TODO list for PostgreSQL
========================
-Last updated: Tue Sep 3 19:38:56 EDT 2002
+Last updated: Tue Dec 24 17:06:43 EST 2002
Current maintainer: Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us)
The most recent version of this document can be viewed at
the PostgreSQL web site, http://www.PostgreSQL.org.
-A dash (-) marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 7.3 release.
+A dash (-) marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 7.4 release.
Bracketed items "[]" have more detailed.
o allow replication over unreliable or non-persistent links
o http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pgreplication/projdisplay.php
* Point-in-time data recovery using backup and write-ahead log
+* Create native Win32 port [win32]
Reporting
number, not just messages (Peter E)
* Add error codes (Peter E)
* Make error messages more consistent [error]
-* -Change DEBUG startup tag to LOG (Bruce)
* Show location of syntax error in query [yacc]
-* -Add getpid() function to backend
-* -Allow logging of query durations
-
-
-Permissions
-===========
-
-* -Improve control over user privileges, including table creation
-* -Allow user/group names to be specified directly in pg_hba.conf (Bruce)
-* -Add PGPASSWORDFILE environment variable or ~/.pgpass to store
- user/host/password combinations
-* -Allow permissions for functions (Peter E)
-* -Allow object creation to be disabled for specific users
Administration
==============
* Incremental backups
-* -Make it easier to create a database owned by someone who can't createdb,
- perhaps CREATE DATABASE dbname WITH OWNER = "user" (Gavin)
-* -Make equals sign optional in CREATE DATABASE WITH param = 'val'
* Remove unreferenced table files and temp tables during database vacuum
or postmaster startup (Bruce)
* Remove behavior of postmaster -o after making postmaster/postgres
flags unique
-* -Prevent SIGHUP and 'pg_ctl reload' from changing command line
- specified parameters to postgresql.conf defaults (Peter E)
* Allow easy display of usernames in a group
* Allow configuration files to be specified in a different directory
-* -Reserve last few process slots for super-user if max_connections reached
-* -Add GUC parameter to print queries that generate errors
+* Add start time to pg_stat_activity
+* Allow limits on per-db/user connections
+* Have standalone backend read postgresql.conf
+
Data Types
==========
-* -Add domain capability (Rod Taylor)
* Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types
* Remove Money type, add money formatting for decimal type
-* -SELECT cash_out(2) crashes because of opaque
-* -Declare typein/out functions in pg_proc with a special "C string" data type
-* -Functions returning sets do not totally work
* Change factorial to return a numeric
* Change NUMERIC data type to use base 10,000 internally
* Change NUMERIC to enforce the maximum precision, and increase it
* Add function to return compressed length of TOAST data values (Tom)
-* -Add GUC parameter for DATESTYLE
* Allow INET subnet tests using non-constants
-* -Allow bytea to handle LIKE with non-TEXT patterns
-* to_char(0,'FM999.99') returns a period, to_char(1,'FM999.99') does not
+* Add now("transaction|statement|clock") functionality
+* -Add GUC variables to control floating number output digits (Pedro Ferreira)
+* Have sequence dependency track use of DEFAULT sequences, seqname.nextval
* CONVERSION
- o -Store binary-compatible type information in the system
o Allow better handling of numeric constants, type conversion
[typeconv]
* ARRAYS
o Allow nulls in arrays
o Allow arrays to be ORDER'ed
- o -Ensure we have array-eq operators for every built-in array type
o Support construction of array result values in expressions
* BINARY DATA
* Make octet_length_client the same as octet_length() (?)
* Prevent mismatch of frontend/backend encodings from converting bytea
data from being interpreted as encoded strings
+* Remove Cyrillic recode support
+
Views / Rules
=============
* Have views on temporary tables exist in the temporary namespace
* Move psql backslash information into views
* Allow RULE recompilation
-* -Remove brackets as multi-statement rule grouping, must use parens (Bruce)
-* Prevent aggregates from being used in rule WHERE clauses
Indexes
* UNIQUE INDEX on base column not honored on inserts from inherited table
INSERT INTO inherit_table (unique_index_col) VALUES (dup) should fail
[inheritance]
-* -Allow UPDATE/DELETE on inherited table
* Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes
* Add btree index support for reltime, tinterval, regproc
* Add rtree index support for line, lseg, path, point
* Use index to restrict rows returned by multi-key index when used with
non-consecutive keys or OR clauses, so fewer heap accesses
* Be smarter about insertion of already-ordered data into btree index
-* -Add deleted bit to index tuples to reduce heap access
* Prevent index uniqueness checks when UPDATE does not modifying column
* Use bitmaps to fetch heap pages in sequential order [performance]
* Use bitmaps to combine existing indexes [performance]
* Allow SELECT * FROM tab WHERE int2col = 4 to use int2col index, int8,
float4, numeric/decimal too [optimizer]
* Add FILLFACTOR to btree index creation
-* Improve concurrency in GIST
-* Improve concurrency of hash indexes (Neil Conway)
-* -Test hash index performance and discourage usage
+* Add concurrency to GIST
+* Improve concurrency of hash indexes (Neil)
Commands
========
-* -Add SIMILAR TO to allow character classes, 'pg_[a-c]%'
* Add BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC/SYMMETRIC (Christopher)
-* -Remove LIMIT #,# and force use LIMIT and OFFSET clauses in 7.3 (Bruce)
* Allow LIMIT/OFFSET to use expressions
-* -Disallow TRUNCATE on tables that are involved in referential constraints
-* -Add OR REPLACE clauses to non-FUNCTION object creation
* CREATE TABLE AS can not determine column lengths from expressions [atttypmod]
* Allow UPDATE to handle complex aggregates [update]
-* -Prevent create/drop scripts from allowing extra args (Bruce)
* Allow command blocks to ignore certain types of errors
* Allow backslash handling in quoted strings to be disabled for portability
* Return proper effected tuple count from complex commands [return]
* Allow DELETE to handle table aliases for self-joins [delete]
* Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT
* Allow REINDEX to rebuild all indexes, remove /contrib/reindex
+* Make a transaction-safe TRUNCATE
+* Fix SELECT ... INTO and CREATE TABLE AS to have appopriate OID column
+* Add ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS options to GROUP BY
+
* ALTER
o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN does not honor DEFAULT and non-CHECK CONSTRAINT
- o -Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN feature
- o -Add ALTER TABLE DROP non-CHECK CONSTRAINT
- o -ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY (Tom)
- o -ALTER TABLE ADD UNIQUE (Tom)
- o -ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN SET/DROP NOT NULL (Christopher)
o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN column DEFAULT should fill existing
rows with DEFAULT value
o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN column SERIAL doesn't create sequence because
of the item above
- o -Have ALTER TABLE OWNER change all dependant objects like indexes
o Add ALTER TABLE tab SET WITHOUT OIDS
+ * Add ALTER SEQUENCE to modify min/max/increment/cache/cycle values
* CLUSTER
- o -Cluster all tables at once using pg_index.indisclustered set during
- previous CLUSTER
- o -Prevent loss of indexes, permissions, inheritance
o Automatically maintain clustering on a table
o Allow CLUSTER to cluster all tables, remove clusterdb
* COPY
- o -Allow specification of column names
o Allow dump/load of CSV format
- o -Change syntax to WITH DELIMITER, (keep old syntax around?)
o Allow COPY to report error lines and continue; optionally
allow error codes to be specified; requires savepoints or can
not be run in a multi-statement transaction
- o -Generate failure on short COPY lines rather than pad NULLs
+ o Allow copy to understand \x as hex
* CURSOR
o Allow BINARY option to SELECT, just like DECLARE
- o MOVE 0 should not move to end of cursor
+ o -MOVE 0 should not move to end of cursor (Bruce)
o Allow UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF cursor using per-cursor tid
stored in the backend
o Prevent DROP of table being referenced by our own open cursor
* INSERT
o Allow INSERT/UPDATE of system-generated oid value for a row
o Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)
- o -Allow INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (a, b, c, DEFAULT, x, y, z, ...)
- o -Disallow missing columns in INSERT ... (col) VALUES, per ANSI
o Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col; handle
RULE cases (Philip)
* SHOW/SET
- o -Add command to display locks
- o -Add SET or BEGIN timeout parameter to cancel query
- o Add SET REAL_FORMAT and SET DOUBLE_PRECISION_FORMAT using printf args
- o -Remove SET KSQO option now that OR processing is improved (Bruce)
o Add SET PERFORMANCE_TIPS option to suggest INDEX, VACUUM, VACUUM
ANALYZE, and CLUSTER
- o Add SHOW command to see locale
- o -Allow SHOW to output as a query result, like EXPLAIN
- o -Abort all SET changes made in an aborted transaction
o Add SET SCHEMA
+ o Allow EXPLAIN EXECUTE to see prepared plans
+ o Allow SHOW of non-modifiable variables, like pg_controldata
+ o Add GUC parameter to control the maximum number of rewrite cycles
* SERVER-SIDE LANGUAGES
o Allow PL/PgSQL's RAISE function to take expressions
- o -Fix PL/PgSQL to handle quoted mixed-case identifiers
o Change PL/PgSQL to use palloc() instead of malloc()
o Add untrusted version of plpython
o Allow Java server-side programming, http://pljava.sourceforge.net
o Allow function parameters to be passed by name,
get_employee_salary(emp_id => 12345, tax_year => 2001)
o Add PL/PgSQL packages
- o Allow array declarations and other data types in PL/PgSQl DECLARE
+ o Allow array declarations and other data types in PL/PgSQL DECLARE
o Add PL/PgSQL PROCEDURES that can return multiple values
o Add table function support to pltcl, plperl, plpython
+ o Make PL/PgSQL %TYPE schema-aware
Clients
=======
-* -Have pg_dump use LEFT OUTER JOIN in multi-table SELECTs
- or multiple SELECTS to avoid bad system catalog entries
-* -Have pg_dump -C dump database location and encoding information
-* -Allow psql \d to show foreign keys
-* -Allow psql \d to show temporary table structure (Tom)
* Allow psql to show transaction status if backend protocol changes made
* Add XML interface: psql, pg_dump, COPY, separate server (?)
-* -Have pg_dump use ADD PRIMARY KEY after COPY, for performance (Neil Conway)
+* -Add schema, cast, and conversion backslash commands to psql (Christopher)
+* Allow pg_dump to dump a specific schema
+* Allow psql to do table completion for SELECT * FROM schema_part and
+ table completion for SELECT * FROM schema_name.
* JDBC
o Comprehensive test suite. This may be available already.
- o -Updateable resultSet
o JDBC-standard BLOB support
o Error Codes (pending backend implementation)
o Support both 'make' and 'ant'
o Fix LargeObject API to handle OIDs as unsigned ints
- o -Implement cancel() method on Statement
o Use cursors implicitly to avoid large results (see setCursorName())
- o -Add support for CallableStatements
o Add LISTEN/NOTIFY support to the JDBC driver (Barry)
- o -Compile under jdk 1.4
* ECPG
o Implement set descriptor, using descriptor
o Add SQLSTATE
o fix handling of DB attributes that are arrays
+* Python
+ o Allow users to register their own types with _pg
+ o Allow SELECT to return a dictionary of dictionaries
+ o Allow COPY BINARY FROM
+
Referential Integrity
=====================
* Add MATCH PARTIAL referential integrity [foreign]
* Add deferred trigger queue file (Jan)
-* -Allow oid to act as a foreign key
* Implement dirty reads and use them in RI triggers
-* Make triggers refer to columns by number, not name
* Enforce referential integrity for system tables
-* -Allow user to control trigger firing order (Tom)
-* -Add ALTER TRIGGER ... RENAME
* Change foreign key constraint for array -> element to mean element
in array
-* -Fix foreign key constraints to not error on intermediate db states (Stephan)
* Allow DEFERRABLE UNIQUE constraints
* Allow triggers to be disabled [trigger]
+* -Support statement-level triggers (Neil)
+* Support triggers on columns (Neil)
Dependency Checking
===================
-* -Add pg_depend table for dependency recording; use sysrelid, oid,
- depend_sysrelid, depend_oid, name
-* -Auto-destroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL; perhaps a separate
- SERIAL type
-* -Prevent column dropping if column is used by foreign key
-* -Propagate column or table renaming to foreign key constraints
-* -Automatically drop constraints/functions when object is dropped
-* -Make foreign key constraints clearer in dump file
-* -Make other constraints clearer in dump file
-* -Make foreign keys easier to identify
* Flush cached query plans when their underlying catalog data changes
* Use dependency information to dump data in proper order
Transactions
============
-* -Allow autocommit so always in a transaction block
* Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager
-* Allow savepoints / nested transactions [transactions]
+* Allow savepoints / nested transactions [transactions] (Bruce)
Exotic Features
===============
-* Add sql3 recursive unions
+* Add SQL99 WITH clause to SELECT (Tom, Fernando)
+* Add SQL99 WITH RECURSIVE to SELECT (Tom, Fernando)
* Add the concept of dataspaces/tablespaces [tablespaces]
-* -Add SQL92 schemas (Tom)
* Allow queries across multiple databases [crossdb]
* Add pre-parsing phase that converts non-ANSI features to supported features
* Allow plug-in modules to emulate features from other databases
Cache
=====
-* -Cache most recent query plan(s) (Neil) [prepare]
* Shared catalog cache, reduce lseek()'s by caching table size in shared area
* Add free-behind capability for large sequential scans (Bruce)
* Allow binding query args over FE/BE protocol
* Improve speed with indexes (perhaps recreate index instead) [vacuum]
* Reduce lock time by moving tuples with read lock, then write
lock and truncate table [vacuum]
-* Provide automatic running of vacuum in the background (Tom)
+* Provide automatic running of vacuum in the background (Tom) [vacuum]
* Allow free space map to be auto-sized or warn when it is too small
+
Locking
=======
* Do listen() in postmaster and accept() in pre-forked backend
* Have pre-forked backend pre-connect to last requested database or pass
file descriptor to backend pre-forked for matching database
-* -Cache system catalog information in per-database files (Tom)
Write-Ahead Log
partial page writes [wal]
* Turn off after-change writes if fsync is disabled (?)
* Add WAL index reliability improvement to non-btree indexes
-* -Reorder postgresql.conf WAL items in order of importance (Bruce)
-* -Remove wal_files postgresql.conf option because WAL files are now recycled
* Find proper defaults for postgresql.conf WAL entries
* Add checkpoint_min_warning postgresql.conf option to warn about checkpoints
that are too frequent
* Allow xlog directory location to be specified during initdb, perhaps
using symlinks
+* Allow pg_xlog to be moved without symlinks
Optimizer / Executor
* Improve Subplan list handling
* Allow Subplans to use efficient joins(hash, merge) with upper variable
-* -Improve dynamic memory allocation by introducing tuple-context memory
- allocation (Tom)
-* Add hash for evaluating GROUP BY aggregates
-* -Nested FULL OUTER JOINs don't work (Tom)
+* -Add hash for evaluating GROUP BY aggregates (Tom)
* Allow merge and hash joins on expressions not just simple variables (Tom)
-* -Add new pg_proc cachable settings to specify whether function can be
- evaluated only once or once per query
-* -Change FIXED_CHAR_SEL to 0.20 from 0.04 to give better selectivity (Bruce)
* Make IN/NOT IN have similar performance to EXISTS/NOT EXISTS [exists]
* Missing optimizer selectivities for date, r-tree, etc. [optimizer]
* Allow ORDER BY ... LIMIT to select top values without sort or index
using a sequential scan for highest/lowest values (Oleg)
-* Inline simple SQL functions to avoid overhead (Tom)
-* Precompile SQL functions to avoid overhead (Neil Conway)
+* -Inline simple SQL functions to avoid overhead (Tom)
+* Precompile SQL functions to avoid overhead (Neil)
* Add utility to compute accurate random_page_cost value
* Improve ability to display optimizer analysis using OPTIMIZER_DEBUG
* Use CHECK constraints to improve optimizer decisions
+* Check GUC geqo_threshold to see if it is still accurate
+* Allow sorting, temp files, temp tables to use multiple work directories
Miscellaneous
when it is available
* Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory or to write WAL files (?) [mmap]
* Improve caching of attribute offsets when NULLs exist in the row
-* -Add Intimate Shared Memory(ISM) for Solaris
-* Add documentation to lock shared memory into RAM for each OS, if possible
-* -Use faster flex flags for performance improvement (Peter E)
-* -Add BSD-licensed qsort() for Solaris
+
+* Wire Protocol Changes
+ o Show transaction status in psql
+ o Allow binding of query parameters, support for prepared queries
+ o Add optional textual message to NOTIFY
+ o Remove hard-coded limits on user/db/password names
+ o Remove unused elements of startup packet (unused, tty, passlength)
+ o Fix COPY/fastpath protocol?
+ o Replication support?
+ o Error codes
+ o Dynamic character set handling
+ o Special passing of binary values in platform-neutral format (bytea?)
+ o ecpg improvements?
+ o Add decoded type, length, precision
+ o Compression?
Source Code
===========
* Add use of 'const' for variables in source tree
-* -Fix problems with libpq non-blocking/async code
-* -Make sure all block numbers are unsigned to increase maximum table size
-* -Merge LockMethodCtl and LockMethodTable into one shared structure (Bruce)
-* -HOLDER/HOLDERTAB rename to PROCLOCK/PROCLOCKTAG (Bruce)
-* -Remove LockMethodTable.prio field, not used (Bruce)
* Rename some /contrib modules from pg* to pg_*
* Move some things from /contrib into main tree
* Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align
* Move platform-specific ps status display info from ps_status.c to ports
-* -Make one version of simple_prompt() in code (Bruce, Tom)
-* -Compile in syslog functionaility by default (Tatsuo)
* Modify regression tests to prevent failures do to minor numeric rounding
-* Add OpenBSD's getpeereid() call for local socket authentication (Bruce)
+* -Add OpenBSD's getpeereid() call for local socket authentication
* Improve access-permissions check on data directory in Cygwin (Tom)
-* -Report failure to find readline or zlib at end of configure run
* Add --port flag to regression tests
-* -Increase identifier length (NAMEDATALEN) if small performance hit,
-* -Increase maximum number of function parameters if little wasted space
* Add documentation for perl, including mention of DBI/DBD perl location
* Add optional CRC checksum to heap and index pages
* Change representation of whole-tuple parameters to functions
* Better document ability to build only certain interfaces (Marc)
* Remove or relicense modules that are not under the BSD license, if possible
* Remove memory/file descriptor freeing befor elog(ERROR) (Bruce)
-* Create native Win32 port [win32]
-* Fix glibc's mktime() to handle pre-1970's dates
-
+* Acquire lock on a relation before building a relcache entry for it
+* Research interaction of setitimer() and sleep() used by statement_timeout
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
* Barry is Barry Lind <barry@xythos.com>
* Billy is Billy G. Allie <Bill.Allie@mug.org>
-* Bruce is Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
-* Christopher is Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>
-* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net>
+* Bruce is Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> of Software Research Assoc.
+* Christopher is Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> of
+ Family Health Network
+* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> of The Cain Gang Ltd.
* Dave is Dave Cramer <dave@fastcrypt.com>
* Edmund is Edmund Mergl <E.Mergl@bawue.de>
-* Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au>
+* Fernando Nasser <fnasser@redhat.com> of Red Hat
+* Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au> of Alcove Systems Engineering
* Hiroshi is Hiroshi Inoue <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>
* Karel is Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>
-* Jan is Jan Wieck <wieck@sapserv.debis.de>
-* Liam is Liam Stewart <liams@redhat.com>
-* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>
+* Jan is Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com> of PeerDirect Corp.
+* Liam is Liam Stewart <liams@redhat.com> of Red Hat
+* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> of PostgreSQL, Inc.
* Mark is Mark Hollomon <mhh@mindspring.com>
-* Marko is Marko Kreen <marko@l-t.ee>
-* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org>
-* Neil is Neil Conway <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>
+* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org> of Credativ
+* Neil is Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
* Oleg is Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>
-* Peter M is Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>
+* Peter M is Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk> of Retep Software
* Peter E is Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
-* Philip is Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
+* Philip is Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> of Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.
* Rod is Rod Taylor <rbt@zort.ca>
* Ross is Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
-* Ryan is Ryan Bradetich <rbrad@hpb50023.boi.hp.com>
* Stephan is Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone23.bigpanda.com>
-* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp>
-* Thomas is Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>
-* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
-* TomH is Tom I Helbekkmo <tih@Hamartun.Priv.no>
-* Vadim is Vadim B. Mikheev <vadim4o@email.com>
+* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp> of Software Research Assoc.
+* Thomas is Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org> of Jet Propulsion Labratory
+* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> of Red Hat
+* Vadim is Vadim B. Mikheev <vadim4o@email.com> of Sector Data
projects / postgresql / blobdiff