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
kibitzing from Tom Lane. Large objects are now all stored in a single
system relation "pg_largeobject" --- no more xinv or xinx files, no more
relkind 'l'. This should offer substantial performance improvement for
large numbers of LOs, since there won't be directory bloat anymore.
It'll also fix problems like running out of locktable space when you
access thousands of LOs in one transaction.
Also clean up cruft in read/write routines. LOs with "holes" in them
(never-written byte ranges) now work just like Unix files with holes do:
a hole reads as zeroes but doesn't occupy storage space.
INITDB forced!
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
rate
it's better than what used to be there.
* Does proper SQL "host variable" substitution as pointed out by Andreas
Zeugwetter (thanks): select * from :foo; Also some changes in how ':'
and ';' are treated (escape with \ to send to backend). This does
_not_
affect the '::' cast operator, but perhaps others that contain : or ;
(but there are none right now).
* To show description with a <something> listing, append '?' to command
name, e.g., \df?. This seemed to be the convenient and logical
solution.
Or append a '+' to see more useless information, e.g., \df+.
* Fixed fflush()'ing bug pointed out by Jan during the regression test
discussion.
* Added LastOid variable. This ought to take care of TODO item "Add a
function to return the last inserted oid, for use in psql scripts"
(under CLIENTS)
E.g.,
insert into foo values(...);
insert into bar values(..., :LastOid);
\echo $LastOid
* \d command shows constraints, rules, and triggers defined on the table
(in addition to indices)
* Various fixes, optimizations, corrections
* Documentation update as well
Note: This now requires snprintf(), which, if necessary, is taken from
src/backend/port. This is certainly a little weird, but it should
suffice
until a source tree cleanup is done.
Enjoy.
--
Peter Eisentraut Sernanders väg 10:115
No big deal; fixed lots of other markup at the same time.
Bigest change: make sure there is no whitespace
in front of <term> contents.
This will probably help the other output types too.