--- /dev/null
+<!-- doc/src/sgml/release-9.4.sgml -->
+<!-- See header comment in release.sgml about typical markup -->
+
+ <sect1 id="release-9-4">
+ <title>Release 9.4</title>
+
+ <note>
+ <title>Release Date</title>
+ <simpara>2014-??-??</simpara>
+ <simpara>Current as of 2014-05-03</simpara>
+ </note>
+
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Overview</title>
+
+ <para>
+ Major enhancements in <productname>PostgreSQL</> 9.4 include:
+ </para>
+
+ <!-- This list duplicates items below, but without authors or details-->
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <para>
+ The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.
+ </para>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+ <sect2>
+
+ <title>Migration to Version 9.4</title>
+
+ <para>
+ A dump/restore using <link
+ linkend="APP-PG-DUMPALL"><application>pg_dumpall</></link>, or use
+ of <link linkend="pgupgrade"><application>pg_upgrade</></link>, is
+ required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Version 9.4 contains a number of changes that may affect compatibility
+ with previous releases. Observe the following incompatibilities:
+ </para>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Cause consecutive whitespace in to_timestamp() and to_date() format strings to consume a corresponding number of characters in the input
+ string (whitespace or not), then conditionally additional adjacent whitespace if not in FX mode (Jeevan Chalke)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously consecutive whitespace characters in a non-FX format string behaved like a single whitespace character and consumed all
+ adjacent whitespace in the input string. For example, previously format string space-space-space would consume only the first space in ' 12', while it will not consume all three characters.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Tighten checks for multi-dimensional array input (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously an input array string that started with a single-element array dimension could later contain multi-dimensional
+ segments.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Change empty arrays returned by intarray to be zero-dimensional arrays (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously empty arrays were returned as one-dimensional empty arrays whose text representation looks the same as
+ zero-dimensional arrays. intarray's behavior in this area now matches the built-in array operators.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ NULL VARIADIC function arguments are now disallowed (Pavel Stehule)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ NULL VARIADIC arguments must be cast to an array data type.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ SHOW TIME ZONE now outputs constant time zone offsets in POSIX-style zone format (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously it was returned in INTERVAL format. The new format can be passed to SET TIME ZONE.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Rename EXPLAIN ANALYZE's "total runtime" output to "execution time" (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This was required now that planning time is also reported.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Fix ts_rank_cd() to ignore stripped lexemes (Alex Hill)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously, stripped lexemes got a default location and could be considered if mixed with non-stripped lexemes.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Prevent CHECK constraints from referencing system columns, except tableoid (Amit Kapila)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Restoring such check constraints will lead to restore errors.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove system column pg_class.reltoastidxid (Michael Paquier)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Instead use normal index access methods.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove support for native krb5 authentication (Magnus Hagander)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The proper way to use Kerberos authentication is with GSSAPI.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have libpq's PQconnectdbParams() and PQpingParams functions accept "" as default (Adrian Vondendriesch)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously, these functions treated "" option values as defaults only in some cases.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove system column pg_rewrite.ev_attr (Kevin Grittner)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Per-column rules have not been supported since 7.3.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Pg_upgrade now uses -U to specify the user name (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously, -u was used to specify the user name. Also spell the long option as --username, again for consistency with other
+ tools.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Changes</title>
+
+ <para>
+ Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between
+ <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 9.4 and the previous major
+ release.
+ </para>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Server</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have VACUUM properly report dead but not removable rows to the statistics collector (Hari Babu)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously these were reported as live rows.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve SSL renegotiation handling (Álvaro Herrera)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ During immediate shutdown, send uncatchable termination signals to child processes that have not already shutdown (MauMau,
+ Álvaro Herrera)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This reduces the likelihood of orphaned child processes after postmaster shutdown.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve randomness of the database system identifier (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow background workers to be dynamically started and terminated (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ worker_spi_launch() in worker_spi shows an example if its use.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow dynamic allocation of shared memory segments (Robert Haas, Amit Kapila)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>Indexes</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve speed of multi-key GIN lookups (Alexander Korotkov, Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Reduce GIN index size (Alexander Korotkov, Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Indexes upgraded via pg_upgrade will work fine but will use the old larger GIN format; REINDEX will recreate the index in the new
+ format.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add GiST index support for INET and CIDR data types (Emre Hasegeli)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Such indexes improve subnet and supernet lookups and ordering comparisons.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>General Performance</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow multiple backends to simultaneously insert into WAL buffers (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This improves parallel write performance.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Conditionally write only the modified portion of updated rows to WAL (Amit Kapila)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve performance of WINDOW aggregate functions (David Rowley, Florian Pflug, Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve speed of aggregates which use NUMERICs (Hadi Moshayedi)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ These include sum(), avg(), stddev(), and variance().
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Freeze tuples when tables are written with CLUSTER or VACUUM FULL (Robert Haas, Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This avoids later freezing overhead.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve speed of COPY with DEFAULT nextval() columns (Simon Riggs)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve speed of accessing many sequence values (David Rowley)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow sorting and btree index builds to use over four gigabytes of memory (Noah Misch)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Reduce memory allocated by DO blocks (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have the optimizer be more aggressive in creating restrictions from mixed AND/OR clauses (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Use memory barriers to avoid some spinlock use (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>Monitoring</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Expose the estimation of number of changed tuples since last analyze (Mark Kirkwood)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This appears in pg_stat_all_tables.n_mod_since_analyze.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add pg_stat_archiver system view to report WAL archiver activity (Gabriele Bartolini)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add xid and xmin to system views pg_stat_activity and pg_stat_replication (Christian Kruse)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>SSL</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add support for SSL ECDH key exchange (Marko Kreen)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Such keys are faster and have improved security over previous options. New variable ssl_ecdh_curve controls the curve that is
+ used.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve the default ssl_ciphers ciphers (Marko Kreen)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow the server to specify the preferred SSL cipher order (Marko Kreen)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is controlled by the new configuration parameter ssl_prefer_server_ciphers.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have log_connections show SSL encryption information (Andreas Kunert)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>Server Settings</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add SQL-level command ALTER SYSTEM command to edit the postgresql.conf configuration file (Amit Kapila)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously postgresql.conf could only be edited at the file system level.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add huge_pages configuration parameter to attempt to use huge translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux (Christian Kruse,
+ Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This can improve performance on large memory systems.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Show PIDs of lock holders and waiters and improve relation
+ information in log_lock_waits log messages (Christian Kruse)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add parameter autovacuum_work_mem to control the amount of memory used by autovacuum workers (Peter Geoghegan)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add max_worker_processes to limit the number of background workers (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is helpful in configuring the standby server to have the required same number of worker processes as the primary.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add configuration parameter wal_log_hints to enable logging of hint bits (Sawada Masahiko)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Hint bits are not normally logged, except when checksums are enabled. This is useful for tools like pg_rewind.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow printf-style space padding to be specified in log_line_prefix (David Rowley)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add configuration variable data_checksums to report whether data page checksums are enabled (Bernd Helmle)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add superuser-only session_preload_libraries configuration parameter to load libraries at session start (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Such libraries are auto-LOAD'ed, unlike local_preload_libraries.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Reduce server logging level when loading shared libraries (Peter Geoghegan)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The previous level was LOG, which was too verbose for per-session libraries.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Auto-tune effective_cache size to be four-times shared buffers (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Increase work_mem and maintenance_work_mem defaults by four-times (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The new defaults are 4MB and 64MB respectively.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow terabyte units to be specified for configuration variable values (Simon Riggs)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have Windows ASCII-encoded databases and server process (e.g. postmaster) emit messages in the LC_CTYPE-defined language (Alexander Law,
+ Noah Misch)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously these messages were output using the Windows ANSI code page.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Replication and Recovery</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow recovery.conf parameter min_recovery_apply_delay to force delayed replication (Robert Haas, Fabrízio de Royes Mello, Simon Riggs)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is useful for delaying replaying of user errors on standby servers.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add recovery_target='immediate' option to replay WAL stop recovery when a consistent state is reached, i.e. pg_stop_backup() (MauMau,
+ Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve recovery target processing (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The timestamp reported by pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp() now shows information about committed records, not commits being
+ replayed. Recovering to restore points now replay the restore point, rather than stop just before the restore point.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Use the last specified recovery_target if multiple are specified (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ pg_switch_xlog() now clears the trailing unused space in the WAL file (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This improves the compression ratio for WAL files.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add replication slots to report the WAL activity on streaming standbys (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Description? Logical only?
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve return codes from external recovery commands (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Write WAL records of running transactions every 15 seconds ? (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>Logical Change-Set Encoding</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add new "logical" wal_level to enable logical change-set encoding in WAL (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This interacts with REPLICA IDENTITY.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add tool pg_recvlogical to receive data logical decoding data (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add contrib/test_decoding module to illustrate logical decoding at the SQL level (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow logical decoding via the walsender interface ? (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add table-level parameter REPLICA IDENTITY to control logical replication (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add relation option user_catalog_table to identify user-created tables involved in logical change-set encoding (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Queries</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add ROWS FROM syntax to allow horizontal concatenation of FROM-clause set-returning functions (Andrew Gierth)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add WITH ORDINALITY which numbers rows returned from FROM-clause functions (Andrew Gierth, David Fetter)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is particularly useful for functions like UNNEST.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow SELECT with an empty target list (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This was added for consistency, and so querying tables with no columns would not produce an error.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Utility Commands</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add DISCARD SEQUENCES command to discard cached sequence information (Fabrízio de Royes Mello, Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ DISCARD ALL will now also discard such information.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow quoted strings matching the null string to be converted
+ to NULL in COPY FROM CVS mode (Ian Barwick, Michael Paquier)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously only unquoted matching strings would be imported as
+ NULLs.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Issue warnings for SET outside of a transaction block, as they have no effect (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The cases are SET LOCAL/CONSTRAINTS/TRANSACTION and ABORT.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>EXPLAIN</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have EXPLAIN ANALYZE output planning time (Andreas Karlsson)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have EXPLAIN print the grouping columns in Agg and Group nodes (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have EXPLAIN ANALYZE show bitmap heap scan exact/lossy block information (Etsuro Fujita)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>Views</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow materialized views to be refreshed without blocking reads (Kevin Grittner)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is done with REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW CONCURRENTLY.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow auto-updates on views where only some columns are auto-updateable (Dean Rasheed)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously the presence of a non-auto-updateable column prevented all columns from being auto-updated. Deletes are now supported
+ on suitable views even if no auto-updateable columns are present.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow control over whether INSERTs and UPDATEs can add rows to an auto-updateable view that would no longer appear in the view (Dean Rasheed)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is controlled with the new WITH CHECK OPTION.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow security barrier views automatically updateable (Dean Rasheed)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Object Manipulation</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow triggers on foreign tables (Ronan Dunklau)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Fix DROP IF EXISTS to more consistently not error for non-existent objects (Pavel Stehule, Dean Rasheed)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve the internal definition of system relations (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously, relations moved into the system catalog schema could not be modified.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow ALTER TABLESPACE options to be also set by CREATE TABLESPACE (Vik Fearing)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow CREATE AGGREGATE to supply the size of the aggregate's transition state data (Hadi Moshayedi)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><command>ALTER</></title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow moving groups of objects from one tablespace to another using ALTER TABLESPACE ... MOVE (Stephen Frost)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow the changing of foreign key constraint via ALTER TABLE ... ALTER CONSTRAINT (Simon Riggs)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Reduce lock levels of some ALTER TABLE commands (Simon Riggs, Noah Misch)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Specifically, VALIDATE CONSTRAINT, CLUSTER ON, SET WITHOUT CLUSTER, ALTER COLUMN SET STATISTICS, ALTER COLUMN
+ SET(attribute_option), ALTER COLUMN RESET(attribute_option).
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Data Types</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Fully-implement the line data type (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The line segment data type (LSEG) has always been supported.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add PG_LSN data type to represent a WAL log sequence number (LSN) (Robert Haas, Michael Paquier)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow single-point POLYGONs to be converted to circles (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow 5+ digit years for non-ISO timestamp/date strings, where appropriate (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add checks for overflow/underflow of INTERVAL values (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><link linkend="datatype-json"><type>JSON</></link></title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add structured (non-text) data type (jsonb) for storing JSON data (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Peter Geoghegan and Andrew Dunstan)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This data type allows faster indexing and access to json keys/value pairs.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add new JSON functions to allow for the construction of arbitrarily complex json trees (Andrew Dunstan, Laurence Rowe)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ New functions include json_array_elements_text(), json_build_array(), json_object(), json_object_agg(), json_to_record(),
+ json_to_recordset().
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add json_typeof() to return the data type of a JSON value (Andrew Tipton)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Functions</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add pg_sleep_for(interval) and pg_sleep_until(timestamp) to specify sophisticated delays (Vik Fearing, Julien Rouhaud)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ pg_sleep() only supports delays specified in seconds.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add cardinality() function for arrays (Marko Tiikkaja)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This returns the total number of elements in the array, or zero for an array with no elements.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add SQL functions to allow large object reads/writes at arbitrary offsets (Pavel Stehule)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow UNNEST() to take multiple arguments, which are individually unnested then horizontally concatenated (Andrew Gierth)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add functions to construct times, dates, timestamps, timestamptzs, and intervals from individual values, rather than strings (Pavel Stehule)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The functions being with "make_", e.g. make_date.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have to_char(TZ) return the proper value for constant time zone offsets (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously, to_char(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 'TZ') returned NULL if the TIME ZONE was set to a constant like '-4'.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add timezone offset output option 'OF' to to_char() (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve the random seed used for random() (Honza Horak)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>System Information Functions</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add functions for error-free pg_class, pg_proc, pg_type, and pg_operator lookups (Yugo Nagata, Nozomi Anzai, Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ For example, to_regclass() does error-free lookups of pg_class, and returns NULL for lookup failures.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add functions pg_filenode_relation() and pg_relation_filepath() to do relation/relfilenode conversions (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ These use a new pg_class index to speed lookups.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add information_schema column parameters.parameter_default (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have information_schema.schemata show all accessible schema (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously it only showed _owned_ schemas.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>Aggregates</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add aggregates percentile_cont(), percentile_disc(), rank(), dense_rank(), percent_rank(), cume_dist(), and mode() (Atri Sharma, Andrew
+ Gierth)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add control over which values are passed into
+ aggregate functions using the FILTER clause (David Fetter)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Support ordered-set (WITHIN GROUP) aggregates (Atri Sharma, Andrew Gierth, Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This allows aggregates that require sorted input.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow polymorphic aggregates to have non-polymorphic state data types ? (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow VARIADIC aggregate functions (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Server-Side Languages</title>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><link linkend="plpgsql">PL/pgSQL</link> Server-Side Language</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add event trigger support to PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Dimitri Fontaine)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add ability to store the PL/PgSQL call stack into a variable using PG_CONTEXT (Pavel Stehule, Stephen Frost)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add option print_strict_params to output parameters passed to
+ queries generating STRICT errors (Marko Tiikkaja)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add option to enable additional PL/pgSQL errors and warnings (Marko Tiikkaja, Petr Jelinek)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Currently only shadowed variable errors/warnings are available.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><link linkend="plpython">PL/Python</link> Server-Side Language</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Handle domains over arrays like plain arrays in PL/python (Rodolfo Campero)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously they were treated as strings.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Convert NUMERICs to "decimal" values in PL/Python (Szymon Guz, Ronan Dunklau)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously these were converted to "floats".
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title><link linkend="libpq"><application>libpq</></link></title>
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add libpq function PQhostaddr() to return the server's IP address (Fujii Masao)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Make libpq's PQconndefaults() ignore invalid service files (Steve Singer, Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously it returned NULL.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow libpq to support TLS versions beyond TLSv1 (Marko Kreen)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Document that libpq's PQclientEncoding() returns -1 for an encoding lookup failure (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Client Applications</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add createuser -g to specify role membership (Chistopher Browne)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow vacuumdb --analyze-in-stages to analyze in stages of increasing granularity (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This allows minimal statistics to be created quickly.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow pg_xlogdump to report a live log stream with --follow (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have pg_resetxlog -n output current and potentially changed values (Rajeev Rastogi)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow sizeof() in ecpg C array definitions (Michael Meskes)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have ecpg properly handle nesting requirements in C and SQL mode for C-style comments (Michael Meskes)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have pg_ctl return '4' for an inaccessible data directory specification (Amit Kapila, Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This more closely matches the Linux Standard Base Core Specification.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ On Windows interpret pg_ctl -D relative directories relative to pg_ctl's current directory (Kumar Rajeev Rastogi)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL"><application>psql</></link></title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow field wrapping to psql's "extended" mode (Sergey Muraviov)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Suppress "No rows" in psql expanded mode when the footer is disabled (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow Control-C to abort psql hung at connection startup (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect5>
+ <title><link linkend="APP-PSQL-meta-commands">Backslash Commands</link></title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have psql \db+ show tablespace options (Magnus Hagander)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have psql \do+ display the functions which implement the operators (Marko Tiikkaja)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have psql \d+ output an OID line only if an oid column exists in a table (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously, the presence or absence of an oid column was always reported.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have \d display disabled system triggers (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously if you disabled all triggers, only user triggers would show as disabled.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Fix psql \copy to no longer require a space between 'stdin' and a semicolon (Etsuro Fujita)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Output the row count at the end of psql \copy just like COPY (Kumar Rajeev Rastogi)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Fix psql \conninfo to display the server's IP address for clients that connect using 'hostaddr' (Fujii Masao)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Previously \conninfo could not display the server's IP address in such cases.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Mention the SSL protocol version in psql's \conninfo (Marko Kreen)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add psql tab completion for \pset (Pavel Stehule)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow psql \pset with no arguments to show all settings (Gilles Darold)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ In psql, output the written history file name (\s) without adding an absolute path prefix (Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The previous output was inconsistent.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect5>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><link linkend="APP-PGDUMP"><application>pg_dump</></link></title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow pg_restore options -I, -P, -T and -n to be specified multiple times (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This allows multiple restore object to be specified.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add IF EXISTS clauses when removing old objects during dump and restore (Pavel Stehule)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This suppresses errors when removing old objects. The new --if-exists option to pg_dump, pg_dumpall, and pg_restore is only
+ available when --clean is also specified.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title>pg_basebackup</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add pg_basebackup option --xlogdir to specify the pg_xlog direction location (Haribabu Kommi)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow pg_basebackup to relocate tablespaces in the backup copy (Steeve Lennmark)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is particularly useful for using pg_basebackup on the same machine as the primary.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow network-streams base backups to be throttled (Antonin Houska)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This can be controlled with the pg_basebackup --max-rate parameter.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Source Code</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve the way tuples are frozen, to preserve forensic information ((Robert Haas, Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Code that inspects tuple flag bits will need to be modified
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Auto-resize the catalog cache (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This reduces memory consumption for backends accessing only a few tables, and improves performance for backend accessing many
+ tables.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ No longer require function prototypes for function marked with the PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1 macro (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This eliminates needless boilerplate prototypes whose lack generates compiler warnings.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove SnapshotNow and HeapTupleSatisfiesNow (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ All existing uses have been switched to more appropriate snapshot types.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Use an MVCC snapshot (rather than SnapshotNow) for catalog scans (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add API for memory allocations over four gigabytes (Noah Misch)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add psprintf() to simplify memory allocation during string composition (Peter Eisentraut, Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Use printf() modifier "z" to specify size_t values (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Change API of appendStringInfoVA() to better use vsnprintf() (David Rowley, Tom Lane)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow new types of external toast datums to be created (Andres Freund)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add single-reader, single-writer, lightweight shared message queue (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Memory barrier changes?
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve spinlock speed on x86_64 CPUs (test on i386?) (Heikki Linnakangas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove spinlock support for unsupported platforms SINIX, Sun3, and NS32K (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Reduce the number of semaphores required by --disable-spinlocks (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Rewrite duplicate_oids Unix hell script in Perl (Andrew Dunstan)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add Test Anything Protocol (TAP) tests for client programs (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add make targets check-tests and installcheck-tests which allow per-test specification (Andrew Dunstan)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove maintainer-check makefile rule (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Its functionality is now done by the default build rules.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve support for VPATH builds of PGXS modules (Cédric Villemain, Andrew Dunstan)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Upgrade to Autoconf 2.69 (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add configure flag that appends custom text to the PG_VERSION string (Oskari Saarenmaa)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is useful for packagers building custom binaries.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve DocBook XML validity (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Various security and sanity fixes reported by the Coverity scanner (Stephen Frost)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve valgrind error reporting (Noah Misch)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve Emacs configuration file emacs.samples (Peter Eisentraut)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Also add .dir-locals.el to the top of the source tree.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow pgindent to be supplied a command-line list of typedefs (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ pgindent is also now smarter about blank lines around preprocessor conditionals.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Remove IRIX port (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Avoid most uses of dlltool in Cygwin and Mingw builds (Marco Atzeri, Hiroshi Inoue)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ <sect3>
+ <title>Additional Modules</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add pg_prewarm to preload relation data into the shared buffer cache (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This is useful at server start to produce more consistent performance.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add UUID random number generator gen_random_uuid() to pgcrypto (Oskari Saarenmaa)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This allows the creation of version 4 UUIDs without requiring the installation of uuid-ossp.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add logging of trigger execution to auto_explain (Horiguchi Kyotaro)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow reporting of the pg_stat_statements's internal query hash identifier (Daniel Farina, Sameer Thakur, Peter Geoghegan)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have pg_stat_statements use a flat file for query text storage, allowing higher limits (Peter Geoghegan)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Also add the ability to retrieve all pg_stat_statements information except the query text. This allows programs to reuse the query
+ text already retrieved by referencing queryid.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Fix pgstattuple to not report rows from uncommitted transactions as dead (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Have pgstattuple functions use regclass-type arguments (Satoshi Nagayasu)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ While text-type arguments are still supported, they will be removed in a later major release.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve consistency of pgrowlocks output to honor snapshot rules more consistently (Robert Haas)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Improve indexing of pg_trgm values to discourage indexing whitespace (Alexander Korotkov)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Store cube data more compactly (Stas Kelvich)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Existing data must be dumped/restored to use the new format. The old format can still be read.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Reduce vacuumlo client-side memory usage by using a cursor (Andrew Dunstan)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Dramatically reduce memory consumption in pg_upgrade (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Pass pg_upgrade user names (-U) to analyze scripts (Bruce Momjian)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <sect4>
+ <title><link linkend="pgbench"><application>pgbench</></link></title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Allow pgbench to process script files of any line length (Sawada Masahiko)
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The previous line limit was BUFSIZ.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add pg_bench option (--rate) to control the transaction rate (Fabien Coelho)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add --progress output option to pgbench (Fabien Coelho)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Add long options to pgbench (Fabien Coelho)
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect4>
+
+ </sect3>
+
+ </sect2>
+ </sect1>
projects / postgresql / commitdiff