postgres/doc/TODO

TODO list for PostgreSQL
========================
Current maintainer:	Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us)
Last updated:		Sat Jan  1 12:24:55 EST 2005

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at the PostgreSQL web
site, http://www.PostgreSQL.org.

#A hyphen, "-", marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 8.1 release.#

Bracketed items, "[]", have more detail.

This list contains all known PostgreSQL bugs and feature requests. If
you would like to work on an item, please read the Developer's FAQ
first.


Administration
==============

* Remove behavior of postmaster -o after making postmaster/postgres
  flags unique
* Allow limits on per-db/user connections
* Add group object ownership, so groups can rename/drop/grant on objects,
  so we can implement roles
* Allow server log information to be output as INSERT statements

  This would allow server log information to be easily loaded into
  a database for analysis.

* Prevent default re-use of sysids for dropped users and groups

  Currently, if a user is removed while he still owns objects, a new
  user given might be given their user id and inherit the
  previous users objects.

* Prevent dropping user that still owns objects, or auto-drop the objects
* Allow pooled connections to list all prepared queries

  This would allow an application inheriting a pooled connection to know
  the queries prepared in the current session.

* Allow major upgrades without dump/reload, perhaps using pg_upgrade
* Have SHOW ALL and pg_settings show descriptions for server-side variables
* Allow GRANT/REVOKE permissions to be applied to all schema objects with one
  command
* Remove unreferenced table files created by transactions that were
  in-progress when the server terminated abruptly
* Allow reporting of which objects are in which tablespaces

  This item is difficult because a tablespace can contain objects from
  multiple databases. There is a server-side function that returns the
  databases which use a specific tablespace, so this requires a tool
  that will call that function and connect to each database to find the
  objects in each database for that tablespace.

* Allow a database in tablespace t1 with tables created in tablespace t2
  to be used as a template for a new database created with default
  tablespace t2

  All objects in the default database tablespace must have default tablespace
  specifications.  This is because new databases are created by copying
  directories.  If you mix default tablespace tables and tablespace-specified
  tables in the same directory, creating a new database from such a mixed
  directory would create a new database with tables that had incorrect
  explicit tablespaces.  To fix this would require modifying pg_class in the
  newly copied database, which we don't currently do.

* Add a GUC variable to control the tablespace for temporary objects and
  sort files

  It could start with a random tablespace from a supplied list and cycle
  through the list.

* Add "include file" functionality in postgresql.conf
* Add session start time and last statement time to pg_stat_activity
* Allow server logs to be remotely read using SQL commands
* Allow server configuration parameters to be remotely modified
* Allow administrators to safely terminate individual sessions

  Right now, SIGTERM will terminate a session, but it is treated as
  though the postmaster has paniced and shared memory might not be
  cleaned up properly.  A new signal is needed for safe termination.

* Un-comment all variables in postgresql.conf

  By not showing commented-out variables, we discourage people from
  thinking that re-commenting a variable returns it to its default.
  This has to address environment variables that are then overridden
  by config file values.  Another option is to allow commented values
  to return to their default values.

* Allow point-in-time recovery to archive partially filled write-ahead
  logs

  Currently only full WAL files are archived. This means that the most
  recent transactions aren't available for recovery in case of a disk
  failure.

* Create dump tool for write-ahead logs for use in determining
  transaction id for point-in-time recovery
* Set proper permissions on non-system schemas during db creation

  Currently all schemas are owned by the super-user because they are
  copied from the template1 database.

* Add a function that returns the 'uptime' of the postmaster
* Allow a warm standby system to also allow read-only queries

  This is useful for checking PITR recovery.

*  Allow the PITR process to be debugged and data examined
* Allow a warm standby system to also allow read-only queries
* Improve replication solutions
	o Automatic failover

	  The proper solution to this will probably the use of a master/slave
	  replication solution like Sloney and a connection pooling tool like
	  pgpool.

	o Load balancing

	  You can use any of the master/slave replication servers to use a
	  standby server for data warehousing. To allow read/write queries to
	  multiple servers, you need multi-master replication like pgcluster.

	o Allow replication over unreliable or non-persistent links


Data Types
==========

* Remove Money type, add money formatting for decimal type
* Change NUMERIC to enforce the maximum precision, and increase it
* Add function to return compressed length of TOAST data values
* Allow INET subnet tests using non-constants to be indexed
* Add transaction_timestamp(), statement_timestamp(), clock_timestamp()
  functionality

  Current CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the start time of the current
  transaction, and gettimeofday() returns the wallclock time. This will
  make time reporting more consistent and will allow reporting of
  the statement start time.

* Have sequence dependency track use of DEFAULT sequences,
  seqname.nextval (?)
* Disallow changing default expression of a SERIAL column (?)
* Allow infinite dates just like infinite timestamps
* Have initdb set DateStyle based on locale?
* Add pg_get_acldef(), pg_get_typedefault(), and pg_get_attrdef()
* Allow to_char() to print localized month names
* Allow functions to have a schema search path specified at creation time
* Allow substring/replace() to get/set bit values
* Add a GUC variable to allow output of interval values in ISO8601 format
* Fix data types where equality comparison isn't intuitive, e.g. box
* Merge hardwired timezone names with the TZ database; allow either kind
  everywhere a TZ name is currently taken
* Allow customization of the known set of TZ names (generalize the
  present australian_timezones hack)
* Allow TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE to store the original timezone
  information, either zone name or offset from UTC

  If the TIMESTAMP value is stored with a time zone name, interval 
  computations should adjust based on the time zone rules, e.g. adding
  24 hours to a timestamp would yield a different result from adding one
  day.

* Prevent INET cast to CIDR if the unmasked bits are not zero, or
  zero the bits
* Prevent INET cast to CIDR from droping netmask, SELECT '1.1.1.1'::inet::cidr


* ARRAYS
	o Allow NULLs in arrays
	o Allow MIN()/MAX() on arrays
	o Delay resolution of array expression's data type so assignment
	  coercion can be performed on empty array expressions
	o Modify array literal representation to handle array index lower bound
	  of other than one


* BINARY DATA
	o Improve vacuum of large objects, like /contrib/vacuumlo (?)
	o Add security checking for large objects

	  Currently large objects entries do not have owners. Permissions can
	  only be set at the pg_largeobject table level.

	o Auto-delete large objects when referencing row is deleted

	o Allow read/write into TOAST values like large objects

	  This requires the TOAST column to be stored EXTERNAL.


Multi-Language Support
======================

* Add NCHAR (as distinguished from ordinary varchar),
* Allow locale to be set at database creation

  Currently locale can only be set during initdb.

* Allow encoding on a per-column basis

  Right now only one encoding is allowed per database.

* Optimize locale to have minimal performance impact when not used
* Support multiple simultaneous character sets, per SQL92
* Improve Unicode combined character handling (?)
* Add octet_length_server() and octet_length_client()
* Make octet_length_client() the same as octet_length()?


Views / Rules
=============

* Automatically create rules on views so they are updateable, per SQL99

  We can only auto-create rules for simple views.  For more complex
  cases users will still have to write rules.

* Add the functionality for WITH CHECK OPTION clause of CREATE VIEW
* Allow NOTIFY in rules involving conditionals
* Have views on temporary tables exist in the temporary namespace
* Allow temporary views on non-temporary tables
* Allow RULE recompilation


Indexes
=======

* Allow inherited tables to inherit index, UNIQUE constraint, and primary
  key, foreign key
* UNIQUE INDEX on base column not honored on INSERTs/UPDATEs from
  inherited table:  INSERT INTO inherit_table (unique_index_col) VALUES
  (dup) should fail

  The main difficulty with this item is the problem of creating an index
  that can span more than one table.

* Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes
* Add rtree index support for line, lseg, path, point
* Use indexes for MIN() and MAX()

  MIN/MAX queries can already be rewritten as SELECT col FROM tab ORDER
  BY col {DESC} LIMIT 1. Completing this item involves making this
  transformation automatically.

* Use index to restrict rows returned by multi-key index when used with
  non-consecutive keys to reduce heap accesses

  For an index on col1,col2,col3, and a WHERE clause of col1 = 5 and
  col3 = 9, spin though the index checking for col1 and col3 matches,
  rather than just col1; also called skip-scanning.

* Prevent index uniqueness checks when UPDATE does not modify the column

  Uniqueness (index) checks are done when updating a column even if the
  column is not modified by the UPDATE.

* Fetch heap pages matching index entries in sequential order

  Rather than randomly accessing heap pages based on index entries, mark
  heap pages needing access in a bitmap and do the lookups in sequential
  order. Another method would be to sort heap ctids matching the index
  before accessing the heap rows.

* Allow non-bitmap indexes to be combined by creating bitmaps in memory

  Bitmap indexes index single columns that can be combined with other bitmap
  indexes to dynamically create a composite index to match a specific query.
  Each index is a bitmap, and the bitmaps are bitwise AND'ed or OR'ed to be
  combined.  They can index by tid or can be lossy requiring a scan of the
  heap page to find matching rows, or perhaps use a mixed solution where
  tids are recorded for pages with only a few matches and per-page bitmaps
  are used for more dense pages.  Another idea is to use a 32-bit bitmap
  for every page and set a bit based on the item number mod(32).

* Allow the creation of on-disk bitmap indexes which can be quickly
  combined with other bitmap indexes

  Such indexes could be more compact if there are only a few distinct values.
  Such indexes can also be compressed.  Keeping such indexes updated can be
  costly.

* Allow use of indexes to search for NULLs

  One solution is to create a partial index on an IS NULL expression.

* Add concurrency to GIST
* Pack hash index buckets onto disk pages more efficiently

  Currently no only one hash bucket can be stored on a page. Ideally
  several hash buckets could be stored on a single page and greater
  granularity used for the hash algorithm.

* Allow accurate statistics to be collected on indexes with more than
  one column or expression indexes, perhaps using per-index statistics
* Add fillfactor to control reserved free space during index creation


Commands
========

* Add BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC/SYMMETRIC
* Change LIMIT/OFFSET to use int8
* Allow CREATE TABLE AS to determine column lengths for complex
  expressions like SELECT col1 || col2
* Allow UPDATE to handle complex aggregates [update] (?)
* Allow backslash handling in quoted strings to be disabled for portability

  The use of C-style backslashes (.e.g. \n, \r) in quoted strings is not
  SQL-spec compliant, so allow such handling to be disabled.

* Allow an alias to be provided for the target table in UPDATE/DELETE

  This is not SQL-spec but many DBMSs allow it.

* Allow additional tables to be specified in DELETE for joins

  UPDATE already allows this (UPDATE...FROM) but we need similar
  functionality in DELETE.  It's been agreed that the keyword should
  be USING, to avoid anything as confusing as DELETE FROM a FROM b.

* Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT
* Allow REINDEX to rebuild all database indexes, remove /contrib/reindex
* Add ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS options to GROUP BY
* Add a schema option to createlang
* Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (...) for updating multiple columns
* Allow SET CONSTRAINTS to be qualified by schema/table name
* Allow TRUNCATE ... CASCADE/RESTRICT
* Allow PREPARE of cursors
* Allow PREPARE to automatically determine parameter types based on the SQL
  statement
* Allow finer control over the caching of prepared query plans

  Currently, queries prepared via the libpq API are planned on first
  execute using the supplied parameters --- allow SQL PREPARE to do the
  same.  Also, allow control over replanning prepared queries either
  manually or automatically when statistics for execute parameters
  differ dramatically from those used during planning.

* Allow LISTEN/NOTIFY to store info in memory rather than tables?

  Currently LISTEN/NOTIFY information is stored in pg_listener. Storing
  such information in memory would improve performance.

* Dump large object comments in custom dump format
* Add optional textual message to NOTIFY

  This would allow an informational message to be added to the notify
  message, perhaps indicating the row modified or other custom
  information.

* Use more reliable method for CREATE DATABASE to get a consistent copy
  of db?

  Currently the system uses the operating system COPY command to create
  a new database.

* Add C code to copy directories for use in creating new databases
* Have pg_ctl look at PGHOST in case it is a socket directory?
* Allow column-level GRANT/REVOKE privileges
* Add a GUC variable to warn about non-standard SQL usage in queries
* Add MERGE command that does UPDATE/DELETE, or on failure, INSERT (rules,
  triggers?)
* Add ON COMMIT capability to CREATE TABLE AS SELECT
* Add NOVICE output level for helpful messages like automatic sequence/index
  creation
* Add COMMENT ON for all cluster global objects (users, groups, databases
  and tablespaces)
* Add an option to automatically use savepoints for each statement in a
  multi-statement transaction.

  When enabled, this would allow errors in multi-statement transactions
  to be automatically ignored.

* Make row-wise comparisons work per SQL spec
* Add RESET CONNECTION command to reset all session state

  This would include resetting of all variables (RESET ALL), dropping of
  all temporary tables, removal of any NOTIFYs, etc.  This could be used
  for connection pooling.  We could also change RESET ALL to have this
  functionality.

* Allow FOR UPDATE queries to do NOWAIT locks


* ALTER
	o Have ALTER TABLE RENAME rename SERIAL sequence names
	o Add ALTER DOMAIN TYPE
	o Allow ALTER TABLE ... ALTER CONSTRAINT ... RENAME
	o Allow ALTER TABLE to change constraint deferrability and actions
	o Disallow dropping of an inherited constraint
	o Allow objects to be moved to different schemas
	o Allow ALTER TABLESPACE to move to different directories
	o Allow databases and schemas to be moved to different tablespaces

	  One complexity is whether moving a schema should move all existing
	  schema objects or just define the location for future object creation.

	o Allow moving system tables to other tablespaces, where possible

	  Currently non-global system tables must be in the default database
	  schema. Global system tables can never be moved.


* CLUSTER
	o Automatically maintain clustering on a table

	  This might require some background daemon to maintain clustering
	  during periods of low usage. It might also require tables to be only
	  paritally filled for easier reorganization.  Another idea would
          be to create a merged heap/index data file so an index lookup would
	  automatically access the heap data too.  A third idea would be to
	  store heap rows in hashed groups, perhaps using a user-supplied
	  hash function.

	o Add default clustering to system tables

	  To do this, determine the ideal cluster index for each system
	  table and set the cluster setting during initdb.


* COPY
	o Allow COPY to report error lines and continue
	
	  This requires the use of a savepoint before each COPY line is
	  processed, with ROLLBACK on COPY failure.

	o Allow COPY to understand \x as a hex byte
	o Have COPY return the number of rows loaded/unloaded (?)
	o Allow COPY to optionally include column headings in the first line
	o Allow COPY FROM ... CVS to interpret newlines and carriage
	  returns in data

	  This would require major refactoring of the copy source code.


* CURSOR
	o Allow UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF cursor
	
	  This requires using the row ctid to map cursor rows back to the
	  original heap row. This become more complicated if WITH HOLD cursors
	  are to be supported because WITH HOLD cursors have a copy of the row
	  and no FOR UPDATE lock.

	o Prevent DROP TABLE from dropping a row referenced by its own open
	  cursor (?)

	o Allow pooled connections to list all open WITH HOLD cursors

	  Because WITH HOLD cursors exist outside transactions, this allows
	  them to be listed so they can be closed.


* INSERT
	o Allow INSERT/UPDATE of the system-generated oid value for a row
	o Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)
	o Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col
	
	  This is useful for returning the auto-generated key for an INSERT.
	  One complication is how to handle rules that run as part of
	  the insert.


* SHOW/SET
	o Add SET PERFORMANCE_TIPS option to suggest INDEX, VACUUM, VACUUM
	  ANALYZE, and CLUSTER
	o Add SET PATH for schemas (?)

	  This is basically the same as SET search_path.

	o Prevent conflicting SET options from being set

	  This requires a checking function to be called after the server
	  configuration file is read.


* SERVER-SIDE LANGUAGES
	o Allow PL/PgSQL's RAISE function to take expressions (?)

	  Currently only constants are supported.

	o Change PL/PgSQL to use palloc() instead of malloc()
	o Handle references to temporary tables that are created, destroyed,
	  then recreated during a session, and EXECUTE is not used

	  This requires the cached PL/PgSQL byte code to be invalidated when
	  an object referenced in the function is changed.

	o Fix PL/pgSQL RENAME to work on variables other than OLD/NEW
	o Allow function parameters to be passed by name,
	  get_employee_salary(emp_id => 12345, tax_year => 2001)
	o Add Oracle-style packages
	o Add table function support to pltcl, plperl, plpython (?)
	o Allow PL/pgSQL to name columns by ordinal position, e.g. rec.(3)
	o Allow PL/pgSQL EXECUTE query_var INTO record_var;
	o Add capability to create and call PROCEDURES
	o Allow PL/pgSQL to handle %TYPE arrays, e.g. tab.col%TYPE[]


Clients
=======

* Add XML output to pg_dump and COPY

  We already allow XML to be stored in the database, and XPath queries
  can be used on that data using /contrib/xml2. It also supports XSLT
  transformations.

* Add a libpq function to support Parse/DescribeStatement capability
* Prevent libpq's PQfnumber() from lowercasing the column name (?)
* Allow libpq to access SQLSTATE so pg_ctl can test for connection failure

  This would be used for checking if the server is up.

* Have psql show current values for a sequence
* Move psql backslash database information into the backend, use mnemonic
  commands? [psql]

  This would allow non-psql clients to pull the same information out of
  the database as psql.

* Fix psql's display of schema information (Neil)
* Allow psql \pset boolean variables to set to fixed values, rather than toggle
* Consistently display privilege information for all objects in psql
* pg_dump
	o Have pg_dump use multi-statement transactions for INSERT dumps
	o Allow pg_dump to use multiple -t and -n switches

	  This should be done by allowing a '-t schema.table' syntax.

	o Add dumping of comments on composite type columns
	o Add dumping of comments on index columns
	o Replace crude DELETE FROM method of pg_dumpall for cleaning of
	  users and groups with separate DROP commands
	o Add dumping and restoring of LOB comments
	o Stop dumping CASCADE on DROP TYPE commands in clean mode
	o Add full object name to the tag field.  eg. for operators we need
	  '=(integer, integer)', instead of just '='.
	o Add pg_dumpall custom format dumps.

	  This is probably best done by combining pg_dump and pg_dumpall
	  into a single binary.

	o Add CSV output format

* ECPG
	o Docs

	  Document differences between ecpg and the SQL standard and
	  information about the Informix-compatibility module.

	o Solve cardinality > 1 for input descriptors / variables (?)
	o Add a semantic check level, e.g. check if a table really exists
	o fix handling of DB attributes that are arrays
	o Use backend PREPARE/EXECUTE facility for ecpg where possible
	o Implement SQLDA
	o Fix nested C comments
	o sqlwarn[6] should be 'W' if the PRECISION or SCALE value specified
	o Make SET CONNECTION thread-aware, non-standard?
	o Allow multidimensional arrays


Referential Integrity
=====================

* Add MATCH PARTIAL referential integrity
* Add deferred trigger queue file

  Right now all deferred trigger information is stored in backend
  memory.  This could exhaust memory for very large trigger queues.
  This item involves dumping large queues into files.

* Implement dirty reads or shared row locks and use them in RI triggers

  Adding shared locks requires recording the table/rows numbers in a
  shared area, and this could potentially be a large amount of data.
  One idea is to store the table/row numbers in a separate table and set
  a bit on the row indicating looking in this new table is required to
  find any shared row locks.

* Enforce referential integrity for system tables
* Change foreign key constraint for array -> element to mean element
  in array (?)
* Allow DEFERRABLE UNIQUE constraints (?)
* Allow triggers to be disabled [trigger]

  Currently the only way to disable triggers is to modify the system
  tables.

* With disabled triggers, allow pg_dump to use ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY

  If the dump is known to be valid, allow foreign keys to be added
  without revalidating the data.

* Allow statement-level triggers to access modified rows
* Support triggers on columns
* Remove CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER

  This was used in older releases to dump referential integrity
  constraints.

* Allow AFTER triggers on system tables

  System tables are modified in many places in the backend without going
  through the executor and therefore not causing triggers to fire. To
  complete this item, the functions that modify system tables will have
  to fire triggers.


Dependency Checking
===================

* Flush cached query plans when the dependent objects change
* Track dependencies in function bodies and recompile/invalidate


Exotic Features
===============

* Add SQL99 WITH clause to SELECT
* Add SQL99 WITH RECURSIVE to SELECT
* Add pre-parsing phase that converts non-ANSI syntax to supported
  syntax

  This could allow SQL written for other databases to run without
  modification.

* Allow plug-in modules to emulate features from other databases
* SQL*Net listener that makes PostgreSQL appear as an Oracle database
  to clients
* Allow queries across databases or servers with transaction
  semantics
	
  Right now contrib/dblink can be used to issue such queries except it
  does not have locking or transaction semantics. Two-phase commit is
  needed to enable transaction semantics.

* Add two-phase commit

  This will involve adding a way to respond to commit failure by either
  taking the server into offline/readonly mode or notifying the
  administrator


PERFORMANCE
===========


Fsync
=====

* Improve commit_delay handling to reduce fsync()
* Determine optimal fdatasync/fsync, O_SYNC/O_DSYNC options
* Allow multiple blocks to be written to WAL with one write()
* Add an option to sync() before fsync()'ing checkpoint files


Cache
=====
* Allow free-behind capability for large sequential scans, perhaps using
  posix_fadvise()

  Posix_fadvise() can control both sequential/random file caching and
  free-behind behavior, but it is unclear how the setting affects other
  backends that also have the file open, and the feature is not supported
  on all operating systems.

* Consider use of open/fcntl(O_DIRECT) to minimize OS caching
* Cache last known per-tuple offsets to speed long tuple access

  While column offsets are already cached, the cache can not be used if
  the tuple has NULLs or TOAST columns because these values change the
  typical column offsets. Caching of such offsets could be accomplished
  by remembering the previous offsets and use them again if the row has
  the same pattern.

* Speed up COUNT(*)

  We could use a fixed row count and a +/- count to follow MVCC
  visibility rules, or a single cached value could be used and
  invalidated if anyone modifies the table.

* Consider automatic caching of queries at various levels:
	o Parsed query tree
	o Query execute plan
	o Query results

* Allow the size of the buffer cache used by temporary objects to be
  specified as a GUC variable

  Larger local buffer cache sizes requires more efficient handling of
  local cache lookups.

* Improve the background writer

  Allow the background writer to more efficiently write dirty buffers
  from the end of the LRU cache and use a clock sweep algorithm to
  write other dirty buffers to reduced checkpoint I/O

Vacuum
======

* Improve speed with indexes

  For large table adjustements during vacuum, it is faster to reindex
  rather than update the index.

* Reduce lock time by moving tuples with read lock, then write
  lock and truncate table

  Moved tuples are invisible to other backends so they don't require a
  write lock. However, the read lock promotion to write lock could lead
  to deadlock situations.

* Allow free space map to be auto-sized or warn when it is too small

  The free space map is in shared memory so resizing is difficult.

* Maintain a map of recently-expired rows

  This allows vacuum to reclaim free space without requiring
  a sequential scan

* Auto-vacuum
	o Move into the backend code
	o Scan the buffer cache to find free space or use background writer
	o Use free-space map information to guide refilling

Locking
=======

* Make locking of shared data structures more fine-grained

  This requires that more locks be acquired but this would reduce lock
  contention, improving concurrency.

* Add code to detect an SMP machine and handle spinlocks accordingly
  from distributted.net, http://www1.distributed.net/source,
  in client/common/cpucheck.cpp

  On SMP machines, it is possible that locks might be released shortly,
  while on non-SMP machines, the backend should sleep so the process
  holding the lock can complete and release it.

* Improve SMP performance on i386 machines

  i386-based SMP machines can generate excessive context switching
  caused by lock failure in high concurrency situations. This may be
  caused by CPU cache line invalidation inefficiencies.

* Research use of sched_yield() for spinlock acquisition failure
* Fix priority ordering of read and write light-weight locks (Neil)


Startup Time
============

* Experiment with multi-threaded backend [thread]

  This would prevent the overhead associated with process creation. Most
  operating systems have trivial process creation time compared to
  database startup overhead, but a few operating systems (WIn32,
  Solaris) might benefit from threading.

* Add connection pooling

  It is unclear if this should be done inside the backend code or done
  by something external like pgpool. The passing of file descriptors to
  existing backends is one of the difficulties with a backend approach.


Write-Ahead Log
===============

* Eliminate need to write full pages to WAL before page modification [wal]

  Currently, to protect against partial disk page writes, we write the
  full page images to WAL before they are modified so we can correct any
  partial page writes during recovery.  These pages can also be
  eliminated from point-in-time archive files.

* Reduce WAL traffic so only modified values are written rather than
  entire rows (?)
* Turn off after-change writes if fsync is disabled

  If fsync is off, there is no purpose in writing full pages to WAL

* Add WAL index reliability improvement to non-btree indexes
* Allow the pg_xlog directory location to be specified during initdb
  with a symlink back to the /data location
* Allow WAL information to recover corrupted pg_controldata
* Find a way to reduce rotational delay when repeatedly writing
  last WAL page

  Currently fsync of WAL requires the disk platter to perform a full
  rotation to fsync again. One idea is to write the WAL to different
  offsets that might reduce the rotational delay.

* Allow buffered WAL writes and fsync

  Instead of guaranteeing recovery of all committed transactions, this
  would provide improved performance by delaying WAL writes and fsync
  so an abrupt operating system restart might lose a few seconds of
  committed transactions but still be consistent.  We could perhaps
  remove the 'fsync' parameter (which results in an an inconsistent
  database) in favor of this capability.

* Eliminate WAL logging for CREATE TABLE AS when not doing WAL archiving

Optimizer / Executor
====================

* Add missing optimizer selectivities for date, r-tree, etc
* Allow ORDER BY ... LIMIT 1 to select high/low value without sort or
  index using a sequential scan for highest/lowest values

  If only one value is needed, there is no need to sort the entire
  table. Instead a sequential scan could get the matching value.

* Precompile SQL functions to avoid overhead
* Create utility to compute accurate random_page_cost value
* Improve ability to display optimizer analysis using OPTIMIZER_DEBUG
* Have EXPLAIN ANALYZE highlight poor optimizer estimates
* Use CHECK constraints to influence optimizer decisions

  CHECK constraints contain information about the distribution of values
  within the table. This is also useful for implementing subtables where
  a tables content is distributed across several subtables.

* Consider using hash buckets to do DISTINCT, rather than sorting

  This would be beneficial when there are few distinct values.

* ANALYZE should record a pg_statistic entry for an all-NULL column

Miscellaneous
=============

* Do async I/O for faster random read-ahead of data

  Async I/O allows multiple I/O requests to be sent to the disk with
  results coming back asynchronously.

* Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory or to write WAL files (?)

  This would remove the requirement for SYSV SHM but would introduce
  portability issues. Anonymous mmap (or mmap to /dev/zero) is required
  to prevent I/O overhead.

* Consider mmap()'ing files into a backend?

  Doing I/O to large tables would consume a lot of address space or
  require frequent mapping/unmapping.  Extending the file also causes
  mapping problems that might require mapping only individual pages,
  leading to thousands of mappings.  Another problem is that there is no
  way to _prevent_ I/O to disk from the dirty shared buffers so changes
  could hit disk before WAL is written.

* Add a script to ask system configuration questions and tune postgresql.conf
* Use a phantom command counter for nested subtransactions to reduce
  per-tuple overhead
* Consider parallel processing a single query

  This would involve using multiple threads or processes to do optimization,
  sorting, or execution of single query.  The major advantage of such a
  feature would be to allow multiple CPUs to work together to process a
  single query.

* Research the use of larger page sizes


Source Code
===========

* Add use of 'const' for variables in source tree
* Rename some /contrib modules from pg* to pg_*
* Move some things from /contrib into main tree
* Move some /contrib modules out to their own project sites
* Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align
* Move platform-specific ps status display info from ps_status.c to ports
* Add optional CRC checksum to heap and index pages
* Improve documentation to build only interfaces (Marc)
* Remove or relicense modules that are not under the BSD license, if possible
* Remove memory/file descriptor freeing before ereport(ERROR)
* Acquire lock on a relation before building a relcache entry for it
* Promote debug_query_string into a server-side function current_query()
* Allow the identifier length to be increased via a configure option
* Remove Win32 rename/unlink looping if unnecessary
* Remove kerberos4 from source tree?
* Allow cross-compiling by generating the zic database on the target system
* Improve NLS maintenace of libpgport messages linked onto applications
* Allow ecpg to work with MSVC and BCC


* Win32
	o Remove configure.in check for link failure when cause is found
	o Remove readdir() errno patch when runtime/mingwex/dirent.c rev
	  1.4 is released
	o Remove psql newline patch when we find out why mingw outputs an
	  extra newline
	o Allow psql to use readline once non-US code pages work with
	  backslashes
	o Re-enable timezone output on log_line_prefix '%t' when a
	  shorter timezone string is available
	o Improve dlerror() reporting string
	o Fix problem with shared memory on the Win32 Terminal Server
        o Disallow encodings like UTF8 which PostgreSQL supports
          but the operating system does not (already disallowed by
	  pginstaller)

	  To fix UTF8, the data needs to be converted to UTF16 and then
	  the Win32 wcscoll() can be used.


* Wire Protocol Changes
	o Allow dynamic character set handling
	o Add decoded type, length, precision
	o Use compression?
	o Update clients to use data types, typmod, schema.table.column names
	  of result sets using new query protocol


---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Developers who have claimed items are:
--------------------------------------
* Alvaro is Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@dcc.uchile.cl>
* Andrew is Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
* Bruce is Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> of Software Research Assoc.
* Christopher is Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> of
    Family Health Network
* Claudio is Claudio Natoli <claudio.natoli@memetrics.com>
* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> of The Cain Gang Ltd.
* Fabien is Fabien Coelho <coelho@cri.ensmp.fr>
* Gavin is Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au> of Alcove Systems Engineering
* Greg is Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
* Hiroshi is Hiroshi Inoue <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>
* Jan is Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com> of Afilias, Inc.
* Joe is Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>
* Karel is Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>
* Magnus is Magnus Hagander <mha@sollentuna.net>
* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> of PostgreSQL, Inc.
* Matthew T. O'Connor <matthew@zeut.net>
* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org> of Credativ
* Neil is Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
* Oleg is Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>
* Peter is Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
* Philip is Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> of Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.
* Rod is Rod Taylor <pg@rbt.ca>
* Simon is Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
* Stephan is Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone23.bigpanda.com>
* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp> of Software Research Assoc.
* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> of Red Hat