Release 9.1Release Date2011-??-??CURRENT AS OF 2011-07-07Overview
This release of
PostgreSQL> adds numerous major features, including:
(summary to be added)
The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.
Migration to Version 9.1
A dump/restore using pg_dump,
or use of pg_upgrade, is required
for those wishing to migrate data from any previous
release.
Version 9.1 contains a number of changes that may affect compatibility
with previous releases. Observe the following incompatibilities:
Strings
Change the default value of standard_conforming_strings>
to on (Robert Haas)
By default, backslashes are now ordinary characters in string literals,
not escape characters. This change removes a long-standing
incompatibility with the SQL standard. escape_string_warning>
has produced warnings about this usage for years. E''>
strings are the proper way to embed backslash escapes in strings and are
unaffected by this change.
Casting
Disallow function-style and attribute-style data type casts for
composite types (Tom Lane)
For example, disallow
composite_value>.text and
text(composite_value>).
Unintentional uses of this syntax have frequently resulted in bug
reports; although it was not a bug, it seems better to go back to
rejecting such expressions.
The CAST> and ::> syntaxes are still available
for use when a cast of an entire composite value is actually intended.
Tighten casting checks for domains based on arrays (Tom Lane)
When a domain is based on an array type, it is allowed to look
through> the domain type to access the array elements, including
subscripting the domain value to fetch or assign an element.
Assignment to an element of such a domain value, for instance via
UPDATE ... SET domaincol[5] = ...>, will now result in
rechecking the domain type's constraints, whereas before the checks
were skipped.
Arrays
Change string_to_array()>
to return an empty array for a zero-length string (Pavel
Stehule)
Previously this returned a null value.
Change string_to_array()>
so a NULL> separator splits the string into characters
(Pavel Stehule)
Previously this returned a null value.
Object Modification
Fix improper checks for before/after triggers (Tom Lane)
Triggers can now be fired in three cases: BEFORE>,
AFTER>, or INSTEAD OF> some action.
Trigger function authors should verify that their logic behaves
sanely in all three cases.
Require superuser or CREATEROLE> permissions in order to
set role comments (Tom Lane)
Server Settings
Change pg_last_xlog_receive_location()>
so it never moves backwards (Fujii Masao)
Previously pg_last_xlog_receive_location()> could
move backward when streaming replication is restarted.
Have logging of replication connections honor log_connections>
(Magnus Hagander)
Previously replication connections were always logged.
PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language
Change PL/pgSQL's RAISE> command without parameters
to be catchable by the attached exception block (Piyush Newe)
Previously RAISE> in a code block was always scoped to
an attached exception block, so it was uncatchable at the same
scope.
Adjust PL/pgSQL's error line numbering code to be consistent
with other PLs (Pavel Stehule)
Previously, PL/pgSQL would ignore (not count) an empty line at the
start of the function body. Since this was inconsistent with all
other languages, the special case was removed.
Make PL/pgSQL complain about conflicting IN and OUT parameter names
(Tom Lane)
Formerly, the collision was not detected, and the name would just
silently refer to only the OUT parameter.
Type modifiers of PL/pgSQL variables are now visible to the SQL parser
(Tom Lane)
A type modifier (such as a varchar length limit) attached to a PL/pgSQL
variable was formerly enforced during assignments, but was ignored for
all other purposes. Such variables will now behave more like table
columns declared with the same modifier. This is not expected to make
any visible difference in most cases, but it could result in subtle
changes for some SQL commands issued by PL/pgSQL functions.
Other Incompatibilities
Make pg_stat_reset()>
reset all database-level statistics (Tomas Vondra)
Some pg_stat_database> counters were not being reset.
Fix some information_schema.triggers>
column names to match the new SQL-standard names (Dean Rasheed)
Treat ECPG> cursor names as case-insensitive (Zoltan Boszormenyi)
Changes
Version 9.1 has ...
ServerPerformance
Support unlogged tables using the UNLOGGED>
option in CREATE
TABLE> (Robert Haas)
Such tables provide better update performance than regular tables,
but are not crash-safe: their contents are automatically cleared in
case of a server crash. Their contents do not propagate to
replication slaves, either.
Allow FULL OUTER JOIN to be implemented as a
hash join, and allow either side of a LEFT OUTER JOIN>
or RIGHT OUTER JOIN> to be hashed (Tom Lane)
Previously FULL OUTER JOIN could only be
implemented as a merge join, and LEFT OUTER JOIN
and RIGHT OUTER JOIN could hash only the nullable
side of the join. These changes provide additional query optimization
possibilities.
Merge duplicate fsync requests on busy systems (Robert Haas,
Greg Smith)
Improve performance of commit_siblings>
(Greg Smith)
This allows the use of commit_siblings with
less overhead.
Reduce the memory requirement for large ispell dictionaries
(Pavel Stehule, Tom Lane)
Avoid leaving data files open after blind writes>
(Alvaro Herrera)
This fixes scenarios where backends might hold open files that
were long since deleted, preventing the kernel from reclaiming
disk space.
Optimizer
Allow inheritance table scans to return meaningfully-sorted
results (Greg Stark, Hans-Jurgen Schonig, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)
This allows better optimization of queries that use ORDER
BY>, LIMIT>, or MIN>/MAX> with
inherited tables.
Improve GIN index scan cost estimation (Teodor Sigaev)
Improve cost estimation for aggregates and window functions (Tom Lane)
Authentication
Support host names and host suffixes
(e.g. .example.com>) in pg_hba.conf>
(Peter Eisentraut)
Previously only host IP> addresses and CIDR>
values were supported.
Support the key word all> in the host column of pg_hba.conf>
(Peter Eisentraut)
Previously people used 0.0.0.0/0> or ::/0>
for this.
Reject local> lines in pg_hba.conf>
on platforms that don't support Unix-socket connections
(Magnus Hagander)
Formerly, such lines were silently ignored, which could be surprising.
This makes the behavior more like other unsupported cases.
Allow GSSAPI>
to be used to authenticate to servers via SSPI> (Christian Ullrich)
Specifically this allows Unix-based GSSAPI> clients
to do SSPI> authentication with Windows servers.
ident
authentication over local sockets is now known as
peer
(Magnus Hagander)
The old term is still accepted for backward compatibility.
Rewrite peer>
authentication to avoid use of credential control messages (Tom Lane)
This change makes the peer authentication code simpler and
better-performing. However, it requires the platform to provide the
getpeereid> function or an equivalent socket operation.
So far as is known, the only platform for which peer authentication
worked before and now will not is pre-5.0 NetBSD.
Monitoring
Add details to the logging of restartpoints and checkpoints,
which is controlled by log_checkpoints>
(Fujii Masao, Greg Smith)
New details show WAL> file and sync activity.
Add log_file_mode>
which controls the permissions on log files created by the
logging collector (Martin Pihlak)
Statistical Views
Add client_hostname column to pg_stat_activity>
(Peter Eisentraut)
Previously only the client address was reported.
Add pg_stat_xact_*>
statistics functions and views (Joel Jacobson)
These are like the database-wide statistics counter views, but
reflect counts for only the current transaction.
Add time of last reset in database-level and background writer
statistics views (Tomas Vondra)
Add columns showing the number of vacuum and analyze operations
in pg_stat_*_tables>
views (Magnus Hagander)
Add buffers_backend_fsync> column to pg_stat_bgwriter>
(Greg Smith)
This new column counts the number of times a backend fsyncs a
buffer.
Server Settings
Allow auto-tuning of wal_buffers> (Greg
Smith)
wal_buffers> is now auto-tuned by default based on
the size of shared_buffers>.
Increase the maximum values for
deadlock_timeout,
log_min_duration_statement, and
log_autovacuum_min_duration
(Peter Eisentraut)
The maximum value for each of these parameters was previously
only about 35 minutes. Much larger values are now allowed.
Replication and RecoveryStreaming Replication and Continuous Archiving
Allow synchronous
replication (Simon Riggs, Fujii Masao)
This allows the primary to wait for a standby to write the transaction
information to disk before acknowledging the commit.
One standby at a time can take the role of the synchronous standby,
as controlled by the
synchronous_standby_names
setting. Synchronous replication can be enabled or disabled on a
per-transaction basis using the
synchronous_commit>
setting.
Add protocol support for sending file system backups to standbys using
the streaming replication network connection (Magnus Hagander,
Heikki Linnakangas)
This avoids the requirement of manually transferring a file
system backup when setting up a standby server.
Add
replication_timeout>
setting (Fujii Masao, Heikki Linnakangas)
Replication connections that are idle for more than the
replication_timeout> interval will be terminated
automatically. Formerly, a failed connection was typically not
detected until the TCP timeout elapsed, which is inconveniently
long in many situations.
Add command-line tool pg_basebackup>
for creating a new standby server or database backup (Magnus
Hagander)
Add replication permission
for roles (Magnus Hagander)
This is a read-only permission used for streaming replication.
It allows a non-superuser role to be used for replication connections.
Previously only superusers could initiate replication
connections; superusers still have this permission by default.
Replication Monitoring
Add system view pg_stat_replication>
which displays activity of WAL> sender processes (Itagaki
Takahiro, Simon Riggs)
This reports the status of all connected standby servers.
Add monitoring function pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp()>
(Fujii Masao)
This returns the time at which the primary generated the most
recent commit or abort record applied on the standby.
Hot Standby
Add configuration parameter hot_standby_feedback>
to enable standbys to postpone cleanup of old row versions on the
primary (Simon Riggs)
This helps avoid canceling long-running queries on the standby.
Add the pg_stat_database_conflicts>
system view to show queries that have been canceled and the
reason (Magnus Hagander)
Cancellations can occur because of dropped tablespaces, lock
timeouts, old snapshots, pinned buffers, and deadlocks.
Add a conflicts> count to pg_stat_database>
(Magnus Hagander)
This is the number of conflicts that occurred in the database.
Increase the maximum values for
max_standby_archive_delay and
max_standby_streaming_delay.
The maximum value for each of these parameters was previously
only about 35 minutes. Much larger values are now allowed.
Add ERRCODE_T_R_DATABASE_DROPPED>
error code to report recovery conflicts due to dropped databases
(Tatsuo Ishii)
This is useful for connection pooling software.
Recovery Control
Add functions to control streaming replication replay (Simon Riggs)
The new functions are pg_xlog_replay_pause()>,
pg_xlog_replay_resume()>,
and the status function pg_is_xlog_replay_paused()>.
Add recovery.conf> setting pause_at_recovery_target>
to pause recovery at target (Simon Riggs)
This allows a recovery server to be queried to check whether
the recovery point is the one desired.
Add the ability to create named restore points using pg_create_restore_point()>
(Jaime Casanova)
These named restore points can be specified as recovery
targets using the new recovery.conf> setting
recovery_target_name>.
Allow standby recovery to switch to a new timeline automatically
(Heikki Linnakangas)
Now standby servers scan the archive directory for new
timelines periodically.
Add restart_after_crash>
setting which disables automatic server restart after a backend
crash (Robert Haas)
This allows external cluster management software to take control
of whether servers restart or not.
Allow recovery.conf>
to use the same quoting behavior as postgresql.conf>
(Dimitri Fontaine)
Previously all values had to be quoted.
Queries
Add a true serializable isolation
level (Kevin Grittner, Dan Ports)
Previously, asking for serializable isolation guaranteed only that a
single MVCC snapshot would be used for the entire transaction, which
allowed certain documented anomalies. The old snapshot isolation
behavior is still accessible by requesting the REPEATABLE READ>
isolation level.
Allow data-modification commands
(INSERT>/UPDATE>/DELETE)> in
WITH> clauses
(Marko Tiikkaja, Hitoshi Harada)
These commands can use RETURNING> to pass data up to the
containing query.
Allow WITH>
clauses to be attached to INSERT>, UPDATE>,
DELETE> statements (Marko Tiikkaja, Hitoshi Harada)
Allow non-GROUP
BY> columns in the query target list when the primary
key is specified in the GROUP BY> clause (Peter
Eisentraut)
Some other database system already allowed this behavior, and
because of the primary key, the result is unambiguous.
Allow use of the key word DISTINCT> in UNION>/INTERSECT>/EXCEPT>
clauses (Tom Lane)
DISTINCT> is the default behavior so use of this
key word is redundant, but the SQL standard allows it.
Fix ordinary queries with rules to use the same snapshot behavior
as EXPLAIN ANALYZE> (Marko Tiikkaja)
Previously EXPLAIN ANALYZE> used a slightly different
snapshot for queries involving rules. The EXPLAIN ANALYZE>
behavior was judged to be more logical.
Strings
Add per-column collation support
(Peter Eisentraut, Tom Lane)
Previously collation could only be set at database creation.
Collation can now be set per column, domain, index, or
expression, via the SQL-standard COLLATE> clause.
Object Manipulation
Add extensions which
simplify packaging of additions to PostgreSQL>
(Dimitri Fontaine, Tom Lane)
Extensions are controlled by the new CREATE>/ALTER>/DROP EXTENSION>
commands. This replaces ad-hoc methods of grouping objects that
are added to a PostgreSQL> installation.
Add support for foreign
tables (Shigeru Hanada, Robert Haas, Jan Urbanski,
Heikki Linnakangas)
This allows data stored outside the database to be used like
native PostgreSQL>-stored data. Foreign tables
are currently read-only, however.
Allow new values to be added to an existing enum type via
ALTER TYPE> (Andrew
Dunstan)
Add ALTER TYPE ...
ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE> (Peter Eisentraut)
This allows modification of composite types.
ALTER> Object
Add RESTRICT>/CASCADE> to ALTER TYPE> operations
on typed tables (Peter Eisentraut)
This controls
ADD>/DROP>/ALTER>/RENAME
ATTRIBUTE> cascading behavior.
Support ALTER TABLE name> {OF | NOT OF}
type>
(Noah Misch)
This syntax allows a standalone table to be made into a typed table,
or a typed table to be made standalone.
Add support for more object types in ALTER ... SET
SCHEMA> commands (Dimitri Fontaine)
This command is now supported for conversions, operators, operator
classes, operator families, text search configurations, text search
dictionaries, text search parsers, and text search templates.
CREATE/ALTER TABLE>
Add ALTER TABLE ...
ADD UNIQUE/PRIMARY KEY USING INDEX
(Gurjeet Singh)
This allows a primary key or unique constraint to be defined using an
existing unique index, including a concurrently created unique index.
Allow ALTER TABLE>
to add foreign keys without validation (Simon Riggs)
The new option is called NOT VALID>, which can
later be modified to VALIDATED> and validation
checks performed. Together these allow you to add a foreign key
with minimal impact on read and write operations.
Allow ALTER TABLE
... SET DATA TYPE to avoid table rewrites in
appropriate cases (Noah Misch, Robert Haas)
For example, converting a varchar> column to
text> no longer requires a rewrite of the table.
However, increasing the length constraint on a
varchar> column still requires a table rewrite.
Add CREATE TABLE IF
NOT EXISTS> syntax (Robert Haas)
This allows table creation without causing an error if the
table already exists.
Fix possible tuple concurrently updated error
when two backends attempted to add an inheritance
child to the same table at the same time (Robert Haas)
ALTER TABLE
now takes a stronger lock on the parent table, so that both children do
not try to update it simultaneously.
Object Permissions
Add a SECURITY
LABEL> command (KaiGai Kohei)
This allows security labels to be assigned to objects.
Utility Operations
Add transaction-level advisory
locks (Marko Tiikkaja)
This is similar to the existing session-level advisory locks,
but the locks are automatically released at transaction end.
Make TRUNCATE ... RESTART
IDENTITY> restart sequences transactionally (Steve
Singer)
Previously the counter could have been left out of sync if a
backend crashed between the on-commit truncation activity and
commit completion.
COPY>
Add ENCODING> option to COPY TO/FROM> (Hitoshi
Harada, Itagaki Takahiro)
This allows the encoding of the COPY> file to be
specified separately from client encoding.
Add bidirectional COPY>
protocol support (Fujii Masao)
This is currently only used by streaming replication.
EXPLAIN>
Make EXPLAIN VERBOSE> show the function call expression
in a FunctionScan node (Tom Lane)
VACUUM>
Add additional details to the output of VACUUM FULL VERBOSE>
and CLUSTER VERBOSE>
(Itagaki Takahiro)
New information includes the live and dead tuple count and
whether CLUSTER> is using an index to rebuild.
Prevent autovacuum from
waiting if it cannot acquire a lock (Robert Haas)
It will try to vacuum later.
CLUSTER>
Allow CLUSTER> to sort the table rather than scanning
the index when it seems likely to be cheaper (Leonardo Francalanci)
Indexes
Add nearest-neighbor (order-by-operator) searching to GiST> indexes (Teodor Sigaev, Tom Lane)
This allows GiST> indexes to quickly return the
N> closest values in a query with LIMIT>.
Allow GIN> indexes to index null
and empty values (Tom Lane)
This allows full GIN> index scans, and fixes various
corner cases in which GIN scans would fail.
Allow GIN> indexes to
better recognize duplicate search entries (Tom Lane)
This reduces the cost of index scans, especially in cases where
it avoids unnecessary full index scans.
Fix GiST> indexes to be fully
crash-safe (Heikki Linnakangas)
Previously there were rare cases where a REINDEX>
would be required (you would be informed).
Data Types
Allow numeric> to use a more compact, two-byte header
in common cases (Robert Haas)
Previously all numeric> values had four-byte headers;
this saves on disk storage.
Add support for dividing money> by money>
(Andy Balholm)
Allow binary I/O on type void (Radoslaw Smogura)
Improve hypotenuse calculations for geometric operators (Paul Matthews)
This avoids unnecessary overflows, and may also be more accurate.
Support hashing array values (Tom Lane)
This provides additional query optimization possibilities.
Don't treat a composite type as sortable unless all its column types
are sortable (Tom Lane)
This avoids possible could not identify a comparison function>
failures at runtime, if it is possible to implement the query without
sorting. Also, ANALYZE> won't try to use inappropriate
statistics-gathering methods for columns of such composite types.
Casting
Add support for casting between money> and numeric>
(Andy Balholm)
Add support for casting from int4> and int8>
to numeric> (Joey Adams)
Allow casting a table's row type to the table's supertype if
it's a typed table (Peter Eisentraut)
This is analogous to the existing facility that allows casting a row
type to a supertable's row type.
XML>
Add XML> function XMLEXISTS> and xpath_exists()>
functions (Mike Fowler)
These are used for XPath matching.
Add XML> functions xml_is_well_formed()>,
xml_is_well_formed_document()>,
xml_is_well_formed_content()>
(Mike Fowler)
These check whether the input is properly-formed XML>.
They provide functionality that was previously available only in
the deprecated contrib/xml2 module.
Functions
Add SQL function format(text)>, which
behaves like C's printf()> (Pavel Stehule, Robert
Haas)
It currently supports formats for strings, SQL literals, and
SQL identifiers.
Add string functions concat()>,
concat_ws()>,
left()>,
right()>,
and reverse()>
(Pavel Stehule)
These improve compatibility with other database products.
Add function pg_read_binary_file()>
to read binary files (Dimitri Fontaine, Itagaki Takahiro)
Add a single-parameter version of function pg_read_file()>
to read an entire file (Dimitri Fontaine, Itagaki Takahiro)
Add three-parameter forms of array_to_string()>
and string_to_array()>
for null value processing control (Pavel Stehule)
Object Information Functions
Add the pg_describe_object()>
function (Alvaro Herrera)
This function is used to obtain a human-readable string describing
an object, based on the pg_class
OID, object OID, and sub-object ID. It can be used to help
interpret the contents of pg_depend.
Update comments for built-in operators and their underlying
functions (Tom Lane)
Functions that are meant to be used via an associated operator
are now commented as such.
Add variable quote_all_identifiers>
to force the quoting of all identifiers in EXPLAIN>
and in system catalog functions like pg_get_viewdef()>
(Robert Haas)
This makes exporting schemas to tools and other databases with
different quoting rules easier.
Add columns to the information_schema.sequences>
system view (Peter Eisentraut)
Previously, though the view existed, the columns about the
sequence parameters were unimplemented.
Allow public> as a pseudo-role name in has_table_privilege()>
and related functions (Alvaro Herrera)
This allows checking for public permissions.
Function and Trigger Creation
Support INSTEAD
OF> triggers on views (Dean Rasheed)
This feature can be used to implement fully updatable views.
Server-Side LanguagesPL/pgSQL Server-Side Language
Add FOREACH IN
ARRAY> to PL/pgSQL
(Pavel Stehule)
This is more efficient and readable than previous methods of
iterating through the elements of an array value.
Allow RAISE without parameters to be caught in
the same places that could catch a RAISE ERROR
from the same location (Piyush Newe)
The previous coding threw the error
from the block containing the active exception handler.
The new behavior is more consistent with other DBMS products.
PL/Perl Server-Side Language
Allow generic record arguments to PL/Perl functions (Andrew
Dunstan)
PL/Perl functions can now be declared to accept type record>.
The behavior is the same as for any named composite type.
Convert PL/Perl array arguments to Perl arrays (Alexey Klyukin,
Alex Hunsaker)
String representations are still available.
Convert PL/Perl composite-type arguments to Perl hashes
(Alexey Klyukin, Alex Hunsaker)
String representations are still available.
PL/Python Server-Side Language
Add table function support for PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)
PL/Python can now return multiple OUT> parameters
and record sets.
Add a validator to PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)
This allows PL/Python functions to be syntax-checked at function
creation time.
Allow exceptions for SQL queries in PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)
This allows access to SQL-generated exception error codes from
PL/Python exception blocks.
Add PL/Python explicit subtransactions (Jan Urbanski)
Add PL/Python functions for quoting strings (Jan Urbanski)
The functions are plpy.quote_ident>,
plpy.quote_literal>,
and plpy.quote_nullable>.
Add traceback information to PL/Python errors (Jan Urbanski)
Report PL/Python errors from iterators with PLy_elog> (Jan
Urbanski)
Fix exception handling with Python 3 (Jan Urbanski)
Exception classes were previously not available in
plpy> under Python 3.
Client Applications
Mark createlang>
and droplang>
as deprecated now that they just invoke extension commands (Tom
Lane)
psql>
Add psql> command \conninfo>
to show current connection information (David Christensen)
Add psql> command \sf> to
show a function's definition (Pavel Stehule)
Add psql> command \dL> to list
languages (Fernando Ike)
Add \dn> without S> now suppresses system
schemas.
Allow psql>'s \e> and \ef>
commands to accept a line number to be used to position the
cursor in the editor (Pavel Stehule)
This is passed to the editor according to the
EDITOR_LINENUMBER_SWITCH> psql variable.
Have psql> set the client encoding from the
operating system locale by default (Heikki Linnakangas)
This only happens if the PGCLIENTENCODING> environment
variable is not set.
Make \d distinguish between unique
indexes and unique constraints (Josh Kupershmidt)
Make \dt+ report pg_table_size>
instead of pg_relation_size> when talking to 9.0 or
later servers (Bernd Helmle)
This is a more useful measure of table size, but note that it is
not identical to what was previously reported in the same display.
Additional tab completion support (Itagaki Takahiro, Pavel Stehule,
Andrey Popp, Christoph Berg, David Fetter, Josh Kupershmidt)
pg_dump>
Add pg_dump>
and pg_dumpall>
option
Add directory> format to pg_dump>
(Joachim Wieland, Heikki Linnakangas)
This is internally similar to the tar>
pg_dump> format.
pg_ctl>
Fix pg_ctl>
so it no longer incorrectly reports that the server is not
running (Bruce Momjian)
Previously this could happen if the server was running but
pg_ctl> could not authenticate.
Improve pg_ctl> start's wait
(
The wait mode is now significantly more robust. It will not get
confused by non-default postmaster port numbers, non-default
Unix-domain socket locations, permission problems, or stale
postmaster lock files.
Add promote> option to pg_ctl> to
switch a standby server to primary (Fujii Masao)
Development Tools>libpq>
Add a libpq connection option client_encoding>
which behaves like the PGCLIENTENCODING> environment
variable (Heikki Linnakangas)
The value auto> sets the client encoding based on
the operating system locale.
Add PQlibVersion()>
function which returns the libpq library version (Magnus
Hagander)
libpq already had PQserverVersion()> which returns
the server version.
Allow libpq database clients to
check the user name of the server process using requirepeer>
when connecting via Unix-domain sockets
(Peter Eisentraut)
PostgreSQL> already allowed servers to check
the client user name when connecting via Unix-domain sockets.
Add PQping()>
and PQpingParams()>
to libpq (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)
These functions allow detection of the server's status without
trying to open a new session.
ECPG>
Allow ECPG to accept dynamic cursor names even in
WHERE CURRENT OF clauses
Build Options
Use +Olibmerrno> compile flag with HP-UX C compilers
that accept it (Ibrar Ahmed)
This avoids possible misbehavior of math library calls on recent
HP platforms.
Makefiles
Improved parallel make support (Peter Eisentraut)
This allows for faster compiles. Also, make -k>
now works more consistently.
Require GNU> make>
3.80 or newer (Peter Eisentraut)
This is necessary because of the parallel-make improvements.
Add make maintainer-check> target
(Peter Eisentraut)
This target performs various source code checks that are not
appropriate for either the build or the regression tests. Currently:
duplicate_oids, SGML syntax and tabs check, NLS syntax check.
Support make check> in contrib>
(Peter Eisentraut)
Formerly only make installcheck> worked, but now
there is support for testing in a temporary installation.
The top-level make check-world> target now includes
testing contrib> this way.
Windows
On Windows, allow pg_ctl> to register
the service as auto-start or start-on-demand (Quan Zongliang)
Add support for collecting crash
dumps on Windows (Craig Ringer, Magnus Hagander)
minidumps> can now be generated by non-debug
Windows binaries and analyzed by standard debugging tools.
Enable building with the MinGW64 compiler (Andrew Dunstan)
This allows building 64-bit Windows binaries even on non-Windows
platforms via cross-compiling.
Source Code
Revise the API for GUC variable assign hooks (Tom Lane)
The previous functions of assign hooks are now split between check
hooks and assign hooks, where the former can fail but the latter
shouldn't. This change will impact add-on modules that define custom
GUC parameters.
Add latches to the source code to wait for events (Heikki
Linnakangas)
Centralize data modification permissions-checking logic
(KaiGai Kohei)
Add missing get_object>_oid() functions, for consistency
(Robert Haas)
Improve ability to use C++ compilers for compiling add-on modules by removing
conflicting key words (Tom Lane)
Add support for DragonFly BSD> (Rumko)
Expose quote_literal_cstr()> for backend use
(Robert Haas)
Run regression tests in the
default encoding (Peter Eisentraut)
Regression tests were previously always run with
SQL_ASCII> encoding.
Add src/tools/git_changelog> to replace
cvs2cl> and pgcvslog> (Robert
Haas, Tom Lane)
Add git-external-diff> script to
src/tools> (Bruce Momjian)
This is used to generate context diffs from git.
Server Hooks
Add source code hooks to check permissions (Robert Haas,
Stephen Frost)
Add post-object-creation function hooks for use by security
frameworks (KaiGai Kohei)
Add a client authentication hook (KaiGai Kohei)
Contrib
Modify contrib> modules and stored procedure
languages to install via the new extension mechanism (Tom Lane,
Dimitri Fontaine)
Add contrib/file_fdw>
foreign-data wrapper (Shigeru Hanada)
Foreign tables using this foreign data wrapper can read flat files
in a manner very similar to COPY>.
Add nearest-neighbor support to contrib/pg_trgm> and contrib/btree_gist>
(Teodor Sigaev)
Add contrib/btree_gist>
support for searching on not-equals (Jeff Davis)
Fix contrib/fuzzystrmatch>'s
levenshtein()> function to handle multibyte characters
(Alexander Korotkov)
Add ssl_cipher()> and ssl_version()>
functions to contrib/sslinfo> (Robert
Haas)
Fix contrib/intarray>
and contrib/hstore>
to give consistent results with indexed empty arrays (Tom Lane)
Previously an empty-array query that used an index might return
different results from one that used a sequential scan.
Allow contrib/intarray>
to work properly on multidimensional arrays (Tom Lane)
In
contrib/intarray>,
avoid errors complaining about the presence of nulls in cases where no
nulls are actually present (Tom Lane)
In
contrib/intarray>,
fix behavior of containment operators with respect to empty arrays
(Tom Lane)
Empty arrays are now correctly considered to be contained in any other
array.
Remove contrib/xml2>'s
arbitrary limit on the number of
parameter>=value> pairs that can be
handled by xslt_process()> (Pavel Stehule)
The previous limit was 10.
In contrib/pageinspect>,
fix heap_page_item to return infomasks as 32-bit values (Alvaro Herrera)
This avoids returning negative values, which was confusing. The
underlying value is a 16-bit unsigned integer.
Security
Add contrib/sepgsql>
to interface permission checks with SE>-Linux (KaiGai Kohei)
This uses the new SECURITY LABEL>
facility.
Add contrib module auth_delay> (KaiGai
Kohei)
This causes the server to pause before returning authentication
failure; it is designed to make brute force password attacks
more difficult.
Add dummy_seclabel
contrib module (KaiGai Kohei)
This is used for permission regression testing.
Performance
Add support for LIKE> and ILIKE> index
searches to contrib/pg_trgm> (Alexander
Korotkov)
Add levenshtein_less_equal()> function to contrib/fuzzystrmatch>,
which is optimized for small distances (Alexander Korotkov)
Improve performance of index lookups on contrib/seg> columns (Alexander
Korotkov)
Improve performance of pg_upgrade> for
databases with many relations (Bruce Momjian)
Add flag to contrib/pgbench> to
report per-statement latencies (Florian Pflug)
Fsync Testing
Move src/tools/test_fsync> to contrib/pg_test_fsync>
(Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)
Add O_DIRECT> support to contrib/pg_test_fsync>
(Bruce Momjian)
This matches the use of O_DIRECT> by wal_sync_method>.
Add new tests to contrib/pg_test_fsync>
(Bruce Momjian)
Documentation
Extensive ECPG> documentation
improvements (Satoshi Nagayasu)
Extensive proofreading and documentation improvements
(Thom Brown, Josh Kupershmidt, Susanne Ebrecht)
Add documentation for exit_on_error>
(Robert Haas)
This parameter causes sessions to exit on any error.
Add documentation for pg_options_to_table()>
(Josh Berkus)
This function shows table storage options in a readable form.
Document that it is possible to access all composite type
fields using (compositeval).*>
syntax (Peter Eisentraut)
Document that translate()>
removes characters in from> that don't have a
corresponding to> character (Josh Kupershmidt)
Merge docs for CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER> and CREATE TRIGGER>
(Alvaro Herrera)
Centralize permission and upgrade documentation (Bruce Momjian)
Add kernel tuning
documentation for Solaris 10 (Josh Berkus)
Previously only Solaris 9 kernel tuning was documented.
Handle non-ASCII characters consistently in HISTORY> file
(Peter Eisentraut)
While the HISTORY> file is in English, we do have to deal
with non-ASCII letters in contributor names. These are now
transliterated so that they are reasonably legible without assumptions
about character set.