a separate statement (though it can still be invoked as part of VACUUM, too).
pg_statistic redesigned to be more flexible about what statistics are
stored. ANALYZE now collects a list of several of the most common values,
not just one, plus a histogram (not just the min and max values). Random
sampling is used to make the process reasonably fast even on very large
tables. The number of values and histogram bins collected is now
user-settable via an ALTER TABLE command.
There is more still to do; the new stats are not being used everywhere
they could be in the planner. But the remaining changes for this project
should be localized, and the behavior is already better than before.
A not-very-related change is that sorting now makes use of btree comparison
routines if it can find one, rather than invoking '<' twice.
in pghackers list. Support for oldstyle internal functions is gone
(no longer needed, since conversion is complete) and pg_language entry
'internal' now implies newstyle call convention. pg_language entry
'newC' is gone; both old and newstyle dynamically loaded C functions
are now called language 'C'. A newstyle function must be identified
by an associated info routine. See src/backend/utils/fmgr/README.
maintained for each cache entry. A cache entry will not be freed until
the matching ReleaseSysCache call has been executed. This eliminates
worries about cache entries getting dropped while still in use. See
my posting to pg-hackers of even date for more info.
right thing with variable-free clauses that contain noncachable functions,
such as 'WHERE random() < 0.5' --- these are evaluated once per
potential output tuple. Expressions that contain only Params are
now candidates to be indexscan quals --- for example, 'var = ($1 + 1)'
can now be indexed. Cope with RelabelType nodes atop potential indexscan
variables --- this oversight prevents 7.0.* from recognizing some
potentially indexscanable situations.
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian
Marc G. Fournier