TODO list for PostgreSQL ======================== Last updated: Sun Jun 6 22:08:59 EDT 1999 Current maintainer: Bruce Momjian (maillist@candle.pha.pa.us) The most recent version of this document can be viewed at the PostgreSQL WWW site, http://www.postgreSQL.org. A dash(-) marks changes to be in the next release. Developers who have claimed items are: ------------------------------------- * Billy is Billy G. Allie * Brook is Brook Milligan * Bruce is Bruce Momjian * Bryan is Bryan Henderson * D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain * David is David Hartwig * Edmund is Edmund Mergl * Goran is Goran Thyni * Hiroshi is Hiroshi Inoue * Jan is Jan Wieck * Marc is Marc Fournier * Massimo Dal Zotto * Michael is Michael Meskes * Oleg is Oleg Bartunov * Peter is Peter T Mount * Stefan Simkovics * Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii * Tom is Tom Lane * Thomas is Thomas Lockhart * TomH is Tom I Helbekkmo * Vadim is "Vadim B. Mikheev" RELIABILITY ----------- * Overhaul mdmgr/smgr to fix double unlinking and double opens, cleanup * Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager * Remove EXTEND? * Tables that start with xinv confused to be large objects * Two and three dimensional arrays display improperly, missing {} * Select a[1] FROM test fails, it needs test.a[1] * Update table SET table.value = 3 fails * User who can create databases can modify pg_database table * Elog() does not free all its memory(Jan) * Disallow inherited columns with the same name as new columns * Recover or force failure when disk space is exhausted * Views containing aggregates sometimes fail(Jan) * Alter TABLE ADD COLUMN does not honor DEFAULT, add CONSTRAINT * Array index references without table name cause problems * Views with spaces in view name fail when referenced * Plpgsql does not handle quoted mixed-case identifiers * Do not allow bpchar column creation without length * INSERT INTO ... SELECT with AS columns matching result columns problem ENHANCEMENTS ------------ * Add referential integrity * Add OUTER joins, left and right(Thomas) * Allow long tuples by chaining or auto-storing outside db (chaining,large objs) * Fix memory leak for expressions?, aggregates? Exotic features: * Add sql3 recursive unions * Add the concept of dataspaces * Add replication of distributed databases * Allow queries across multiple databases Admin: * Better interface for adding to pg_group * More access control over who can create tables and access the database * Add syslog functionality * Allow elog() to return error codes, not just messages * Allow international error message support and add error codes * Generate postmaster pid file and remove flock/fcntl lock code * Add ability to specifiy location of lock/socket files Types: * Add BIT, BIT VARYING * Nchar (as distinguished from ordinary varchar), * Domain capability * Add STDDEV/VARIANCE() function for standard deviation computation/variance * Allow compression of large fields or a compressed field type * Large objects * Fix large object mapping scheme, own typeid or reltype(Peter) * Allow large text type to use large objects(Peter) * Not to stuff everything as files in a single directory * Allow pg_descriptions when creating types, tables, columns, and functions * Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types * Make a separate SERIAL type? * Store binary-compatible type information in the system * Allow user to define char1 column * Add support for & operator Views: * Allow DISTINCT on views * Allow views of aggregate columns * Allow views with subselects * Allow subqueries in target list * Put sort files, large objects in their on directory * Do autocommit so always in a transaction block * Show location of syntax error in query * Redesign the function call interface to handle NULLs better(Jan) * Document/trigger/rule so changes to pg_shadow create pg_pwd * Missing optimizer selectivities for date, etc. Indexes: * Allow CREATE INDEX zman_index ON test (date_trunc( 'day', zman ) datetime_ops) fails index can't store constant parameters * Allow creation of functional indexes to use default types * Permissions on indexes - prevent them? * Allow SQL function indexes * Add FILLFACTOR to index creation Commands: * ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN to inherited table put column in wrong place * Add ALTER TABLE DROP/ALTER COLUMN feature * Allow CLUSTER on all tables at once, and improve CLUSTER * Generate error on CREATE OPERATOR of ~~, ~ and and ~* * Add SIMILAR TO to allow character classes, 'pg_[a-c]%' * Auto-destroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL * Allow LOCK TABLE tab1, tab2, tab3 so all tables locked in unison * Allow INSERT/UPDATE of system-generated oid value for a row * Allow ESCAPE '\' at the end of LIKE for ANSI compliance * Rewrite the LIKE handling by rewriting the user string with the supplied ESCAPE * Move LIKE index optimization handling to the optimizer Clients: * Make NULL's come out at the beginning or end depending on the ORDER BY direction * Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs * Update reltuples from COPY command * Allow psql \copy to allow delimiters * Add a function to return the last inserted oid, for use in psql scripts * Allow psql to print nulls as distinct from ""(?) * Increase identifier length(NAMEDATALEN) if small performance hit * Allow row re-use without vacuum, maybe?(Vadim) * Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes * Certain indexes will not shrink, i.e. oid indexes with many inserts * Restore unused oid's on backend exit if no one else has gotten oids * Have UPDATE/DELETE clean out indexes * Allow WHERE restriction on ctid * Allow cursors to be DECLAREd/OPENed/CLOSEed outside transactions * Allow PQrequestCancel() to terminate when in waiting-for-lock state * Transaction log, so re-do log can be on a separate disk * Populate backend status area and write program to dump status data * Make oid use unsigned int more reliably, pg_atoi() * Add PL/Perl(Mark Hollomon) PERFORMANCE ----------- * Allow transaction commits with rollback with no-fsync performance * Prevent fsync in SELECT-only queries * Use indexes in ORDER BY for restrictive data sets, min(), max() * Pull requested data directly from indexes, bypassing heap data * Use index to restrict rows returned by multi-key index when used with non-consecutive keys or OR clauses, so fewer heap accesses * Use index with constants on functions * Allow LIMIT ability on single-table queries that have no ORDER BY to use a matching index * Improve LIMIT processing by using index to limit rows processed * Cache most recent query plan(s?) * Shared catalog cache, reduce lseek()'s by caching table size in shared area * Allow compression of log and meta data * Update pg_statistic table to remove operator column * Make index creation use psort code, because it is now faster(Vadim) * Allow char() not to use variable-sized header to reduce disk size * Do async I/O to do better read-ahead of data * Fix memory exhaustion when using many OR's * Get faster regex() code from Henry Spencer when it is available * Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory(?) * Process const = const parts of OR clause in separate pass * Make oid use oidin/oidout not int4in/int4out in pg_type.h * Create more system table indexes for faster cache lookups * Improve Subplan list handling * Allow Subplans to use efficient joins(hash, merge) with upper variable DOCUMENTATION ------------- * Add use of 'const' for varibles in source tree