TODO list for PostgreSQL ======================== Last updated: Fri Jun 4 23:16:01 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 * 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) * views on subselects fail * 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 ------------ * Transaction log, so re-do log can be on a separate disk * Allow transaction commits with rollback with no-fsync performance * More access control over who can create tables and access the database * Add full ANSI SQL capabilities * add OUTER joins, left and right(Thomas) * add sql3 recursive unions * add the concept of dataspaces * add BIT, BIT VARYING * NCHAR (as distinguished from ordinary varchar), * DOMAIN capability * 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 * Better interface for adding to pg_group * allow row re-use without vacuum, maybe?(Vadim) * Populate backend status area and write program to dump status data * Add ALTER TABLE DROP/ALTER COLUMN feature * Add syslog functionality * Add STDDEV/VARIANCE() function for standard deviation computation/variance * add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes * certain indexes will not shrink, i.e. oid indexes with many inserts * make NULL's come out at the beginning or end depending on the ORDER BY direction * 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 pg_descriptions when creating types, tables, columns, and functions * Allow psql to print nulls as distinct from ""(?) * Allow cursors to be DECLAREd/OPENed/CLOSEed outside transactions * Allow DISTINCT on views * Allow views of aggregate columns * Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs * Allow CLUSTER on all tables at once, and improve CLUSTER * Allow elog() to return error codes, not just messages * allow international error message support and add error codes * Allow subqueries in target list * Allow queries across multiple databases * Add replication of distributed databases * Generate error on CREATE OPERATOR of ~~, ~ and and ~* * allow psql \copy to allow delimiters * add a function to return the last inserted oid, for use in psql scripts * allow creation of functional indexes to use default types * put sort files, large objects in their on directory * do autocommit so always in a transaction block * add SIMILAR TO to allow character classes, 'pg_[a-c]%' * improve reporting of syntax errors by showing location of error in query * allow chaining of pages to allow >8k tuples, auto-large object use * redesign the function call interface to handle NULLs better(Jan) * permissions on indexes - prevent them? * document/trigger/rule so changes to pg_shadow create pg_pwd * generate postmaster pid file and remove flock/fcntl lock code * add ability to specifiy location of lock/socket files * auto-destroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL * make a separate serial type? * allow user to define char1 column * allow LOCK TABLE tab1, tab2, tab3 so all tables locked in unison * allow INSERT/UPDATE of system-generated oid value for a row * missing optimizer selectivities for date, etc. * Add support for & operator * store binary-compatible type information in the system * Allow ESCAPE '\' at the end of LIKE for ANSI compliance * rewrite the LIKE handling by rewriting the user string with the supplied ESCAPE * Fix memory leak for expressions?, aggregates? * Allow Subplans to use efficient joins(hash, merge) with upper variable * Update reltuples from COPY command * Allow CREATE INDEX zman_index ON test (date_trunc( 'day', zman ) datetime_ops) fails index can't store constant parameters * allow SQL function indexes * ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN to inherited table put column in wrong place * Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types * Allow PQrequestCancel() to terminate when in waiting-for-lock state * Increase identifier length(NAMEDATALEN) if small performance hit * Fix for long table/column name auto-sequence serial name PERFORMANCE ----------- * Use indexes in ORDER BY for restrictive data sets, min(), max() * Allow LIMIT ability on single-table queries that have no ORDER BY to use a matching index * Pull requested data directly from indexes, bypassing heap data * Prevent fsync in SELECT-only queries * 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 * Add FILLFACTOR to index creation * 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(?) * 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 * process const = const parts of OR clause in separate pass * make oid use oidin/oidout not int4in/int4out in pg_type.h * make oid use unsigned int more reliably, pg_atoi() * create more system table indexes for faster cache lookups * Move LIKE index optimization handling to the optimizer * Improve LIMIT processing by using index to limit rows processed * Improve Subplan list handling DOCUMENTATION ------------- * Add use of 'const' for varibles in source tree