We've accumulated quite a mix of instances of "an SQL" and "a SQL" in the
documents. It would be good to be a bit more consistent with these.
The most recent version of the SQL standard I looked at seems to prefer
"an SQL". That seems like a good lead to follow, so here we change all
instances of "a SQL" to become "an SQL". Most instances correctly use
"an SQL" already, so it also makes sense to use the dominant variation in
order to minimise churn.
Additionally, there were some other abbreviations that needed to be
adjusted. FSM, SSPI, SRF and a few others. Also fix some pronounceable,
abbreviations to use "a" instead of "an". For example, "a SASL" instead
of "an SASL".
Here I've only adjusted the documents and error messages. Many others
still exist in source code comments. Translator hint comments seem to be
the biggest culprit. It currently does not seem worth the churn to change
these.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvpML27UqFXnrYO1MJddsKVMQoiZisPvsAGhKE_tsKXquw%40mail.gmail.com
Previously tables declared WITH OIDS, including a significant fraction
of the catalog tables, stored the oid column not as a normal column,
but as part of the tuple header.
This special column was not shown by default, which was somewhat odd,
as it's often (consider e.g. pg_class.oid) one of the more important
parts of a row. Neither pg_dump nor COPY included the contents of the
oid column by default.
The fact that the oid column was not an ordinary column necessitated a
significant amount of special case code to support oid columns. That
already was painful for the existing, but upcoming work aiming to make
table storage pluggable, would have required expanding and duplicating
that "specialness" significantly.
WITH OIDS has been deprecated since 2005 (commit ff02d0a05280e0).
Remove it.
Removing includes:
- CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE syntax for declaring the table to be
WITH OIDS has been removed (WITH (oids[ = true]) will error out)
- pg_dump does not support dumping tables declared WITH OIDS and will
issue a warning when dumping one (and ignore the oid column).
- restoring an pg_dump archive with pg_restore will warn when
restoring a table with oid contents (and ignore the oid column)
- COPY will refuse to load binary dump that includes oids.
- pg_upgrade will error out when encountering tables declared WITH
OIDS, they have to be altered to remove the oid column first.
- Functionality to access the oid of the last inserted row (like
plpgsql's RESULT_OID, spi's SPI_lastoid, ...) has been removed.
The syntax for declaring a table WITHOUT OIDS (or WITH (oids = false)
for CREATE TABLE) is still supported. While that requires a bit of
support code, it seems unnecessary to break applications / dumps that
do not use oids, and are explicit about not using them.
The biggest user of WITH OID columns was postgres' catalog. This
commit changes all 'magic' oid columns to be columns that are normally
declared and stored. To reduce unnecessary query breakage all the
newly added columns are still named 'oid', even if a table's column
naming scheme would indicate 'reloid' or such. This obviously
requires adapting a lot code, mostly replacing oid access via
HeapTupleGetOid() with access to the underlying Form_pg_*->oid column.
The bootstrap process now assigns oids for all oid columns in
genbki.pl that do not have an explicit value (starting at the largest
oid previously used), only oids assigned later by oids will be above
FirstBootstrapObjectId. As the oid column now is a normal column the
special bootstrap syntax for oids has been removed.
Oids are not automatically assigned during insertion anymore, all
backend code explicitly assigns oids with GetNewOidWithIndex(). For
the rare case that insertions into the catalog via SQL are called for
the new pg_nextoid() function can be used (which only works on catalog
tables).
The fact that oid columns on system tables are now normal columns
means that they will be included in the set of columns expanded
by * (i.e. SELECT * FROM pg_class will now include the table's oid,
previously it did not). It'd not technically be hard to hide oid
column by default, but that'd mean confusing behavior would either
have to be carried forward forever, or it'd cause breakage down the
line.
While it's not unlikely that further adjustments are needed, the
scope/invasiveness of the patch makes it worthwhile to get merge this
now. It's painful to maintain externally, too complicated to commit
after the code code freeze, and a dependency of a number of other
patches.
Catversion bump, for obvious reasons.
Author: Andres Freund, with contributions by John Naylor
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20180930034810.ywp2c7awz7opzcfr@alap3.anarazel.de
Since procedures are now a different thing from functions, change the
CREATE TRIGGER and CREATE EVENT TRIGGER syntax to use FUNCTION in the
clause that specifies the function. PROCEDURE is still accepted for
compatibility.
pg_dump and ruleutils.c output is not changed yet, because that would
require a change in information_schema.sql and thus a catversion change.
Reported-by: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Reviewed-by: Jonathan S. Katz <jonathan.katz@excoventures.com>
Historically, the term procedure was used as a synonym for function in
Postgres/PostgreSQL. Now we have procedures as separate objects from
functions, so we need to clean up the documentation to not mix those
terms.
In particular, mentions of "trigger procedures" are changed to "trigger
functions", and access method "support procedures" are changed to
"support functions". (The latter already used FUNCTION in the SQL
syntax anyway.) Also, the terminology in the SPI chapter has been
cleaned up.
A few tests, examples, and code comments are also adjusted to be
consistent with documentation changes, but not everything.
Reported-by: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Reviewed-by: Jonathan S. Katz <jonathan.katz@excoventures.com>
In a top-level CALL, the values of INOUT arguments will be returned as a
result row. In PL/pgSQL, the values are assigned back to the input
arguments. In other languages, the same convention as for return a
record from a function is used. That does not require any code changes
in the PL implementations.
Reviewed-by: Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>
In each of the supplied procedural languages (PL/pgSQL, PL/Perl,
PL/Python, PL/Tcl), add language-specific commit and rollback
functions/commands to control transactions in procedures in that
language. Add similar underlying functions to SPI. Some additional
cleanup so that transaction commit or abort doesn't blow away data
structures still used by the procedure call. Add execution context
tracking to CALL and DO statements so that transaction control commands
can only be issued in top-level procedure and block calls, not function
calls or other procedure or block calls.
- SPI
Add a new function SPI_connect_ext() that is like SPI_connect() but
allows passing option flags. The only option flag right now is
SPI_OPT_NONATOMIC. A nonatomic SPI connection can execute transaction
control commands, otherwise it's not allowed. This is meant to be
passed down from CALL and DO statements which themselves know in which
context they are called. A nonatomic SPI connection uses different
memory management. A normal SPI connection allocates its memory in
TopTransactionContext. For nonatomic connections we use PortalContext
instead. As the comment in SPI_connect_ext() (previously SPI_connect())
indicates, one could potentially use PortalContext in all cases, but it
seems safest to leave the existing uses alone, because this stuff is
complicated enough already.
SPI also gets new functions SPI_start_transaction(), SPI_commit(), and
SPI_rollback(), which can be used by PLs to implement their transaction
control logic.
- portalmem.c
Some adjustments were made in the code that cleans up portals at
transaction abort. The portal code could already handle a command
*committing* a transaction and continuing (e.g., VACUUM), but it was not
quite prepared for a command *aborting* a transaction and continuing.
In AtAbort_Portals(), remove the code that marks an active portal as
failed. As the comment there already predicted, this doesn't work if
the running command wants to keep running after transaction abort. And
it's actually not necessary, because pquery.c is careful to run all
portal code in a PG_TRY block and explicitly runs MarkPortalFailed() if
there is an exception. So the code in AtAbort_Portals() is never used
anyway.
In AtAbort_Portals() and AtCleanup_Portals(), we need to be careful not
to clean up active portals too much. This mirrors similar code in
PreCommit_Portals().
- PL/Perl
Gets new functions spi_commit() and spi_rollback()
- PL/pgSQL
Gets new commands COMMIT and ROLLBACK.
Update the PL/SQL porting example in the documentation to reflect that
transactions are now possible in procedures.
- PL/Python
Gets new functions plpy.commit and plpy.rollback.
- PL/Tcl
Gets new commands commit and rollback.
Reviewed-by: Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>
This adds a new object type "procedure" that is similar to a function
but does not have a return type and is invoked by the new CALL statement
instead of SELECT or similar. This implementation is aligned with the
SQL standard and compatible with or similar to other SQL implementations.
This commit adds new commands CALL, CREATE/ALTER/DROP PROCEDURE, as well
as ALTER/DROP ROUTINE that can refer to either a function or a
procedure (or an aggregate function, as an extension to SQL). There is
also support for procedures in various utility commands such as COMMENT
and GRANT, as well as support in pg_dump and psql. Support for defining
procedures is available in all the languages supplied by the core
distribution.
While this commit is mainly syntax sugar around existing functionality,
future features will rely on having procedures as a separate object
type.
Reviewed-by: Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>
Since some preparation work had already been done, the only source
changes left were changing empty-element tags like <xref linkend="foo">
to <xref linkend="foo"/>, and changing the DOCTYPE.
The source files are still named *.sgml, but they are actually XML files
now. Renaming could be considered later.
In the build system, the intermediate step to convert from SGML to XML
is removed. Everything is build straight from the source files again.
The OpenSP (or the old SP) package is no longer needed.
The documentation toolchain instructions are updated and are much
simpler now.
Peter Eisentraut, Alexander Lakhin, Jürgen Purtz
For DocBook XML compatibility, don't use SGML empty tags (</>) anymore,
replace by the full tag name. Add a warning option to catch future
occurrences.
Alexander Lakhin, Jürgen Purtz
Define GUCs pltcl.start_proc and pltclu.start_proc. When set to a
nonempty value at the time a new Tcl interpreter is created, the
parameterless pltcl or pltclu function named by the GUC is called to
allow user-controlled initialization to occur within the interpreter.
This is modeled on plv8's start_proc parameter, and also has much in
common with plperl's on_init feature. It allows users to fully
replace the "modules" feature that was removed in commit 817f2a586.
Since an initializer function could subvert later Tcl code in nearly
arbitrary ways, mark both GUCs as SUSET for now. It would be nice
to find a way to relax that someday; but the corresponding GUCs in
plperl are also SUSET, and there's not been much complaint.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/22067.1488046447@sss.pgh.pa.us
PL/Tcl has long had a facility whereby Tcl code could be autoloaded from
a database table named "pltcl_modules". However, nobody is using it, as
evidenced by the recent discovery that it's never been fixed to work with
standard_conforming_strings turned on. Moreover, it's rather shaky from
a security standpoint, and the table design is very old and crufty (partly
because it dates from before we had TOAST). A final problem is that
because the table-population scripts depend on the Tcl client library
Pgtcl, which we removed from the core distribution in 2004, it's
impossible to create a self-contained regression test for the feature.
Rather than try to surmount these problems, let's just remove it.
A follow-on patch will provide a way to execute user-defined
initialization code, similar to features that exist in plperl and plv8.
With that, it will be possible to implement this feature or similar ones
entirely in userspace, which is where it belongs.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/22067.1488046447@sss.pgh.pa.us
For a very long time, pltcl's spi_exec and spi_execp commands have had
a behavior of storing the current row number as an element of output
arrays, but this was never documented. Fix that.
For an equally long time, pltcl_trigger_handler had a behavior of silently
ignoring ".tupno" as an output column name, evidently so that the result
of spi_exec could be used directly as a trigger result tuple. Not sure
how useful that really is, but in any case it's bad that it would break
attempts to use ".tupno" as an actual column name. We can fix it by not
checking for ".tupno" until after we check for a column name match. This
comports with the effective behavior of spi_exec[p] that ".tupno" is only
magic when you don't have an actual column named that.
In passing, wordsmith the description of returning modified tuples from
a pltcl trigger.
Noted while working on Jim Nasby's patch to support composite results
from pltcl. The inability to return trigger tuples using ".tupno" as
a column name is a bug, so back-patch to all supported branches.
We don't really want to encourage people to write numeric SQLSTATEs in
programs; that's unreadable and error-prone. Copy plpgsql's infrastructure
for converting between SQLSTATEs and exception names shown in Appendix A,
and modify examples in tests and documentation to do it that way.
Tcl has a convention for returning additional info about an error in a
global variable named errorCode. Up to now PL/Tcl has ignored that,
but this patch causes database errors caught by PL/Tcl to fill in
errorCode with useful information from the ErrorData struct.
Jim Nasby, reviewed by Pavel Stehule and myself
Errors detected using Topy (https://github.com/intgr/topy), all
changes verified by hand and some manual tweaks added.
Marti Raudsepp
Individual changes backpatched, where applicable, as far as 9.0.
The main problem is that DocBook SGML allows indexterm elements just
about everywhere, but DocBook XML is stricter. For example, this common
pattern
<varlistentry>
<indexterm>...</indexterm>
<term>...</term>
...
</varlistentry>
needs to be changed to something like
<varlistentry>
<term>...<indexterm>...</indexterm></term>
...
</varlistentry>
See also bb4eefe7bf.
There is currently nothing in the build system that enforces that things
stay valid, because that requires additional tools and will receive
separate consideration.
As noted by Thom Brown, this confuses the DocBook index processor; it
fails to merge entries that differ only in whitespace, and sorts them
unexpectedly as well. Seems like a toolchain bug, but I'm not going to
hold my breath waiting for a fix.
Note: easiest way to find these is to look for double spaces in HTML.index.
This patch adds the SQL-standard concept of an INSTEAD OF trigger, which
is fired instead of performing a physical insert/update/delete. The
trigger function is passed the entire old and/or new rows of the view,
and must figure out what to do to the underlying tables to implement
the update. So this feature can be used to implement updatable views
using trigger programming style rather than rule hacking.
In passing, this patch corrects the names of some columns in the
information_schema.triggers view. It seems the SQL committee renamed
them somewhere between SQL:99 and SQL:2003.
Dean Rasheed, reviewed by Bernd Helmle; some additional hacking by me.
There are numerous methods by which a Perl or Tcl function can subvert
the behavior of another such function executed later; for example, by
redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function.
If the target function is SECURITY DEFINER, or is called by such a
function, this means that any ordinary SQL user with Perl or Tcl language
usage rights can do essentially anything with the privileges of the target
function's owner.
To close this security hole, create a separate Perl or Tcl interpreter for
each SQL userid under which plperl or pltcl functions are executed within
a session. However, all plperlu or pltclu functions run within a session
still share a single interpreter, since they all execute at the trust
level of a database superuser anyway.
Note: this change results in a functionality loss when libperl has been
built without the "multiplicity" option: it's no longer possible to call
plperl functions under different userids in one session, since such a
libperl can't support multiple interpreters in one process. However, such
a libperl already failed to support concurrent use of plperl and plperlu,
so it's likely that few people use such versions with Postgres.
Security: CVE-2010-3433
that is a regular table or view owned by a superuser. This prevents a
trojan horse attack whereby any unprivileged SQL user could create such a
table and insert code into it that would then get executed in other users'
sessions whenever they call pltcl functions.
Worse yet, because the code was automatically loaded into both the "normal"
and "safe" interpreters at first use, the attacker could execute unrestricted
Tcl code in the "normal" interpreter without there being any pltclu functions
anywhere, or indeed anyone else using pltcl at all: installing pltcl is
sufficient to open the hole. Change the initialization logic so that the
"unknown" code is only loaded into an interpreter when the interpreter is
first really used. (That doesn't add any additional security in this
particular context, but it seems a prudent change, and anyway the former
behavior violated the principle of least astonishment.)
Security: CVE-2010-1170
The endterm attribute is mainly useful when the toolchain does not support
automatic link target text generation for a particular situation. In the
past, this was required by the man page tools for all reference page links,
but that is no longer the case, and it now actually gets in the way of
proper automatic link text generation. The only remaining use cases are
currently xrefs to refsects.
Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:
may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."
can - ability, "I can lift that log."
might - possibility, "It might rain today."
Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice. Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".
Also update two error messages mentioned in the documenation to match.
more, and standard_conforming_strings less, because in the future non-E
strings will not treat backslashes specially.
Also use E'' strings where backslashes are used in examples. (The
existing examples would have drawn warnings.)
Backpatch to 8.2.X.
An article at WebProNews quoted from the PG docs as to the merits of
stored procedures. I have added a bit more material on their merits,
as well as making a few changes to improve the introductions to
PL/Perl and PL/Tcl.
Chris Browne
Bruce Momjian
David Rowley
Michael Paquier
Peter Eisentraut
Andres Freund
Peter Eisentraut
Tom Lane
Kevin Grittner
Magnus Hagander
Andrew Dunstan
Neil Conway