-<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release-8.5.sgml,v 1.11 2009/12/19 00:05:27 rhaas Exp $ -->
+<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/release-8.5.sgml,v 1.12 2009/12/19 02:38:54 tgl Exp $ -->
<sect1 id="release-8-5">
<title>Release 8.5alpha3</title>
<sect2>
<title>Testing</title>
<para>
- The primary reason we release alphas is to get users to test new
+ The primary reason we release alphas is to get users to test new
features as early as possible. If you are interested in helping
- with organized testing, please see
- <ulink url="http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest">the
+ with organized testing, please see
+ <ulink url="http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest">the
testing information page</ulink>.
</para>
</sect2>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Performance and behavioral improvements in UPDATE,
- DELETE, and SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE queries with
- joins. Various corner-cases could result in duplicated output
+ DELETE, and SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE queries with joins.
+ Fix various corner cases that could have resulted in duplicated output
rows. Set-returning functions are now prohibited in the
target list of SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE. FOR UPDATE does not
propagate into a WITH query anymore.</emphasis>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- <emphasis>Fixed for SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE in conjuction with LIMIT.
+ <emphasis>Fix SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE in conjunction with LIMIT.
Previously, it could return fewer rows than the limit specified.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
</para>
<para>
<emphasis>Behavioral change: formerly, agg(DISTINCT x) dropped null values of
- x unconditionally. Now, it does so only if the agg transition
+ x unconditionally. Now, it does so only if the aggregate's transition
function is strict; otherwise nulls are treated as DISTINCT
normally would, i.e., you get one copy.</emphasis>
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
- <emphasis>Allow rewriting ALTER TABLE to skip WAL logging.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>Allow rewriting forms of ALTER TABLE to skip WAL
+ logging.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- <emphasis>Speed up information schema privilege views.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>Speed up INFORMATION_SCHEMA's privilege views.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
interruptions.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <emphasis>Error when a specified connection service is not found in
- pg_service.conf, instead of ignoring it.</emphasis>
- </para>
- </listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Add YAML to list of EXPLAIN formats.</emphasis>
<emphasis>Teach the regular expression functions to do case-insensitive
matching and locale-dependent character classification properly
when the database encoding is UTF8. This previously only worked
- correct for single-byte encodings and is still broken for other
+ correctly for single-byte encodings. It is still broken for other
multibyte encodings.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect3>
+ <sect3>
+ <title>libpq</title>
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <emphasis>Throw error when a specified connection service name is not
+ found in pg_service.conf, instead of ignoring it.</emphasis>
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Make libpq reject non-numeric and out-of-range port numbers with a
+ suitable error message.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </sect3>
<sect3>
<title>psql</title>
<itemizedlist>
go, ie, a place where a column value or parameter would be legal,
instead of the former behavior that would replace any textual match
including table names and column aliases (leading to syntax errors
- later on). PL/pgSQL variable names that match fully-reserved words
- will now need to be quoted. On the other hand, a number of
- PL/pgSQL-specific words were de-reserved.</emphasis>
+ later on).</emphasis>
</para>
<para>
- <emphasis>The variable resolution behavior is by default not backward
- compatible, but can be configured; see documentation.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>When a name could refer either to a PL/pgSQL variable or a
+ table column, PL/pgSQL formerly always assumed the variable was
+ meant, sometimes resulting in surprising behavior. Now, PL/pgSQL
+ can assume the variable is meant, or assume the table column is
+ meant, or throw an error in ambiguous cases. For safety the default
+ is to throw error. To configure this see <xref
+ linkend="plpgsql-var-subst">.</emphasis>
</para>
<para>
- <emphasis>Error reporting is much nicer and accurate.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>Error reporting is much nicer: it no longer shows edited
+ versions of statements that look significantly different from what
+ you wrote.</emphasis>
</para>
<para>
- <emphasis>The argument of WHERE CURRENT OF can be a PL/pgSQL cursor variable.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>Note that this change affects the set of keywords that are
+ reserved in PL/pgSQL (i.e., cannot be the name of a PL/pgSQL
+ variable). Now, all keywords shown as reserved in <xref
+ linkend="sql-keywords-appendix"> are reserved for PL/pgSQL purposes
+ as well. However, many PL/pgSQL-only keywords that were formerly
+ treated as reserved no longer are. As in regular SQL, you can
+ double-quote a variable's name if you want to use a name that
+ conflicts with a reserved keyword.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- <emphasis>Python 3 support in PL/Python; behaves more or less unchanged
- compared to Python 2, but the new language variant is called
- plpython3u.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>Add Python 3 support to PL/Python. It behaves more or less
+ unchanged compared to Python 2, but the new language variant is
+ called plpython3u.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
- Allow cursor commands MOVE FORWARD n, MOVE BACKWARD n,
+ Allow cursor commands MOVE FORWARD n, MOVE BACKWARD n,
MOVE FORWARD ALL, MOVE BACKWARD ALL in PL/pgSQL.
</para>
</listitem>
<emphasis>Add \shell and \setshell meta commands to pgbench.</emphasis>
</para>
<para>
- <emphasis>\shell command runs an external shell command. \setshell also does
- the same and sets the result to a variable.</emphasis>
+ <emphasis>\shell runs an external shell command. \setshell
+ does the same and assigns the result to a variable.</emphasis>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect3>
<sect3>
- <title>Development</title>
+ <title>ecpg</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Make ECPG more robust against applications freeing strings.
</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Make libpq reject non-numeric and out-of-range port numbers with a
- suitable error message.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Functions which conflict with C++ reserved words have been renamed,
- making backend header files now safe to use with C++ libraries.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Add man pages for SPI functions.
- </para>
- </listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
ECPG now includes a STRING datatype for Informix compatibility
<para>
Derived files that are shipped in the distribution used to be
built in the source directory even for out-of-tree
- builds. They are now also built in the build tree. This
+ builds. They are now built in the build tree. This
should be more convenient for certain developers' workflows.
</para>
</listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Translations were updated.
- </para>
- </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Functions which conflict with C++ reserved words have been renamed,
+ making backend header files now safe to use with C++ libraries.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add man pages for SPI functions.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Upgrade to Autoconf 2.63 (not relevant to users of distribution
projects / postgresql / commitdiff