
27869 <title>Changes</title>
27874 Large object fix (Tom)
27875 Fix lean in COPY WITH OIDS leak (Tom)
27876 Fix backwards-index-scan (Tom)
27877 Fix SELECT ... FOR UPDATE so it checks for duplicate keys (Hiroshi)
27878 Add --enable-syslog to configure (Marc)
27879 Fix abort transaction at backend exit in rare cases (Tom)
27880 Fix for psql \l+ when multibyte enabled (Tatsuo)
27881 Allow PL/pgSQL to accept non ascii identifiers (Tatsuo)
27882 Make vacuum always flush buffers (Tom)
27883 Fix to allow cancel while waiting for a lock (Hiroshi)
27884 Fix for memory allocation problem in user authentication code (Tom)
27885 Remove bogus use of int4out() (Tom)
27886 Fixes for multiple subqueries in COALESCE or BETWEEN (Tom)
27887 Fix for failure of triggers on heap open in certain cases (Jeroen van
27889 Fix for erroneous selectivity of not-equals (Tom)
27890 Fix for erroneous use of strcmp() (Tom)
27891 Fix for bug where storage manager accesses items beyond end of file
27893 Fix to include kernel errno message in all smgr elog messages (Tom)
27894 Fix for '.' not in PATH at build time (SL Baur)
27895 Fix for out-of-file-descriptors error (Tom)
27896 Fix to make pg_dump dump 'iscachable' flag for functions (Tom)
27897 Fix for subselect in targetlist of Append node (Tom)
27898 Fix for mergejoin plans (Tom)
27899 Fix TRUNCATE failure on relations with indexes (Tom)
27900 Avoid database-wide restart on write error (Hiroshi)
27901 Fix nodeMaterial to honor chgParam by recomputing its output (Tom)
27902 Fix VACUUM problem with moving chain of update row versions when source
27903 and destination of a row version lie on the same page (Tom)
27904 Fix user.c CommandCounterIncrement (Tom)
27905 Fix for AM/PM boundary problem in to_char() (Karel Zak)
27906 Fix TIME aggregate handling (Tom)
27907 Fix to_char() to avoid coredump on NULL input (Tom)
27909 Fix for inserting/copying longer multibyte strings into char() data
27911 Fix for crash of backend, on abort (Tom)
27918 <sect1 id="release-7-0-2">
27919 <title>Release 7.0.2</title>
27922 <title>Release date</title>
27923 <simpara>2000-06-05</simpara>
27927 This is a repackaging of 7.0.1 with added documentation.
27932 <title>Migration to Version 7.0.2</title>
27935 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
27941 <title>Changes</title>
27945 Added documentation to tarball.
27952 <sect1 id="release-7-0-1">
27953 <title>Release 7.0.1</title>
27956 <title>Release date</title>
27957 <simpara>2000-06-01</simpara>
27961 This is a cleanup release for 7.0.
27965 <title>Migration to Version 7.0.1</title>
27968 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
27974 <title>Changes</title>
27978 Fix many CLUSTER failures (Tom)
27979 Allow ALTER TABLE RENAME works on indexes (Tom)
27980 Fix plpgsql to handle datetime->timestamp and timespan->interval (Bruce)
27981 New configure --with-setproctitle switch to use setproctitle() (Marc, Bruce)
27982 Fix the off by one errors in ResultSet from 6.5.3, and more.
27983 jdbc ResultSet fixes (Joseph Shraibman)
27984 optimizer tunings (Tom)
27985 Fix create user for pgaccess
27986 Fix for UNLISTEN failure
27987 IRIX fixes (David Kaelbling)
27988 QNX fixes (Andreas Kardos)
27989 Reduce COPY IN lock level (Tom)
27990 Change libpqeasy to use PQconnectdb() style parameters (Bruce)
27991 Fix pg_dump to handle OID indexes (Tom)
27992 Fix small memory leak (Tom)
27993 Solaris fix for createdb/dropdb (Tatsuo)
27994 Fix for non-blocking connections (Alfred Perlstein)
27995 Fix improper recovery after RENAME TABLE failures (Tom)
27996 Copy pg_ident.conf.sample into /lib directory in install (Bruce)
27997 Add SJIS UDC (NEC selection IBM kanji) support (Eiji Tokuya)
27998 Fix too long syslog message (Tatsuo)
27999 Fix problem with quoted indexes that are too long (Tom)
28000 JDBC ResultSet.getTimestamp() fix (Gregory Krasnow & Floyd Marinescu)
28001 ecpg changes (Michael)
28007 <sect1 id="release-7-0">
28008 <title>Release 7.0</title>
28011 <title>Release date</title>
28012 <simpara>2000-05-08</simpara>
28016 This release contains improvements in many areas, demonstrating
28017 the continued growth of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
28018 There are more improvements and fixes in 7.0 than in any previous
28019 release. The developers have confidence that this is the best
28020 release yet; we do our best to put out only solid releases, and
28021 this one is no exception.
28025 Major changes in this release:
28035 Foreign keys are now implemented, with the exception of PARTIAL MATCH
28036 foreign keys. Many users have been asking for this feature, and we are
28037 pleased to offer it.
28048 Continuing on work started a year ago, the optimizer has been
28049 improved, allowing better query plan selection and faster performance
28050 with less memory usage.
28057 Updated <application>psql</application>
28061 <application>psql</application>, our interactive terminal monitor, has been
28062 updated with a variety of new features. See the <application>psql</application> manual page for details.
28073 SQL92 join syntax is now supported, though only as
28074 <literal>INNER JOIN</> for this release. <literal>JOIN</>,
28075 <literal>NATURAL JOIN</>, <literal>JOIN</>/<literal>USING</>,
28076 and <literal>JOIN</>/<literal>ON</> are available, as are
28077 column correlation names.
28085 <title>Migration to Version 7.0</title>
28088 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application>
28089 is required for those wishing to migrate data from any
28090 previous release of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
28091 For those upgrading from 6.5.*, you can instead use
28092 <application>pg_upgrade</application> to upgrade to this
28093 release; however, a full dump/reload installation is always the
28094 most robust method for upgrades.
28098 Interface and compatibility issues to consider for the new
28105 The date/time types <type>datetime</type> and
28106 <type>timespan</type> have been superseded by the
28107 SQL92-defined types <type>timestamp</type> and
28108 <type>interval</type>. Although there has been some effort to
28109 ease the transition by allowing
28110 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> to recognize
28111 the deprecated type names and translate them to the new type
28112 names, this mechanism cannot be completely transparent to
28113 your existing application.
28119 The optimizer has been substantially improved in the area of
28120 query cost estimation. In some cases, this will result in
28121 decreased query times as the optimizer makes a better choice
28122 for the preferred plan. However, in a small number of cases,
28123 usually involving pathological distributions of data, your
28124 query times might go up. If you are dealing with large amounts
28125 of data, you might want to check your queries to verify
28132 The <acronym>JDBC</acronym> and <acronym>ODBC</acronym>
28133 interfaces have been upgraded and extended.
28139 The string function <function>CHAR_LENGTH</function> is now a
28140 native function. Previous versions translated this into a call
28141 to <function>LENGTH</function>, which could result in
28142 ambiguity with other types implementing
28143 <function>LENGTH</function> such as the geometric types.
28150 <title>Changes</title>
28156 Prevent function calls exceeding maximum number of arguments (Tom)
28157 Improve CASE construct (Tom)
28158 Fix SELECT coalesce(f1,0) FROM int4_tbl GROUP BY f1 (Tom)
28159 Fix SELECT sentence.words[0] FROM sentence GROUP BY sentence.words[0] (Tom)
28160 Fix GROUP BY scan bug (Tom)
28161 Improvements in SQL grammar processing (Tom)
28162 Fix for views involved in INSERT ... SELECT ... (Tom)
28163 Fix for SELECT a/2, a/2 FROM test_missing_target GROUP BY a/2 (Tom)
28164 Fix for subselects in INSERT ... SELECT (Tom)
28165 Prevent INSERT ... SELECT ... ORDER BY (Tom)
28166 Fixes for relations greater than 2GB, including vacuum
28167 Improve propagating system table changes to other backends (Tom)
28168 Improve propagating user table changes to other backends (Tom)
28169 Fix handling of temp tables in complex situations (Bruce, Tom)
28170 Allow table locking at table open, improving concurrent reliability (Tom)
28171 Properly quote sequence names in pg_dump (Ross J. Reedstrom)
28172 Prevent DROP DATABASE while others accessing
28173 Prevent any rows from being returned by GROUP BY if no rows processed (Tom)
28174 Fix SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table WHERE ...' if no rows matching WHERE (Tom)
28175 Fix pg_upgrade so it works for MVCC (Tom)
28176 Fix for SELECT ... WHERE x IN (SELECT ... HAVING SUM(x) > 1) (Tom)
28177 Fix for "f1 datetime DEFAULT 'now'" (Tom)
28178 Fix problems with CURRENT_DATE used in DEFAULT (Tom)
28179 Allow comment-only lines, and ;;; lines too. (Tom)
28180 Improve recovery after failed disk writes, disk full (Hiroshi)
28181 Fix cases where table is mentioned in FROM but not joined (Tom)
28182 Allow HAVING clause without aggregate functions (Tom)
28183 Fix for "--" comment and no trailing newline, as seen in perl interface
28184 Improve pg_dump failure error reports (Bruce)
28185 Allow sorts and hashes to exceed 2GB file sizes (Tom)
28186 Fix for pg_dump dumping of inherited rules (Tom)
28187 Fix for NULL handling comparisons (Tom)
28188 Fix inconsistent state caused by failed CREATE/DROP commands (Hiroshi)
28189 Fix for dbname with dash
28190 Prevent DROP INDEX from interfering with other backends (Tom)
28191 Fix file descriptor leak in verify_password()
28192 Fix for "Unable to identify an operator =$" problem
28193 Fix ODBC so no segfault if CommLog and Debug enabled (Dirk Niggemann)
28194 Fix for recursive exit call (Massimo)
28195 Fix for extra-long timezones (Jeroen van Vianen)
28196 Make pg_dump preserve primary key information (Peter E)
28197 Prevent databases with single quotes (Peter E)
28198 Prevent DROP DATABASE inside transaction (Peter E)
28199 ecpg memory leak fixes (Stephen Birch)
28200 Fix for SELECT null::text, SELECT int4fac(null) and SELECT 2 + (null) (Tom)
28201 Y2K timestamp fix (Massimo)
28202 Fix for VACUUM 'HEAP_MOVED_IN was not expected' errors (Tom)
28203 Fix for views with tables/columns containing spaces (Tom)
28204 Prevent privileges on indexes (Peter E)
28205 Fix for spinlock stuck problem when error is generated (Hiroshi)
28206 Fix ipcclean on Linux
28207 Fix handling of NULL constraint conditions (Tom)
28208 Fix memory leak in odbc driver (Nick Gorham)
28209 Fix for privilege check on UNION tables (Tom)
28210 Fix to allow SELECT 'a' LIKE 'a' (Tom)
28211 Fix for SELECT 1 + NULL (Tom)
28213 Fix log() on numeric type (Tom)
28214 Deprecate ':' and ';' operators
28215 Allow vacuum of temporary tables
28216 Disallow inherited columns with the same name as new columns
28217 Recover or force failure when disk space is exhausted (Hiroshi)
28218 Fix INSERT INTO ... SELECT with AS columns matching result columns
28219 Fix INSERT ... SELECT ... GROUP BY groups by target columns not source columns (Tom)
28220 Fix CREATE TABLE test (a char(5) DEFAULT text '', b int4) with INSERT (Tom)
28221 Fix UNION with LIMIT
28222 Fix CREATE TABLE x AS SELECT 1 UNION SELECT 2
28223 Fix CREATE TABLE test(col char(2) DEFAULT user)
28224 Fix mismatched types in CREATE TABLE ... DEFAULT
28225 Fix SELECT * FROM pg_class where oid in (0,-1)
28226 Fix SELECT COUNT('asdf') FROM pg_class WHERE oid=12
28227 Prevent user who can create databases can modifying pg_database table (Peter E)
28228 Fix btree to give a useful elog when key > 1/2 (page - overhead) (Tom)
28229 Fix INSERT of 0.0 into DECIMAL(4,4) field (Tom)
28233 New CLI interface include file sqlcli.h, based on SQL3/SQL98
28234 Remove all limits on query length, row length limit still exists (Tom)
28235 Update jdbc protocol to 2.0 (Jens Glaser <email>jens@jens.de</email>)
28236 Add TRUNCATE command to quickly truncate relation (Mike Mascari)
28237 Fix to give super user and createdb user proper update catalog rights (Peter E)
28238 Allow ecpg bool variables to have NULL values (Christof)
28239 Issue ecpg error if NULL value for variable with no NULL indicator (Christof)
28240 Allow ^C to cancel COPY command (Massimo)
28241 Add SET FSYNC and SHOW PG_OPTIONS commands(Massimo)
28242 Function name overloading for dynamically-loaded C functions (Frankpitt)
28243 Add CmdTuples() to libpq++(Vince)
28244 New CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER and SET CONSTRAINTS commands(Jan)
28245 Allow CREATE FUNCTION/WITH clause to be used for all language types
28246 configure --enable-debug adds -g (Peter E)
28247 configure --disable-debug removes -g (Peter E)
28248 Allow more complex default expressions (Tom)
28249 First real FOREIGN KEY constraint trigger functionality (Jan)
28250 Add FOREIGN KEY ... MATCH FULL ... ON DELETE CASCADE (Jan)
28251 Add FOREIGN KEY ... MATCH <unspecified> referential actions (Don Baccus)
28252 Allow WHERE restriction on ctid (physical heap location) (Hiroshi)
28253 Move pginterface from contrib to interface directory, rename to pgeasy (Bruce)
28254 Change pgeasy connectdb() parameter ordering (Bruce)
28255 Require SELECT DISTINCT target list to have all ORDER BY columns (Tom)
28256 Add Oracle's COMMENT ON command (Mike Mascari <email>mascarim@yahoo.com</email>)
28257 libpq's PQsetNoticeProcessor function now returns previous hook(Peter E)
28258 Prevent PQsetNoticeProcessor from being set to NULL (Peter E)
28259 Make USING in COPY optional (Bruce)
28260 Allow subselects in the target list (Tom)
28261 Allow subselects on the left side of comparison operators (Tom)
28262 New parallel regression test (Jan)
28263 Change backend-side COPY to write files with permissions 644 not 666 (Tom)
28264 Force permissions on PGDATA directory to be secure, even if it exists (Tom)
28265 Added psql LASTOID variable to return last inserted oid (Peter E)
28266 Allow concurrent vacuum and remove pg_vlock vacuum lock file (Tom)
28267 Add privilege check for vacuum (Peter E)
28268 New libpq functions to allow asynchronous connections: PQconnectStart(),
28269 PQconnectPoll(), PQresetStart(), PQresetPoll(), PQsetenvStart(),
28270 PQsetenvPoll(), PQsetenvAbort (Ewan Mellor)
28271 New libpq PQsetenv() function (Ewan Mellor)
28272 create/alter user extension (Peter E)
28273 New postmaster.pid and postmaster.opts under $PGDATA (Tatsuo)
28274 New scripts for create/drop user/db (Peter E)
28275 Major psql overhaul (Peter E)
28276 Add const to libpq interface (Peter E)
28277 New libpq function PQoidValue (Peter E)
28278 Show specific non-aggregate causing problem with GROUP BY (Tom)
28279 Make changes to pg_shadow recreate pg_pwd file (Peter E)
28280 Add aggregate(DISTINCT ...) (Tom)
28281 Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs (Peter E)
28282 Make postgres user have a password by default (Peter E)
28283 Add CREATE/ALTER/DROP GROUP (Peter E)
28284 All administration scripts now support --long options (Peter E, Karel)
28285 Vacuumdb script now supports --all option (Peter E)
28286 ecpg new portable FETCH syntax
28287 Add ecpg EXEC SQL IFDEF, EXEC SQL IFNDEF, EXEC SQL ELSE, EXEC SQL ELIF
28288 and EXEC SQL ENDIF directives
28289 Add pg_ctl script to control backend start-up (Tatsuo)
28290 Add postmaster.opts.default file to store start-up flags (Tatsuo)
28291 Allow --with-mb=SQL_ASCII
28292 Increase maximum number of index keys to 16 (Bruce)
28293 Increase maximum number of function arguments to 16 (Bruce)
28294 Allow configuration of maximum number of index keys and arguments (Bruce)
28295 Allow unprivileged users to change their passwords (Peter E)
28296 Password authentication enabled; required for new users (Peter E)
28297 Disallow dropping a user who owns a database (Peter E)
28298 Change initdb option --with-mb to --enable-multibyte
28299 Add option for initdb to prompts for superuser password (Peter E)
28300 Allow complex type casts like col::numeric(9,2) and col::int2::float8 (Tom)
28301 Updated user interfaces on initdb, initlocation, pg_dump, ipcclean (Peter E)
28302 New pg_char_to_encoding() and pg_encoding_to_char() functions (Tatsuo)
28303 libpq non-blocking mode (Alfred Perlstein)
28304 Improve conversion of types in casts that don't specify a length
28305 New plperl internal programming language (Mark Hollomon)
28306 Allow COPY IN to read file that do not end with a newline (Tom)
28307 Indicate when long identifiers are truncated (Tom)
28308 Allow aggregates to use type equivalency (Peter E)
28309 Add Oracle's to_char(), to_date(), to_datetime(), to_timestamp(), to_number()
28310 conversion functions (Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>)
28311 Add SELECT DISTINCT ON (expr [, expr ...]) targetlist ... (Tom)
28312 Check to be sure ORDER BY is compatible with the DISTINCT operation (Tom)
28313 Add NUMERIC and int8 types to ODBC
28314 Improve EXPLAIN results for Append, Group, Agg, Unique (Tom)
28315 Add ALTER TABLE ... ADD FOREIGN KEY (Stephan Szabo)
28316 Allow SELECT .. FOR UPDATE in PL/pgSQL (Hiroshi)
28317 Enable backward sequential scan even after reaching EOF (Hiroshi)
28318 Add btree indexing of boolean values, >= and <= (Don Baccus)
28319 Print current line number when COPY FROM fails (Massimo)
28320 Recognize POSIX time zone e.g. "PST+8" and "GMT-8" (Thomas)
28321 Add DEC as synonym for DECIMAL (Thomas)
28322 Add SESSION_USER as SQL92 key word, same as CURRENT_USER (Thomas)
28323 Implement SQL92 column aliases (aka correlation names) (Thomas)
28324 Implement SQL92 join syntax (Thomas)
28325 Make INTERVAL reserved word allowed as a column identifier (Thomas)
28326 Implement REINDEX command (Hiroshi)
28327 Accept ALL in aggregate function SUM(ALL col) (Tom)
28328 Prevent GROUP BY from using column aliases (Tom)
28329 New psql \encoding option (Tatsuo)
28330 Allow PQrequestCancel() to terminate when in waiting-for-lock state (Hiroshi)
28331 Allow negation of a negative number in all cases
28332 Add ecpg descriptors (Christof, Michael)
28333 Allow CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT f1::char(8) FROM tbl
28334 Allow casts with length, like foo::char(8)
28335 New libpq functions PQsetClientEncoding(), PQclientEncoding() (Tatsuo)
28336 Add support for SJIS user defined characters (Tatsuo)
28337 Larger views/rules supported
28338 Make libpq's PQconndefaults() thread-safe (Tom)
28339 Disable // as comment to be ANSI conforming, should use -- (Tom)
28340 Allow column aliases on views CREATE VIEW name (collist)
28341 Fixes for views with subqueries (Tom)
28342 Allow UPDATE table SET fld = (SELECT ...) (Tom)
28343 SET command options no longer require quotes
28344 Update pgaccess to 0.98.6
28345 New SET SEED command
28346 New pg_options.sample file
28347 New SET FSYNC command (Massimo)
28348 Allow pg_descriptions when creating tables
28349 Allow pg_descriptions when creating types, columns, and functions
28350 Allow psql \copy to allow delimiters (Peter E)
28351 Allow psql to print nulls as distinct from "" [null] (Peter E)
28355 Many array fixes (Tom)
28356 Allow bare column names to be subscripted as arrays (Tom)
28357 Improve type casting of int and float constants (Tom)
28358 Cleanups for int8 inputs, range checking, and type conversion (Tom)
28359 Fix for SELECT timespan('21:11:26'::time) (Tom)
28360 netmask('x.x.x.x/0') is 255.255.255.255 instead of 0.0.0.0 (Oleg Sharoiko)
28361 Add btree index on NUMERIC (Jan)
28362 Perl fix for large objects containing NUL characters (Douglas Thomson)
28363 ODBC fix for large objects (free)
28364 Fix indexing of cidr data type
28365 Fix for Ethernet MAC addresses (macaddr type) comparisons
28366 Fix for date/time types when overflows happened in computations (Tom)
28367 Allow array on int8 (Peter E)
28368 Fix for rounding/overflow of NUMERIC type, like NUMERIC(4,4) (Tom)
28369 Allow NUMERIC arrays
28370 Fix bugs in NUMERIC ceil() and floor() functions (Tom)
28371 Make char_length()/octet_length including trailing blanks (Tom)
28372 Made abstime/reltime use int4 instead of time_t (Peter E)
28373 New lztext data type for compressed text fields
28374 Revise code to handle coercion of int and float constants (Tom)
28375 Start at new code to implement a BIT and BIT VARYING type (Adriaan Joubert)
28376 NUMERIC now accepts scientific notation (Tom)
28377 NUMERIC to int4 rounds (Tom)
28378 Convert float4/8 to NUMERIC properly (Tom)
28379 Allow type conversion with NUMERIC (Thomas)
28380 Make ISO date style (2000-02-16 09:33) the default (Thomas)
28381 Add NATIONAL CHAR [ VARYING ] (Thomas)
28382 Allow NUMERIC round and trunc to accept negative scales (Tom)
28383 New TIME WITH TIME ZONE type (Thomas)
28384 Add MAX()/MIN() on time type (Thomas)
28385 Add abs(), mod(), fac() for int8 (Thomas)
28386 Rename functions to round(), sqrt(), cbrt(), pow() for float8 (Thomas)
28387 Add transcendental math functions (e.g. sin(), acos()) for float8 (Thomas)
28388 Add exp() and ln() for NUMERIC type
28389 Rename NUMERIC power() to pow() (Thomas)
28390 Improved TRANSLATE() function (Edwin Ramirez, Tom)
28391 Allow X=-Y operators (Tom)
28392 Allow SELECT float8(COUNT(*))/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t) FROM t GROUP BY f1; (Tom)
28393 Allow LOCALE to use indexes in regular expression searches (Tom)
28394 Allow creation of functional indexes to use default types
28398 Prevent exponential space consumption with many AND's and OR's (Tom)
28399 Collect attribute selectivity values for system columns (Tom)
28400 Reduce memory usage of aggregates (Tom)
28401 Fix for LIKE optimization to use indexes with multibyte encodings (Tom)
28402 Fix r-tree index optimizer selectivity (Thomas)
28403 Improve optimizer selectivity computations and functions (Tom)
28404 Optimize btree searching for cases where many equal keys exist (Tom)
28405 Enable fast LIKE index processing only if index present (Tom)
28406 Re-use free space on index pages with duplicates (Tom)
28407 Improve hash join processing (Tom)
28408 Prevent descending sort if result is already sorted(Hiroshi)
28409 Allow commuting of index scan query qualifications (Tom)
28410 Prefer index scans in cases where ORDER BY/GROUP BY is required (Tom)
28411 Allocate large memory requests in fix-sized chunks for performance (Tom)
28412 Fix vacuum's performance by reducing memory allocation requests (Tom)
28413 Implement constant-expression simplification (Bernard Frankpitt, Tom)
28414 Use secondary columns to be used to determine start of index scan (Hiroshi)
28415 Prevent quadruple use of disk space when doing internal sorting (Tom)
28416 Faster sorting by calling fewer functions (Tom)
28417 Create system indexes to match all system caches (Bruce, Hiroshi)
28418 Make system caches use system indexes (Bruce)
28419 Make all system indexes unique (Bruce)
28420 Improve pg_statistics management for VACUUM speed improvement (Tom)
28421 Flush backend cache less frequently (Tom, Hiroshi)
28422 COPY now reuses previous memory allocation, improving performance (Tom)
28423 Improve optimization cost estimation (Tom)
28424 Improve optimizer estimate of range queries x > lowbound AND x < highbound (Tom)
28425 Use DNF instead of CNF where appropriate (Tom, Taral)
28426 Further cleanup for OR-of-AND WHERE-clauses (Tom)
28427 Make use of index in OR clauses (x = 1 AND y = 2) OR (x = 2 AND y = 4) (Tom)
28428 Smarter optimizer computations for random index page access (Tom)
28429 New SET variable to control optimizer costs (Tom)
28430 Optimizer queries based on LIMIT, OFFSET, and EXISTS qualifications (Tom)
28431 Reduce optimizer internal housekeeping of join paths for speedup (Tom)
28432 Major subquery speedup (Tom)
28433 Fewer fsync writes when fsync is not disabled (Tom)
28434 Improved LIKE optimizer estimates (Tom)
28435 Prevent fsync in SELECT-only queries (Vadim)
28436 Make index creation use psort code, because it is now faster (Tom)
28437 Allow creation of sort temp tables > 1 Gig
28439 Source Tree Changes
28440 -------------------
28441 Fix for linux PPC compile
28442 New generic expression-tree-walker subroutine (Tom)
28443 Change form() to varargform() to prevent portability problems
28444 Improved range checking for large integers on Alphas
28445 Clean up #include in /include directory (Bruce)
28446 Add scripts for checking includes (Bruce)
28447 Remove un-needed #include's from *.c files (Bruce)
28448 Change #include's to use <> and "" as appropriate (Bruce)
28449 Enable Windows compilation of libpq
28450 Alpha spinlock fix from Uncle George <email>gatgul@voicenet.com</email>
28451 Overhaul of optimizer data structures (Tom)
28452 Fix to cygipc library (Yutaka Tanida)
28453 Allow pgsql to work on newer Cygwin snapshots (Dan)
28454 New catalog version number (Tom)
28456 Rename heap_replace to heap_update
28457 Update for QNX (Dr. Andreas Kardos)
28458 New platform-specific regression handling (Tom)
28459 Rename oid8 -> oidvector and int28 -> int2vector (Bruce)
28460 Included all yacc and lex files into the distribution (Peter E.)
28461 Remove lextest, no longer needed (Peter E)
28462 Fix for libpq and psql on Windows (Magnus)
28463 Internally change datetime and timespan into timestamp and interval (Thomas)
28464 Fix for plpgsql on BSD/OS
28465 Add SQL_ASCII test case to the regression test (Tatsuo)
28466 configure --with-mb now deprecated (Tatsuo)
28468 NetBSD fixes (Johnny C. Lam <email>lamj@stat.cmu.edu</email>)
28469 Fixes for Alpha compiles
28470 New multibyte encodings
28476 <sect1 id="release-6-5-3">
28477 <title>Release 6.5.3</title>
28480 <title>Release date</title>
28481 <simpara>1999-10-13</simpara>
28485 This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5.2. We have added a new
28486 <application>PgAccess</> that was missing in 6.5.2, and installed an NT-specific fix.
28491 <title>Migration to Version 6.5.3</title>
28494 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
28499 <title>Changes</title>
28503 Updated version of pgaccess 0.98
28505 Fix dumping rules on inherited tables
28512 <sect1 id="release-6-5-2">
28513 <title>Release 6.5.2</title>
28516 <title>Release date</title>
28517 <simpara>1999-09-15</simpara>
28521 This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5.1. We have fixed a variety of
28522 problems reported by 6.5.1 users.
28527 <title>Migration to Version 6.5.2</title>
28530 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
28536 <title>Changes</title>
28540 subselect+CASE fixes(Tom)
28541 Add SHLIB_LINK setting for solaris_i386 and solaris_sparc ports(Daren Sefcik)
28542 Fixes for CASE in WHERE join clauses(Tom)
28543 Fix BTScan abort(Tom)
28544 Repair the check for redundant UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY indexes(Thomas)
28545 Improve it so that it checks for multicolumn constraints(Thomas)
28546 Fix for Windows making problem with MB enabled(Hiroki Kataoka)
28547 Allow BSD yacc and bison to compile pl code(Bruce)
28548 Fix SET NAMES working
28550 Fix vacuum's memory consumption(Hiroshi,Tatsuo)
28551 Reduce the total memory consumption of vacuum(Tom)
28552 Fix for timestamp(datetime)
28553 Rule deparsing bugfixes(Tom)
28554 Fix quoting problems in mkMakefile.tcldefs.sh.in and mkMakefile.tkdefs.sh.in(Tom)
28555 This is to re-use space on index pages freed by vacuum(Vadim)
28556 document -x for pg_dump(Bruce)
28557 Fix for unary operators in rule deparser(Tom)
28558 Comment out FileUnlink of excess segments during mdtruncate()(Tom)
28559 IRIX linking fix from Yu Cao >yucao@falcon.kla-tencor.com<
28560 Repair logic error in LIKE: should not return LIKE_ABORT
28561 when reach end of pattern before end of text(Tom)
28562 Repair incorrect cleanup of heap memory allocation during transaction abort(Tom)
28563 Updated version of pgaccess 0.98
28569 <sect1 id="release-6-5-1">
28570 <title>Release 6.5.1</title>
28573 <title>Release date</title>
28574 <simpara>1999-07-15</simpara>
28578 This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5. We have fixed a variety of
28579 problems reported by 6.5 users.
28583 <title>Migration to Version 6.5.1</title>
28586 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
28592 <title>Changes</title>
28597 Portability fixes for linux_ppc, IRIX, linux_alpha, OpenBSD, alpha
28598 Remove QUERY_LIMIT, use SELECT...LIMIT
28599 Fix for EXPLAIN on inheritance(Tom)
28600 Patch to allow vacuum on multisegment tables(Hiroshi)
28601 R-Tree optimizer selectivity fix(Tom)
28602 ACL file descriptor leak fix(Atsushi Ogawa)
28603 New expression subtree code(Tom)
28604 Avoid disk writes for read-only transactions(Vadim)
28605 Fix for removal of temp tables if last transaction was aborted(Bruce)
28606 Fix to prevent too large row from being created(Bruce)
28608 Allow port numbers 32k - 64k(Bruce)
28609 Add ^ precedence(Bruce)
28610 Rename sort files called pg_temp to pg_sorttemp(Bruce)
28611 Fix for microseconds in time values(Tom)
28612 Tutorial source cleanup
28613 New linux_m68k port
28614 Fix for sorting of NULL's in some cases(Tom)
28615 Shared library dependencies fixed (Tom)
28616 Fixed glitches affecting GROUP BY in subselects(Tom)
28617 Fix some compiler warnings (Tomoaki Nishiyama)
28618 Add Win1250 (Czech) support (Pavel Behal)
28624 <sect1 id="release-6-5">
28625 <title>Release 6.5</title>
28628 <title>Release date</title>
28629 <simpara>1999-06-09</simpara>
28633 This release marks a major step in the development team's mastery of the source
28634 code we inherited from Berkeley. You will see we are now easily adding
28635 major features, thanks to the increasing size and experience of our
28636 world-wide development team.
28640 Here is a brief summary of the more notable changes:
28645 Multiversion concurrency control(MVCC)
28649 This removes our old table-level locking, and replaces it with
28650 a locking system that is superior to most commercial database
28651 systems. In a traditional system, each row that is modified
28652 is locked until committed, preventing reads by other users.
28653 MVCC uses the natural multiversion nature of
28654 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> to allow readers to
28655 continue reading consistent data during writer activity.
28656 Writers continue to use the compact pg_log transaction system.
28657 This is all performed without having to allocate a lock for
28658 every row like traditional database systems. So, basically,
28659 we no longer are restricted by simple table-level locking; we
28660 have something better than row-level locking.
28667 Hot backups from <application>pg_dump</application>
28671 <application>pg_dump</application> takes advantage of the new
28672 MVCC features to give a consistent database dump/backup while
28673 the database stays online and available for queries.
28684 We now have a true numeric data type, with
28685 user-specified precision.
28696 Temporary tables are guaranteed to have unique names
28697 within a database session, and are destroyed on session exit.
28708 We now have CASE, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT statement
28709 support. We have new LIMIT/OFFSET, SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL,
28710 SELECT ... FOR UPDATE, and an improved LOCK TABLE command.
28721 We continue to speed up <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>,
28722 thanks to the variety of talents within our team. We have
28723 sped up memory allocation, optimization, table joins, and row
28735 We continue to expand our port list, this time including
28736 <systemitem class="osname">Windows NT</>/<systemitem>ix86</> and <systemitem class="osname">NetBSD</>/<systemitem>arm32</>.
28747 Most interfaces have new versions, and existing functionality
28759 New and updated material is present throughout the
28760 documentation. New <acronym>FAQ</acronym>s have been
28761 contributed for <systemitem class="osname">SGI</> and <systemitem class="osname">AIX</> platforms.
28762 The <citetitle>Tutorial</citetitle> has introductory information
28763 on <acronym>SQL</acronym> from Stefan Simkovics.
28764 For the <citetitle>User's Guide</citetitle>, there are
28765 reference pages covering the postmaster and more utility
28766 programs, and a new appendix
28767 contains details on date/time behavior.
28768 The <citetitle>Administrator's Guide</citetitle> has a new
28769 chapter on troubleshooting from Tom Lane.
28770 And the <citetitle>Programmer's Guide</citetitle> has a
28771 description of query processing, also from Stefan, and details
28772 on obtaining the <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> source
28773 tree via anonymous <productname>CVS</productname> and
28774 <productname>CVSup</productname>.
28782 <title>Migration to Version 6.5</title>
28785 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application>
28786 is required for those wishing to migrate data from any
28787 previous release of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
28788 <application>pg_upgrade</application> can <emphasis>not</emphasis>
28789 be used to upgrade to this release because the on-disk structure
28790 of the tables has changed compared to previous releases.
28794 The new Multiversion Concurrency Control (MVCC) features can
28795 give somewhat different behaviors in multiuser
28796 environments. <emphasis>Read and understand the following section
28797 to ensure that your existing applications will give you the
28798 behavior you need.</emphasis>
28802 <title>Multiversion Concurrency Control</title>
28805 Because readers in 6.5 don't lock data, regardless of transaction
28806 isolation level, data read by one transaction can be overwritten by
28807 another. In other words, if a row is returned by
28808 <command>SELECT</command> it doesn't mean that this row really exists
28809 at the time it is returned (i.e. sometime after the statement or
28810 transaction began) nor that the row is protected from being deleted or
28811 updated by concurrent transactions before the current transaction does
28812 a commit or rollback.
28816 To ensure the actual existence of a row and protect it against
28817 concurrent updates one must use <command>SELECT FOR UPDATE</command> or
28818 an appropriate <command>LOCK TABLE</command> statement. This should be
28819 taken into account when porting applications from previous releases of
28820 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> and other environments.
28824 Keep the above in mind if you are using
28825 <filename>contrib/refint.*</filename> triggers for
28826 referential integrity. Additional techniques are required now. One way is
28827 to use <command>LOCK parent_table IN SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE</command>
28828 command if a transaction is going to update/delete a primary key and
28829 use <command>LOCK parent_table IN SHARE MODE</command> command if a
28830 transaction is going to update/insert a foreign key.
28834 Note that if you run a transaction in SERIALIZABLE mode then you must
28835 execute the <command>LOCK</command> commands above before execution of any
28836 <acronym>DML</acronym> statement
28837 (<command>SELECT/INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/FETCH/COPY_TO</command>) in the
28844 These inconveniences will disappear in the future
28845 when the ability to read dirty
28846 (uncommitted) data (regardless of isolation level) and true referential
28847 integrity will be implemented.
28853 <title>Changes</title>
28859 Fix text<->float8 and text<->float4 conversion functions(Thomas)
28860 Fix for creating tables with mixed-case constraints(Billy)
28861 Change exp()/pow() behavior to generate error on underflow/overflow(Jan)
28862 Fix bug in pg_dump -z
28863 Memory overrun cleanups(Tatsuo)
28864 Fix for lo_import crash(Tatsuo)
28865 Adjust handling of data type names to suppress double quotes(Thomas)
28866 Use type coercion for matching columns and DEFAULT(Thomas)
28867 Fix deadlock so it only checks once after one second of sleep(Bruce)
28868 Fixes for aggregates and PL/pgsql(Hiroshi)
28869 Fix for subquery crash(Vadim)
28870 Fix for libpq function PQfnumber and case-insensitive names(Bahman Rafatjoo)
28871 Fix for large object write-in-middle, no extra block, memory consumption(Tatsuo)
28872 Fix for pg_dump -d or -D and quote special characters in INSERT
28873 Repair serious problems with dynahash(Tom)
28874 Fix INET/CIDR portability problems
28875 Fix problem with selectivity error in ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN(Bruce)
28876 Fix executor so mergejoin of different column types works(Tom)
28877 Fix for Alpha OR selectivity bug
28878 Fix OR index selectivity problem(Bruce)
28879 Fix so \d shows proper length for char()/varchar()(Ryan)
28880 Fix tutorial code(Clark)
28881 Improve destroyuser checking(Oliver)
28882 Fix for Kerberos(Rodney McDuff)
28883 Fix for dropping database while dirty buffers(Bruce)
28884 Fix so sequence nextval() can be case-sensitive(Bruce)
28886 Drop buffers before destroying database files(Bruce)
28887 Fix case where executor evaluates functions twice(Tatsuo)
28888 Allow sequence nextval actions to be case-sensitive(Bruce)
28889 Fix optimizer indexing not working for negative numbers(Bruce)
28890 Fix for memory leak in executor with fjIsNull
28891 Fix for aggregate memory leaks(Erik Riedel)
28892 Allow user name containing a dash to grant privileges
28893 Cleanup of NULL in inet types
28894 Clean up system table bugs(Tom)
28895 Fix problems of PAGER and \? command(Masaaki Sakaida)
28896 Reduce default multisegment file size limit to 1GB(Peter)
28897 Fix for dumping of CREATE OPERATOR(Tom)
28898 Fix for backward scanning of cursors(Hiroshi Inoue)
28899 Fix for COPY FROM STDIN when using \i(Tom)
28900 Fix for subselect is compared inside an expression(Jan)
28901 Fix handling of error reporting while returning rows(Tom)
28902 Fix problems with reference to array types(Tom,Jan)
28903 Prevent UPDATE SET oid(Jan)
28904 Fix pg_dump so -t option can handle case-sensitive tablenames
28905 Fixes for GROUP BY in special cases(Tom, Jan)
28906 Fix for memory leak in failed queries(Tom)
28907 DEFAULT now supports mixed-case identifiers(Tom)
28908 Fix for multisegment uses of DROP/RENAME table, indexes(Ole Gjerde)
28909 Disable use of pg_dump with both -o and -d options(Bruce)
28910 Allow pg_dump to properly dump group privileges(Bruce)
28911 Fix GROUP BY in INSERT INTO table SELECT * FROM table2(Jan)
28912 Fix for computations in views(Jan)
28913 Fix for aggregates on array indexes(Tom)
28914 Fix for DEFAULT handles single quotes in value requiring too many quotes
28915 Fix security problem with non-super users importing/exporting large objects(Tom)
28916 Rollback of transaction that creates table cleaned up properly(Tom)
28917 Fix to allow long table and column names to generate proper serial names(Tom)
28921 Add "vacuumdb" utility
28922 Speed up libpq by allocating memory better(Tom)
28923 EXPLAIN all indexes used(Tom)
28924 Implement CASE, COALESCE, NULLIF expression(Thomas)
28925 New pg_dump table output format(Constantin)
28926 Add string min()/max() functions(Thomas)
28927 Extend new type coercion techniques to aggregates(Thomas)
28928 New moddatetime contrib(Terry)
28929 Update to pgaccess 0.96(Constantin)
28930 Add routines for single-byte "char" type(Thomas)
28931 Improved substr() function(Thomas)
28932 Improved multibyte handling(Tatsuo)
28933 Multiversion concurrency control/MVCC(Vadim)
28934 New Serialized mode(Vadim)
28935 Fix for tables over 2gigs(Peter)
28936 New SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL(Vadim)
28937 New LOCK TABLE IN ... MODE(Vadim)
28938 Update ODBC driver(Byron)
28939 New NUMERIC data type(Jan)
28940 New SELECT FOR UPDATE(Vadim)
28941 Handle "NaN" and "Infinity" for input values(Jan)
28942 Improved date/year handling(Thomas)
28943 Improved handling of backend connections(Magnus)
28944 New options ELOG_TIMESTAMPS and USE_SYSLOG options for log files(Massimo)
28945 New TCL_ARRAYS option(Massimo)
28946 New INTERSECT and EXCEPT(Stefan)
28947 New pg_index.indisprimary for primary key tracking(D'Arcy)
28948 New pg_dump option to allow dropping of tables before creation(Brook)
28949 Speedup of row output routines(Tom)
28950 New READ COMMITTED isolation level(Vadim)
28951 New TEMP tables/indexes(Bruce)
28952 Prevent sorting if result is already sorted(Jan)
28953 New memory allocation optimization(Jan)
28954 Allow psql to do \p\g(Bruce)
28955 Allow multiple rule actions(Jan)
28956 Added LIMIT/OFFSET functionality(Jan)
28957 Improve optimizer when joining a large number of tables(Bruce)
28958 New intro to SQL from S. Simkovics' Master's Thesis (Stefan, Thomas)
28959 New intro to backend processing from S. Simkovics' Master's Thesis (Stefan)
28960 Improved int8 support(Ryan Bradetich, Thomas, Tom)
28961 New routines to convert between int8 and text/varchar types(Thomas)
28962 New bushy plans, where meta-tables are joined(Bruce)
28963 Enable right-hand queries by default(Bruce)
28964 Allow reliable maximum number of backends to be set at configure time
28965 (--with-maxbackends and postmaster switch (-N backends))(Tom)
28966 GEQO default now 10 tables because of optimizer speedups(Tom)
28967 Allow NULL=Var for MS-SQL portability(Michael, Bruce)
28968 Modify contrib check_primary_key() so either "automatic" or "dependent"(Anand)
28969 Allow psql \d on a view show query(Ryan)
28970 Speedup for LIKE(Bruce)
28971 Ecpg fixes/features, see src/interfaces/ecpg/ChangeLog file(Michael)
28972 JDBC fixes/features, see src/interfaces/jdbc/CHANGELOG(Peter)
28973 Make % operator have precedence like /(Bruce)
28974 Add new postgres -O option to allow system table structure changes(Bruce)
28975 Update contrib/pginterface/findoidjoins script(Tom)
28976 Major speedup in vacuum of deleted rows with indexes(Vadim)
28977 Allow non-SQL functions to run different versions based on arguments(Tom)
28978 Add -E option that shows actual queries sent by \dt and friends(Masaaki Sakaida)
28979 Add version number in start-up banners for psql(Masaaki Sakaida)
28980 New contrib/vacuumlo removes large objects not referenced(Peter)
28981 New initialization for table sizes so non-vacuumed tables perform better(Tom)
28982 Improve error messages when a connection is rejected(Tom)
28983 Support for arrays of char() and varchar() fields(Massimo)
28984 Overhaul of hash code to increase reliability and performance(Tom)
28985 Update to PyGreSQL 2.4(D'Arcy)
28986 Changed debug options so -d4 and -d5 produce different node displays(Jan)
28987 New pg_options: pretty_plan, pretty_parse, pretty_rewritten(Jan)
28988 Better optimization statistics for system table access(Tom)
28989 Better handling of non-default block sizes(Massimo)
28990 Improve GEQO optimizer memory consumption(Tom)
28991 UNION now supports ORDER BY of columns not in target list(Jan)
28992 Major libpq++ improvements(Vince Vielhaber)
28993 pg_dump now uses -z(ACL's) as default(Bruce)
28994 backend cache, memory speedups(Tom)
28995 have pg_dump do everything in one snapshot transaction(Vadim)
28996 fix for large object memory leakage, fix for pg_dumping(Tom)
28997 INET type now respects netmask for comparisons
28998 Make VACUUM ANALYZE only use a readlock(Vadim)
28999 Allow VIEWs on UNIONS(Jan)
29000 pg_dump now can generate consistent snapshots on active databases(Vadim)
29002 Source Tree Changes
29003 -------------------
29004 Improve port matching(Tom)
29005 Portability fixes for SunOS
29006 Add Windows NT backend port and enable dynamic loading(Magnus and Daniel Horak)
29007 New port to Cobalt Qube(Mips) running Linux(Tatsuo)
29008 Port to NetBSD/m68k(Mr. Mutsuki Nakajima)
29009 Port to NetBSD/sun3(Mr. Mutsuki Nakajima)
29010 Port to NetBSD/macppc(Toshimi Aoki)
29011 Fix for tcl/tk configuration(Vince)
29012 Removed CURRENT key word for rule queries(Jan)
29013 NT dynamic loading now works(Daniel Horak)
29014 Add ARM32 support(Andrew McMurry)
29015 Better support for HP-UX 11 and UnixWare
29016 Improve file handling to be more uniform, prevent file descriptor leak(Tom)
29017 New install commands for plpgsql(Jan)
29024 <sect1 id="release-6-4-2">
29025 <title>Release 6.4.2</title>
29028 <title>Release date</title>
29029 <simpara>1998-12-20</simpara>
29033 The 6.4.1 release was improperly packaged. This also has one additional
29039 <title>Migration to Version 6.4.2</title>
29042 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
29047 <title>Changes</title>
29051 Fix for datetime constant problem on some platforms(Thomas)
29059 <sect1 id="release-6-4-1">
29060 <title>Release 6.4.1</title>
29063 <title>Release date</title>
29064 <simpara>1998-12-18</simpara>
29068 This is basically a cleanup release for 6.4. We have fixed a variety of
29069 problems reported by 6.4 users.
29074 <title>Migration to Version 6.4.1</title>
29077 A dump/restore is <emphasis>not</emphasis> required for those running
29082 <title>Changes</title>
29086 Add pg_dump -N flag to force double quotes around identifiers. This is
29087 the default(Thomas)
29088 Fix for NOT in where clause causing crash(Bruce)
29089 EXPLAIN VERBOSE coredump fix(Vadim)
29090 Fix shared-library problems on Linux
29091 Fix test for table existence to allow mixed-case and whitespace in
29092 the table name(Thomas)
29093 Fix a couple of pg_dump bugs
29094 Configure matches template/.similar entries better(Tom)
29095 Change builtin function names from SPI_* to spi_*
29096 OR WHERE clause fix(Vadim)
29097 Fixes for mixed-case table names(Billy)
29098 contrib/linux/postgres.init.csh/sh fix(Thomas)
29099 libpq memory overrun fix
29101 Change exp() behavior to generate error on underflow(Thomas)
29102 pg_dump fixes for memory leak, inheritance constraints, layout change
29103 update pgaccess to 0.93
29104 Fix prototype for 64-bit platforms
29105 Multibyte fixes(Tatsuo)
29107 Fix memory overruns(Tatsuo)
29108 Fix for lo_import() crash(Bruce)
29109 Better search for install program(Tom)
29110 Timezone fixes(Tom)
29112 Use implicit type coercion for matching DEFAULT values(Thomas)
29113 Add routines to help with single-byte (internal) character type(Thomas)
29114 Compilation of libpq for Windows fixes(Magnus)
29115 Upgrade to PyGreSQL 2.2(D'Arcy)
29123 <sect1 id="release-6-4">
29124 <title>Release 6.4</title>
29127 <title>Release date</title>
29128 <simpara>1998-10-30</simpara>
29132 There are <emphasis>many</emphasis> new features and improvements in this release.
29133 Thanks to our developers and maintainers, nearly every aspect of the system
29134 has received some attention since the previous release.
29135 Here is a brief, incomplete summary:
29140 Views and rules are now functional thanks to extensive new code in the
29141 rewrite rules system from Jan Wieck. He also wrote a chapter on it
29142 for the <citetitle>Programmer's Guide</citetitle>.
29147 Jan also contributed a second procedural language, <application>PL/pgSQL</application>, to go with the
29148 original <application>PL/pgTCL</application> procedural language he contributed last release.
29154 We have optional multiple-byte character set support from Tatsuo Ishii
29155 to complement our existing locale support.
29161 Client/server communications has been cleaned up, with better support for
29162 asynchronous messages and interrupts thanks to Tom Lane.
29168 The parser will now perform automatic type coercion to match arguments
29169 to available operators and functions, and to match columns and expressions
29170 with target columns. This uses a generic mechanism which supports
29171 the type extensibility features of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
29172 There is a new chapter in the <citetitle>User's Guide</citetitle>
29173 which covers this topic.
29179 Three new data types have been added.
29180 Two types, <type>inet</type> and <type>cidr</type>, support various forms
29181 of IP network, subnet, and machine addressing. There is now an 8-byte integer
29182 type available on some platforms. See the chapter on data types
29183 in the <citetitle>User's Guide</citetitle> for details.
29184 A fourth type, <type>serial</type>, is now supported by the parser as an
29185 amalgam of the <type>int4</type> type, a sequence, and a unique index.
29191 Several more <acronym>SQL92</acronym>-compatible syntax features have been
29192 added, including <command>INSERT DEFAULT VALUES</command>
29198 The automatic configuration and installation system has received some
29199 attention, and should be more robust for more platforms than it has ever
29208 <title>Migration to Version 6.4</title>
29211 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application>
29212 or <application>pg_dumpall</application>
29213 is required for those wishing to migrate data from any
29214 previous release of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
29219 <title>Changes</title>
29225 Fix for a tiny memory leak in PQsetdb/PQfinish(Bryan)
29226 Remove char2-16 data types, use char/varchar(Darren)
29227 Pqfn not handles a NOTICE message(Anders)
29228 Reduced busywaiting overhead for spinlocks with many backends (dg)
29229 Stuck spinlock detection (dg)
29230 Fix up "ISO-style" timespan decoding and encoding(Thomas)
29231 Fix problem with table drop after rollback of transaction(Vadim)
29232 Change error message and remove non-functional update message(Vadim)
29233 Fix for COPY array checking
29234 Fix for SELECT 1 UNION SELECT NULL
29235 Fix for buffer leaks in large object calls(Pascal)
29236 Change owner from oid to int4 type(Bruce)
29237 Fix a bug in the oracle compatibility functions btrim() ltrim() and rtrim()
29238 Fix for shared invalidation cache overflow(Massimo)
29239 Prevent file descriptor leaks in failed COPY's(Bruce)
29240 Fix memory leak in libpgtcl's pg_select(Constantin)
29241 Fix problems with username/passwords over 8 characters(Tom)
29242 Fix problems with handling of asynchronous NOTIFY in backend(Tom)
29243 Fix of many bad system table entries(Tom)
29247 Upgrade ecpg and ecpglib,see src/interfaces/ecpc/ChangeLog(Michael)
29248 Show the index used in an EXPLAIN(Zeugswetter)
29249 EXPLAIN invokes rule system and shows plan(s) for rewritten queries(Jan)
29250 Multibyte awareness of many data types and functions, via configure(Tatsuo)
29251 New configure --with-mb option(Tatsuo)
29252 New initdb --pgencoding option(Tatsuo)
29253 New createdb -E multibyte option(Tatsuo)
29254 Select version(); now returns PostgreSQL version(Jeroen)
29255 libpq now allows asynchronous clients(Tom)
29256 Allow cancel from client of backend query(Tom)
29257 psql now cancels query with Control-C(Tom)
29258 libpq users need not issue dummy queries to get NOTIFY messages(Tom)
29259 NOTIFY now sends sender's PID, so you can tell whether it was your own(Tom)
29260 PGresult struct now includes associated error message, if any(Tom)
29261 Define "tz_hour" and "tz_minute" arguments to date_part()(Thomas)
29262 Add routines to convert between varchar and bpchar(Thomas)
29263 Add routines to allow sizing of varchar and bpchar into target columns(Thomas)
29264 Add bit flags to support timezonehour and minute in data retrieval(Thomas)
29265 Allow more variations on valid floating point numbers (e.g. ".1", "1e6")(Thomas)
29266 Fixes for unary minus parsing with leading spaces(Thomas)
29267 Implement TIMEZONE_HOUR, TIMEZONE_MINUTE per SQL92 specs(Thomas)
29268 Check for and properly ignore FOREIGN KEY column constraints(Thomas)
29269 Define USER as synonym for CURRENT_USER per SQL92 specs(Thomas)
29270 Enable HAVING clause but no fixes elsewhere yet.
29271 Make "char" type a synonym for "char(1)" (actually implemented as bpchar)(Thomas)
29272 Save string type if specified for DEFAULT clause handling(Thomas)
29273 Coerce operations involving different data types(Thomas)
29274 Allow some index use for columns of different types(Thomas)
29275 Add capabilities for automatic type conversion(Thomas)
29276 Cleanups for large objects, so file is truncated on open(Peter)
29277 Readline cleanups(Tom)
29278 Allow psql \f \ to make spaces as delimiter(Bruce)
29279 Pass pg_attribute.atttypmod to the frontend for column field lengths(Tom,Bruce)
29280 Msql compatibility library in /contrib(Aldrin)
29281 Remove the requirement that ORDER/GROUP BY clause identifiers be
29282 included in the target list(David)
29283 Convert columns to match columns in UNION clauses(Thomas)
29284 Remove fork()/exec() and only do fork()(Bruce)
29285 Jdbc cleanups(Peter)
29286 Show backend status on ps command line(only works on some platforms)(Bruce)
29287 Pg_hba.conf now has a sameuser option in the database field
29288 Make lo_unlink take oid param, not int4
29289 New DISABLE_COMPLEX_MACRO for compilers that cannot handle our macros(Bruce)
29290 Libpgtcl now handles NOTIFY as a Tcl event, need not send dummy queries(Tom)
29291 libpgtcl cleanups(Tom)
29292 Add -error option to libpgtcl's pg_result command(Tom)
29293 New locale patch, see docs/README/locale(Oleg)
29294 Fix for pg_dump so CONSTRAINT and CHECK syntax is correct(ccb)
29295 New contrib/lo code for large object orphan removal(Peter)
29296 New psql command "SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO 'encoding'" for multibytes
29297 feature, see /doc/README.mb(Tatsuo)
29298 contrib/noupdate code to revoke update permission on a column
29299 libpq can now be compiled on Windows(Magnus)
29300 Add PQsetdbLogin() in libpq
29301 New 8-byte integer type, checked by configure for OS support(Thomas)
29302 Better support for quoted table/column names(Thomas)
29303 Surround table and column names with double-quotes in pg_dump(Thomas)
29304 PQreset() now works with passwords(Tom)
29305 Handle case of GROUP BY target list column number out of range(David)
29306 Allow UNION in subselects
29307 Add auto-size to screen to \d? commands(Bruce)
29308 Use UNION to show all \d? results in one query(Bruce)
29309 Add \d? field search feature(Bruce)
29310 Pg_dump issues fewer \connect requests(Tom)
29311 Make pg_dump -z flag work better, document it in manual page(Tom)
29312 Add HAVING clause with full support for subselects and unions(Stephan)
29313 Full text indexing routines in contrib/fulltextindex(Maarten)
29314 Transaction ids now stored in shared memory(Vadim)
29315 New PGCLIENTENCODING when issuing COPY command(Tatsuo)
29316 Support for SQL92 syntax "SET NAMES"(Tatsuo)
29317 Support for LATIN2-5(Tatsuo)
29318 Add UNICODE regression test case(Tatsuo)
29319 Lock manager cleanup, new locking modes for LLL(Vadim)
29320 Allow index use with OR clauses(Bruce)
29321 Allows "SELECT NULL ORDER BY 1;"
29322 Explain VERBOSE prints the plan, and now pretty-prints the plan to
29323 the postmaster log file(Bruce)
29324 Add indexes display to \d command(Bruce)
29325 Allow GROUP BY on functions(David)
29326 New pg_class.relkind for large objects(Bruce)
29327 New way to send libpq NOTICE messages to a different location(Tom)
29328 New \w write command to psql(Bruce)
29329 New /contrib/findoidjoins scans oid columns to find join relationships(Bruce)
29330 Allow binary-compatible indexes to be considered when checking for valid
29331 Indexes for restriction clauses containing a constant(Thomas)
29332 New ISBN/ISSN code in /contrib/isbn_issn
29333 Allow NOT LIKE, IN, NOT IN, BETWEEN, and NOT BETWEEN constraint(Thomas)
29334 New rewrite system fixes many problems with rules and views(Jan)
29335 * Rules on relations work
29336 * Event qualifications on insert/update/delete work
29337 * New OLD variable to reference CURRENT, CURRENT will be remove in future
29338 * Update rules can reference NEW and OLD in rule qualifications/actions
29339 * Insert/update/delete rules on views work
29340 * Multiple rule actions are now supported, surrounded by parentheses
29341 * Regular users can create views/rules on tables they have RULE permits
29342 * Rules and views inherit the privileges of the creator
29343 * No rules at the column level
29344 * No UPDATE NEW/OLD rules
29345 * New pg_tables, pg_indexes, pg_rules and pg_views system views
29346 * Only a single action on SELECT rules
29347 * Total rewrite overhaul, perhaps for 6.5
29348 * handle subselects
29349 * handle aggregates on views
29350 * handle insert into select from view works
29351 System indexes are now multikey(Bruce)
29352 Oidint2, oidint4, and oidname types are removed(Bruce)
29353 Use system cache for more system table lookups(Bruce)
29354 New backend programming language PL/pgSQL in backend/pl(Jan)
29355 New SERIAL data type, auto-creates sequence/index(Thomas)
29356 Enable assert checking without a recompile(Massimo)
29357 User lock enhancements(Massimo)
29358 New setval() command to set sequence value(Massimo)
29359 Auto-remove unix socket file on start-up if no postmaster running(Massimo)
29360 Conditional trace package(Massimo)
29361 New UNLISTEN command(Massimo)
29362 psql and libpq now compile under Windows using win32.mak(Magnus)
29363 Lo_read no longer stores trailing NULL(Bruce)
29364 Identifiers are now truncated to 31 characters internally(Bruce)
29365 Createuser options now available on the command line
29366 Code for 64-bit integer supported added, configure tested, int8 type(Thomas)
29367 Prevent file descriptor leaf from failed COPY(Bruce)
29368 New pg_upgrade command(Bruce)
29369 Updated /contrib directories(Massimo)
29370 New CREATE TABLE DEFAULT VALUES statement available(Thomas)
29371 New INSERT INTO TABLE DEFAULT VALUES statement available(Thomas)
29372 New DECLARE and FETCH feature(Thomas)
29373 libpq's internal structures now not exported(Tom)
29374 Allow up to 8 key indexes(Bruce)
29375 Remove ARCHIVE key word, that is no longer used(Thomas)
29376 pg_dump -n flag to suppress quotes around indentifiers
29377 disable system columns for views(Jan)
29378 new INET and CIDR types for network addresses(TomH, Paul)
29379 no more double quotes in psql output
29380 pg_dump now dumps views(Terry)
29381 new SET QUERY_LIMIT(Tatsuo,Jan)
29383 Source Tree Changes
29384 -------------------
29385 /contrib cleanup(Jun)
29386 Inline some small functions called for every row(Bruce)
29388 HP-UX cleanups(Tom)
29389 Multibyte regression tests(Soonmyung.)
29390 Remove --disabled options from configure
29391 Define PGDOC to use POSTGRESDIR by default
29392 Make regression optional
29393 Remove extra braces code to pgindent(Bruce)
29394 Add bsdi shared library support(Bruce)
29395 New --without-CXX support configure option(Brook)
29397 Update backend flowchart in tools/backend(Bruce)
29398 Change atttypmod from int16 to int32(Bruce, Tom)
29399 Getrusage() fix for platforms that do not have it(Tom)
29400 Add PQconnectdb, PGUSER, PGPASSWORD to libpq man page
29401 NS32K platform fixes(Phil Nelson, John Buller)
29402 SCO 7/UnixWare 2.x fixes(Billy,others)
29403 Sparc/Solaris 2.5 fixes(Ryan)
29404 Pgbuiltin.3 is obsolete, move to doc files(Thomas)
29405 Even more documentation(Thomas)
29406 Nextstep support(Jacek)
29408 pginterface manual page(Bruce)
29409 shared libraries all have version numbers
29410 merged all OS-specific shared library defines into one file
29411 smarter TCL/TK configuration checking(Billy)
29412 smarter perl configuration(Brook)
29413 configure uses supplied install-sh if no install script found(Tom)
29414 new Makefile.shlib for shared library configuration(Tom)
29420 <sect1 id="release-6-3-2">
29421 <title>Release 6.3.2</title>
29424 <title>Release date</title>
29425 <simpara>1998-04-07</simpara>
29429 This is a bug-fix release for 6.3.x.
29430 Refer to the release notes for version 6.3 for a more complete summary of new features.
29438 Repairs automatic configuration support for some platforms, including Linux,
29439 from breakage inadvertently introduced in version 6.3.1.
29445 Correctly handles function calls on the left side of BETWEEN and LIKE clauses.
29452 A dump/restore is NOT required for those running 6.3 or 6.3.1. A
29453 <literal>make distclean</>, <literal>make</>, and <literal>make install</> is all that is required.
29454 This last step should be performed while the postmaster is not running.
29455 You should re-link any custom applications that use <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> libraries.
29458 For upgrades from pre-6.3 installations,
29459 refer to the installation and migration instructions for version 6.3.
29463 <title>Changes</title>
29467 Configure detection improvements for tcl/tk(Brook Milligan, Alvin)
29468 Manual page improvements(Bruce)
29469 BETWEEN and LIKE fix(Thomas)
29470 fix for psql \connect used by pg_dump(Oliver Elphick)
29472 pgaccess, version 0.86
29473 qsort removed, now uses libc version, cleanups(Jeroen)
29474 fix for buffer over-runs detected(Maurice Gittens)
29475 fix for buffer overrun in libpgtcl(Randy Kunkee)
29476 fix for UNION with DISTINCT or ORDER BY(Bruce)
29477 gettimeofday configure check(Doug Winterburn)
29478 Fix "indexes not used" bug(Vadim)
29479 docs additions(Thomas)
29480 Fix for backend memory leak(Bruce)
29481 libreadline cleanup(Erwan MAS)
29482 Remove DISTDIR(Bruce)
29483 Makefile dependency cleanup(Jeroen van Vianen)
29484 ASSERT fixes(Bruce)
29490 <sect1 id="release-6-3-1">
29491 <title>Release 6.3.1</title>
29494 <title>Release date</title>
29495 <simpara>1998-03-23</simpara>
29504 Additional support for multibyte character sets.
29510 Repair byte ordering for mixed-endian clients and servers.
29516 Minor updates to allowed SQL syntax.
29522 Improvements to the configuration autodetection for installation.
29529 A dump/restore is NOT required for those running 6.3. A
29530 <literal>make distclean</>, <literal>make</>, and <literal>make install</> is all that is required.
29531 This last step should be performed while the postmaster is not running.
29532 You should re-link any custom applications that use <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> libraries.
29535 For upgrades from pre-6.3 installations,
29536 refer to the installation and migration instructions for version 6.3.
29540 <title>Changes</title>
29544 ecpg cleanup/fixes, now version 1.1(Michael Meskes)
29545 pg_user cleanup(Bruce)
29546 large object fix for pg_dump and tclsh (alvin)
29547 LIKE fix for multiple adjacent underscores
29548 fix for redefining builtin functions(Thomas)
29550 upgrade to pg_access 0.83
29551 updated CLUSTER manual page
29552 multibyte character set support, see doc/README.mb(Tatsuo)
29553 configure --with-pgport fix
29555 big-endian fix for backend communications(Kataoka)
29556 SUBSTR() and substring() fix(Jan)
29557 several jdbc fixes(Peter)
29558 libpgtcl improvements, see libptcl/README(Randy Kunkee)
29559 Fix for "Datasize = 0" error(Vadim)
29560 Prevent \do from wrapping(Bruce)
29561 Remove duplicate Russian character set entries
29563 Allow optional TABLE key word in LOCK and SELECT INTO(Thomas)
29564 CREATE SEQUENCE options to allow a negative integer(Thomas)
29565 Add "PASSWORD" as an allowed column identifier(Thomas)
29566 Add checks for UNION target fields(Bruce)
29567 Fix Alpha port(Dwayne Bailey)
29568 Fix for text arrays containing quotes(Doug Gibson)
29569 Solaris compile fix(Albert Chin-A-Young)
29570 Better identify tcl and tk libs and includes(Bruce)
29576 <sect1 id="release-6-3">
29577 <title>Release 6.3</title>
29580 <title>Release date</title>
29581 <simpara>1998-03-01</simpara>
29585 There are <emphasis>many</emphasis> new features and improvements in this release.
29586 Here is a brief, incomplete summary:
29591 Many new SQL features, including
29592 full <acronym>SQL92</acronym> subselect capability
29593 (everything is here but target-list subselects).
29599 Support for client-side environment variables to specify time zone and date style.
29605 Socket interface for client/server connection. This is the default now
29606 so you might need to start <application>postmaster</application> with the
29607 <option>-i</option> flag.
29613 Better password authorization mechanisms. Default table privileges have changed.
29619 Old-style <firstterm>time travel</firstterm>
29620 has been removed. Performance has been improved.
29628 Bruce Momjian wrote the following notes to introduce the new release.
29633 There are some general 6.3 issues that I want to mention. These are
29634 only the big items that cannot be described in one sentence. A review
29635 of the detailed changes list is still needed.
29638 First, we now have subselects. Now that we have them, I would like to
29639 mention that without subselects, SQL is a very limited language.
29640 Subselects are a major feature, and you should review your code for
29641 places where subselects provide a better solution for your queries. I
29642 think you will find that there are more uses for subselects than you might
29643 think. Vadim has put us on the big SQL map with subselects, and fully
29644 functional ones too. The only thing you cannot do with subselects is to
29645 use them in the target list.
29648 Second, 6.3 uses Unix domain sockets rather than TCP/IP by default. To
29649 enable connections from other machines, you have to use the new
29650 postmaster -i option, and of course edit <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename>. Also, for this
29651 reason, the format of <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename> has changed.
29654 Third, <type>char()</type> fields will now allow faster access than <type>varchar()</type> or
29655 <type>text</type>. Specifically, the <type>text</> and <type>varchar()</type> have a penalty for access to
29656 any columns after the first column of this type. <type>char()</type> used to also
29657 have this access penalty, but it no longer does. This might suggest that
29658 you redesign some of your tables, especially if you have short character
29659 columns that you have defined as <type>varchar()</type> or <type>text</type>. This and other
29660 changes make 6.3 even faster than earlier releases.
29663 We now have passwords definable independent of any Unix file. There are
29664 new SQL USER commands.
29665 See the <citetitle>Administrator's Guide</citetitle> for more
29666 information. There is a new table, pg_shadow, which is used to store
29667 user information and user passwords, and it by default only SELECT-able
29668 by the <systemitem>postgres</systemitem> super-user. pg_user is now a view of pg_shadow, and is
29669 SELECT-able by PUBLIC. You should keep using pg_user in your
29670 application without changes.
29673 User-created tables now no longer have SELECT privilege to PUBLIC by
29674 default. This was done because the ANSI standard requires it. You can
29675 of course GRANT any privileges you want after the table is created.
29676 System tables continue to be SELECT-able by PUBLIC.
29679 We also have real deadlock detection code. No more sixty-second
29680 timeouts. And the new locking code implements a <acronym>FIFO</acronym> better, so there
29681 should be less resource starvation during heavy use.
29684 Many complaints have been made about inadequate documentation in previous
29685 releases. Thomas has put much effort into many new manuals for this
29686 release. Check out the doc/ directory.
29689 For performance reasons, time travel is gone, but can be implemented
29690 using triggers (see <filename>pgsql/contrib/spi/README</filename>). Please check out the new
29691 \d command for types, operators, etc. Also, views have their own
29692 privileges now, not based on the underlying tables, so privileges on
29693 them have to be set separately. Check <filename>/pgsql/interfaces</filename> for some new
29694 ways to talk to <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
29697 This is the first release that really required an explanation for
29698 existing users. In many ways, this was necessary because the new
29699 release removes many limitations, and the work-arounds people were using
29700 are no longer needed.
29704 <title>Migration to Version 6.3</title>
29707 A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application>
29708 or <application>pg_dumpall</application>
29709 is required for those wishing to migrate data from any
29710 previous release of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
29715 <title>Changes</title>
29721 Fix binary cursors broken by MOVE implementation(Vadim)
29722 Fix for tcl library crash(Jan)
29723 Fix for array handling, from Gerhard Hintermayer
29724 Fix acl error, and remove duplicate pqtrace(Bruce)
29725 Fix psql \e for empty file(Bruce)
29726 Fix for textcat on varchar() fields(Bruce)
29727 Fix for DBT Sendproc (Zeugswetter Andres)
29728 Fix vacuum analyze syntax problem(Bruce)
29729 Fix for international identifiers(Tatsuo)
29730 Fix aggregates on inherited tables(Bruce)
29731 Fix substr() for out-of-bounds data
29732 Fix for select 1=1 or 2=2, select 1=1 and 2=2, and select sum(2+2)(Bruce)
29733 Fix notty output to show status result. -q option still turns it off(Bruce)
29734 Fix for count(*), aggs with views and multiple tables and sum(3)(Bruce)
29736 Fix for PQtrace start/stop several times(Bruce)
29737 Fix a variety of locking problems like newer lock waiters getting
29738 lock before older waiters, and having readlock people not share
29739 locks if a writer is waiting for a lock, and waiting writers not
29740 getting priority over waiting readers(Bruce)
29741 Fix crashes in psql when executing queries from external files(James)
29742 Fix problem with multiple order by columns, with the first one having
29743 NULL values(Jeroen)
29744 Use correct hash table support functions for float8 and int4(Thomas)
29745 Re-enable JOIN= option in CREATE OPERATOR statement (Thomas)
29746 Change precedence for boolean operators to match expected behavior(Thomas)
29747 Generate elog(ERROR) on over-large integer(Bruce)
29748 Allow multiple-argument functions in constraint clauses(Thomas)
29749 Check boolean input literals for 'true','false','yes','no','1','0'
29750 and throw elog(ERROR) if unrecognized(Thomas)
29751 Major large objects fix
29752 Fix for GROUP BY showing duplicates(Vadim)
29753 Fix for index scans in MergeJoin(Vadim)
29757 Subselects with EXISTS, IN, ALL, ANY key words (Vadim, Bruce, Thomas)
29758 New User Manual(Thomas, others)
29759 Speedup by inlining some frequently-called functions
29760 Real deadlock detection, no more timeouts(Bruce)
29761 Add SQL92 "constants" CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
29762 CURRENT_USER(Thomas)
29763 Modify constraint syntax to be SQL92-compliant(Thomas)
29764 Implement SQL92 PRIMARY KEY and UNIQUE clauses using indexes(Thomas)
29765 Recognize SQL92 syntax for FOREIGN KEY. Throw elog notice(Thomas)
29766 Allow NOT NULL UNIQUE constraint clause (each allowed separately before)(Thomas)
29767 Allow PostgreSQL-style casting ("::") of non-constants(Thomas)
29768 Add support for SQL3 TRUE and FALSE boolean constants(Thomas)
29769 Support SQL92 syntax for IS TRUE/IS FALSE/IS NOT TRUE/IS NOT FALSE(Thomas)
29770 Allow shorter strings for boolean literals (e.g. "t", "tr", "tru")(Thomas)
29771 Allow SQL92 delimited identifiers(Thomas)
29772 Implement SQL92 binary and hexadecimal string decoding (b'10' and x'1F')(Thomas)
29773 Support SQL92 syntax for type coercion of literal strings
29774 (e.g. "DATETIME 'now'")(Thomas)
29775 Add conversions for int2, int4, and OID types to and from text(Thomas)
29776 Use shared lock when building indexes(Vadim)
29777 Free memory allocated for an user query inside transaction block after
29778 this query is done, was turned off in <= 6.2.1(Vadim)
29779 New SQL statement CREATE PROCEDURAL LANGUAGE(Jan)
29780 New <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> Procedural Language (PL) backend interface(Jan)
29781 Rename pg_dump -H option to -h(Bruce)
29782 Add Java support for passwords, European dates(Peter)
29783 Use indexes for LIKE and ~, !~ operations(Bruce)
29784 Add hash functions for datetime and timespan(Thomas)
29785 Time Travel removed(Vadim, Bruce)
29786 Add paging for \d and \z, and fix \i(Bruce)
29787 Add Unix domain socket support to backend and to frontend library(Goran)
29788 Implement CREATE DATABASE/WITH LOCATION and initlocation utility(Thomas)
29789 Allow more SQL92 and/or <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> reserved words as column identifiers(Thomas)
29790 Augment support for SQL92 SET TIME ZONE...(Thomas)
29791 SET/SHOW/RESET TIME ZONE uses TZ backend environment variable(Thomas)
29792 Implement SET keyword = DEFAULT and SET TIME ZONE DEFAULT(Thomas)
29793 Enable SET TIME ZONE using TZ environment variable(Thomas)
29794 Add PGDATESTYLE environment variable to frontend and backend initialization(Thomas)
29795 Add PGTZ, PGCOSTHEAP, PGCOSTINDEX, PGRPLANS, PGGEQO
29796 frontend library initialization environment variables(Thomas)
29797 Regression tests time zone automatically set with "setenv PGTZ PST8PDT"(Thomas)
29798 Add pg_description table for info on tables, columns, operators, types, and
29800 Increase 16 char limit on system table/index names to 32 characters(Bruce)
29801 Rename system indexes(Bruce)
29802 Add 'GERMAN' option to SET DATESTYLE(Thomas)
29803 Define an "ISO-style" timespan output format with "hh:mm:ss" fields(Thomas)
29804 Allow fractional values for delta times (e.g. '2.5 days')(Thomas)
29805 Validate numeric input more carefully for delta times(Thomas)
29806 Implement day of year as possible input to date_part()(Thomas)
29807 Define timespan_finite() and text_timespan() functions(Thomas)
29808 Remove archive stuff(Bruce)
29809 Allow for a pg_password authentication database that is separate from
29810 the system password file(Todd)
29811 Dump ACLs, GRANT, REVOKE privileges(Matt)
29812 Define text, varchar, and bpchar string length functions(Thomas)
29813 Fix Query handling for inheritance, and cost computations(Bruce)
29814 Implement CREATE TABLE/AS SELECT (alternative to SELECT/INTO)(Thomas)
29815 Allow NOT, IS NULL, IS NOT NULL in constraints(Thomas)
29816 Implement UNIONs for SELECT(Bruce)
29817 Add UNION, GROUP, DISTINCT to INSERT(Bruce)
29818 varchar() stores only necessary bytes on disk(Bruce)
29819 Fix for BLOBs(Peter)
29820 Mega-Patch for JDBC...see README_6.3 for list of changes(Peter)
29821 Remove unused "option" from PQconnectdb()
29822 New LOCK command and lock manual page describing deadlocks(Bruce)
29823 Add new psql \da, \dd, \df, \do, \dS, and \dT commands(Bruce)
29824 Enhance psql \z to show sequences(Bruce)
29825 Show NOT NULL and DEFAULT in psql \d table(Bruce)
29826 New psql .psqlrc file start-up(Andrew)
29827 Modify sample start-up script in contrib/linux to show syslog(Thomas)
29828 New types for IP and MAC addresses in contrib/ip_and_mac(TomH)
29829 Unix system time conversions with date/time types in contrib/unixdate(Thomas)
29830 Update of contrib stuff(Massimo)
29831 Add Unix socket support to DBD::Pg(Goran)
29832 New python interface (PyGreSQL 2.0)(D'Arcy)
29833 New frontend/backend protocol has a version number, network byte order(Phil)
29834 Security features in pg_hba.conf enhanced and documented, many cleanups(Phil)
29835 CHAR() now faster access than VARCHAR() or TEXT
29836 ecpg embedded SQL preprocessor
29837 Reduce system column overhead(Vadmin)
29838 Remove pg_time table(Vadim)
29839 Add pg_type attribute to identify types that need length (bpchar, varchar)
29840 Add report of offending line when COPY command fails
29841 Allow VIEW privileges to be set separately from the underlying tables.
29842 For security, use GRANT/REVOKE on views as appropriate(Jan)
29843 Tables now have no default GRANT SELECT TO PUBLIC. You must
29844 explicitly grant such privileges.
29845 Clean up tutorial examples(Darren)
29847 Source Tree Changes
29848 -------------------
29849 Add new html development tools, and flow chart in /tools/backend
29850 Fix for SCO compiles
29851 Stratus computer port Robert Gillies
29852 Added support for shlib for BSD44_derived & i386_solaris
29853 Make configure more automated(Brook)
29854 Add script to check regression test results
29855 Break parser functions into smaller files, group together(Bruce)
29856 Rename heap_create to heap_create_and_catalog, rename heap_creatr
29857 to heap_create()(Bruce)
29858 Sparc/Linux patch for locking(TomS)
29859 Remove PORTNAME and reorganize port-specific stuff(Marc)
29860 Add optimizer README file(Bruce)
29861 Remove some recursion in optimizer and clean up some code there(Bruce)
29862 Fix for NetBSD locking(Henry)
29863 Fix for libptcl make(Tatsuo)
29865 Change IS TRUE, IS FALSE, ... to expressions using "=" rather than
29866 function calls to istrue() or isfalse() to allow optimization(Thomas)
29867 Various fixes NetBSD/Sparc related(TomH)
29868 Alpha linux locking(Travis,Ryan)
29869 Change elog(WARN) to elog(ERROR)(Bruce)
29870 FAQ for FreeBSD(Marc)
29871 Bring in the PostODBC source tree as part of our standard distribution(Marc)
29872 A minor patch for HP/UX 10 vs 9(Stan)
29873 New pg_attribute.atttypmod for type-specific info like varchar length(Bruce)
29874 UnixWare patches(Billy)
29875 New i386 'lock' for spinlock asm(Billy)
29876 Support for multiplexed backends is removed
29877 Start an OpenBSD port
29879 Start a Cygnus port
29880 Add string functions to regression suite(Thomas)
29881 Expand a few function names formerly truncated to 16 characters(Thomas)
29882 Remove un-needed malloc() calls and replace with palloc()(Bruce)
29888 <sect1 id="release-6-2-1">
29889 <title>Release 6.2.1</title>
29892 <title>Release date</title>
29893 <simpara>1997-10-17</simpara>
29897 6.2.1 is a bug-fix and usability release on 6.2.
29905 Allow strings to span lines, per <acronym>SQL92</acronym>.
29911 Include example trigger function for inserting user names on table updates.
29918 This is a minor bug-fix release on 6.2.
29919 For upgrades from pre-6.2 systems, a full dump/reload is required.
29920 Refer to the 6.2 release notes for instructions.
29924 <title>Migration from version 6.2 to version 6.2.1</title>
29927 This is a minor bug-fix release. A dump/reload is not required from version 6.2,
29928 but is required from any release prior to 6.2.
29931 In upgrading from version 6.2, if you choose to dump/reload you will find that
29932 avg(money) is now calculated correctly. All other bug fixes take effect
29933 upon updating the executables.
29936 Another way to avoid dump/reload is to use the following SQL command
29937 from <command>psql</command> to update the existing system table:
29940 update pg_aggregate set aggfinalfn = 'cash_div_flt8'
29941 where aggname = 'avg' and aggbasetype = 790;
29945 This will need to be done to every existing database, including template1.
29950 <title>Changes</title>
29954 Allow TIME and TYPE column names(Thomas)
29955 Allow larger range of true/false as boolean values(Thomas)
29956 Support output of "now" and "current"(Thomas)
29957 Handle DEFAULT with INSERT of NULL properly(Vadim)
29958 Fix for relation reference counts problem in buffer manager(Vadim)
29959 Allow strings to span lines, like ANSI(Thomas)
29960 Fix for backward cursor with ORDER BY(Vadim)
29961 Fix avg(cash) computation(Thomas)
29962 Fix for specifying a column twice in ORDER/GROUP BY(Vadim)
29963 Documented new libpq function to return affected rows, PQcmdTuples(Bruce)
29964 Trigger function for inserting user names for INSERT/UPDATE(Brook Milligan)
29970 <sect1 id="release-6-2">
29971 <title>Release 6.2</title>
29974 <title>Release date</title>
29975 <simpara>1997-10-02</simpara>
29979 A dump/restore is required for those wishing to migrate data from
29980 previous releases of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
29984 <title>Migration from version 6.1 to version 6.2</title>
29987 This migration requires a complete dump of the 6.1 database and a
29988 restore of the database in 6.2.
29991 Note that the <command>pg_dump</command> and <command>pg_dumpall</command> utility from 6.2 should be used
29992 to dump the 6.1 database.
29997 <title>Migration from version 1.<replaceable>x</> to version 6.2</title>
30000 Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09
30001 because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.
30006 <title>Changes</title>
30012 Fix problems with pg_dump for inheritance, sequences, archive tables(Bruce)
30013 Fix compile errors on overflow due to shifts, unsigned, and bad prototypes
30014 from Solaris(Diab Jerius)
30015 Fix bugs in geometric line arithmetic (bad intersection calculations)(Thomas)
30016 Check for geometric intersections at endpoints to avoid rounding ugliness(Thomas)
30017 Catch non-functional delete attempts(Vadim)
30018 Change time function names to be more consistent(Michael Reifenberg)
30019 Check for zero divides(Michael Reifenberg)
30020 Fix very old bug which made rows changed/inserted by a command
30021 visible to the command itself (so we had multiple update of
30022 updated rows, etc.)(Vadim)
30023 Fix for SELECT null, 'fail' FROM pg_am (Patrick)
30024 SELECT NULL as EMPTY_FIELD now allowed(Patrick)
30025 Remove un-needed signal stuff from contrib/pginterface
30026 Fix OR (where x != 1 or x isnull didn't return rows with x NULL) (Vadim)
30027 Fix time_cmp function (Vadim)
30028 Fix handling of functions with non-attribute first argument in
30029 WHERE clauses (Vadim)
30030 Fix GROUP BY when order of entries is different from order
30031 in target list (Vadim)
30032 Fix pg_dump for aggregates without sfunc1 (Vadim)
30036 Default genetic optimizer GEQO parameter is now 8(Bruce)
30037 Allow use parameters in target list having aggregates in functions(Vadim)
30038 Added JDBC driver as an interface(Adrian & Peter)
30039 pg_password utility
30040 Return number of rows inserted/affected by INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE etc.(Vadim)
30041 Triggers implemented with CREATE TRIGGER (SQL3)(Vadim)
30042 SPI (Server Programming Interface) allows execution of queries inside
30043 C-functions (Vadim)
30044 NOT NULL implemented (SQL92)(Robson Paniago de Miranda)
30045 Include reserved words for string handling, outer joins, and unions(Thomas)
30046 Implement extended comments ("/* ... */") using exclusive states(Thomas)
30047 Add "//" single-line comments(Bruce)
30048 Remove some restrictions on characters in operator names(Thomas)
30049 DEFAULT and CONSTRAINT for tables implemented (SQL92)(Vadim & Thomas)
30050 Add text concatenation operator and function (SQL92)(Thomas)
30051 Support WITH TIME ZONE syntax (SQL92)(Thomas)
30052 Support INTERVAL unit TO unit syntax (SQL92)(Thomas)
30053 Define types DOUBLE PRECISION, INTERVAL, CHARACTER,
30054 and CHARACTER VARYING (SQL92)(Thomas)
30055 Define type FLOAT(p) and rudimentary DECIMAL(p,s), NUMERIC(p,s) (SQL92)(Thomas)
30056 Define EXTRACT(), POSITION(), SUBSTRING(), and TRIM() (SQL92)(Thomas)
30057 Define CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP (SQL92)(Thomas)
30058 Add syntax and warnings for UNION, HAVING, INNER and OUTER JOIN (SQL92)(Thomas)
30059 Add more reserved words, mostly for SQL92 compliance(Thomas)
30060 Allow hh:mm:ss time entry for timespan/reltime types(Thomas)
30061 Add center() routines for lseg, path, polygon(Thomas)
30062 Add distance() routines for circle-polygon, polygon-polygon(Thomas)
30063 Check explicitly for points and polygons contained within polygons
30064 using an axis-crossing algorithm(Thomas)
30065 Add routine to convert circle-box(Thomas)
30066 Merge conflicting operators for different geometric data types(Thomas)
30067 Replace distance operator "<===>" with "<->"(Thomas)
30068 Replace "above" operator "!^" with ">^" and "below" operator "!|" with "<^"(Thomas)
30069 Add routines for text trimming on both ends, substring, and string position(Thomas)
30070 Added conversion routines circle(box) and poly(circle)(Thomas)
30071 Allow internal sorts to be stored in memory rather than in files(Bruce & Vadim)
30072 Allow functions and operators on internally-identical types to succeed(Bruce)
30073 Speed up backend start-up after profiling analysis(Bruce)
30074 Inline frequently called functions for performance(Bruce)
30075 Reduce open() calls(Bruce)
30076 psql: Add PAGER for \h and \?,\C fix
30077 Fix for psql pager when no tty(Bruce)
30078 New entab utility(Bruce)
30079 General trigger functions for referential integrity (Vadim)
30080 General trigger functions for time travel (Vadim)
30081 General trigger functions for AUTOINCREMENT/IDENTITY feature (Vadim)
30082 MOVE implementation (Vadim)
30084 Source Tree Changes
30085 -------------------
30086 HP-UX 10 patches (Vladimir Turin)
30087 Added SCO support, (Daniel Harris)
30088 MkLinux patches (Tatsuo Ishii)
30089 Change geometric box terminology from "length" to "width"(Thomas)
30090 Deprecate temporary unstored slope fields in geometric code(Thomas)
30091 Remove restart instructions from INSTALL(Bruce)
30092 Look in /usr/ucb first for install(Bruce)
30093 Fix c++ copy example code(Thomas)
30094 Add -o to psql manual page(Bruce)
30095 Prevent relname unallocated string length from being copied into database(Bruce)
30096 Cleanup for NAMEDATALEN use(Bruce)
30097 Fix pg_proc names over 15 chars in output(Bruce)
30098 Add strNcpy() function(Bruce)
30099 remove some (void) casts that are unnecessary(Bruce)
30100 new interfaces directory(Marc)
30101 Replace fopen() calls with calls to fd.c functions(Bruce)
30102 Make functions static where possible(Bruce)
30103 enclose unused functions in #ifdef NOT_USED(Bruce)
30104 Remove call to difftime() in timestamp support to fix SunOS(Bruce & Thomas)
30105 Changes for Digital Unix
30106 Portability fix for pg_dumpall(Bruce)
30107 Rename pg_attribute.attnvals to attdispersion(Bruce)
30108 "intro/unix" manual page now "pgintro"(Bruce)
30109 "built-in" manual page now "pgbuiltin"(Bruce)
30110 "drop" manual page now "drop_table"(Bruce)
30111 Add "create_trigger", "drop_trigger" manual pages(Thomas)
30112 Add constraints regression test(Vadim & Thomas)
30113 Add comments syntax regression test(Thomas)
30114 Add PGINDENT and support program(Bruce)
30115 Massive commit to run PGINDENT on all *.c and *.h files(Bruce)
30116 Files moved to /src/tools directory(Bruce)
30117 SPI and Trigger programming guides (Vadim & D'Arcy)
30123 <sect1 id="release-6-1-1">
30124 <title>Release 6.1.1</title>
30127 <title>Release date</title>
30128 <simpara>1997-07-22</simpara>
30132 <title>Migration from version 6.1 to version 6.1.1</title>
30135 This is a minor bug-fix release. A dump/reload is not required from version 6.1,
30136 but is required from any release prior to 6.1.
30137 Refer to the release notes for 6.1 for more details.
30142 <title>Changes</title>
30146 fix for SET with options (Thomas)
30147 allow pg_dump/pg_dumpall to preserve ownership of all tables/objects(Bruce)
30148 new psql \connect option allows changing usernames without changing databases
30149 fix for initdb --debug option(Yoshihiko Ichikawa))
30150 lextest cleanup(Bruce)
30152 fix date/time month boundary arithmetic(Thomas)
30153 fix timezone daylight handling for some ports(Thomas, Bruce, Tatsuo)
30154 timestamp overhauled to use standard functions(Thomas)
30155 other code cleanup in date/time routines(Thomas)
30156 psql's \d now case-insensitive(Bruce)
30157 psql's backslash commands can now have trailing semicolon(Bruce)
30158 fix memory leak in psql when using \g(Bruce)
30159 major fix for endian handling of communication to server(Thomas, Tatsuo)
30160 Fix for Solaris assembler and include files(Yoshihiko Ichikawa)
30161 allow underscores in usernames(Bruce)
30162 pg_dumpall now returns proper status, portability fix(Bruce)
30168 <sect1 id="release-6-1">
30169 <title>Release 6.1</title>
30172 <title>Release date</title>
30173 <simpara>1997-06-08</simpara>
30177 The regression tests have been adapted and extensively modified for the
30178 6.1 release of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
30182 Three new data types (<type>datetime</type>, <type>timespan</type>, and <type>circle</type>) have been added to
30183 the native set of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> types. Points, boxes, paths, and polygons
30184 have had their output formats made consistent across the data types.
30185 The polygon output in misc.out has only been spot-checked for correctness
30186 relative to the original regression output.
30190 <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 6.1 introduces a new, alternate
30191 optimizer which uses <firstterm>genetic</firstterm>
30192 algorithms. These algorithms introduce a random behavior in the ordering
30193 of query results when the query contains multiple qualifiers or multiple
30194 tables (giving the optimizer a choice on order of evaluation). Several
30195 regression tests have been modified to explicitly order the results, and
30196 hence are insensitive to optimizer choices. A few regression tests are
30197 for data types which are inherently unordered (e.g. points and time
30198 intervals) and tests involving those types are explicitly bracketed with
30199 <command>set geqo to 'off'</command> and <command>reset geqo</command>.
30203 The interpretation of array specifiers (the curly braces around atomic
30204 values) appears to have changed sometime after the original regression
30205 tests were generated. The current <filename>./expected/*.out</filename> files reflect this
30206 new interpretation, which might not be correct!
30210 The float8 regression test fails on at least some platforms. This is due
30211 to differences in implementations of <function>pow()</function> and <function>exp()</function> and the signaling
30212 mechanisms used for overflow and underflow conditions.
30216 The <quote>random</> results in the random test should cause the
30217 <quote>random</quote> test to be <quote>failed</quote>, since the
30218 regression tests are evaluated using a simple diff. However,
30219 <quote>random</> does not seem to produce random results on my test
30220 machine (Linux/<application>gcc</>/i686).
30224 <title>Migration to Version 6.1</title>
30227 This migration requires a complete dump of the 6.0 database and a
30228 restore of the database in 6.1.
30231 Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09
30232 because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.
30237 <title>Changes</title>
30243 packet length checking in library routines
30244 lock manager priority patch
30245 check for under/over flow of float8(Bruce)
30246 multitable join fix(Vadim)
30247 SIGPIPE crash fix(Darren)
30248 large object fixes(Sven)
30249 allow btree indexes to handle NULLs(Vadim)
30250 timezone fixes(D'Arcy)
30251 select SUM(x) can return NULL on no rows(Thomas)
30252 internal optimizer, executor bug fixes(Vadim)
30253 fix problem where inner loop in < or <= has no rows(Vadim)
30254 prevent re-commuting join index clauses(Vadim)
30255 fix join clauses for multiple tables(Vadim)
30256 fix hash, hashjoin for arrays(Vadim)
30257 fix btree for abstime type(Vadim)
30258 large object fixes(Raymond)
30259 fix buffer leak in hash indexes (Vadim)
30260 fix rtree for use in inner scan (Vadim)
30261 fix gist for use in inner scan, cleanups (Vadim, Andrea)
30262 avoid unnecessary local buffers allocation (Vadim, Massimo)
30263 fix local buffers leak in transaction aborts (Vadim)
30264 fix file manager memmory leaks, cleanups (Vadim, Massimo)
30265 fix storage manager memmory leaks (Vadim)
30266 fix btree duplicates handling (Vadim)
30267 fix deleted rows reincarnation caused by vacuum (Vadim)
30268 fix SELECT varchar()/char() INTO TABLE made zero-length fields(Bruce)
30269 many psql, pg_dump, and libpq memory leaks fixed using Purify (Igor)
30273 attribute optimization statistics(Bruce)
30274 much faster new btree bulk load code(Paul)
30275 BTREE UNIQUE added to bulk load code(Vadim)
30276 new lock debug code(Massimo)
30277 massive changes to libpg++(Leo)
30278 new GEQO optimizer speeds table multitable optimization(Martin)
30279 new WARN message for non-unique insert into unique key(Marc)
30280 update x=-3, no spaces, now valid(Bruce)
30281 remove case-sensitive identifier handling(Bruce,Thomas,Dan)
30282 debug backend now pretty-prints tree(Darren)
30283 new Oracle character functions(Edmund)
30284 new plaintext password functions(Dan)
30285 no such class or insufficient privilege changed to distinct messages(Dan)
30286 new ANSI timestamp function(Dan)
30287 new ANSI Time and Date types (Thomas)
30288 move large chunks of data in backend(Martin)
30289 multicolumn btree indexes(Vadim)
30290 new SET var TO value command(Martin)
30291 update transaction status on reads(Dan)
30292 new locale settings for character types(Oleg)
30293 new SEQUENCE serial number generator(Vadim)
30294 GROUP BY function now possible(Vadim)
30295 re-organize regression test(Thomas,Marc)
30296 new optimizer operation weights(Vadim)
30297 new psql \z grant/permit option(Marc)
30298 new MONEY data type(D'Arcy,Thomas)
30299 tcp socket communication speed improved(Vadim)
30300 new VACUUM option for attribute statistics, and for certain columns (Vadim)
30301 many geometric type improvements(Thomas,Keith)
30302 additional regression tests(Thomas)
30303 new datestyle variable(Thomas,Vadim,Martin)
30304 more comparison operators for sorting types(Thomas)
30305 new conversion functions(Thomas)
30306 new more compact btree format(Vadim)
30307 allow pg_dumpall to preserve database ownership(Bruce)
30308 new SET GEQO=# and R_PLANS variable(Vadim)
30309 old (!GEQO) optimizer can use right-sided plans (Vadim)
30310 typechecking improvement in SQL parser(Bruce)
30311 new SET, SHOW, RESET commands(Thomas,Vadim)
30312 new \connect database USER option
30313 new destroydb -i option (Igor)
30314 new \dt and \di psql commands (Darren)
30315 SELECT "\n" now escapes newline (A. Duursma)
30316 new geometry conversion functions from old format (Thomas)
30318 Source tree changes
30319 -------------------
30320 new configuration script(Marc)
30321 readline configuration option added(Marc)
30322 OS-specific configuration options removed(Marc)
30323 new OS-specific template files(Marc)
30324 no more need to edit Makefile.global(Marc)
30325 re-arrange include files(Marc)
30326 nextstep patches (Gregor Hoffleit)
30327 removed Windows-specific code(Bruce)
30328 removed postmaster -e option, now only postgres -e option (Bruce)
30329 merge duplicate library code in front/backends(Martin)
30330 now works with eBones, international Kerberos(Jun)
30331 more shared library support
30332 c++ include file cleanup(Bruce)
30333 warn about buggy flex(Bruce)
30334 DG/UX, Ultrix, IRIX, AIX portability fixes
30340 <sect1 id="release-6-0">
30341 <title>Release 6.0</title>
30344 <title>Release date</title>
30345 <simpara>1997-01-29</simpara>
30349 A dump/restore is required for those wishing to migrate data from
30350 previous releases of <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
30354 <title>Migration from version 1.09 to version 6.0</title>
30357 This migration requires a complete dump of the 1.09 database and a
30358 restore of the database in 6.0.
30363 <title>Migration from pre-1.09 to version 6.0</title>
30366 Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09
30367 because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.
30372 <title>Changes</title>
30378 ALTER TABLE bug - running postgres process needs to re-read table definition
30379 Allow vacuum to be run on one table or entire database(Bruce)
30381 Fix array over-runs of memory writes(Kurt)
30382 Fix elusive btree range/non-range bug(Dan)
30383 Fix for hash indexes on some types like time and date
30384 Fix for pg_log size explosion
30385 Fix permissions on lo_export()(Bruce)
30386 Fix uninitialized reads of memory(Kurt)
30387 Fixed ALTER TABLE ... char(3) bug(Bruce)
30388 Fixed a few small memory leaks
30389 Fixed EXPLAIN handling of options and changed full_path option name
30390 Fixed output of group acl privileges
30391 Memory leaks (hunt and destroy with tools like Purify(Kurt)
30392 Minor improvements to rules system
30394 New asserts for run-checking
30395 Overhauled parser/analyze code to properly report errors and increase speed
30396 Pg_dump -d now handles NULL's properly(Bruce)
30397 Prevent SELECT NULL from crashing server (Bruce)
30398 Properly report errors when INSERT ... SELECT columns did not match
30399 Properly report errors when insert column names were not correct
30400 psql \g filename now works(Bruce)
30401 psql fixed problem with multiple statements on one line with multiple outputs
30402 Removed duplicate system OIDs
30403 SELECT * INTO TABLE . GROUP/ORDER BY gives unlink error if table exists(Bruce)
30404 Several fixes for queries that crashed the backend
30405 Starting quote in insert string errors(Bruce)
30406 Submitting an empty query now returns empty status, not just " " query(Bruce)
30410 Add EXPLAIN manual page(Bruce)
30411 Add UNIQUE index capability(Dan)
30412 Add hostname/user level access control rather than just hostname and user
30413 Add synonym of != for <>(Bruce)
30414 Allow "select oid,* from table"
30415 Allow BY,ORDER BY to specify columns by number, or by non-alias table.column(Bruce)
30416 Allow COPY from the frontend(Bryan)
30417 Allow GROUP BY to use alias column name(Bruce)
30418 Allow actual compression, not just reuse on the same page(Vadim)
30419 Allow installation-configuration option to auto-add all local users(Bryan)
30420 Allow libpq to distinguish between text value '' and null(Bruce)
30421 Allow non-postgres users with createdb privs to destroydb's
30422 Allow restriction on who can create C functions(Bryan)
30423 Allow restriction on who can do backend COPY(Bryan)
30424 Can shrink tables, pg_time and pg_log(Vadim & Erich)
30425 Change debug level 2 to print queries only, changed debug heading layout(Bruce)
30426 Change default decimal constant representation from float4 to float8(Bruce)
30427 European date format now set when postmaster is started
30428 Execute lowercase function names if not found with exact case
30429 Fixes for aggregate/GROUP processing, allow 'select sum(func(x),sum(x+y) from z'
30430 Gist now included in the distribution(Marc)
30431 Idend authentication of local users(Bryan)
30432 Implement BETWEEN qualifier(Bruce)
30433 Implement IN qualifier(Bruce)
30434 libpq has PQgetisnull()(Bruce)
30435 libpq++ improvements
30436 New options to initdb(Bryan)
30437 Pg_dump allow dump of OIDs(Bruce)
30438 Pg_dump create indexes after tables are loaded for speed(Bruce)
30439 Pg_dumpall dumps all databases, and the user table
30440 Pginterface additions for NULL values(Bruce)
30441 Prevent postmaster from being run as root
30442 psql \h and \? is now readable(Bruce)
30443 psql allow backslashed, semicolons anywhere on the line(Bruce)
30444 psql changed command prompt for lines in query or in quotes(Bruce)
30445 psql char(3) now displays as (bp)char in \d output(Bruce)
30446 psql return code now more accurate(Bryan?)
30447 psql updated help syntax(Bruce)
30448 Re-visit and fix vacuum(Vadim)
30449 Reduce size of regression diffs, remove timezone name difference(Bruce)
30450 Remove compile-time parameters to enable binary distributions(Bryan)
30451 Reverse meaning of HBA masks(Bryan)
30452 Secure Authentication of local users(Bryan)
30453 Speed up vacuum(Vadim)
30454 Vacuum now had VERBOSE option(Bruce)
30456 Source tree changes
30457 -------------------
30458 All functions now have prototypes that are compared against the calls
30459 Allow asserts to be disabled easily from Makefile.global(Bruce)
30460 Change oid constants used in code to #define names
30461 Decoupled sparc and solaris defines(Kurt)
30462 Gcc -Wall compiles cleanly with warnings only from unfixable constructs
30463 Major include file reorganization/reduction(Marc)
30464 Make now stops on compile failure(Bryan)
30465 Makefile restructuring(Bryan, Marc)
30466 Merge bsdi_2_1 to bsdi(Bruce)
30467 Monitor program removed
30468 Name change from Postgres95 to PostgreSQL
30469 New config.h file(Marc, Bryan)
30470 PG_VERSION now set to 6.0 and used by postmaster
30471 Portability additions, including Ultrix, DG/UX, AIX, and Solaris
30472 Reduced the number of #define's, centralized #define's
30473 Remove duplicate OIDS in system tables(Dan)
30474 Remove duplicate system catalog info or report mismatches(Dan)
30475 Removed many os-specific #define's
30476 Restructured object file generation/location(Bryan, Marc)
30477 Restructured port-specific file locations(Bryan, Marc)
30478 Unused/uninitialized variables corrected
30484 <sect1 id="release-1-09">
30485 <title>Release 1.09</title>
30488 <title>Release date</title>
30489 <simpara>1996-11-04</simpara>
30493 Sorry, we didn't keep track of changes from 1.02 to 1.09. Some of
30494 the changes listed in 6.0 were actually included in the 1.02.1 to 1.09
30499 <sect1 id="release-1-02">
30500 <title>Release 1.02</title>
30503 <title>Release date</title>
30504 <simpara>1996-08-01</simpara>
30508 <title>Migration from version 1.02 to version 1.02.1</title>
30511 Here is a new migration file for 1.02.1. It includes the 'copy' change
30512 and a script to convert old <acronym>ASCII</acronym> files.
30516 The following notes are for the benefit of users who want to migrate
30517 databases from <productname>Postgres95</> 1.01 and 1.02 to <productname>Postgres95</> 1.02.1.
30520 If you are starting afresh with <productname>Postgres95</> 1.02.1 and do not need
30521 to migrate old databases, you do not need to read any further.
30526 In order to upgrade older <productname>Postgres95</> version 1.01 or 1.02 databases to
30527 version 1.02.1, the following steps are required:
30532 Start up a new 1.02.1 postmaster
30537 Add the new built-in functions and operators of 1.02.1 to 1.01 or 1.02
30538 databases. This is done by running the new 1.02.1 server against
30539 your own 1.01 or 1.02 database and applying the queries attached at
30540 the end of the file. This can be done easily through <command>psql</>. If your
30541 1.01 or 1.02 database is named <literal>testdb</literal> and you have cut the commands
30542 from the end of this file and saved them in <filename>addfunc.sql</filename>:
30544 % psql testdb -f addfunc.sql
30547 Those upgrading 1.02 databases will get a warning when executing the
30548 last two statements in the file because they are already present in 1.02. This is
30549 not a cause for concern.
30556 <title>Dump/Reload Procedure</title>
30559 If you are trying to reload a pg_dump or text-mode, <literal>copy tablename to
30560 stdout</literal> generated with a previous version, you will need to run the
30561 attached <command>sed</command> script on the ASCII file before loading it into the
30562 database. The old format used '.' as end-of-data, while '\.' is now the
30563 end-of-data marker. Also, empty strings are now loaded in as '' rather
30564 than NULL. See the copy manual page for full details.
30567 sed 's/^\.$/\\./g' <in_file >out_file
30571 If you are loading an older binary copy or non-<systemitem>stdout</> copy, there is no
30572 end-of-data character, and hence no conversion necessary.
30575 -- following lines added by agc to reflect the case-insensitive
30576 -- regexp searching for varchar (in 1.02), and bpchar (in 1.02.1)
30577 create operator ~* (leftarg = bpchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
30578 create operator !~* (leftarg = bpchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
30579 create operator ~* (leftarg = varchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
30580 create operator !~* (leftarg = varchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
30586 <title>Changes</title>
30590 Source code maintenance and development
30591 * worldwide team of volunteers
30592 * the source tree now in CVS at ftp.ki.net
30595 * psql (and underlying libpq library) now has many more options for
30596 formatting output, including HTML
30597 * pg_dump now output the schema and/or the data, with many fixes to
30598 enhance completeness.
30599 * psql used in place of monitor in administration shell scripts.
30600 monitor to be deprecated in next release.
30601 * date/time functions enhanced
30602 * NULL insert/update/comparison fixed/enhanced
30603 * TCL/TK lib and shell fixed to work with both tck7.4/tk4.0 and tcl7.5/tk4.1
30605 Bug Fixes (almost too numerous to mention)
30607 * storage management
30608 * check for NULL pointer before dereferencing
30612 * added SolarisX86 port
30613 * added BSD/OS 2.1 port
30618 Contributors (apologies to any missed)
30619 * Kurt J. Lidl <lidl@va.pubnix.com>
30620 (missed in first run, but no less important)
30621 * Erich Stamberger <eberger@gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at>
30622 * Jason Wright <jason@shiloh.vnet.net>
30623 * Cees de Groot <C.deGroot@inter.NL.net>
30624 * ernst.molitor@uni-bonn.de
30625 * michael.siebenborn@ae3.Hypo.DE (Michael Siebenborn (6929))
30626 * Brian E. Gallew <geek+@cmu.edu>
30627 * Vadim B. Mikheev <vadim@sable.krasnoyarsk.su>
30628 * Adam Sussman <myddryn@vidya.com>
30629 * Chris Dunlop <chris@onthe.net.au>
30630 * Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@ki.net>
30631 * Dan McGuirk <mcguirk@indirect.com>
30632 * Dr_George_D_Detlefsen <drgeorge@ilt.com>
30633 * Erich Stamberger <eberger@gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at>
30634 * Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>
30635 * Randy Kunkee <kunkee@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
30636 * Rick Weldon <rick@wisetech.com>
30637 * Thomas van Reimersdahl <reimersd@dali.techinfo.rwth-aachen.de>
30638 * david bennett <dave@bensoft.com>
30639 * ernst.molitor@uni-bonn.de
30640 * Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.net>
30641 * Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
30642 * Paul "Shag" Walmsley <ccshag@cclabs.missouri.edu>
30643 * "Alistair G. Crooks" <azcb0@sde.uts.amdahl.com>
30648 <sect1 id="release-1-01">
30649 <title>Release 1.01</title>
30652 <title>Release date</title>
30653 <simpara>1996-02-23</simpara>
30658 <title>Migration from version 1.0 to version 1.01</title>
30661 The following notes are for the benefit of users who want to migrate
30662 databases from <productname>Postgres95</> 1.0 to <productname>Postgres95</> 1.01.
30665 If you are starting afresh with <productname>Postgres95</> 1.01 and do not need
30666 to migrate old databases, you do not need to read any further.
30669 In order to <productname>Postgres95</> version 1.01 with databases created with
30670 <productname>Postgres95</> version 1.0, the following steps are required:
30675 Set the definition of <symbol>NAMEDATALEN</symbol> in <filename>src/Makefile.global</filename> to 16
30676 and <symbol>OIDNAMELEN</symbol> to 20.
30681 Decide whether you want to use Host based authentication.
30686 If you do, you must create a file name <literal>pg_hba</literal> in your top-level data
30687 directory (typically the value of your <envar>$PGDATA</envar>). <filename>src/libpq/pg_hba</filename>
30688 shows an example syntax.
30693 If you do not want host-based authentication, you can comment out
30698 in <filename>src/Makefile.global</filename>
30701 Note that host-based authentication is turned on by default, and if
30702 you do not take steps A or B above, the out-of-the-box 1.01 will
30703 not allow you to connect to 1.0 databases.
30711 Compile and install 1.01, but DO NOT do the <command>initdb</command> step.
30716 Before doing anything else, terminate your 1.0 postmaster, and
30717 backup your existing <envar>$PGDATA</envar> directory.
30722 Set your <envar>PGDATA</envar> environment variable to your 1.0 databases, but set up
30723 path up so that 1.01 binaries are being used.
30728 Modify the file <filename><envar>$PGDATA</envar>/PG_VERSION</filename> from 5.0 to 5.1
30733 Start up a new 1.01 postmaster
30738 Add the new built-in functions and operators of 1.01 to 1.0
30739 databases. This is done by running the new 1.01 server against
30740 your own 1.0 database and applying the queries attached and saving
30741 in the file 1.0_to_1.01.sql. This can be done easily through <command>psql</command>.
30742 If your 1.0 database is name <literal>testdb</literal>:
30745 % psql testdb -f 1.0_to_1.01.sql
30748 and then execute the following commands (cut and paste from here):
30751 -- add builtin functions that are new to 1.01
30753 create function int4eqoid (int4, oid) returns bool as 'foo'
30754 language 'internal';
30755 create function oideqint4 (oid, int4) returns bool as 'foo'
30756 language 'internal';
30757 create function char2icregexeq (char2, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30758 language 'internal';
30759 create function char2icregexne (char2, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30760 language 'internal';
30761 create function char4icregexeq (char4, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30762 language 'internal';
30763 create function char4icregexne (char4, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30764 language 'internal';
30765 create function char8icregexeq (char8, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30766 language 'internal';
30767 create function char8icregexne (char8, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30768 language 'internal';
30769 create function char16icregexeq (char16, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30770 language 'internal';
30771 create function char16icregexne (char16, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30772 language 'internal';
30773 create function texticregexeq (text, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30774 language 'internal';
30775 create function texticregexne (text, text) returns bool as 'foo'
30776 language 'internal';
30778 -- add builtin functions that are new to 1.01
30780 create operator = (leftarg = int4, rightarg = oid, procedure = int4eqoid);
30781 create operator = (leftarg = oid, rightarg = int4, procedure = oideqint4);
30782 create operator ~* (leftarg = char2, rightarg = text, procedure = char2icregexeq);
30783 create operator !~* (leftarg = char2, rightarg = text, procedure = char2icregexne);
30784 create operator ~* (leftarg = char4, rightarg = text, procedure = char4icregexeq);
30785 create operator !~* (leftarg = char4, rightarg = text, procedure = char4icregexne);
30786 create operator ~* (leftarg = char8, rightarg = text, procedure = char8icregexeq);
30787 create operator !~* (leftarg = char8, rightarg = text, procedure = char8icregexne);
30788 create operator ~* (leftarg = char16, rightarg = text, procedure = char16icregexeq);
30789 create operator !~* (leftarg = char16, rightarg = text, procedure = char16icregexne);
30790 create operator ~* (leftarg = text, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
30791 create operator !~* (leftarg = text, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
30799 <title>Changes</title>
30804 * 1.01 is backwards compatible with 1.0 database provided the user
30805 follow the steps outlined in the MIGRATION_from_1.0_to_1.01 file.
30806 If those steps are not taken, 1.01 is not compatible with 1.0 database.
30809 * added PQdisplayTuples() to libpq and changed monitor and psql to use it
30810 * added NeXT port (requires SysVIPC implementation)
30811 * added CAST .. AS ... syntax
30812 * added ASC and DESC key words
30813 * added 'internal' as a possible language for CREATE FUNCTION
30814 internal functions are C functions which have been statically linked
30815 into the postgres backend.
30816 * a new type "name" has been added for system identifiers (table names,
30817 attribute names, etc.) This replaces the old char16 type. The
30818 of name is set by the NAMEDATALEN #define in src/Makefile.global
30819 * a readable reference manual that describes the query language.
30820 * added host-based access control. A configuration file ($PGDATA/pg_hba)
30821 is used to hold the configuration data. If host-based access control
30822 is not desired, comment out HBA=1 in src/Makefile.global.
30823 * changed regex handling to be uniform use of Henry Spencer's regex code
30824 regardless of platform. The regex code is included in the distribution
30825 * added functions and operators for case-insensitive regular expressions.
30826 The operators are ~* and !~*.
30827 * pg_dump uses COPY instead of SELECT loop for better performance
30830 * fixed an optimizer bug that was causing core dumps when
30831 functions calls were used in comparisons in the WHERE clause
30832 * changed all uses of getuid to geteuid so that effective uids are used
30833 * psql now returns non-zero status on errors when using -c
30834 * applied public patches 1-14
30840 <sect1 id="release-1-0">
30841 <title>Release 1.0</title>
30844 <title>Release date</title>
30845 <simpara>1995-09-05</simpara>
30849 <title>Changes</title>
30854 * The copyright of <productname>Postgres</productname> 1.0 has been loosened to be freely modifiable
30855 and modifiable for any purpose. Please read the COPYRIGHT file.
30856 Thanks to Professor Michael Stonebraker for making this possible.
30859 * date formats have to be MM-DD-YYYY (or DD-MM-YYYY if you're using
30860 EUROPEAN STYLE). This follows SQL-92 specs.
30861 * "delimiters" is now a key word
30864 * sql LIKE syntax has been added
30865 * copy command now takes an optional USING DELIMITER specification.
30866 delimiters can be any single-character string.
30867 * IRIX 5.3 port has been added.
30868 Thanks to Paul Walmsley and others.
30869 * updated pg_dump to work with new libpq
30870 * \d has been added psql
30871 Thanks to Keith Parks
30872 * regexp performance for architectures that use POSIX regex has been
30873 improved due to caching of precompiled patterns.
30874 Thanks to Alistair Crooks
30875 * a new version of libpq++
30876 Thanks to William Wanders
30879 * arbitrary userids can be specified in the createuser script
30880 * \c to connect to other databases in psql now works.
30881 * bad pg_proc entry for float4inc() is fixed
30882 * users with usecreatedb field set can now create databases without
30883 having to be usesuper
30884 * remove access control entries when the entry no longer has any
30886 * fixed non-portable datetimes implementation
30887 * added kerberos flags to the src/backend/Makefile
30888 * libpq now works with kerberos
30889 * typographic errors in the user manual have been corrected.
30890 * btrees with multiple index never worked, now we tell you they don't
30891 work when you try to use them
30897 <sect1 id="release-0-03">
30898 <title><productname>Postgres95</productname> Release 0.03</title>
30901 <title>Release date</title>
30902 <simpara>1995-07-21</simpara>
30906 <title>Changes</title>
30909 Incompatible changes:
30910 * BETA-0.3 IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH DATABASES CREATED WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS
30911 (due to system catalog changes and indexing structure changes).
30912 * double-quote (") is deprecated as a quoting character for string literals;
30913 you need to convert them to single quotes ('). <!-- " -->
30914 * name of aggregates (eg. int4sum) are renamed in accordance with the
30915 SQL standard (eg. sum).
30916 * CHANGE ACL syntax is replaced by GRANT/REVOKE syntax.
30917 * float literals (eg. 3.14) are now of type float4 (instead of float8 in
30918 previous releases); you might have to do typecasting if you depend on it
30919 being of type float8. If you neglect to do the typecasting and you assign
30920 a float literal to a field of type float8, you might get incorrect values
30922 * LIBPQ has been totally revamped so that frontend applications
30923 can connect to multiple backends
30924 * the usesysid field in pg_user has been changed from int2 to int4 to
30925 allow wider range of Unix user ids.
30926 * the netbsd/freebsd/bsd o/s ports have been consolidated into a
30927 single BSD44_derived port. (thanks to Alistair Crooks)
30929 SQL standard-compliance (the following details changes that makes postgres95
30930 more compliant to the SQL-92 standard):
30931 * the following SQL types are now built-in: smallint, int(eger), float, real,
30932 char(N), varchar(N), date and time.
30934 The following are aliases to existing postgres types:
30935 smallint -> int2
30936 integer, int -> int4
30937 float, real -> float4
30938 char(N) and varchar(N) are implemented as truncated text types. In
30939 addition, char(N) does blank-padding.
30940 * single-quote (') is used for quoting string literals; '' (in addition to
30941 \') is supported as means of inserting a single quote in a string
30942 * SQL standard aggregate names (MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, COUNT) are used
30943 (Also, aggregates can now be overloaded, i.e. you can define your
30944 own MAX aggregate to take in a user-defined type.)
30945 * CHANGE ACL removed. GRANT/REVOKE syntax added.
30946 - Privileges can be given to a group using the "GROUP" key word.
30948 GRANT SELECT ON foobar TO GROUP my_group;
30949 The key word 'PUBLIC' is also supported to mean all users.
30951 Privileges can only be granted or revoked to one user or group
30954 "WITH GRANT OPTION" is not supported. Only class owners can change
30956 - The default access control is to grant users readonly access.
30957 You must explicitly grant insert/update access to users. To change
30958 this, modify the line in
30959 src/backend/utils/acl.h
30960 that defines ACL_WORLD_DEFAULT
30963 * the bug where aggregates of empty tables were not run has been fixed. Now,
30964 aggregates run on empty tables will return the initial conditions of the
30965 aggregates. Thus, COUNT of an empty table will now properly return 0.
30966 MAX/MIN of an empty table will return a row of value NULL.
30967 * allow the use of \; inside the monitor
30968 * the LISTEN/NOTIFY asynchronous notification mechanism now work
30969 * NOTIFY in rule action bodies now work
30970 * hash indexes work, and access methods in general should perform better.
30971 creation of large btree indexes should be much faster. (thanks to Paul
30974 Other changes and enhancements:
30975 * addition of an EXPLAIN statement used for explaining the query execution
30976 plan (eg. "EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM EMP" prints out the execution plan for
30978 * WARN and NOTICE messages no longer have timestamps on them. To turn on
30979 timestamps of error messages, uncomment the line in
30980 src/backend/utils/elog.h:
30981 /* define ELOG_TIMESTAMPS */
30982 * On an access control violation, the message
30983 "Either no such class or insufficient privilege"
30984 will be given. This is the same message that is returned when
30985 a class is not found. This dissuades non-privileged users from
30986 guessing the existence of privileged classes.
30987 * some additional system catalog changes have been made that are not
30988 visible to the user.
30991 * The -oid option has been added to the "pg_result" tcl command.
30992 pg_result -oid returns oid of the last row inserted. If the
30993 last command was not an INSERT, then pg_result -oid returns "".
30994 * the large object interface is available as pg_lo* tcl commands:
30995 pg_lo_open, pg_lo_close, pg_lo_creat, etc.
30997 Portability enhancements and New Ports:
30998 * flex/lex problems have been cleared up. Now, you should be able to use
30999 flex instead of lex on any platforms. We no longer make assumptions of
31000 what lexer you use based on the platform you use.
31001 * The Linux-ELF port is now supported. Various configuration have been
31002 tested: The following configuration is known to work:
31003 kernel 1.2.10, gcc 2.6.3, libc 4.7.2, flex 2.5.2, bison 1.24
31004 with everything in ELF format,
31007 * ipcclean added to the distribution
31008 ipcclean usually does not need to be run, but if your backend crashes
31009 and leaves shared memory segments hanging around, ipcclean will
31010 clean them up for you.
31013 * the user manual has been revised and libpq documentation added.
31019 <sect1 id="release-0-02">
31020 <title><productname>Postgres95</productname> Release 0.02</title>
31023 <title>Release date</title>
31024 <simpara>1995-05-25</simpara>
31028 <title>Changes</title>
31032 Incompatible changes:
31033 * The SQL statement for creating a database is 'CREATE DATABASE' instead
31034 of 'CREATEDB'. Similarly, dropping a database is 'DROP DATABASE' instead
31035 of 'DESTROYDB'. However, the names of the executables 'createdb' and
31036 'destroydb' remain the same.
31039 * pgperl - a Perl (4.036) interface to Postgres95
31040 * pg_dump - a utility for dumping out a postgres database into a
31041 script file containing query commands. The script files are in a ASCII
31042 format and can be used to reconstruct the database, even on other
31043 machines and other architectures. (Also good for converting
31044 a Postgres 4.2 database to Postgres95 database.)
31046 The following ports have been incorporated into postgres95-beta-0.02:
31047 * the NetBSD port by Alistair Crooks
31048 * the AIX port by Mike Tung
31049 * the Windows NT port by Jon Forrest (more stuff but not done yet)
31050 * the Linux ELF port by Brian Gallew
31052 The following bugs have been fixed in postgres95-beta-0.02:
31053 * new lines not escaped in COPY OUT and problem with COPY OUT when first
31055 * cannot type return to use the default user id in createuser
31056 * SELECT DISTINCT on big tables crashes
31057 * Linux installation problems
31058 * monitor doesn't allow use of 'localhost' as PGHOST
31059 * psql core dumps when doing \c or \l
31060 * the "pgtclsh" target missing from src/bin/pgtclsh/Makefile
31061 * libpgtcl has a hard-wired default port number
31062 * SELECT DISTINCT INTO TABLE hangs
31063 * CREATE TYPE doesn't accept 'variable' as the internallength
31064 * wrong result using more than 1 aggregate in a SELECT
31070 <sect1 id="release-0-01">
31071 <title><productname>Postgres95</productname> Release 0.01</title>
31074 <title>Release date</title>
31075 <simpara>1995-05-01</simpara>
31084 <sect1 id="timing-results">
31085 <title>Timing Results</title>
31088 These timing results are from running the regression test with the commands
31091 % cd src/test/regress
31093 % time make runtest
31097 Timing under Linux 2.0.27 seems to have a roughly 5% variation from run
31098 to run, presumably due to the scheduling vagaries of multitasking systems.
31102 <title>Version 6.5</title>
31105 As has been the case for previous releases, timing between
31106 releases is not directly comparable since new regression tests
31107 have been added. In general, 6.5 is faster than previous
31112 Timing with <function>fsync()</function> disabled:
31116 02:00 Dual Pentium Pro 180, 224MB, UW-SCSI, Linux 2.0.36, gcc 2.7.2.3 -O2 -m486
31117 04:38 Sparc Ultra 1 143MHz, 64MB, Solaris 2.6
31122 Timing with <function>fsync()</function> enabled:
31126 04:21 Dual Pentium Pro 180, 224MB, UW-SCSI, Linux 2.0.36, gcc 2.7.2.3 -O2 -m486
31129 For the <systemitem class="osname">Linux</systemitem> system above, using <acronym>UW-SCSI</acronym> disks rather than (older) <acronym>IDE</acronym>
31130 disks leads to a 50% improvement in speed on the regression test.
31135 <title>Version 6.4beta</title>
31138 The times for this release are not directly comparable to those for previous releases
31139 since some additional regression tests have been included.
31140 In general, however, 6.4 should be slightly faster than the previous release (thanks, Bruce!).
31145 02:26 Dual Pentium Pro 180, 96MB, UW-SCSI, Linux 2.0.30, gcc 2.7.2.1 -O2 -m486
31151 <title>Version 6.3</title>
31154 The times for this release are not directly comparable to those for previous releases
31155 since some additional regression tests have been included and some obsolete tests involving
31156 time travel have been removed.
31157 In general, however, 6.3 is substantially faster than previous releases (thanks, Bruce!).
31162 02:30 Dual Pentium Pro 180, 96MB, UW-SCSI, Linux 2.0.30, gcc 2.7.2.1 -O2 -m486
31163 04:12 Dual Pentium Pro 180, 96MB, EIDE, Linux 2.0.30, gcc 2.7.2.1 -O2 -m486
31169 <title>Version 6.1</title>
31174 06:12 Pentium Pro 180, 32MB, EIDE, Linux 2.0.30, gcc 2.7.2 -O2 -m486
31175 12:06 P-100, 48MB, Linux 2.0.29, gcc
31176 39:58 Sparc IPC 32MB, Solaris 2.5, gcc 2.7.2.1 -O -g
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