hosting product, on both shared and dedicated machines. We currently
offer Oracle and MySQL, and it would be a nice middle-ground.
However, as shipped, PostgreSQL lacks the following features we need
that MySQL has:
1. The ability to listen only on a particular IP address. Each
hosting customer has their own IP address, on which all of their
servers (http, ftp, real media, etc.) run.
2. The ability to place the Unix-domain socket in a mode 700 directory.
This allows us to automatically create an empty database, with an
empty DBA password, for new or upgrading customers without having
to interactively set a DBA password and communicate it to (or from)
the customer. This in turn cuts down our install and upgrade times.
3. The ability to connect to the Unix-domain socket from within a
change-rooted environment. We run CGI programs chrooted to the
user's home directory, which is another reason why we need to be
able to specify where the Unix-domain socket is, instead of /tmp.
4. The ability to, if run as root, open a pid file in /var/run as
root, and then setuid to the desired user. (mysqld -u can almost
do this; I had to patch it, too).
The patch below fixes problem 1-3. I plan to address #4, also, but
haven't done so yet. These diffs are big enough that they should give
the PG development team something to think about in the meantime :-)
Also, I'm about to leave for 2 weeks' vacation, so I thought I'd get
out what I have, which works (for the problems it tackles), now.
With these changes, we can set up and run PostgreSQL with scripts the
same way we can with apache or proftpd or mysql.
In summary, this patch makes the following enhancements:
1. Adds an environment variable PGUNIXSOCKET, analogous to MYSQL_UNIX_PORT,
and command line options -k --unix-socket to the relevant programs.
2. Adds a -h option to postmaster to set the hostname or IP address to
listen on instead of the default INADDR_ANY.
3. Extends some library interfaces to support the above.
4. Fixes a few memory leaks in PQconnectdb().
The default behavior is unchanged from stock 7.0.2; if you don't use
any of these new features, they don't change the operation.
David J. MacKenzie
I hope I didn't mess the SGML up too bad, but somebody should definitly
look that over. I tried to steal as much as I could from around :-)
This patch updates:
* Installation instructions (paragraph on how to compile with openssl)
* Documentation of pg_hba.conf (added "hostssl" record docs)
* Libpq documentation (added connection option, documentation of
PQgetssl() function)
* Add section on SSL to "Server Runtime Environment"
If you beleive any particular area needs more attention, please let me know.
//Magnus
I hope I didn't mess the SGML up too bad, but somebody should definitly
look that over. I tried to steal as much as I could from around :-)
This patch updates:
* Installation instructions (paragraph on how to compile with openssl)
* Documentation of pg_hba.conf (added "hostssl" record docs)
* Libpq documentation (added connection option, documentation of
PQgetssl() function)
* Add section on SSL to "Server Runtime Environment"
If you beleive any particular area needs more attention, please let me know.
//Magnus
it in a separate object. There's no value in keeping the state separate,
and it creates dangling-pointer problems. Also, remove PQsetenv routines
from public API, until and unless they are redesigned to have a safer
interface. Since they were never part of the documented API before 7.0,
it's unlikely that anyone is calling them.
accesses versus sequential accesses, a (very crude) estimate of the
effects of caching on random page accesses, and cost to evaluate WHERE-
clause expressions. Export critical parameters for this model as SET
variables. Also, create SET variables for the planner's enable flags
(enable_seqscan, enable_indexscan, etc) so that these can be controlled
more conveniently than via PGOPTIONS.
Planner now estimates both startup cost (cost before retrieving
first tuple) and total cost of each path, so it can optimize queries
with LIMIT on a reasonable basis by interpolating between these costs.
Same facility is a win for EXISTS(...) subqueries and some other cases.
Redesign pathkey representation to achieve a major speedup in planning
(I saw as much as 5X on a 10-way join); also minor changes in planner
to reduce memory consumption by recycling discarded Path nodes and
not constructing unnecessary lists.
Minor cleanups to display more-plausible costs in some cases in
EXPLAIN output.
Initdb forced by change in interface to index cost estimation
functions.
Initdb help correction
Changed end/abort to commit/rollback and changed related notices
Commented out way old printing functions in libpq
Fixed a typo in alter table / alter column
in libpq --- mostly, poor response to error conditions. You now actually
get to see the postmaster's 'The Data Base System is starting up' message,
which you didn't before. I suspect the SSL code is still broken though.
PQconnectStart
PQconnectPoll
PQresetStart
PQresetPoll
PQsetenvStart
PQsetenvPoll
PQsetenvAbort
and brings into the published interface
PQsetenv.
The first four are asynchronous analogues of PQconnectdb and PQreset -
they allow an application to connect to the DB without blocking on
remote I/O.
The PQsetenv functions perform an environment negotiation with the
server.
Internal to libpq, pqReadReady and pqWriteReady have been made available
across the library (they were previously static functions inside
fe-misc.c). A lot of internal rearrangement has been necessary to
support these changes.
The API documentation has been updated also.
Caveats:
o The Windows code does not default to using non-blocking sockets,
since I have no documentation: Define WIN32_NON_BLOCKING_CONNECTIONS to
do that.
o The SSL code still blocks.
Ewan Mellor.
on connection. This patch changes it to use PQconnectdb rather than
{fe_setauthsvc,PQsetdb}. This still isn't the complete solution, as
there
is no provision for user,password in class PgEnv, but it does get rid of
the error message. Tested with gcc version egcs-2.91.60 19981201
(egcs-1.1.1 release) under NetBSD-1.3K/i386.
Cheers,
Patrick Welche
Add new bibliographic references from Paul Aoki.
Include libpq++ docs from the old man page in the Programmer's Guide.
Update Unix installation info for ODBC.
Peter Eisentraut
Thomas G. Lockhart
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian