postgres/HISTORY

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Release Notes
Release 7.3
Release date: 2002-??-??
Overview
Major changes in this release:
Schemas
Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace
so two people or applications can have tables with the same
name. There is also a public schema for shared tables.
Table/index creation can be restricted by removing
permissions on the public schema.
Drop Column
PostgreSQL now supports ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality.
Table Functions
Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are
now much easier to use than before. You can call such a
"table function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output
like a table. Also, plpgsql functions can now return sets.
Prepared Queries
For performance, PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries.
Dependency Tracking
PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows
improvements in many areas.
Privileges
Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and
people running them can take on the privileges of their creators.
Multibyte/Locale
Both multibyte and locale are now always enabled.
Logging
A variety of logging options have been enhanced.
Interfaces
A large number of interfaces have been moved to
http://gborg.postgresql.org where they can be developed
and released independently.
Functions/Identifiers
By default, functions can now take up to 32 parameters, and
identifiers can be up to 63 bytes long.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.3
A dump/restore using "pg_dump" is required for those wishing to migrate
data from any previous release. If your application examines the
system catalogs, additional changes will be required due to the
introduction of schemas in 7.3; for more information, see
http://www.ca.postgresql.org/docs/momjian/upgrade_tips_7.3
Observe the following incompatibilities:
* Pre-6.3 clients are no longer supported.
* pg_hba.conf now has a USER column and additional features.
* Several GUC logging parameters have been renamed and improved.
* LIMIT #,# is disabled, use LIMIT # OFFSET #.
* INSERTs with column lists must specify all values, e.g.
INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1') is now invalid.
* DROP object now takes either CASCADE or RESTRICT to control
whether dependent objects are also dropped.
* An index is now not automatically created for SERIAL columns.
* A SET inside an aborted transaction is now rolled back.
* COPY no longer considers missing trailing columns to be NULL.
* TIMESTAMP and TIME data types now default to WITHOUT TIMEZONE.
* Pre-7.3 databases loaded into 7.3 will not have the new object
dependencies for SERIAL, UNIQUE constraints, and foreign keys. See
/contrib/adddepend for a detailed description and a script that
will add the such dependencies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
2002-09-23
Server Operation
================
Kerberos V Heimdal support (KTH)
Add pg_locks view to show locks (Neil)
Security fixes for password negotiation memory allocation (Neil)
Remove support for version 0, <=6.2 FE/BE protocol (Tom)
Reserve the last few backend slots for superusers, add GUC variable
superuser_reserved_connections to control this (Nigel J. Andrews)
Performance
===========
Improve startup by calling localtime() only once (Tom)
Cache system catalog information in flat files for faster startup (Tom)
Improve caching of index information (Tom)
Optimizer improvements (Tom, Fernando Nasser)
Catalog caches now store failed lookups (Tom)
Hash function improvements (Neil)
Improve performance of query tokenization and network handling (Peter)
Speed improvement for large object restore (Mario Weilguni)
Mark expired index entries on first lookup, saving later heap fetches (Tom)
Eliminate NULL bitmap padding when not required (Manfred)
Add BSD-licensed qsort() for Solaris, for performance (Bruce)
Reduce per-row overhead by four bytes (Manfred Koizar)
Fix GEQO optimizer bug (Neil Conway)
Make WITHOUT OID actually save four bytes per row (Manfred Koizar)
Add GUC default_statistics_target variable to specify ANALYZE buckets (Neil)
Use local buffer cache for temporary tables so no WAL overhead (Tom)
Improve free space map performance on large tables (Stephen Marshall, Tom)
Privileges
==========
Add privileges on functions and procedural languages (Peter)
Add OWNER to CREATE DATABASE so superusers can create databases
on behalf of unprivileged users. (Gavin Sherry, Tom)
Add new object permission bits EXECUTE and USAGE (Tom)
Add SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION (Peter)
Allow functions to be executed with the privilege of the function owner (Peter)
Client Authentication
=====================
Allow $HOME/.pgpass to store host/user password combinations (Alvaro Herrera)
Server Configuration
====================
Server log messages now tagged with LOG, not DEBUG (Bruce)
Add USER column to pg_hba.conf (Bruce)
Have log_connections output two lines in log file (Tom)
Remove debug_level from postgresql.conf, now SERVER_MIN_MESSAGES (Bruce)
New ALTER DATABASE/USER ... SET command for per-user/db initialization (Peter)
New GUC variables server_min_messages and client_min_messages which control
which messages are sent to the server logs or client applications (Bruce)
Allow pg_hba.conf to specify lists of users/dbs separated by commas,
group names prepended with +, and file names prepended with @ (Bruce)
Allow group names specified by +
Add samegroup in pg_hba.conf for group name/dbname restriction (Bruce)
Remove secondary password file capability (Bruce)
Remove pg_passwd utility (Bruce)
Add GUC variable db_user_namespace for db-local user names (Bruce)
SSL improvements (Bear Giles)
Make encryption of stored passwords the default (Bruce)
Allow pg_statistics to be reset by calling pg_stat_reset() (Christopher)
Add log_duration GUC parameter (Bruce)
Rename GUC debug_print_query to log_statement (Bruce)
Rename GUC show_query_stats to show_statement_stats (Bruce)
Add GUC param log_min_error_statement to print query to logs on error (Gavin)
Queries
=======
Make cursors insensitive, meaning their contents do not change (Tom)
Disable LIMIT #,# syntax; now only LIMIT # OFFSET # supported (Bruce)
Increase identifier length to 63 (Neil, Bruce)
UNION fixes for merging >= 3 columns of different lengths (Tom)
Add DEFAULT keyword to INSERT, i.e INSERT ... (..., DEFAULT, ) (Rod)
Allow views to have default values using ALTER COLUMN ... SET DEFAULT (Neil)
Fail on INSERTs with column lists that don't supply all column values,
e.g. INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1'); (Rod)
Fix for join aliases (Tom)
Fix for FULL OUTER JOINs (Tom)
Improve reporting of invalid identifier and location (Tom, Gavin)
Fix OPEN cursor(args) (Tom)
Allow 'ctid' to be used in a view and currtid(viewname) (Hiroshi)
Fix for CREATE TABLE AS with UNION (Tom)
SQL99 syntax improvements (Thomas)
Add GUC statement_timeout variable to cancel queries (Bruce)
Allow prepared queries with PREPARE/EXECUTE (Neil)
Allow FOR UPDATE to appear after LIMIT/OFFSET (Bruce)
Add auto-transactions with GUC variable autocommit (Tom, David Van Wie)
Object Manipulation
===================
Make equals signs optional in CREATE DATABASE (Gavin Sherry)
Make ALTER TABLE OWNER to change index ownership (Neil)
Add per-database and per-user startup commands, ALTER DATABASE ... SET and
ALTER USER ... SET (Peter)
New ALTER TABLE tabname ALTER COLUMN colname SET STORAGE controls TOAST
storage, compression (John Gray)
Add SCHEMA support with CREATE/DROP SCHEMA (Tom)
Create schema for temporary tables (Tom)
Add GUC variable search_path for namespace schema search (Tom)
Add ALTER TABLE SET/DROP NOT NULL (Christopher)
New CREATE FUNCTION volatility levels (Tom)
Make rule names unique only per table (Tom)
Add 'ON tablename' clause to DROP RULE and COMMENT ON RULE (Tom)
Add ALTER TRIGGER RENAME (Joe)
New current_schema() and current_schemas() inquiry functions (Tom)
Allow functions to return multiple rows, also called table functions (Joe)
Make WITH optional in CREATE DATABASE, for consistency (Bruce)
Add object dependency tracking (Rod, Tom)
Add RESTRICT/CASCADE to DROP commands (Rod)
Add ALTER TABLE DROP non-CHECK CONSTRAINT (Rod)
Auto-destroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL (Rod)
Prevent column dropping if column is used by foreign key (Rod)
Automatically drop constraints/functions when object is dropped (Rod)
Add CREATE/DROP OPERATOR CLASS (Bill Studenmund, Tom)
Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN (Christopher, Tom, Hiroshi)
Prevent inherited columns from being removed or renamed (Alvaro Herrera)
Fix foreign key constraints to not error on intermediate db states (Stephan)
Propagate column or table renaming to foreign key constraints
Add CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW (Gavin, Neil, Tom)
Add CREATE OR REPLACE RULE (Gavin, Neil, Tom)
Utility Commands
================
Have COPY TO output embedded carriage returns and newlines as \r and \n (Tom)
Allow DELIMITER in COPY FROM to be 8-bit clean (Tatsuo)
Make pg_dump use ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY, for performance (Neil)
Disable brackets in multi-statement rules (Bruce)
Disable VACUUM from being called inside a function (Bruce)
Allow dropdb and other scripts to use identifiers with spaces (Bruce)
Restrict comment to the current database
Allow comments on operators, independent of the underlying function (Rod)
Rollback SET commands in aborted transactions (Tom)
EXPLAIN now outputs as a query (Tom)
Display sort keys in EXPLAIN (Tom)
Add 'SET LOCAL var = value' to set GUC variables for a single transaction (Tom)
Allow ANALYZE to run in a transaction (Bruce)
Improve COPY syntax using new WITH clauses, keep backward compatibility (Bruce)
Fix pg_dump to consistently output tags in non-ASCII dumps (Bruce)
Make foreign key constraints clearer in dump file (Rod)
Add COMMENT ON CONSTRAINT (Rod)
Allow COPY TO/FROM to specify column names (Brent Verner)
Dump UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY contraints as ALTER TABLE (Rod)
Have SHOW output a query result (Joe)
Generate failure on short COPY lines rather than pad NULLs (Neil)
Fix CLUSTER to preserve all table attributes (Alvaro Herrera)
New pg_settings table to view/modify GUC settings (Joe)
Add smart quoting, portability improvements to pg_dump output (Peter)
Dump serial columns out as SERIAL (Tom)
Enable large file support, >2G for pg_dump (Peter)
Disallow TRUNCATE on tables that are involved in referential constraints (Rod)
Have TRUNCATE also auto-truncate the toast table of the relation (Tom)
Add clusterdb utility that will auto-cluster an entire database based on
previous CLUSTER operations (Alvaro Herrera)
Overhaul pg_dumpall (Peter)
Allow REINDEX of TOAST tables (Tom)
Implemented START TRANSACTION, per SQL99 (Neil)
Data Types and Functions
========================
Fix factorial(0) to return 1 (Bruce)
Date/time/timezone improvements (Thomas)
Fix for array slice extraction (Tom)
Fix extract/date_part to report proper microseconds for timestamp (Tatsuo)
Allow text_substr() and bytea_substr() to read TOAST values more
efficiently (John Gray)
Add DOMAIN type support (Rod)
Make WITHOUT TIME ZONE the default for TIMESTAMP and TIME data types (Thomas)
Allow alternate storage scheme of 64-bit integers for date/time types
using --enable-integer-datetimes in configure (Thomas)
Make timezone(timestamptz) return timestamp rather than a string (Thomas)
Allow fractional seconds in date/time types for dates prior to 1BC (Thomas)
Limit timestamp data types to 6 decimal places of precision (Thomas)
Change timezone conversion functions from timetz() to timezone() (Thomas)
Add GUC variables datestyle and timezone (Tom)
Add OVERLAY(), which allows substitution of a substring in a string (Thomas)
Add SIMILAR TO as a synonym for our existing operator "~" (Thomas, Tom)
Add regular expression SUBSTRING(string FROM pat FOR escape) (Thomas)
Add LOCALTIME and LOCALTIMESTAMP functions (Thomas)
Add named composite types using CREATE TYPE typename AS (column) (Joe)
Allow composite type definition in the table alias clause (Joe)
Add new API to simplify creation of C language table functions (Joe)
Remove ODBC-compatible empty parentheses from calls to SQL99 functions
for which these parentheses do not match the standar (Thomas)
Add appendix in the User's Guide which lists SQL92 features (Thomas)
Allow macaddr data type to accept 12 hex digits with no separators (Mike Wyer)
Add CREATE/DROP CAST (Thomas)
Add IS DISTINCT FROM operator (Thomas)
Add SQL99 TREAT() function, synonym for CAST() (Thomas)
Add pg_backend_pid() to output backend pid (Bruce)
Allow inet arrays in /contrib/array (Neil)
Add IS OF / IS NOT OF type predicate (Thomas)
Allow bit string constants without fully-specified length (Thomas)
Allow conversion between 8-byte integers and bit strings (Thomas)
Implement hex literal conversion to bit string literal (Thomas)
Allow table functions to appear in the FROM clause (Joe)
Increase maximum number of function parameters to 32 (Bruce)
No longer automatically create index for SERIAL column (Tom)
Add current_database() (Rod)
Fix cash_words() to not overflow buffer (Tom)
Add functions replace(), split_part(), to_hex() (Joe)
Fix LIKE for bytea as a right-hand argument (Joe)
Prevent crashes caused by SELECT cash_out(2)
Triggers are now fired in alphabetical order (Tom)
Add /contrib/adddepend to handle pre-7.3 object dependencies (Rod)
Allow better casting when INSERTing/UPDATing values (Tom)
Fix to_char(1,'FM999.99') to return a period (Karel)
Fix trigger/type/language functions returning OPAQUE to return proper type (Tom)
Internationalization
====================
Add additional encodings (Korean (JOHAB), Thai (WIN874), Vietnamese (TCVN),
Arabic (WIN1256), Simplified Chinese (GBK), Korean (UHC) (Eiji Tokuya)
Enable locale support by default (Peter)
Add GUC locale variables (Peter)
Escape byes >= 0x7f for multibyte in PQescapeBytea/PQunescapeBytea (Tatsuo)
Add locale awareness to regular expression character classes
Enable multibyte support by default (Tatso)
Add GUC variables client_encoding (Tom)
Add GB18030 multibyte support (Bill Huang)
Add CREATE/DROP CONVERSION, allowing loadable encodings (Tatsuo, Kaori)
Add pg_conversion table (Tatsuo)
Add SQL99 CONVERT() function (Tatsuo)
Server-side Languages
=====================
Allow recursive SQL function (Peter)
Change PL/Tcl build to use configured compiler and Makefile.shlib (Peter)
Overhaul the PL/pgSQL FOUND variable to be more Oracle-compatible (Tom, Neil)
Allow PL/pgSQL to handle quoted identifiers (Tom)
Allow set-returning PL/pgSQL functions (Neil)
Make PL/pgSQL schema-aware (Joe)
Psql
====
Don't lowercase psql \connect database name for 7.2.0 compatibility (Tom)
Add psql \timing to time user queries (Greg Sabino Mullane)
Have psql \d show index information (Greg Sabino Mullane)
New psql \dD shows domains (Jonathan Eisler)
Allow psql to show rules on views (Paul ?)
Fix for psql variable substitution (Tom)
Allow psql \d to show temporary table structure (Tom)
Allow psql \d to show foreign keys (Rod)
Fix \? to honor \pset pager (Bruce)
Have psql reports its version number on startup (Tom)
Libpq
=====
Add PQunescapeBytea() function to libpq (Patrick Welche)
Fix for sending large queries over non-blocking connections (Bernhard Herzog)
Fix for libpq using timers on Win9X (David Ford)
Allow libpq notify to handle servers with different-length identifiers (Tom)
Add libpq PQescapeString() and PQescapeBytea() to Win32 (Bruce)
Fix for SSL with non-blocking connections (Jack Bates)
Add libpq connection timeout parameter (Denis A Ustimenko)
JDBC
====
Allow jdbc to compile with jdk 1.4 (Dave)
Add jdbc3 support (Barry)
Allows jdbc to set loglevel by adding ?loglevel=X to the connection URL (Barry)
Add jdbc Driver.info() message that prints out the version number (Barry)
Add jdbc updateable result sets (Raghu Nidagal, Dave)
Add jdbc support for callable statements (Paul Bethe)
Add jdbc query cancel capability
Add refresh row to jdbc (Dave)
Fix jdbc MD5 encryption handling for multibyte servers (Jun Kawai)
Add JDBC support for prepared statements (Barry)
ECPG
====
Fixed ecpg bug concerning octal numbers in single quotes (Michael)
Misc. Interfaces
================
Move /interfaces/libpgeasy to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)
Improve python (Elliot Lee, Andrew Johnson, Greg Copeland)
Add libpgtcl connection close event (Gerhard Hintermayer)
Move /interfaces/libpq++ to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)
Move /interfaces/odbc to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc)
Move /interfaces/libpgeasy to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)
Move /interfaces/perl5 to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)
Remove /bin/pgaccess from main tree, now at http://www.pgaccess.org (Bruce)
Add pg_on_connection_loss command to libpgtcl (Gerhard Hintermayer, Tom)
Build and Install
=================
Fix for parallel make (Peter)
AIX fixes for linking TCL (Andreas Zeugswetter)
Allow plperl to build under Cygwin (Jason Tishler)
Improve MIPS compiles (Peter, Oliver Elphick)
Require autoconf version 2.53 (Peter)
Require readline and zlib by default in configure (Peter)
Allow Solaris to use Intimate Shared Memory (ISM), for performance
(Scott Brunza, P.J. Josh Rovero)
Always enable syslog in compile, remove --enable-syslog option (Tatsuo)
Always enable multibyte in compile, remove --enable-multibyte option (Tatsuo)
Always enable locale in compile, remove --enable-locale option (Tatsuo)
Fix for Win9x DLL creation (Magnus Naeslund)
Fix for link() usage by WAL code on Win32, Netware, BeOS (Jason Tishler)
Add sys/types.h to c.h, remove from main files (Peter, Bruce)
Fix AIX hang on SMP machines (Tomoyuki Niijima)
AIX SMP hang fix (Tomoyuki Niijima)
Fix pre-1970 date handling on newer glibc libraries (Tom)
Fix PowerPC SMP locking (Tom)
Prevent gcc -ffast-math from being used (Tom)
Source Code
===========
Improve loadable module linking to use RTLD_NOW (Tom)
New error levels WARNING, INFO, LOG, DEBUG[1-5] (Bruce)
New src/port directory holds replace libc functions (Peter, Bruce)
New pg_namespace system catalog for schemas (Tom)
Add pg_class.relnamespace for schemas (Tom)
Add pg_type.typnamespace for schemas (Tom)
Add pg_proc.pronamespace for schemas (Tom)
Restructure aggregates to have pg_proc entries (Tom)
System relations now have their own namespace, pg_* test not required
(Fernando Nasser)
Rename TOAST index names to be *_index rather than *_idx (Neil)
Add namespaces for operators, opclasses (Tom)
Add additional checks to server control file (Thomas)
New Polish FAQ (Marcin Mazurek)
Add Posix semaphore support (Tom)
Document need for reindex (Bruce)
Rename some internal identifiers to simplify Win32 compile (Jan, Katherine Ward)
Add documentation on computing disk space (Bruce)
Remove KSQO from GUC (Bruce)
Fix memory leak in rtree (Kenneth Been)
Modify a few error messages for consistency (Bruce)
Remove unused system table columns (Peter)
Make system columns NOT NULL where appropriate (Tom)
Clean up use of sprintf in favor of snprintf() (Neil, Jukka Holappa)
Remove OPAQUE and create specific subtypes (Tom)
Cleanups in array internal handling (Joe, Tom)
Disallow pg_atoi('') (Bruce)
Remove GUC parameter wal_files because WAL files are now recycled (Bruce)
Add version numbers to heap pages (Tom)
Contrib
=======
Gist fixes (Teodor Sigaev, Neil)
Upgrade /contrib/mysql
Add /contrib/dbsize which shows table sizes without vacuum (Peter)
Add /contrib/intagg, integer aggregator routines (mlw)
Improve /contrib/Oid2name (Neil, Bruce)
Improve /contrib/tsearch (Teodor Sigaev)
Improve /contrib/tsearch (Oleg)
Cleanups of /contrib/rserver (Alexey V. Borzov)
Update /contrib/oracle conversion utility (Gilles Darold)
Update /contrib/dblink (Joe)
Improve options supported by /contrib/vacuumlo (Mario Weilguni)
Improvements to /contrib/intarray (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev, Andrey Oktyabrski)
Add /contrib/reindexdb utility (Shaun Thomas)
Add indexing to /contrib/isbn_issn (Dan Weston)
Add /contrib/dbmirror (Steven Singer)
Improve /contrib/pgbench (Neil)
Add /contrib/tablefunc table function examples (Joe)
Add /contrib/ltree data type for tree structures (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov)
Move /contrib/pg_controldata into main tree (Bruce)
Fixes to /contrib/cube (Bruno Wolff)
Improve /contrib/fulltextindex (Christopher)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.2.3
Release date: 2002-10-01
This has a variety of fixes from 7.2.2, including fixes to prevent
possible data loss.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.2.3
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.2.X.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Prevent possible compressed transaction log loss (Tom)
Prevent non-superuser from increasing most recent vacuum info (Tom)
Handle pre-1970 date values in newer versions of glibc (Tom)
Fix possible hang during server shutdown
Prevent spinlock hangs on SMP PPC machines (Tomoyuki Niijima)
Fix pg_dump to properly dump FULL JOIN USING (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.2.2
Release date: 2002-08-23
This has a variety of fixes from 7.2.1, including the security
problems reported on BUGTRAQ.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.2.2
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.2.X.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Allow EXECUTE of "CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT" in PL/pgSQL (Tom)
Fix for compressed transaction log id wraparound (Tom)
Fix PQescapeBytea/PQunescapeBytea so that they handle bytes > 0x7f (Tatsuo)
Fix for psql and pg_dump crashing when invoked with non-existent long
options (Tatsuo)
Fix crash when invoking geometric operators (Tom)
Allow OPEN cursor(args) (Tom)
Fix for rtree_gist index build (Teodor)
Fix for usage of partial indexes for relations other than first in
joins (Tom)
Fix for dumping user-defined aggregates (Tom)
Contrib/intarray fixes (Oleg)
Fix for complex UNION/EXCEPT/INTERSECT queries using parens (Tom)
Fix to pg_convert (Tatsuo)
Fix for buffer overrun in handling long datetime input (Thomas, Neil)
Fix for buffer overrun in repeat() (Neil)
Fix for buffer overrun in lpad() and rpad() with multibyte (Neil)
Fix for buffer overrun in SET TIME ZONE and TZ env var (Neil)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.2.1
Release date: 2002-03-21
This has a variety of fixes from 7.2.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.2.1
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.2.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Ensure that sequence counters do not go backwards after a crash (Tom)
Fix pgaccess kanji-coversion key binding (Tatsuo)
Optimizer improvements (Tom)
cash I/O improvements (Tom)
New Russian FAQ
Compile fix for missing AuthBlockSig (Heiko)
Additional time zones and time zone fixes (Thomas)
Allow psql \connect to handle mixed case database and user names (Tom)
Return proper OID on command completion even with ON INSERT rules (Tom)
Allow COPY FROM to use 8-bit DELIMITERS (Tatsuo)
Fix bug in extract/date_part for milliseconds/microseconds (Tatsuo)
Improve handling of multiple UNIONs with different lengths (Tom)
contrib/btree_gist improvements (Teodor Sigaev)
contrib/tsearch dictionary improvements, see README.tsearch for
an additional installation step (Thomas T. Thai, Teodor Sigaev)
Fix for array subscripts handling (Tom)
Allow EXECUTE of "CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT" in PL/pgSQL (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.2
Release date: 2002-02-04
Overview
This release improves PostgreSQL for use in high-volume applications.
Major changes in this release:
VACUUM
Vacuuming no longer locks tables, thus allowing normal user access
during the vacuum. A new "VACUUM FULL" command does old-style
vacuum by locking the table and shrinking the on-disk copy of the
table.
Transactions
There is no longer a problem with installations that exceed four
billion transactions.
OID's
OID's are now optional. Users can now create tables without OID's
for cases where OID usage is excessive.
Optimizer
The system now computes histogram column statistics during
"ANALYZE", allowing much better optimizer choices.
Security
A new MD5 encryption option allows more secure storage and
transfer of passwords. A new Unix-domain socket authentication
option is available on Linux and BSD systems.
Statistics
Administrators can use the new table access statistics module to
get fine-grained information about table and index usage.
Internationalization
Program and library messages can now be displayed in several
languages.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.2
A dump/restore using "pg_dump" is required for those wishing to migrate
data from any previous release.
Observe the following incompatibilities:
* The semantics of the "VACUUM" command have changed in this release.
You may wish to update your maintenance procedures accordingly.
* In this release, comparisons using = NULL will always return false (or
NULL, more precisely). Previous releases automatically transformed
this syntax to IS NULL. The old behavior can be re-enabled using a
"postgresql.conf" parameter.
* The "pg_hba.conf" and "pg_ident.conf" configuration is now only
reloaded after receiving a SIGHUP signal, not with each connection.
* The function "octet_length()" now returns the uncompressed data
length.
* The date/time value 'current' is no longer available. You will need to
rewrite your applications.
* The timestamp() function is no longer available. Use timestamp
'string' instead, or CAST.
The SELECT ... LIMIT #,# syntax will be removed in the next release. You
should change your queries to use separate LIMIT and OFFSET clauses, e.g.
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 20.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Server Operation
Create temporary files in a separate directory (Bruce)
Delete orphanded temporary files on postmaster startup (Bruce)
Added unique indexes to some system tables (Tom)
System table operator reorganization (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Tom)
Renamed pg_log to pg_clog (Tom)
Enable SIGTERM, SIGQUIT to kill backends (Jan)
Removed compile-time limit on number of backends (Tom)
Better cleanup for semaphore resource failure (Tatsuo, Tom)
Allow safe transaction ID wraparound (Tom)
Removed OID's from some system tables (Tom)
Removed "triggered data change violation" error check (Tom)
SPI portal creation of prepared/saved plans (Jan)
Allow SPI column functions to work for system columns (Tom)
Long value compression improvement (Tom)
Statistics collector for table, index access (Jan)
Truncate extra-long sequence names to a reasonable value (Tom)
Measure transaction times in milliseconds (Thomas)
Fix TID sequential scans (Hiroshi)
Superuser ID now fixed at 1 (Peter E)
New pg_ctl "reload" option (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Performance
Optimizer improvements (Tom)
New histogram column statistics for optimizer (Tom)
Reuse write-ahead log files rather than discarding them (Tom)
Cache improvements (Tom)
IS NULL, IS NOT NULL optimizer improvement (Tom)
Improve lock manager to reduce lock contention (Tom)
Keep relcache entries for index access support functions (Tom)
Allow better selectivity with NaN and infinities in NUMERIC (Tom)
R-tree performance improvements (Kenneth Been)
B-tree splits more efficient (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Privileges
Change UPDATE, DELETE permissions to be distinct (Peter E)
New REFERENCES, TRIGGER privileges (Peter E)
Allow GRANT/REVOKE to/from more than one user at a time (Peter E)
New has_table_privilege() function (Joe Conway)
Allow non-superuser to vacuum database (Tom)
New SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION command (Peter E)
Fix bug in privilege modifications on newly created tables (Tom)
Disallow access to pg_statistic for non-superuser, add user-accessible views (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Client Authentication
Fork postmaster before doing authentication to prevent hangs (Peter E)
Add ident authentication over Unix domain sockets on Linux, *BSD (Helge Bahmann, Oliver Elphick, Teodor Sigaev, Bruce)
Add a password authentication method that uses MD5 encryption (Bruce)
Allow encryption of stored passwords using MD5 (Bruce)
PAM authentication (Dominic J. Eidson)
Load pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf only on startup and SIGHUP (Bruce)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Server Configuration
Interpretation of some time zone abbreviations as Australian rather than North American now settable at run time (Bruce)
New parameter to set default transaction isolation level (Peter E)
New parameter to enable conversion of "expr = NULL" into "expr IS NULL", off by default (Peter E)
New parameter to control memory usage by VACUUM (Tom)
New parameter to set client authentication timeout (Tom)
New parameter to set maximum number of open files (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Queries
Statements added by INSERT rules now execute after the INSERT (Jan)
Prevent unadorned relation names in target list (Bruce)
NULLs now sort after all normal values in ORDER BY (Tom)
New IS UNKNOWN, IS NOT UNKNOWN Boolean tests (Tom)
New SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock mode (Tom)
New EXPLAIN ANALYZE command that shows run times and row counts (Martijn van Oosterhout)
Fix problem with LIMIT and subqueries (Tom)
Fix for LIMIT, DISTINCT ON pushed into subqueryies (Tom)
Fix nested EXCEPT/INTERSECT (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Schema Manipulation
Fix SERIAL in temporary tables (Bruce)
Allow temporary sequences (Bruce)
Sequences now use int8 internally (Tom)
New SERIAL8 creates int8 columns with sequences, default still SERIAL4 (Tom)
Make OIDs optional using WITHOUT OIDS (Tom)
Add %TYPE syntax to CREATE TYPE (Ian Lance Taylor)
Add ALTER TABLE / DROP CONSTRAINT for CHECK constraints (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
New CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION to alter existing function (preserving the function OID) (Gavin Sherry)
Add ALTER TABLE / ADD [ UNIQUE | PRIMARY ] (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
Allow column renaming in views
Make ALTER TABLE / RENAME COLUMN update column names of indexes (Brent Verner)
Fix for ALTER TABLE / ADD CONSTRAINT ... CHECK with inherited tables (Stephan Szabo)
ALTER TABLE RENAME update foreign-key trigger arguments correctly (Brent Verner)
DROP AGGREGATE and COMMENT ON AGGREGATE now accept an aggtype (Tom)
Add automatic return type data casting for SQL functions (Tom)
Allow GiST indexes to handle NULLs and multikey indexes (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Tom)
Enable partial indexes (Martijn van Oosterhout)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Utility Commands
Add RESET ALL, SHOW ALL (Marko Kreen)
CREATE/ALTER USER/GROUP now allow options in any order (Vince)
Add LOCK A, B, C functionality (Neil Padgett)
New ENCRYPTED/UNENCRYPTED option to CREATE/ALTER USER (Bruce)
New light-weight VACUUM does not lock table; old semantics are available as VACUUM FULL (Tom)
Disable COPY TO/FROM on views (Bruce)
COPY DELIMITERS string must be exactly one character (Tom)
VACUUM warning about index tuples fewer than heap now only appears when appropriate (Martijn van Oosterhout)
Fix permission checks for CREATE INDEX (Tom)
Disallow inappropriate use of CREATE/DROP INDEX/TRIGGER/VIEW (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Types and Functions
SUM(), AVG(), COUNT() now uses int8 internally for speed (Tom)
Add convert(), convert2() (Tatsuo)
New function bit_length() (Peter E)
Make the "n" in CHAR(n)/VARCHAR(n) represents letters, not bytes (Tatsuo)
CHAR(), VARCHAR() now reject strings that are too long (Peter E)
BIT VARYING now rejects bit strings that are too long (Peter E)
BIT now rejects bit strings that do not match declared size (Peter E)
INET, CIDR text conversion functions (Alex Pilosov)
INET, CIDR operators << and <<= indexable (Alex Pilosov)
Bytea \### now requires valid three digit octal number
Bytea comparison improvements, now supports =, <>, >, >=, <, and <=
Bytea now supports B-tree indexes
Bytea now supports LIKE, LIKE...ESCAPE, NOT LIKE, NOT LIKE...ESCAPE
Bytea now supports concatenation
New bytea functions: position, substring, trim, btrim, and length
New encode() function mode, "escaped", converts minimally escaped bytea to/from text
Add pg_database_encoding_max_length() (Tatsuo)
Add pg_client_encoding() function (Tatsuo)
now() returns time with millisecond precision (Thomas)
New TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIMEZONE data type (Thomas)
Add ISO date/time specification with "T", yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss (Thomas)
New xid/int comparison functions (Hiroshi)
Add precision to TIME, TIMESTAMP, and INVERVAL data types (Thomas)
Modify type coersion logic to attempt binary-compatible functions first (Tom)
New encode() function installed by default (Marko Kreen)
Improved to_*() conversion functions (Karel Zak)
Optimize LIKE/ILIKE when using single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)
New functions in contrib/pgcrypto: crypt(), hmac(), encrypt(), gen_salt() (Marko Kreen)
Correct description of translate() function (Bruce)
Add INTERVAL argument for SET TIME ZONE (Thomas)
Add INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH (etc.) syntax (Thomas)
Optimize length functions when using single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)
Fix path_inter, path_distance, path_length, dist_ppath to handle closed paths (Curtis Barrett, Tom)
octet_length(text) now returns non-compressed length (Tatsuo, Bruce)
Handle "July" full name in date/time literals (Greg Sabino Mullane)
Some datatype() function calls now evaluated differently
Add support for Julian and ISO time specifications (Thomas)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Internationalization
National language support in psql, pg_dump, libpq, and server (Peter E)
Message translations in Chinese (simplified, traditional), Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Swedish (Peter E, Serguei A. Mokhov, Karel Zak, Weiping He, Zhenbang Wei, Kovacs Zoltan)
Make trim, ltrim, rtrim, btrim, lpad, rpad, translate multibyte aware (Tatsuo)
Add LATIN5,6,7,8,9,10 support (Tatsuo)
Add ISO 8859-5,6,7,8 support (Tatsuo)
Correct LATIN5 to mean ISO-8859-9, not ISO-8859-5 (Tatsuo)
Make mic2ascii() non-ASCII aware (Tatsuo)
Reject invalid multibyte character sequences (Tatsuo)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PL/pgSQL
Now uses portals for SELECT loops, allowing huge result sets (Jan)
CURSOR and REFCURSOR support (Jan)
Can now return open cursors (Jan)
Add ELSEIF (Klaus Reger)
Improve PL/pgSQL error reporting, including location of error (Tom)
Allow IS or FOR key words in cursor declaration, for compatibility (Bruce)
Fix for SELECT ... FOR UPDATE (Tom)
Fix for PERFORM returning multiple rows (Tom)
Make PL/pgSQL use the server's type coercion code (Tom)
Memory leak fix (Jan, Tom)
Make trailing semicolon optional (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PL/Perl
New untrusted PL/Perl (Alex Pilosov)
PL/Perl is now built on some platforms even if libperl is not shared (Peter E)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PL/Tcl
Now reports errorInfo (Vsevolod Lobko)
Add spi_lastoid function (bob@redivi.com)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PL/Python
...is new (Andrew Bosma)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Psql
\d displays indexes in unique, primary groupings (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
Allow trailing semicolons in backslash commands (Greg Sabino Mullane)
Read password from /dev/tty if possible
Force new password prompt when changing user and database (Tatsuo, Tom)
Format the correct number of columns for Unicode (Patrice)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Libpq
New function PQescapeString() to escape quotes in command strings (Florian Weimer)
New function PQescapeBytea() escapes binary strings for use as SQL string literals
----------------------------------------------------------------------
JDBC
Return OID of INSERT (Ken K)
Handle more data types (Ken K)
Handle single quotes and newlines in strings (Ken K)
Handle NULL variables (Ken K)
Fix for time zone handling (Barry Lind)
Improved Druid support
Allow eight-bit characters with non-multibyte server (Barry Lind)
Support BIT, BINARY types (Ned Wolpert)
Reduce memory usage (Michael Stephens, Dave Cramer)
Update DatabaseMetaData (Peter E)
Add DatabaseMetaData.getCatalogs() (Peter E)
Encoding fixes (Anders Bengtsson)
Get/setCatalog methods (Jason Davies)
DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() now returns column defaults (Jason Davies)
DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() performance improvement (Jeroen van Vianen)
Some JDBC1 and JDBC2 merging (Anders Bengtsson)
Transaction performance improvements (Barry Lind)
Array fixes (Greg Zoller)
Serialize addition
Fix batch processing (Rene Pijlman)
ExecSQL method reorganization (Anders Bengtsson)
GetColumn() fixes (Jeroen van Vianen)
Fix isWriteable() function (Rene Pijlman)
Improved passage of JDBC2 conformance tests (Rene Pijlman)
Add bytea type capability (Barry Lind)
Add isNullable() (Rene Pijlman)
JDBC date/time test suite fixes (Liam Stewart)
Fix for SELECT 'id' AS xxx FROM table (Dave Cramer)
Fix DatabaseMetaData to show precision properly (Mark Lillywhite)
New getImported/getExported keys (Jason Davies)
MD5 password encryption support (Jeremy Wohl)
Fix to actually use type cache (Ned Wolpert)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ODBC
Remove query size limit (Hiroshi)
Remove text field size limit (Hiroshi)
Fix for SQLPrimaryKeys in multibyte mode (Hiroshi)
Allow ODBC procedure calls (Hiroshi)
Improve boolean handing (Aidan Mountford)
Most configuration options on setable via DSN (Hiroshi)
Multibyte, performance fixes (Hiroshi)
Allow driver to be used with iODBC or unixODBC (Peter E)
MD5 password encryption support (Bruce)
Add more compatibility functions to odbc.sql (Peter E)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ECPG
EXECUTE ... INTO implemented (Christof Petig)
Multiple row descriptor support (e.g. CARDINALITY) (Christof Petig)
Fix for GRANT parameters (Lee Kindness)
Fix INITIALLY DEFERRED bug
Various bug fixes (Michael, Christof Petig)
Auto allocation for indicator variable arrays (int *ind_p=NULL)
Auto allocation for string arrays (char **foo_pp=NULL)
ECPGfree_auto_mem fixed
All function names with external linkage are now prefixed by ECPG
Fixes for arrays of structures (Michael)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Misc. Interfaces
Python fix fetchone() (Gerhard Haring)
Use UTF, Unicode in Tcl where appropriate (Vsevolod Lobko, Reinhard Max)
Add Tcl COPY TO/FROM (ljb)
Prevent output of default index op class in pg_dump (Tom)
Fix libpgeasy memory leak (Bruce)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Build and Install
Configure, dynamic loader, and shared library fixes (Peter E)
Fixes in QNX 4 port (Bernd Tegge)
Fixes in Cygwin and Win32 ports (Jason Tishler, Gerhard Haring, Dmitry Yurtaev, Darko Prenosil, Mikhail Terekhov)
Fix for Win32 socket communication failures (Magnus, Mikhail Terekhov)
Hurd compile fix (Oliver Elphick)
BeOS fixes (Cyril Velter)
Remove configure --enable-unicode-conversion, now enabled by multibyte (Tatsuo)
AIX fixes (Tatsuo, Andreas)
Fix parallel make (Peter E)
Install SQL language manual pages into OS-specific directories (Peter E)
Rename config.h to pg_config.h (Peter E)
Reorganize installation layout of header files (Peter E)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Source Code
Remove SEP_CHAR (Bruce)
New GUC hooks (Tom)
Merge GUC and command line handling (Marko Kreen)
Remove EXTEND INDEX (Martijn van Oosterhout, Tom)
New pgjindent utility to indent java code (Bruce)
Remove define of true/false when compiling under C++ (Leandro Fanzone, Tom)
pgindent fixes (Bruce, Tom)
Replace strcasecmp() with strcmp() where appropriate (Peter E)
Dynahash portability improvements (Tom)
Add 'volatile' usage in spinlock structures
Improve signal handling logic (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Contrib
New contrib/rtree_gist (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev)
New contrib/tsearch full-text indexing (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev)
Add contrib/dblink for remote database access (Joe Conway)
contrib/ora2pg Oracle conversion utility (Gilles Darold)
contrib/xml XML conversion utility (John Gray)
contrib/fulltextindex fixes (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
New contrib/fuzzystrmatch with levenshtein and metaphone, soundex merged (Joe Conway)
Add contrib/intarray boolean queries, binary search, fixes (Oleg Bartunov)
New pg_upgrade utility (Bruce)
Add new pg_resetxlog options (Bruce, Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.1.3
Release date: 2001-08-15
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.1.3
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.1.X.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Remove unused WAL segements of large transactions (Tom)
Multiaction rule fix (Tom)
PL/pgSQL memory allocation fix (Jan)
VACUUM buffer fix (Tom)
Regression test fixes (Tom)
pg_dump fixes for GRANT/REVOKE/comments on views, user-defined types (Tom)
Fix subselects with DISTINCT ON or LIMIT (Tom)
BEOS fix
Disable COPY TO/FROM a view (Tom)
Cygwin build (Jason Tishler)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.1.2
Release date: 2001-05-11
This has one fix from 7.1.1.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.1.2
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.1.X.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Fix PL/pgSQL SELECTs when returning no rows
Fix for psql backslash core dump
Referential integrity permission fix
Optimizer fixes
pg_dump cleanups
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.1.1
Release date: 2001-05-05
This has a variety of fixes from 7.1.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.1.1
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.1.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Fix for numeric MODULO operator (Tom)
pg_dump fixes (Philip)
pg_dump can dump 7.0 databases (Philip)
readline 4.2 fixes (Peter E)
JOIN fixes (Tom)
AIX, MSWIN, VAX,N32K fixes (Tom)
Multibytes fixes (Tom)
Unicode fixes (Tatsuo)
Optimizer improvements (Tom)
Fix for whole tuples in functions (Tom)
Fix for pg_ctl and option strings with spaces (Peter E)
ODBC fixes (Hiroshi)
EXTRACT can now take string argument (Thomas)
Python fixes (Darcy)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.1
Release date: 2001-04-13
This release focuses on removing limitations that have existed in the
PostgreSQL code for many years.
Major changes in this release:
Write-ahead Log (WAL)
To maintain database consistency in case of an operating system
crash, previous releases of PostgreSQL have forced all data
modifications to disk before each transaction commit. With WAL,
only one log file must be flushed to disk, greatly improving
performance. If you have been using -F in previous releases to
disable disk flushes, you may want to consider discontinuing its
use.
TOAST
TOAST - Previous releases had a compiled-in row length limit,
typically 8k - 32k. This limit made storage of long text fields
difficult. With TOAST, long rows of any length can be stored with
good performance.
Outer Joins
We now support outer joins. The UNION/NOT IN workaround for outer
joins is no longer required. We use the SQL92 outer join syntax.
Function Manager
The previous C function manager did not handle NULLs properly, nor
did it support 64-bit CPU's (Alpha). The new function manager
does. You can continue using your old custom functions, but you
may want to rewrite them in the future to use the new function
manager call interface.
Complex Queries
A large number of complex queries that were unsupported in
previous releases now work. Many combinations of views,
aggregates, UNION, LIMIT, cursors, subqueries, and inherited
tables now work properly. Inherited tables are now accessed by
default. Subqueries in FROM are now supported.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.1
A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data
from any previous release.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
Many multi-byte/Unicode/locale fixes (Tatsuo and others)
More reliable ALTER TABLE RENAME (Tom)
Kerberos V fixes (David Wragg)
Fix for INSERT INTO...SELECT where targetlist has subqueries (Tom)
Prompt username/password on standard error (Bruce)
Large objects inv_read/inv_write fixes (Tom)
Fixes for to_char(), to_date(), to_ascii(), and to_timestamp() (Karel,
Daniel Baldoni)
Prevent query expressions from leaking memory (Tom)
Allow UPDATE of arrays elements (Tom)
Wake up lock waiters during cancel (Hiroshi)
Fix rare cursor crash when using hash join (Tom)
Fix for DROP TABLE/INDEX in rolled-back transaction (Hiroshi)
Fix psql crash from \l+ if MULTIBYTE enabled (Peter E)
Fix truncation of rule names during CREATE VIEW (Ross Reedstrom)
Fix PL/perl (Alex Kapranoff)
Disallow LOCK on views (Mark Hollomon)
Disallow INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE on views (Mark Hollomon)
Disallow DROP RULE, CREATE INDEX, TRUNCATE on views (Mark Hollomon)
Allow PL/pgSQL accept non-ASCII identifiers (Tatsuo)
Allow views to proper handle GROUP BY, aggregates, DISTINCT (Tom)
Fix rare failure with TRUNCATE command (Tom)
Allow UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT to be used with ALL, subqueries, views,
DISTINCT, ORDER BY, SELECT...INTO (Tom)
Fix parser failures during aborted transactions (Tom)
Allow temporary relations to properly clean up indexes (Bruce)
Fix VACUUM problem with moving rows in same page (Tom)
Modify pg_dump to better handle user-defined items in template1 (Philip)
Allow LIMIT in VIEW (Tom)
Require cursor FETCH to honor LIMIT (Tom)
Allow PRIMARY/FOREIGN Key definitions on inherited columns (Stephan)
Allow ORDER BY, LIMIT in sub-selects (Tom)
Allow UNION in CREATE RULE (Tom)
Make ALTER/DROP TABLE rollback-able (Vadim, Tom)
Store initdb collation in pg_control so collation cannot be changed (Tom)
Fix INSERT...SELECT with rules (Tom)
Fix FOR UPDATE inside views and subselects (Tom)
Fix OVERLAPS operators conform to SQL92 spec regarding NULLs (Tom)
Fix lpad() and rpad() to handle length less than input string (Tom)
Fix use of NOTIFY in some rules (Tom)
Overhaul btree code (Tom)
Fix NOT NULL use in PL/pgSQL variables (Tom)
Overhaul GIST code (Oleg)
Fix CLUSTER to preserve constraints and column default (Tom)
Improved deadlock detection handling (Tom)
Allow multiple SERIAL columns in a table (Tom)
Prevent occasional index corruption (Vadim)
Enhancements
------------
Add OUTER JOINs (Tom)
Function manager overhaul (Tom)
Allow ALTER TABLE RENAME on indexes (Tom)
Improve CLUSTER (Tom)
Improve ps status display for more platforms (Peter E, Marc)
Improve CREATE FUNCTION failure message (Ross)
JDBC improvements (Peter, Travis Bauer, Christopher Cain, William Webber,
Gunnar)
Grand Unified Configuration scheme/GUC. Many options can now be set in
data/postgresql.conf, postmaster/postgres flags, or SET commands (Peter E)
Improved handling of file descriptor cache (Tom)
New warning code about auto-created table alias entries (Bruce)
Overhaul initdb process (Tom, Peter E)
Overhaul of inherited tables; inherited tables now accessed by default;
new ONLY keyword prevents it (Chris Bitmead, Tom)
ODBC cleanups/improvements (Nick Gorham, Stephan Szabo, Zoltan Kovacs,
Michael Fork)
Allow renaming of temp tables (Tom)
Overhaul memory manager contexts (Tom)
pg_dumpall uses CREATE USER or CREATE GROUP rather using COPY (Peter E)
Overhaul pg_dump (Philip Warner)
Allow pg_hba.conf secondary password file to specify only username (Peter E)
Allow TEMPORARY or TEMP keyword when creating temporary tables (Bruce)
New memory leak checker (Karel)
New SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS (Thomas)
Allow nested block comments (Thomas)
Add WITHOUT TIME ZONE type qualifier (Thomas)
New ALTER TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT (Stephan)
Use NUMERIC accumulators for INTEGER aggregates (Tom)
Overhaul aggregate code (Tom)
New VARIANCE and STDDEV() aggregates
Improve dependency ordering of pg_dump (Philip)
New pg_restore command (Philip)
New pg_dump tar output option (Philip)
New pg_dump of large objects (Philip)
New ESCAPE option to LIKE (Thomas)
New case-insensitive LIKE - ILIKE (Thomas)
Allow functional indexes to use binary-compatible type (Tom)
Allow SQL functions to be used in more contexts (Tom)
New pg_config utility (Peter E)
New PL/pgSQL EXECUTE command which allows dynamic SQL and utility statements
(Jan)
New PL/pgSQL GET DIAGNOSTICS statement for SPI value access (Jan)
New quote_identifiers() and quote_literal() functions (Jan)
New ALTER TABLE table OWNER TO user command (Mark Hollomon)
Allow subselects in FROM, i.e. FROM (SELECT ...) [AS] alias (Tom)
Update PyGreSQL to version 3.1 (D'Arcy)
Store tables as files named by OID (Vadim)
New SQL function setval(seq,val,bool) for use in pg_dump (Philip)
Require DROP VIEW to remove views, no DROP TABLE (Mark)
Allow DROP VIEW view1, view2 (Mark)
Allow multiple objects in DROP INDEX, DROP RULE, and DROP TYPE (Tom)
Allow automatic conversion to/from Unicode (Tatsuo, Eiji)
New /contrib/pgcrypto hashing functions (Marko Kreen)
New pg_dumpall --globals-only option (Peter E)
New CHECKPOINT command for WAL which creates new WAL log file (Vadim)
New AT TIME ZONE syntax (Thomas)
Allow location of Unix domain socket to be configurable (David J. MacKenzie)
Allow postmaster to listen on a specific IP address (David J. MacKenzie)
Allow socket path name to be specified in hostname by using leading slash
(David J. MacKenzie)
Allow CREATE DATABASE to specify template database (Tom)
New utility to convert MySQL schema dumps to SQL92 and PostgreSQL (Thomas)
New /contrib/rserv replication toolkit (Vadim)
New file format for COPY BINARY (Tom)
New /contrib/oid2name to map numeric files to table names (B Palmer)
New "idle in transaction" ps status message (Marc)
Update to pgaccess 0.98.7 (Constantin Teodorescu)
pg_ctl now defaults to -w (wait) on shutdown, new -l (log) option
Add rudimentary dependency checking to pg_dump (Philip)
Types
-----
Fix INET/CIDR type ordering and add new functions (Tom)
Make OID behave as an unsigned type (Tom)
Allow BIGINT as synonym for INT8 (Peter E)
New int2 and int8 comparison operators (Tom)
New BIT and BIT VARYING types (Adriaan Joubert, Tom, Peter E)
CHAR() no longer faster than VARCHAR() because of TOAST (Tom)
New GIST seg/cube examples (Gene Selkov)
Improved round(numeric) handling (Tom)
Fix CIDR output formatting (Tom)
New CIDR abbrev() function (Tom)
Performance
-----------
Write-Ahead Log (WAL) to provide crash recovery with less performance
overhead (Vadim)
ANALYZE stage of VACUUM no longer exclusively locks table (Bruce)
Reduced file seeks (Denis Perchine)
Improve BTREE code for duplicate keys (Tom)
Store all large objects in a single table (Denis Perchine, Tom)
Improve memory allocation performance (Karel, Tom)
Source Code
-----------
New function manager call conventions (Tom)
SGI portability fixes (David Kaelbling)
New configure --enable-syslog option (Peter E)
New BSDI README (Bruce)
configure script moved to top level, not /src (Peter E)
Makefile/configuration/compilation overhaul (Peter E)
New configure --with-python option (Peter E)
Solaris cleanups (Peter E)
Overhaul /contrib Makefiles (Karel)
New OpenSSL configuration option (Magnus, Peter E)
AIX fixes (Andreas)
QNX fixes (Maurizio)
New heap_open(), heap_openr() API (Tom)
Remove colon and semi-colon operators (Thomas)
New pg_class.relkind value for views (Mark Hollomon)
Rename ichar() to chr() (Karel)
New documentation for btrim(), ascii(), chr(), repeat() (Karel)
Fixes for NT/Cygwin (Pete Forman)
AIX port fixes (Andreas)
New BeOS port (David Reid, Cyril Velter)
Add proofreader's changes to docs (Addison-Wesley, Bruce)
New Alpha spinlock code (Adriaan Joubert, Compaq)
Unixware port overhaul (Peter E)
New Darwin/Mac OSX port (Peter Bierman, Bruce Hartzler)
New FreeBSD Alpha port (Alfred)
Overhaul shared memory segments (Tom)
Add IBM S/390 support (Neale Ferguson)
Moved macmanuf to /contrib (Larry Rosenman)
Syslog improvements (Larry Rosenman)
New template0 database that contains no user additions (Tom)
New /contrib/cube and /contrib/seg GIST sample code (Gene Selkov)
Allow NetBSD's libedit instead of readline (Peter)
Improved assembly language source code format (Bruce)
New contrib/pg_logger
New --template option to createdb
New contrib/pg_control utility (Oliver)
New FreeBSD tools ipc_check, start-scripts/freebsd
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.0.3
Release date: 2000-11-11
This has a variety of fixes from 7.0.2.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.0.3
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.0.*.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Jdbc fixes (Peter)
Large object fix (Tom)
Fix lean in COPY WITH OIDS leak (Tom)
Fix backwards-index-scan (Tom)
Fix SELECT ... FOR UPDATE so it checks for duplicate keys (Hiroshi)
Add --enable-syslog to configure (Marc)
Fix abort transaction at backend exit in rare cases (Tom)
Fix for psql \l+ when multi-byte enabled (Tatsuo)
Allow PL/pgSQL to accept non ascii identifiers (Tatsuo)
Make vacuum always flush buffers (Tom)
Fix to allow cancel while waiting for a lock (Hiroshi)
Fix for memory aloocation problem in user authentication code (Tom)
Remove bogus use of int4out() (Tom)
Fixes for multiple subqueries in COALESCE or BETWEEN (Tom)
Fix for failure of triggers on heap open in certain cases (Jeroen van
Vianen)
Fix for erroneous selectivity of not-equals (Tom)
Fix for erroneous use of strcmp() (Tom)
Fix for bug where storage manager accesses items beyond end of file
(Tom)
Fix to include kernel errno message in all smgr elog messages (Tom)
Fix for '.' not in PATH at build time (SL Baur)
Fix for out-of-file-descriptors error (Tom)
Fix to make pg_dump dump 'iscachable' flag for functions (Tom)
Fix for subselect in targetlist of Append node (Tom)
Fix for mergejoin plans (Tom)
Fix TRUNCATE failure on relations with indexes (Tom)
Avoid database-wide restart on write error (Hiroshi)
Fix nodeMaterial to honor chgParam by recomputing its output (Tom)
Fix VACUUM problem with moving chain of update tuples when source and
destination of a tuple lie on the same page (Tom)
Fix user.c CommandCounterIncrement (Tom)
Fix for AM/PM boundary problem in to_char() (Karel Zak)
Fix TIME aggregate handling (Tom)
Fix to_char() to avoid coredump on NULL input (Tom)
Buffer fix (Tom)
Fix for inserting/copying longer multibyte strings into char() data
types (Tatsuo)
Fix for crash of backend, on abort (Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.0.2
Release date: 2000-06-05
This is a repackaging of 7.0.1 with added documentation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.0.2
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.*.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Added documentation to tarball.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.0.1
Release date: 2000-06-01
This is a cleanup release for 7.0.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.0.1
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 7.0.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Fix many CLUSTER failures (Tom)
Allow ALTER TABLE RENAME works on indexes (Tom)
Fix plpgsql to handle datetime->timestamp and timespan->interval (Bruce)
New configure --with-setproctitle switch to use setproctitle() (Marc, Bruce)
Fix the off by one errors in ResultSet from 6.5.3, and more.
jdbc ResultSet fixes (Joseph Shraibman)
optimizer tunings (Tom)
Fix create user for pgaccess
Fix for UNLISTEN failure
IRIX fixes (David Kaelbling)
QNX fixes (Andreas Kardos)
Reduce COPY IN lock level (Tom)
Change libpqeasy to use PQconnectdb() style parameters (Bruce)
Fix pg_dump to handle OID indexes (Tom)
Fix small memory leak (Tom)
Solaris fix for createdb/dropdb (Tatsuo)
Fix for non-blocking connections (Alfred Perlstein)
Fix improper recovery after RENAME TABLE failures (Tom)
Copy pg_ident.conf.sample into /lib directory in install (Bruce)
Add SJIS UDC (NEC selection IBM kanji) support (Eiji Tokuya)
Fix too long syslog message (Tatsuo)
Fix problem with quoted indexes that are too long (Tom)
JDBC ResultSet.getTimestamp() fix (Gregory Krasnow & Floyd Marinescu)
ecpg changes (Michael)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 7.0
Release date: 2000-05-08
This release contains improvements in many areas, demonstrating the
continued growth of PostgreSQL. There are more improvements and fixes in
7.0 than in any previous release. The developers have confidence that this
is the best release yet; we do our best to put out only solid releases,
and this one is no exception.
Major changes in this release:
Foreign Keys
Foreign keys are now implemented, with the exception of PARTIAL
MATCH foreign keys. Many users have been asking for this feature,
and we are pleased to offer it.
Optimizer Overhaul
Continuing on work started a year ago, the optimizer has been
improved, allowing better query plan selection and faster
performance with less memory usage.
Updated psql
psql, our interactive terminal monitor, has been updated with a
variety of new features. See the psql manual page for details.
Join Syntax
SQL92 join syntax is now supported, though only as INNER JOINs for
this release. JOIN, NATURAL JOIN, JOIN/USING, JOIN/ON are
available, as are column correlation names.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 7.0
A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data
from any previous release of PostgreSQL. For those upgrading from 6.5.*,
you may instead use pg_upgrade to upgrade to this release; however, a full
dump/reload installation is always the most robust method for upgrades.
Interface and compatibility issues to consider for the new release
include:
* The date/time types datetime and timespan have been superseded by the
SQL92-defined types timestamp and interval. Although there has been
some effort to ease the transition by allowing PostgreSQL to recognize
the deprecated type names and translate them to the new type names,
this mechanism may not be completely transparent to your existing
application.
* The optimizer has been substantially improved in the area of query
cost estimation. In some cases, this will result in decreased query
times as the optimizer makes a better choice for the preferred plan.
However, in a small number of cases, usually involving pathological
distributions of data, your query times may go up. If you are dealing
with large amounts of data, you may want to check your queries to
verify performance.
* The JDBC and ODBC interfaces have been upgraded and extended.
* The string function CHAR_LENGTH is now a native function. Previous
versions translated this into a call to LENGTH, which could result in
ambiguity with other types implementing LENGTH such as the geometric
types.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
Prevent function calls exceeding maximum number of arguments (Tom)
Improve CASE construct (Tom)
Fix SELECT coalesce(f1,0) FROM int4_tbl GROUP BY f1 (Tom)
Fix SELECT sentence.words[0] FROM sentence GROUP BY sentence.words[0] (Tom)
Fix GROUP BY scan bug (Tom)
Improvements in SQL grammar processing (Tom)
Fix for views involved in INSERT ... SELECT ... (Tom)
Fix for SELECT a/2, a/2 FROM test_missing_target GROUP BY a/2 (Tom)
Fix for subselects in INSERT ... SELECT (Tom)
Prevent INSERT ... SELECT ... ORDER BY (Tom)
Fixes for relations greater than 2GB, including vacuum
Improve propagating system table changes to other backends (Tom)
Improve propagating user table changes to other backends (Tom)
Fix handling of temp tables in complex situations (Bruce, Tom)
Allow table locking at table open, improving concurrent reliability (Tom)
Properly quote sequence names in pg_dump (Ross J. Reedstrom)
Prevent DROP DATABASE while others accessing
Prevent any rows from being returned by GROUP BY if no rows processed (Tom)
Fix SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table WHERE ...' if no rows matching WHERE (Tom)
Fix pg_upgrade so it works for MVCC (Tom)
Fix for SELECT ... WHERE x IN (SELECT ... HAVING SUM(x) > 1) (Tom)
Fix for "f1 datetime DEFAULT 'now'" (Tom)
Fix problems with CURRENT_DATE used in DEFAULT (Tom)
Allow comment-only lines, and ;;; lines too. (Tom)
Improve recovery after failed disk writes, disk full (Hiroshi)
Fix cases where table is mentioned in FROM but not joined (Tom)
Allow HAVING clause without aggregate functions (Tom)
Fix for "--" comment and no trailing newline, as seen in perl interface
Improve pg_dump failure error reports (Bruce)
Allow sorts and hashes to exceed 2GB file sizes (Tom)
Fix for pg_dump dumping of inherited rules (Tom)
Fix for NULL handling comparisons (Tom)
Fix inconsistent state caused by failed CREATE/DROP commands (Hiroshi)
Fix for dbname with dash
Prevent DROP INDEX from interfering with other backends (Tom)
Fix file descriptor leak in verify_password()
Fix for "Unable to identify an operator =$" problem
Fix ODBC so no segfault if CommLog and Debug enabled (Dirk Niggemann)
Fix for recursive exit call (Massimo)
Fix for extra-long timezones (Jeroen van Vianen)
Make pg_dump preserve primary key information (Peter E)
Prevent databases with single quotes (Peter E)
Prevent DROP DATABASE inside transaction (Peter E)
ecpg memory leak fixes (Stephen Birch)
Fix for SELECT null::text, SELECT int4fac(null) and SELECT 2 + (null) (Tom)
Y2K timestamp fix (Massimo)
Fix for VACUUM 'HEAP_MOVED_IN was not expected' errors (Tom)
Fix for views with tables/columns containing spaces (Tom)
Prevent permissions on indexes (Peter E)
Fix for spinlock stuck problem when error is generated (Hiroshi)
Fix ipcclean on Linux
Fix handling of NULL constraint conditions (Tom)
Fix memory leak in odbc driver (Nick Gorham)
Fix for permission check on UNION tables (Tom)
Fix to allow SELECT 'a' LIKE 'a' (Tom)
Fix for SELECT 1 + NULL (Tom)
Fixes to CHAR
Fix log() on numeric type (Tom)
Deprecate ':' and ';' operators
Allow vacuum of temporary tables
Disallow inherited columns with the same name as new columns
Recover or force failure when disk space is exhausted (Hiroshi)
Fix INSERT INTO ... SELECT with AS columns matching result columns
Fix INSERT ... SELECT ... GROUP BY groups by target columns not source columns (Tom)
Fix CREATE TABLE test (a char(5) DEFAULT text '', b int4) with INSERT (Tom)
Fix UNION with LIMIT
Fix CREATE TABLE x AS SELECT 1 UNION SELECT 2
Fix CREATE TABLE test(col char(2) DEFAULT user)
Fix mismatched types in CREATE TABLE ... DEFAULT
Fix SELECT * FROM pg_class where oid in (0,-1)
Fix SELECT COUNT('asdf') FROM pg_class WHERE oid=12
Prevent user who can create databases can modifying pg_database table (Peter E)
Fix btree to give a useful elog when key > 1/2 (page - overhead) (Tom)
Fix INSERT of 0.0 into DECIMAL(4,4) field (Tom)
Enhancements
------------
New CLI interface include file sqlcli.h, based on SQL3/SQL98
Remove all limits on query length, row length limit still exists (Tom)
Update jdbc protocol to 2.0 (Jens Glaser <jens@jens.de>)
Add TRUNCATE command to quickly truncate relation (Mike Mascari)
Fix to give super user and createdb user proper update catalog rights (Peter E)
Allow ecpg bool variables to have NULL values (Christof)
Issue ecpg error if NULL value for variable with no NULL indicator (Christof)
Allow ^C to cancel COPY command (Massimo)
Add SET FSYNC and SHOW PG_OPTIONS commands(Massimo)
Function name overloading for dynamically-loaded C functions (Frankpitt)
Add CmdTuples() to libpq++(Vince)
New CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER and SET CONSTRAINTS commands(Jan)
Allow CREATE FUNCTION/WITH clause to be used for all language types
configure --enable-debug adds -g (Peter E)
configure --disable-debug removes -g (Peter E)
Allow more complex default expressions (Tom)
First real FOREIGN KEY constraint trigger functionality (Jan)
Add FOREIGN KEY ... MATCH FULL ... ON DELETE CASCADE (Jan)
Add FOREIGN KEY ... MATCH <unspecified> referential actions (Don Baccus)
Allow WHERE restriction on ctid (physical heap location) (Hiroshi)
Move pginterface from contrib to interface directory, rename to pgeasy (Bruce)
Change pgeasy connectdb() parameter ordering (Bruce)
Require SELECT DISTINCT target list to have all ORDER BY columns (Tom)
Add Oracle's COMMENT ON command (Mike Mascari <mascarim@yahoo.com>)
libpq's PQsetNoticeProcessor function now returns previous hook(Peter E)
Prevent PQsetNoticeProcessor from being set to NULL (Peter E)
Make USING in COPY optional (Bruce)
Allow subselects in the target list (Tom)
Allow subselects on the left side of comparison operators (Tom)
New parallel regression test (Jan)
Change backend-side COPY to write files with permissions 644 not 666 (Tom)
Force permissions on PGDATA directory to be secure, even if it exists (Tom)
Added psql LASTOID variable to return last inserted oid (Peter E)
Allow concurrent vacuum and remove pg_vlock vacuum lock file (Tom)
Add permissions check for vacuum (Peter E)
New libpq functions to allow asynchronous connections: PQconnectStart(),
PQconnectPoll(), PQresetStart(), PQresetPoll(), PQsetenvStart(),
PQsetenvPoll(), PQsetenvAbort (Ewan Mellor)
New libpq PQsetenv() function (Ewan Mellor)
create/alter user extension (Peter E)
New postmaster.pid and postmaster.opts under $PGDATA (Tatsuo)
New scripts for create/drop user/db (Peter E)
Major psql overhaul (Peter E)
Add const to libpq interface (Peter E)
New libpq function PQoidValue (Peter E)
Show specific non-aggregate causing problem with GROUP BY (Tom)
Make changes to pg_shadow recreate pg_pwd file (Peter E)
Add aggregate(DISTINCT ...) (Tom)
Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs (Peter E)
Make postgres user have a password by default (Peter E)
Add CREATE/ALTER/DROP GROUP (Peter E)
All administration scripts now support --long options (Peter E, Karel)
Vacuumdb script now supports --all option (Peter E)
ecpg new portable FETCH syntax
Add ecpg EXEC SQL IFDEF, EXEC SQL IFNDEF, EXEC SQL ELSE, EXEC SQL ELIF
and EXEC SQL ENDIF directives
Add pg_ctl script to control backend start-up (Tatsuo)
Add postmaster.opts.default file to store start-up flags (Tatsuo)
Allow --with-mb=SQL_ASCII
Increase maximum number of index keys to 16 (Bruce)
Increase maximum number of function arguments to 16 (Bruce)
Allow configuration of maximum number of index keys and arguments (Bruce)
Allow unprivileged users to change their passwords (Peter E)
Password authentication enabled; required for new users (Peter E)
Disallow dropping a user who owns a database (Peter E)
Change initdb option --with-mb to --enable-multibyte
Add option for initdb to prompts for superuser password (Peter E)
Allow complex type casts like col::numeric(9,2) and col::int2::float8 (Tom)
Updated user interfaces on initdb, initlocation, pg_dump, ipcclean (Peter E)
New pg_char_to_encoding() and pg_encoding_to_char() functions (Tatsuo)
Libpq non-blocking mode (Alfred Perlstein)
Improve conversion of types in casts that don't specify a length
New plperl internal programming language (Mark Hollomon)
Allow COPY IN to read file that do not end with a newline (Tom)
Indicate when long identifiers are truncated (Tom)
Allow aggregates to use type equivalency (Peter E)
Add Oracle's to_char(), to_date(), to_datetime(), to_timestamp(), to_number()
conversion functions (Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>)
Add SELECT DISTINCT ON (expr [, expr ...]) targetlist ... (Tom)
Check to be sure ORDER BY is compatible with the DISTINCT operation (Tom)
Add NUMERIC and int8 types to ODBC
Improve EXPLAIN results for Append, Group, Agg, Unique (Tom)
Add ALTER TABLE ... ADD FOREIGN KEY (Stephan Szabo)
Allow SELECT .. FOR UPDATE in PL/pgSQL (Hiroshi)
Enable backward sequential scan even after reaching EOF (Hiroshi)
Add btree indexing of boolean values, >= and <= (Don Baccus)
Print current line number when COPY FROM fails (Massimo)
Recognize POSIX time zone e.g. "PST+8" and "GMT-8" (Thomas)
Add DEC as synonym for DECIMAL (Thomas)
Add SESSION_USER as SQL92 keyword, same as CURRENT_USER (Thomas)
Implement SQL92 column aliases (aka correlation names) (Thomas)
Implement SQL92 join syntax (Thomas)
Make INTERVAL reserved word allowed as a column identifier (Thomas)
Implement REINDEX command (Hiroshi)
Accept ALL in aggregate function SUM(ALL col) (Tom)
Prevent GROUP BY from using column aliases (Tom)
New psql \encoding option (Tatsuo)
Allow PQrequestCancel() to terminate when in waiting-for-lock state (Hiroshi)
Allow negation of a negative number in all cases
Add ecpg descriptors (Christof, Michael)
Allow CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT f1::char(8) FROM tbl
Allow casts with length, like foo::char(8)
New libpq functions PQsetClientEncoding(), PQclientEncoding() (Tatsuo)
Add support for SJIS user defined characters (Tatsuo)
Larger views/rules supported
Make libpq's PQconndefaults() thread-safe (Tom)
Disable // as comment to be ANSI conforming, should use -- (Tom)
Allow column aliases on views CREATE VIEW name (collist)
Fixes for views with subqueries (Tom)
Allow UPDATE table SET fld = (SELECT ...) (Tom)
SET command options no longer require quotes
Update pgaccess to 0.98.6
New SET SEED command
New pg_options.sample file
New SET FSYNC command (Massimo)
Allow pg_descriptions when creating tables
Allow pg_descriptions when creating types, columns, and functions
Allow psql \copy to allow delimiters (Peter E)
Allow psql to print nulls as distinct from "" [null] (Peter E)
Types
-----
Many array fixes (Tom)
Allow bare column names to be subscripted as arrays (Tom)
Improve type casting of int and float constants (Tom)
Cleanups for int8 inputs, range checking, and type conversion (Tom)
Fix for SELECT timespan('21:11:26'::time) (Tom)
netmask('x.x.x.x/0') is 255.255.255.255 instead of 0.0.0.0 (Oleg Sharoiko)
Add btree index on NUMERIC (Jan)
Perl fix for large objects containing NUL characters (Douglas Thomson)
ODBC fix for for large objects (free)
Fix indexing of cidr data type
Fix for Ethernet MAC addresses (macaddr type) comparisons
Fix for date/time types when overflows happened in computations (Tom)
Allow array on int8 (Peter E)
Fix for rounding/overflow of NUMERIC type, like NUMERIC(4,4) (Tom)
Allow NUMERIC arrays
Fix bugs in NUMERIC ceil() and floor() functions (Tom)
Make char_length()/octet_length including trailing blanks (Tom)
Made abstime/reltime use int4 instead of time_t (Peter E)
New lztext data type for compressed text fields
Revise code to handle coercion of int and float constants (Tom)
Start at new code to implement a BIT and BIT VARYING type (Adriaan Joubert)
NUMERIC now accepts scientific notation (Tom)
NUMERIC to int4 rounds (Tom)
Convert float4/8 to NUMERIC properly (Tom)
Allow type conversion with NUMERIC (Thomas)
Make ISO date style (2000-02-16 09:33) the default (Thomas)
Add NATIONAL CHAR [ VARYING ] (Thomas)
Allow NUMERIC round and trunc to accept negative scales (Tom)
New TIME WITH TIME ZONE type (Thomas)
Add MAX()/MIN() on time type (Thomas)
Add abs(), mod(), fac() for int8 (Thomas)
Rename functions to round(), sqrt(), cbrt(), pow() for float8 (Thomas)
Add transcendental math functions (e.g. sin(), acos()) for float8 (Thomas)
Add exp() and ln() for NUMERIC type
Rename NUMERIC power() to pow() (Thomas)
Improved TRANSLATE() function (Edwin Ramirez, Tom)
Allow X=-Y operators (Tom)
Allow SELECT float8(COUNT(*))/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t) FROM t GROUP BY f1; (Tom)
Allow LOCALE to use indexes in regular expression searches (Tom)
Allow creation of functional indexes to use default types
Performance
-----------
Prevent exponential space consumption with many AND's and OR's (Tom)
Collect attribute selectivity values for system columns (Tom)
Reduce memory usage of aggregates (Tom)
Fix for LIKE optimization to use indexes with multibyte encodings (Tom)
Fix r-tree index optimizer selectivity (Thomas)
Improve optimizer selectivity computations and functions (Tom)
Optimize btree searching for cases where many equal keys exist (Tom)
Enable fast LIKE index processing only if index present (Tom)
Re-use free space on index pages with duplicates (Tom)
Improve hash join processing (Tom)
Prevent descending sort if result is already sorted(Hiroshi)
Allow commuting of index scan query qualifications (Tom)
Prefer index scans in cases where ORDER BY/GROUP BY is required (Tom)
Allocate large memory requests in fix-sized chunks for performance (Tom)
Fix vacuum's performance by reducing memory allocation requests (Tom)
Implement constant-expression simplification (Bernard Frankpitt, Tom)
Use secondary columns to be used to determine start of index scan (Hiroshi)
Prevent quadruple use of disk space when doing internal sorting (Tom)
Faster sorting by calling fewer functions (Tom)
Create system indexes to match all system caches (Bruce, Hiroshi)
Make system caches use system indexes (Bruce)
Make all system indexes unique (Bruce)
Improve pg_statistics management for VACUUM speed improvement (Tom)
Flush backend cache less frequently (Tom, Hiroshi)
COPY now reuses previous memory allocation, improving performance (Tom)
Improve optimization cost estimation (Tom)
Improve optimizer estimate of range queries x > lowbound AND x < highbound (Tom)
Use DNF instead of CNF where appropriate (Tom, Taral)
Further cleanup for OR-of-AND WHERE-clauses (Tom)
Make use of index in OR clauses (x = 1 AND y = 2) OR (x = 2 AND y = 4) (Tom)
Smarter optimizer computations for random index page access (Tom)
New SET variable to control optimizer costs (Tom)
Optimizer queries based on LIMIT, OFFSET, and EXISTS qualifications (Tom)
Reduce optimizer internal housekeeping of join paths for speedup (Tom)
Major subquery speedup (Tom)
Fewer fsync writes when fsync is not disabled (Tom)
Improved LIKE optimizer estimates (Tom)
Prevent fsync in SELECT-only queries (Vadim)
Make index creation use psort code, because it is now faster (Tom)
Allow creation of sort temp tables > 1 Gig
Source Tree Changes
-------------------
Fix for linux PPC compile
New generic expression-tree-walker subroutine (Tom)
Change form() to varargform() to prevent portability problems
Improved range checking for large integers on Alphas
Clean up #include in /include directory (Bruce)
Add scripts for checking includes (Bruce)
Remove un-needed #include's from *.c files (Bruce)
Change #include's to use <> and "" as appropriate (Bruce)
Enable WIN32 compilation of libpq
Alpha spinlock fix from Uncle George <gatgul@voicenet.com>
Overhaul of optimizer data structures (Tom)
Fix to cygipc library (Yutaka Tanida)
Allow pgsql to work on newer Cygwin snapshots (Dan)
New catalog version number (Tom)
Add Linux ARM
Rename heap_replace to heap_update
Update for QNX (Dr. Andreas Kardos)
New platform-specific regression handling (Tom)
Rename oid8 -> oidvector and int28 -> int2vector (Bruce)
Included all yacc and lex files into the distribution (Peter E.)
Remove lextest, no longer needed (Peter E)
Fix for libpq and psql on Win32 (Magnus)
Internally change datetime and timespan into timestamp and interval (Thomas)
Fix for plpgsql on BSDI
Add SQL_ASCII test case to the regression test (Tatsuo)
configure --with-mb now deprecated (Tatsuo)
NT fixes
NetBSD fixes (Johnny C. Lam <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>)
Fixes for Alpha compiles
New multibyte encodings
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.5.3
Release date: 1999-10-13
This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5.2. We have added a new
PgAccess that was missing in 6.5.2, and installed an NT-specific fix.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.5.3
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 6.5.*.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Updated version of pgaccess 0.98
NT-specific patch
Fix dumping rules on inherited tables
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.5.2
Release date: 1999-09-15
This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5.1. We have fixed a variety of
problems reported by 6.5.1 users.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.5.2
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 6.5.*.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
subselect+CASE fixes(Tom)
Add SHLIB_LINK setting for solaris_i386 and solaris_sparc ports(Daren Sefcik)
Fixes for CASE in WHERE join clauses(Tom)
Fix BTScan abort(Tom)
Repair the check for redundant UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY indexes(Thomas)
Improve it so that it checks for multi-column constraints(Thomas)
Fix for Win32 making problem with MB enabled(Hiroki Kataoka)
Allow BSD yacc and bison to compile pl code(Bruce)
Fix SET NAMES working
int8 fixes(Thomas)
Fix vacuum's memory consumption(Hiroshi,Tatsuo)
Reduce the total memory consumption of vacuum(Tom)
Fix for timestamp(datetime)
Rule deparsing bugfixes(Tom)
Fix quoting problems in mkMakefile.tcldefs.sh.in and mkMakefile.tkdefs.sh.in(Tom)
This is to re-use space on index pages freed by vacuum(Vadim)
document -x for pg_dump(Bruce)
Fix for unary operators in rule deparser(Tom)
Comment out FileUnlink of excess segments during mdtruncate()(Tom)
Irix linking fix from Yu Cao >yucao@falcon.kla-tencor.com<
Repair logic error in LIKE: should not return LIKE_ABORT
when reach end of pattern before end of text(Tom)
Repair incorrect cleanup of heap memory allocation during transaction abort(Tom)
Updated version of pgaccess 0.98
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.5.1
Release date: 1999-07-15
This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5. We have fixed a variety of
problems reported by 6.5 users.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.5.1
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 6.5.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Add NT README file
Portability fixes for linux_ppc, Irix, linux_alpha, OpenBSD, alpha
Remove QUERY_LIMIT, use SELECT...LIMIT
Fix for EXPLAIN on inheritance(Tom)
Patch to allow vacuum on multi-segment tables(Hiroshi)
R-Tree optimizer selectivity fix(Tom)
ACL file descriptor leak fix(Atsushi Ogawa)
New expresssion subtree code(Tom)
Avoid disk writes for read-only transactions(Vadim)
Fix for removal of temp tables if last transaction was aborted(Bruce)
Fix to prevent too large tuple from being created(Bruce)
plpgsql fixes
Allow port numbers 32k - 64k(Bruce)
Add ^ precidence(Bruce)
Rename sort files called pg_temp to pg_sorttemp(Bruce)
Fix for microseconds in time values(Tom)
Tutorial source cleanup
New linux_m68k port
Fix for sorting of NULL's in some cases(Tom)
Shared library dependencies fixed (Tom)
Fixed glitches affecting GROUP BY in subselects(Tom)
Fix some compiler warnings (Tomoaki Nishiyama)
Add Win1250 (Czech) support (Pavel Behal)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.5
Release date: 1999-06-09
This release marks a major step in the development team's mastery of the
source code we inherited from Berkeley. You will see we are now easily
adding major features, thanks to the increasing size and experience of our
world-wide development team.
Here is a brief summary of the more notable changes:
Multi-version concurrency control(MVCC)
This removes our old table-level locking, and replaces it with a
locking system that is superior to most commercial database
systems. In a traditional system, each row that is modified is
locked until committed, preventing reads by other users. MVCC uses
the natural multi-version nature of PostgreSQL to allow readers to
continue reading consistent data during writer activity. Writers
continue to use the compact pg_log transaction system. This is all
performed without having to allocate a lock for every row like
traditional database systems. So, basically, we no longer are
restricted by simple table-level locking; we have something better
than row-level locking.
Hot backups from pg_dump
pg_dump takes advantage of the new MVCC features to give a
consistent database dump/backup while the database stays online
and available for queries.
Numeric data type
We now have a true numeric data type, with user-specified
precision.
Temporary tables
Temporary tables are guaranteed to have unique names within a
database session, and are destroyed on session exit.
New SQL features
We now have CASE, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT statement support. We have
new LIMIT/OFFSET, SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL, SELECT ... FOR
UPDATE, and an improved LOCK TABLE command.
Speedups
We continue to speed up PostgreSQL, thanks to the variety of
talents within our team. We have sped up memory allocation,
optimization, table joins, and row transfer routines.
Ports
We continue to expand our port list, this time including Windows
NT/ix86 and NetBSD/arm32.
Interfaces
Most interfaces have new versions, and existing functionality has
been improved.
Documentation
New and updated material is present throughout the documentation.
New FAQs have been contributed for SGI and AIX platforms. The
Tutorial has introductory information on SQL from Stefan
Simkovics. For the User's Guide, there are reference pages
covering the postmaster and more utility programs, and a new
appendix contains details on date/time behavior. The
Administrator's Guide has a new chapter on troubleshooting from
Tom Lane. And the Programmer's Guide has a description of query
processing, also from Stefan, and details on obtaining the
PostgreSQL source tree via anonymous CVS and CVSup.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.5
A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data
from any previous release of PostgreSQL. pg_upgrade can *not* be used to
upgrade to this release because the on-disk structure of the tables has
changed compared to previous releases.
The new Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) features can give
somewhat different behaviors in multi-user environments. *Read and
understand the following section to ensure that your existing applications
will give you the behavior you need.*
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Multi-Version Concurrency Control
Because readers in 6.5 don't lock data, regardless of transaction
isolation level, data read by one transaction can be overwritten by
another. In other words, if a row is returned by "SELECT" it doesn't mean
that this row really exists at the time it is returned (i.e. sometime
after the statement or transaction began) nor that the row is protected
from being deleted or updated by concurrent transactions before the
current transaction does a commit or rollback.
To ensure the actual existence of a row and protect it against concurrent
updates one must use "SELECT FOR UPDATE" or an appropriate "LOCK TABLE"
statement. This should be taken into account when porting applications
from previous releases of PostgreSQL and other environments.
Keep the above in mind if you are using "contrib/refint.*" triggers for
referential integrity. Additional techniques are required now. One way is
to use "LOCK parent_table IN SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE" command if a
transaction is going to update/delete a primary key and use "LOCK
parent_table IN SHARE MODE" command if a transaction is going to
update/insert a foreign key.
Note: Note that if you run a transaction in SERIALIZABLE mode then you
must execute the "LOCK" commands above before execution of any DML
statement ("SELECT/INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/FETCH/COPY_TO") in the
transaction.
These inconveniences will disappear in the future when the ability to read
dirty (uncommitted) data (regardless of isolation level) and true
referential integrity will be implemented.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
Fix text<->float8 and text<->float4 conversion functions(Thomas)
Fix for creating tables with mixed-case constraints(Billy)
Change exp()/pow() behavior to generate error on underflow/overflow(Jan)
Fix bug in pg_dump -z
Memory overrun cleanups(Tatsuo)
Fix for lo_import crash(Tatsuo)
Adjust handling of data type names to suppress double quotes(Thomas)
Use type coercion for matching columns and DEFAULT(Thomas)
Fix deadlock so it only checks once after one second of sleep(Bruce)
Fixes for aggregates and PL/pgSQL(Hiroshi)
Fix for subquery crash(Vadim)
Fix for libpq function PQfnumber and case-insensitive names(Bahman Rafatjoo)
Fix for large object write-in-middle, no extra block, memory consumption(Tatsuo)
Fix for pg_dump -d or -D and quote special characters in INSERT
Repair serious problems with dynahash(Tom)
Fix INET/CIDR portability problems
Fix problem with selectivity error in ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN(Bruce)
Fix executor so mergejoin of different column types works(Tom)
Fix for Alpha OR selectivity bug
Fix OR index selectivity problem(Bruce)
Fix so \d shows proper length for char()/varchar()(Ryan)
Fix tutorial code(Clark)
Improve destroyuser checking(Oliver)
Fix for Kerberos(Rodney McDuff)
Fix for dropping database while dirty buffers(Bruce)
Fix so sequence nextval() can be case-sensitive(Bruce)
Fix !!= operator
Drop buffers before destroying database files(Bruce)
Fix case where executor evaluates functions twice(Tatsuo)
Allow sequence nextval actions to be case-sensitive(Bruce)
Fix optimizer indexing not working for negative numbers(Bruce)
Fix for memory leak in executor with fjIsNull
Fix for aggregate memory leaks(Erik Riedel)
Allow username containing a dash GRANT permissions
Cleanup of NULL in inet types
Clean up system table bugs(Tom)
Fix problems of PAGER and \? command(Masaaki Sakaida)
Reduce default multi-segment file size limit to 1GB(Peter)
Fix for dumping of CREATE OPERATOR(Tom)
Fix for backward scanning of cursors(Hiroshi Inoue)
Fix for COPY FROM STDIN when using \i(Tom)
Fix for subselect is compared inside an expression(Jan)
Fix handling of error reporting while returning rows(Tom)
Fix problems with reference to array types(Tom,Jan)
Prevent UPDATE SET oid(Jan)
Fix pg_dump so -t option can handle case-sensitive tablenames
Fixes for GROUP BY in special cases(Tom, Jan)
Fix for memory leak in failed queries(Tom)
DEFAULT now supports mixed-case identifiers(Tom)
Fix for multi-segment uses of DROP/RENAME table, indexes(Ole Gjerde)
Disable use of pg_dump with both -o and -d options(Bruce)
Allow pg_dump to properly dump GROUP permissions(Bruce)
Fix GROUP BY in INSERT INTO table SELECT * FROM table2(Jan)
Fix for computations in views(Jan)
Fix for aggregates on array indexes(Tom)
Fix for DEFAULT handles single quotes in value requiring too many quotes
Fix security problem with non-super users importing/exporting large objects(Tom)
Rollback of transaction that creates table cleaned up properly(Tom)
Fix to allow long table and column names to generate proper serial names(Tom)
Enhancements
------------
Add "vacuumdb" utility
Speed up libpq by allocating memory better(Tom)
EXPLAIN all indexes used(Tom)
Implement CASE, COALESCE, NULLIF expression(Thomas)
New pg_dump table output format(Constantin)
Add string min()/max() functions(Thomas)
Extend new type coercion techniques to aggregates(Thomas)
New moddatetime contrib(Terry)
Update to pgaccess 0.96(Constantin)
Add routines for single-byte "char" type(Thomas)
Improved substr() function(Thomas)
Improved multibyte handling(Tatsuo)
Multi-version concurrency control/MVCC(Vadim)
New Serialized mode(Vadim)
Fix for tables over 2gigs(Peter)
New SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL(Vadim)
New LOCK TABLE IN ... MODE(Vadim)
Update ODBC driver(Byron)
New NUMERIC data type(Jan)
New SELECT FOR UPDATE(Vadim)
Handle "NaN" and "Infinity" for input values(Jan)
Improved date/year handling(Thomas)
Improved handling of backend connections(Magnus)
New options ELOG_TIMESTAMPS and USE_SYSLOG options for log files(Massimo)
New TCL_ARRAYS option(Massimo)
New INTERSECT and EXCEPT(Stefan)
New pg_index.indisprimary for primary key tracking(D'Arcy)
New pg_dump option to allow dropping of tables before creation(Brook)
Speedup of row output routines(Tom)
New READ COMMITTED isolation level(Vadim)
New TEMP tables/indexes(Bruce)
Prevent sorting if result is already sorted(Jan)
New memory allocation optimization(Jan)
Allow psql to do \p\g(Bruce)
Allow multiple rule actions(Jan)
Added LIMIT/OFFSET functionality(Jan)
Improve optimizer when joining a large number of tables(Bruce)
New intro to SQL from S. Simkovics' Master's Thesis (Stefan, Thomas)
New intro to backend processing from S. Simkovics' Master's Thesis (Stefan)
Improved int8 support(Ryan Bradetich, Thomas, Tom)
New routines to convert between int8 and text/varchar types(Thomas)
New bushy plans, where meta-tables are joined(Bruce)
Enable right-hand queries by default(Bruce)
Allow reliable maximum number of backends to be set at configure time
(--with-maxbackends and postmaster switch (-N backends))(Tom)
GEQO default now 10 tables because of optimizer speedups(Tom)
Allow NULL=Var for MS-SQL portability(Michael, Bruce)
Modify contrib check_primary_key() so either "automatic" or "dependent"(Anand)
Allow psql \d on a view show query(Ryan)
Speedup for LIKE(Bruce)
Ecpg fixes/features, see src/interfaces/ecpg/ChangeLog file(Michael)
JDBC fixes/features, see src/interfaces/jdbc/CHANGELOG(Peter)
Make % operator have precedence like /(Bruce)
Add new postgres -O option to allow system table structure changes(Bruce)
Update contrib/pginterface/findoidjoins script(Tom)
Major speedup in vacuum of deleted rows with indexes(Vadim)
Allow non-SQL functions to run different versions based on arguments(Tom)
Add -E option that shows actual queries sent by \dt and friends(Masaaki Sakaida)
Add version number in start-up banners for psql(Masaaki Sakaida)
New contrib/vacuumlo removes large objects not referenced(Peter)
New initialization for table sizes so non-vacuumed tables perform better(Tom)
Improve error messages when a connection is rejected(Tom)
Support for arrays of char() and varchar() fields(Massimo)
Overhaul of hash code to increase reliability and performance(Tom)
Update to PyGreSQL 2.4(D'Arcy)
Changed debug options so -d4 and -d5 produce different node displays(Jan)
New pg_options: pretty_plan, pretty_parse, pretty_rewritten(Jan)
Better optimization statistics for system table access(Tom)
Better handling of non-default block sizes(Massimo)
Improve GEQO optimizer memory consumption(Tom)
UNION now suppports ORDER BY of columns not in target list(Jan)
Major libpq++ improvements(Vince Vielhaber)
pg_dump now uses -z(ACL's) as default(Bruce)
backend cache, memory speedups(Tom)
have pg_dump do everything in one snapshot transaction(Vadim)
fix for large object memory leakage, fix for pg_dumping(Tom)
INET type now respects netmask for comparisons
Make VACUUM ANALYZE only use a readlock(Vadim)
Allow VIEWs on UNIONS(Jan)
pg_dump now can generate consistent snapshots on active databases(Vadim)
Source Tree Changes
-------------------
Improve port matching(Tom)
Portability fixes for SunOS
Add NT/Win32 backend port and enable dynamic loading(Magnus and Daniel Horak)
New port to Cobalt Qube(Mips) running Linux(Tatsuo)
Port to NetBSD/m68k(Mr. Mutsuki Nakajima)
Port to NetBSD/sun3(Mr. Mutsuki Nakajima)
Port to NetBSD/macppc(Toshimi Aoki)
Fix for tcl/tk configuration(Vince)
Removed CURRENT keyword for rule queries(Jan)
NT dynamic loading now works(Daniel Horak)
Add ARM32 support(Andrew McMurry)
Better support for HPUX 11 and Unixware
Improve file handling to be more uniform, prevent file descriptor leak(Tom)
New install commands for plpgsql(Jan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.4.2
Release date: 1998-12-20
The 6.4.1 release was improperly packaged. This also has one additional
bug fix.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.4.2
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 6.4.*.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Fix for datetime constant problem on some platforms(Thomas)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.4.1
Release date: 1998-12-18
This is basically a cleanup release for 6.4. We have fixed a variety of
problems reported by 6.4 users.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.4.1
A dump/restore is *not* required for those running 6.4.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Add pg_dump -N flag to force double quotes around identifiers. This is
the default(Thomas)
Fix for NOT in where clause causing crash(Bruce)
EXPLAIN VERBOSE coredump fix(Vadim)
Fix shared-library problems on Linux
Fix test for table existance to allow mixed-case and whitespace in
the table name(Thomas)
Fix a couple of pg_dump bugs
Configure matches template/.similar entries better(Tom)
Change builtin function names from SPI_* to spi_*
OR WHERE clause fix(Vadim)
Fixes for mixed-case table names(Billy)
contrib/linux/postgres.init.csh/sh fix(Thomas)
libpq memory overrun fix
SunOS fixes(Tom)
Change exp() behavior to generate error on underflow(Thomas)
pg_dump fixes for memory leak, inheritance constraints, layout change
update pgaccess to 0.93
Fix prototype for 64-bit platforms
Multibyte fixes(Tatsuo)
New ecpg man page
Fix memory overruns(Tatsuo)
Fix for lo_import() crash(Bruce)
Better search for install program(Tom)
Timezone fixes(Tom)
HPUX fixes(Tom)
Use implicit type coercion for matching DEFAULT values(Thomas)
Add routines to help with single-byte (internal) character type(Thomas)
Compilation of libpq for Win32 fixes(Magnus)
Upgrade to PyGreSQL 2.2(D'Arcy)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.4
Release date: 1998-10-30
There are *many* new features and improvements in this release. Thanks to
our developers and maintainers, nearly every aspect of the system has
received some attention since the previous release. Here is a brief,
incomplete summary:
* Views and rules are now functional thanks to extensive new code in the
rewrite rules system from Jan Wieck. He also wrote a chapter on it for
the Programmer's Guide.
* Jan also contributed a second procedural language, PL/pgSQL, to go
with the original PL/pgTCL procedural language he contributed last
release.
* We have optional multiple-byte character set support from Tatsuo Iishi
to complement our existing locale support.
* Client/server communications has been cleaned up, with better support
for asynchronous messages and interrupts thanks to Tom Lane.
* The parser will now perform automatic type coercion to match arguments
to available operators and functions, and to match columns and
expressions with target columns. This uses a generic mechanism which
supports the type extensibility features of PostgreSQL. There is a new
chapter in the User's Guide which covers this topic.
* Three new data types have been added. Two types, inet and cidr,
support various forms of IP network, subnet, and machine addressing.
There is now an 8-byte integer type available on some platforms. See
the chapter on data types in the User's Guide for details. A fourth
type, serial, is now supported by the parser as an amalgam of the int4
type, a sequence, and a unique index.
* Several more SQL92-compatible syntax features have been added,
including "INSERT DEFAULT VALUES"
* The automatic configuration and installation system has received some
attention, and should be more robust for more platforms than it has
ever been.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.4
A dump/restore using pg_dump or pg_dumpall is required for those wishing
to migrate data from any previous release of PostgreSQL.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
Fix for a tiny memory leak in PQsetdb/PQfinish(Bryan)
Remove char2-16 data types, use char/varchar(Darren)
Pqfn not handles a NOTICE message(Anders)
Reduced busywaiting overhead for spinlocks with many backends (dg)
Stuck spinlock detection (dg)
Fix up "ISO-style" timespan decoding and encoding(Thomas)
Fix problem with table drop after rollback of transaction(Vadim)
Change error message and remove non-functional update message(Vadim)
Fix for COPY array checking
Fix for SELECT 1 UNION SELECT NULL
Fix for buffer leaks in large object calls(Pascal)
Change owner from oid to int4 type(Bruce)
Fix a bug in the oracle compatibility functions btrim() ltrim() and rtrim()
Fix for shared invalidation cache overflow(Massimo)
Prevent file descriptor leaks in failed COPY's(Bruce)
Fix memory leak in libpgtcl's pg_select(Constantin)
Fix problems with username/passwords over 8 characters(Tom)
Fix problems with handling of asynchronous NOTIFY in backend(Tom)
Fix of many bad system table entries(Tom)
Enhancements
------------
Upgrade ecpg and ecpglib,see src/interfaces/ecpc/ChangeLog(Michael)
Show the index used in an EXPLAIN(Zeugswetter)
EXPLAIN invokes rule system and shows plan(s) for rewritten queries(Jan)
Multibyte awareness of many data types and functions, via configure(Tatsuo)
New configure --with-mb option(Tatsuo)
New initdb --pgencoding option(Tatsuo)
New createdb -E multibyte option(Tatsuo)
Select version(); now returns PostgreSQL version(Jeroen)
Libpq now allows asynchronous clients(Tom)
Allow cancel from client of backend query(Tom)
Psql now cancels query with Control-C(Tom)
Libpq users need not issue dummy queries to get NOTIFY messages(Tom)
NOTIFY now sends sender's PID, so you can tell whether it was your own(Tom)
PGresult struct now includes associated error message, if any(Tom)
Define "tz_hour" and "tz_minute" arguments to date_part()(Thomas)
Add routines to convert between varchar and bpchar(Thomas)
Add routines to allow sizing of varchar and bpchar into target columns(Thomas)
Add bit flags to support timezonehour and minute in data retrieval(Thomas)
Allow more variations on valid floating point numbers (e.g. ".1", "1e6")(Thomas)
Fixes for unary minus parsing with leading spaces(Thomas)
Implement TIMEZONE_HOUR, TIMEZONE_MINUTE per SQL92 specs(Thomas)
Check for and properly ignore FOREIGN KEY column constraints(Thomas)
Define USER as synonym for CURRENT_USER per SQL92 specs(Thomas)
Enable HAVING clause but no fixes elsewhere yet.
Make "char" type a synonym for "char(1)" (actually implemented as bpchar)(Thomas)
Save string type if specified for DEFAULT clause handling(Thomas)
Coerce operations involving different data types(Thomas)
Allow some index use for columns of different types(Thomas)
Add capabilities for automatic type conversion(Thomas)
Cleanups for large objects, so file is truncated on open(Peter)
Readline cleanups(Tom)
Allow psql \f \ to make spaces as delimiter(Bruce)
Pass pg_attribute.atttypmod to the frontend for column field lengths(Tom,Bruce)
Msql compatibility library in /contrib(Aldrin)
Remove the requirement that ORDER/GROUP BY clause identifiers be
included in the target list(David)
Convert columns to match columns in UNION clauses(Thomas)
Remove fork()/exec() and only do fork()(Bruce)
Jdbc cleanups(Peter)
Show backend status on ps command line(only works on some platforms)(Bruce)
Pg_hba.conf now has a sameuser option in the database field
Make lo_unlink take oid param, not int4
New DISABLE_COMPLEX_MACRO for compilers that can't handle our macros(Bruce)
Libpgtcl now handles NOTIFY as a Tcl event, need not send dummy queries(Tom)
libpgtcl cleanups(Tom)
Add -error option to libpgtcl's pg_result command(Tom)
New locale patch, see docs/README/locale(Oleg)
Fix for pg_dump so CONSTRAINT and CHECK syntax is correct(ccb)
New contrib/lo code for large object orphan removal(Peter)
New psql command "SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO 'encoding'" for multibytes
feature, see /doc/README.mb(Tatsuo)
/contrib/noupdate code to revoke update permission on a column
Libpq can now be compiled on win32(Magnus)
Add PQsetdbLogin() in libpq
New 8-byte integer type, checked by configure for OS support(Thomas)
Better support for quoted table/column names(Thomas)
Surround table and column names with double-quotes in pg_dump(Thomas)
PQreset() now works with passwords(Tom)
Handle case of GROUP BY target list column number out of range(David)
Allow UNION in subselects
Add auto-size to screen to \d? commands(Bruce)
Use UNION to show all \d? results in one query(Bruce)
Add \d? field search feature(Bruce)
Pg_dump issues fewer \connect requests(Tom)
Make pg_dump -z flag work better, document it in manual page(Tom)
Add HAVING clause with full support for subselects and unions(Stephan)
Full text indexing routines in contrib/fulltextindex(Maarten)
Transaction ids now stored in shared memory(Vadim)
New PGCLIENTENCODING when issuing COPY command(Tatsuo)
Support for SQL92 syntax "SET NAMES"(Tatsuo)
Support for LATIN2-5(Tatsuo)
Add UNICODE regression test case(Tatsuo)
Lock manager cleanup, new locking modes for LLL(Vadim)
Allow index use with OR clauses(Bruce)
Allows "SELECT NULL ORDER BY 1;"
Explain VERBOSE prints the plan, and now pretty-prints the plan to
the postmaster log file(Bruce)
Add indexes display to \d command(Bruce)
Allow GROUP BY on functions(David)
New pg_class.relkind for large objects(Bruce)
New way to send libpq NOTICE messages to a different location(Tom)
New \w write command to psql(Bruce)
New /contrib/findoidjoins scans oid columns to find join relationships(Bruce)
Allow binary-compatible indexes to be considered when checking for valid
Indexes for restriction clauses containing a constant(Thomas)
New ISBN/ISSN code in /contrib/isbn_issn
Allow NOT LIKE, IN, NOT IN, BETWEEN, and NOT BETWEEN constraint(Thomas)
New rewrite system fixes many problems with rules and views(Jan)
* Rules on relations work
* Event qualifications on insert/update/delete work
* New OLD variable to reference CURRENT, CURRENT will be remove in future
* Update rules can reference NEW and OLD in rule qualifications/actions
* Insert/update/delete rules on views work
* Multiple rule actions are now supported, surrounded by parentheses
* Regular users can create views/rules on tables they have RULE permits
* Rules and views inherit the permissions on the creator
* No rules at the column level
* No UPDATE NEW/OLD rules
* New pg_tables, pg_indexes, pg_rules and pg_views system views
* Only a single action on SELECT rules
* Total rewrite overhaul, perhaps for 6.5
* handle subselects
* handle aggregates on views
* handle insert into select from view works
System indexes are now multi-key(Bruce)
Oidint2, oidint4, and oidname types are removed(Bruce)
Use system cache for more system table lookups(Bruce)
New backend programming language PL/pgSQL in backend/pl(Jan)
New SERIAL data type, auto-creates sequence/index(Thomas)
Enable assert checking without a recompile(Massimo)
User lock enhancements(Massimo)
New setval() command to set sequence value(Massimo)
Auto-remove unix socket file on start-up if no postmaster running(Massimo)
Conditional trace package(Massimo)
New UNLISTEN command(Massimo)
Psql and libpq now compile under win32 using win32.mak(Magnus)
Lo_read no longer stores trailing NULL(Bruce)
Identifiers are now truncated to 31 characters internally(Bruce)
Createuser options now availble on the command line
Code for 64-bit integer supported added, configure tested, int8 type(Thomas)
Prevent file descriptor leaf from failed COPY(Bruce)
New pg_upgrade command(Bruce)
Updated /contrib directories(Massimo)
New CREATE TABLE DEFAULT VALUES statement available(Thomas)
New INSERT INTO TABLE DEFAULT VALUES statement available(Thomas)
New DECLARE and FETCH feature(Thomas)
libpq's internal structures now not exported(Tom)
Allow up to 8 key indexes(Bruce)
Remove ARCHIVE keyword, that is no longer used(Thomas)
pg_dump -n flag to supress quotes around indentifiers
disable system columns for views(Jan)
new INET and CIDR types for network addresses(TomH, Paul)
no more double quotes in psql output
pg_dump now dumps views(Terry)
new SET QUERY_LIMIT(Tatsuo,Jan)
Source Tree Changes
-------------------
/contrib cleanup(Jun)
Inline some small functions called for every row(Bruce)
Alpha/linux fixes
Hp/UX cleanups(Tom)
Multibyte regression tests(Soonmyung.)
Remove --disabled options from configure
Define PGDOC to use POSTGRESDIR by default
Make regression optional
Remove extra braces code to pgindent(Bruce)
Add bsdi shared library support(Bruce)
New --without-CXX support configure option(Brook)
New FAQ_CVS
Update backend flowchart in tools/backend(Bruce)
Change atttypmod from int16 to int32(Bruce, Tom)
Getrusage() fix for platforms that do not have it(Tom)
Add PQconnectdb, PGUSER, PGPASSWORD to libpq man page
NS32K platform fixes(Phil Nelson, John Buller)
Sco 7/UnixWare 2.x fixes(Billy,others)
Sparc/Solaris 2.5 fixes(Ryan)
Pgbuiltin.3 is obsolete, move to doc files(Thomas)
Even more documention(Thomas)
Nextstep support(Jacek)
Aix support(David)
pginterface manual page(Bruce)
shared libraries all have version numbers
merged all OS-specific shared library defines into one file
smarter TCL/TK configuration checking(Billy)
smarter perl configuration(Brook)
configure uses supplied install-sh if no install script found(Tom)
new Makefile.shlib for shared library configuration(Tom)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.3.2
Release date: 1998-04-07
This is a bug-fix release for 6.3.x. Refer to the release notes for
version 6.3 for a more complete summary of new features.
Summary:
* Repairs automatic configuration support for some platforms, including
Linux, from breakage inadvertently introduced in version 6.3.1.
* Correctly handles function calls on the left side of BETWEEN and LIKE
clauses.
A dump/restore is NOT required for those running 6.3 or 6.3.1. A make
distclean, make, and make install is all that is required. This last step
should be performed while the postmaster is not running. You should
re-link any custom applications that use PostgreSQL libraries.
For upgrades from pre-6.3 installations, refer to the installation and
migration instructions for version 6.3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Configure detection improvements for tcl/tk(Brook Milligan, Alvin)
Manual page improvements(Bruce)
BETWEEN and LIKE fix(Thomas)
fix for psql \connect used by pg_dump(Oliver Elphick)
New odbc driver
pgaccess, version 0.86
qsort removed, now uses libc version, cleanups(Jeroen)
fix for buffer over-runs detected(Maurice Gittens)
fix for buffer overrun in libpgtcl(Randy Kunkee)
fix for UNION with DISTINCT or ORDER BY(Bruce)
gettimeofday configure check(Doug Winterburn)
Fix "indexes not used" bug(Vadim)
docs additions(Thomas)
Fix for backend memory leak(Bruce)
libreadline cleanup(Erwan MAS)
Remove DISTDIR(Bruce)
Makefile dependency cleanup(Jeroen van Vianen)
ASSERT fixes(Bruce)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.3.1
Release date: 1998-03-23
Summary:
* Additional support for multibyte character sets.
* Repair byte ordering for mixed-endian clients and servers.
* Minor updates to allowed SQL syntax.
* Improvements to the configuration autodetection for installation.
A dump/restore is NOT required for those running 6.3. A make distclean,
make, and make install is all that is required. This last step should be
performed while the postmaster is not running. You should re-link any
custom applications that use PostgreSQL libraries.
For upgrades from pre-6.3 installations, refer to the installation and
migration instructions for version 6.3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
ecpg cleanup/fixes, now version 1.1(Michael Meskes)
pg_user cleanup(Bruce)
large object fix for pg_dump and tclsh (alvin)
LIKE fix for multiple adjacent underscores
fix for redefining builtin functions(Thomas)
ultrix4 cleanup
upgrade to pg_access 0.83
updated CLUSTER manual page
multibyte character set support, see doc/README.mb(Tatsuo)
configure --with-pgport fix
pg_ident fix
big-endian fix for backend communications(Kataoka)
SUBSTR() and substring() fix(Jan)
several jdbc fixes(Peter)
libpgtcl improvements, see libptcl/README(Randy Kunkee)
Fix for "Datasize = 0" error(Vadim)
Prevent \do from wrapping(Bruce)
Remove duplicate Russian character set entries
Sunos4 cleanup
Allow optional TABLE keyword in LOCK and SELECT INTO(Thomas)
CREATE SEQUENCE options to allow a negative integer(Thomas)
Add "PASSWORD" as an allowed column identifier(Thomas)
Add checks for UNION target fields(Bruce)
Fix Alpha port(Dwayne Bailey)
Fix for text arrays containing quotes(Doug Gibson)
Solaris compile fix(Albert Chin-A-Young)
Better identify tcl and tk libs and includes(Bruce)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.3
Release date: 1998-03-01
There are *many* new features and improvements in this release. Here is a
brief, incomplete summary:
* Many new SQL features, including full SQL92 subselect capability
(everything is here but target-list subselects).
* Support for client-side environment variables to specify time zone and
date style.
* Socket interface for client/server connection. This is the default now
so you may need to start postmaster with the "-i" flag.
* Better password authorization mechanisms. Default table permissions
have changed.
* Old-style time travel has been removed. Performance has been improved.
Note: Bruce Momjian wrote the following notes to introduce the new
release.
There are some general 6.3 issues that I want to mention. These are only
the big items that can not be described in one sentence. A review of the
detailed changes list is still needed.
First, we now have subselects. Now that we have them, I would like to
mention that without subselects, SQL is a very limited language.
Subselects are a major feature, and you should review your code for places
where subselects provide a better solution for your queries. I think you
will find that there are more uses for subselects than you may think.
Vadim has put us on the big SQL map with subselects, and fully functional
ones too. The only thing you can't do with subselects is to use them in
the target list.
Second, 6.3 uses Unix domain sockets rather than TCP/IP by default. To
enable connections from other machines, you have to use the new postmaster
-i option, and of course edit "pg_hba.conf". Also, for this reason, the
format of "pg_hba.conf" has changed.
Third, char() fields will now allow faster access than varchar() or text.
Specifically, the text and varchar() have a penalty for access to any
columns after the first column of this type. char() used to also have this
access penalty, but it no longer does. This may suggest that you redesign
some of your tables, especially if you have short character columns that
you have defined as varchar() or text. This and other changes make 6.3
even faster than earlier releases.
We now have passwords definable independent of any Unix file. There are
new SQL USER commands. See the Administrator's Guide for more information.
There is a new table, pg_shadow, which is used to store user information
and user passwords, and it by default only SELECT-able by the postgres
super-user. pg_user is now a view of pg_shadow, and is SELECT-able by
PUBLIC. You should keep using pg_user in your application without changes.
User-created tables now no longer have SELECT permission to PUBLIC by
default. This was done because the ANSI standard requires it. You can of
course GRANT any permissions you want after the table is created. System
tables continue to be SELECT-able by PUBLIC.
We also have real deadlock detection code. No more sixty-second timeouts.
And the new locking code implements a FIFO better, so there should be less
resource starvation during heavy use.
Many complaints have been made about inadequate documentation in previous
releases. Thomas has put much effort into many new manuals for this
release. Check out the doc/ directory.
For performance reasons, time travel is gone, but can be implemented using
triggers (see "pgsql/contrib/spi/README"). Please check out the new \d
command for types, operators, etc. Also, views have their own permissions
now, not based on the underlying tables, so permissions on them have to be
set separately. Check "/pgsql/interfaces" for some new ways to talk to
PostgreSQL.
This is the first release that really required an explanation for existing
users. In many ways, this was necessary because the new release removes
many limitations, and the work-arounds people were using are no longer
needed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.3
A dump/restore using pg_dump or pg_dumpall is required for those wishing
to migrate data from any previous release of PostgreSQL.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
Fix binary cursors broken by MOVE implementation(Vadim)
Fix for tcl library crash(Jan)
Fix for array handling, from Gerhard Hintermayer
Fix acl error, and remove duplicate pqtrace(Bruce)
Fix psql \e for empty file(Bruce)
Fix for textcat on varchar() fields(Bruce)
Fix for DBT Sendproc (Zeugswetter Andres)
Fix vacuum analyze syntax problem(Bruce)
Fix for international identifiers(Tatsuo)
Fix aggregates on inherited tables(Bruce)
Fix substr() for out-of-bounds data
Fix for select 1=1 or 2=2, select 1=1 and 2=2, and select sum(2+2)(Bruce)
Fix notty output to show status result. -q option still turns it off(Bruce)
Fix for count(*), aggs with views and multiple tables and sum(3)(Bruce)
Fix cluster(Bruce)
Fix for PQtrace start/stop several times(Bruce)
Fix a variety of locking problems like newer lock waiters getting
lock before older waiters, and having readlock people not share
locks if a writer is waiting for a lock, and waiting writers not
getting priority over waiting readers(Bruce)
Fix crashes in psql when executing queries from external files(James)
Fix problem with multiple order by columns, with the first one having
NULL values(Jeroen)
Use correct hash table support functions for float8 and int4(Thomas)
Re-enable JOIN= option in CREATE OPERATOR statement (Thomas)
Change precedence for boolean operators to match expected behavior(Thomas)
Generate elog(ERROR) on over-large integer(Bruce)
Allow multiple-argument functions in constraint clauses(Thomas)
Check boolean input literals for 'true','false','yes','no','1','0'
and throw elog(ERROR) if unrecognized(Thomas)
Major large objects fix
Fix for GROUP BY showing duplicates(Vadim)
Fix for index scans in MergeJion(Vadim)
Enhancements
------------
Subselects with EXISTS, IN, ALL, ANY keywords (Vadim, Bruce, Thomas)
New User Manual(Thomas, others)
Speedup by inlining some frequently-called functions
Real deadlock detection, no more timeouts(Bruce)
Add SQL92 "constants" CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
CURRENT_USER(Thomas)
Modify constraint syntax to be SQL92-compliant(Thomas)
Implement SQL92 PRIMARY KEY and UNIQUE clauses using indexes(Thomas)
Recognize SQL92 syntax for FOREIGN KEY. Throw elog notice(Thomas)
Allow NOT NULL UNIQUE constraint clause (each allowed separately before)(Thomas)
Allow PostgreSQL-style casting ("::") of non-constants(Thomas)
Add support for SQL3 TRUE and FALSE boolean constants(Thomas)
Support SQL92 syntax for IS TRUE/IS FALSE/IS NOT TRUE/IS NOT FALSE(Thomas)
Allow shorter strings for boolean literals (e.g. "t", "tr", "tru")(Thomas)
Allow SQL92 delimited identifiers(Thomas)
Implement SQL92 binary and hexadecimal string decoding (b'10' and x'1F')(Thomas)
Support SQL92 syntax for type coercion of literal strings
(e.g. "DATETIME 'now'")(Thomas)
Add conversions for int2, int4, and OID types to and from text(Thomas)
Use shared lock when building indexes(Vadim)
Free memory allocated for an user query inside transaction block after
this query is done, was turned off in <= 6.2.1(Vadim)
New SQL statement CREATE PROCEDURAL LANGUAGE(Jan)
New PostgreSQL Procedural Language (PL) backend interface(Jan)
Rename pg_dump -H option to -h(Bruce)
Add Java support for passwords, European dates(Peter)
Use indexes for LIKE and ~, !~ operations(Bruce)
Add hash functions for datetime and timespan(Thomas)
Time Travel removed(Vadim, Bruce)
Add paging for \d and \z, and fix \i(Bruce)
Add Unix domain socket support to backend and to frontend library(Goran)
Implement CREATE DATABASE/WITH LOCATION and initlocation utility(Thomas)
Allow more SQL92 and/or PostgreSQL reserved words as column identifiers(Thomas)
Augment support for SQL92 SET TIME ZONE...(Thomas)
SET/SHOW/RESET TIME ZONE uses TZ backend environment variable(Thomas)
Implement SET keyword = DEFAULT and SET TIME ZONE DEFAULT(Thomas)
Enable SET TIME ZONE using TZ environment variable(Thomas)
Add PGDATESTYLE environment variable to frontend and backend initialization(Thomas)
Add PGTZ, PGCOSTHEAP, PGCOSTINDEX, PGRPLANS, PGGEQO
frontend library initialization environment variables(Thomas)
Regression tests time zone automatically set with "setenv PGTZ PST8PDT"(Thomas)
Add pg_description table for info on tables, columns, operators, types, and
aggregates(Bruce)
Increase 16 char limit on system table/index names to 32 characters(Bruce)
Rename system indexes(Bruce)
Add 'GERMAN' option to SET DATESTYLE(Thomas)
Define an "ISO-style" timespan output format with "hh:mm:ss" fields(Thomas)
Allow fractional values for delta times (e.g. '2.5 days')(Thomas)
Validate numeric input more carefully for delta times(Thomas)
Implement day of year as possible input to date_part()(Thomas)
Define timespan_finite() and text_timespan() functions(Thomas)
Remove archive stuff(Bruce)
Allow for a pg_password authentication database that is separate from
the system password file(Todd)
Dump ACLs, GRANT, REVOKE permissions(Matt)
Define text, varchar, and bpchar string length functions(Thomas)
Fix Query handling for inheritance, and cost computations(Bruce)
Implement CREATE TABLE/AS SELECT (alternative to SELECT/INTO)(Thomas)
Allow NOT, IS NULL, IS NOT NULL in constraints(Thomas)
Implement UNIONs for SELECT(Bruce)
Add UNION, GROUP, DISTINCT to INSERT(Bruce)
varchar() stores only necessary bytes on disk(Bruce)
Fix for BLOBs(Peter)
Mega-Patch for JDBC...see README_6.3 for list of changes(Peter)
Remove unused "option" from PQconnectdb()
New LOCK command and lock manual page describing deadlocks(Bruce)
Add new psql \da, \dd, \df, \do, \dS, and \dT commands(Bruce)
Enhance psql \z to show sequences(Bruce)
Show NOT NULL and DEFAULT in psql \d table(Bruce)
New psql .psqlrc file start-up(Andrew)
Modify sample start-up script in contrib/linux to show syslog(Thomas)
New types for IP and MAC addresses in contrib/ip_and_mac(TomH)
Unix system time conversions with date/time types in contrib/unixdate(Thomas)
Update of contrib stuff(Massimo)
Add Unix socket support to DBD::Pg(Goran)
New python interface (PyGreSQL 2.0)(D'Arcy)
New frontend/backend protocol has a version number, network byte order(Phil)
Security features in pg_hba.conf enhanced and documented, many cleanups(Phil)
CHAR() now faster access than VARCHAR() or TEXT
ecpg embedded SQL preprocessor
Reduce system column overhead(Vadmin)
Remove pg_time table(Vadim)
Add pg_type attribute to identify types that need length (bpchar, varchar)
Add report of offending line when COPY command fails
Allow VIEW permissions to be set separately from the underlying tables.
For security, use GRANT/REVOKE on views as appropriate(Jan)
Tables now have no default GRANT SELECT TO PUBLIC. You must
explicitly grant such permissions.
Clean up tutorial examples(Darren)
Source Tree Changes
-------------------
Add new html development tools, and flow chart in /tools/backend
Fix for SCO compiles
Stratus computer port Robert Gillies
Added support for shlib for BSD44_derived & i386_solaris
Make configure more automated(Brook)
Add script to check regression test results
Break parser functions into smaller files, group together(Bruce)
Rename heap_create to heap_create_and_catalog, rename heap_creatr
to heap_create()(Bruce)
Sparc/Linux patch for locking(TomS)
Remove PORTNAME and reorganize port-specific stuff(Marc)
Add optimizer README file(Bruce)
Remove some recursion in optimizer and clean up some code there(Bruce)
Fix for NetBSD locking(Henry)
Fix for libptcl make(Tatsuo)
AIX patch(Darren)
Change IS TRUE, IS FALSE, ... to expressions using "=" rather than
function calls to istrue() or isfalse() to allow optimization(Thomas)
Various fixes NetBSD/Sparc related(TomH)
Alpha linux locking(Travis,Ryan)
Change elog(WARN) to elog(ERROR)(Bruce)
FAQ for FreeBSD(Marc)
Bring in the PostODBC source tree as part of our standard distribution(Marc)
A minor patch for HP/UX 10 vs 9(Stan)
New pg_attribute.atttypmod for type-specific info like varchar length(Bruce)
Unixware patches(Billy)
New i386 'lock' for spin lock asm(Billy)
Support for multiplexed backends is removed
Start an OpenBSD port
Start an AUX port
Start a Cygnus port
Add string functions to regression suite(Thomas)
Expand a few function names formerly truncated to 16 characters(Thomas)
Remove un-needed malloc() calls and replace with palloc()(Bruce)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.2.1
Release date: 1997-10-17
6.2.1 is a bug-fix and usability release on 6.2.
Summary:
* Allow strings to span lines, per SQL92.
* Include example trigger function for inserting user names on table
updates.
This is a minor bug-fix release on 6.2. For upgrades from pre-6.2 systems,
a full dump/reload is required. Refer to the 6.2 release notes for
instructions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 6.2 to version 6.2.1
This is a minor bug-fix release. A dump/reload is not required from
version 6.2, but is required from any release prior to 6.2.
In upgrading from version 6.2, if you choose to dump/reload you will find
that avg(money) is now calculated correctly. All other bug fixes take
effect upon updating the executables.
Another way to avoid dump/reload is to use the following SQL command from
"psql" to update the existing system table:
update pg_aggregate set aggfinalfn = 'cash_div_flt8'
where aggname = 'avg' and aggbasetype = 790;
This will need to be done to every existing database, including template1.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Allow TIME and TYPE column names(Thomas)
Allow larger range of true/false as boolean values(Thomas)
Support output of "now" and "current"(Thomas)
Handle DEFAULT with INSERT of NULL properly(Vadim)
Fix for relation reference counts problem in buffer manager(Vadim)
Allow strings to span lines, like ANSI(Thomas)
Fix for backward cursor with ORDER BY(Vadim)
Fix avg(cash) computation(Thomas)
Fix for specifying a column twice in ORDER/GROUP BY(Vadim)
Documented new libpq function to return affected rows, PQcmdTuples(Bruce)
Trigger function for inserting user names for INSERT/UPDATE(Brook Milligan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.2
Release date: 1997-10-02
A dump/restore is required for those wishing to migrate data from previous
releases of PostgreSQL.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 6.1 to version 6.2
This migration requires a complete dump of the 6.1 database and a restore
of the database in 6.2.
Note that the "pg_dump" and "pg_dumpall" utility from 6.2 should be used
to dump the 6.1 database.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 1.x to version 6.2
Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09
because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
Fix problems with pg_dump for inheritance, sequences, archive tables(Bruce)
Fix compile errors on overflow due to shifts, unsigned, and bad prototypes
from Solaris(Diab Jerius)
Fix bugs in geometric line arithmetic (bad intersection calculations)(Thomas)
Check for geometric intersections at endpoints to avoid rounding ugliness(Thomas)
Catch non-functional delete attempts(Vadim)
Change time function names to be more consistent(Michael Reifenberg)
Check for zero divides(Michael Reifenberg)
Fix very old bug which made tuples changed/inserted by a commnd
visible to the command itself (so we had multiple update of
updated tuples, etc)(Vadim)
Fix for SELECT null, 'fail' FROM pg_am (Patrick)
SELECT NULL as EMPTY_FIELD now allowed(Patrick)
Remove un-needed signal stuff from contrib/pginterface
Fix OR (where x != 1 or x isnull didn't return tuples with x NULL) (Vadim)
Fix time_cmp function (Vadim)
Fix handling of functions with non-attribute first argument in
WHERE clauses (Vadim)
Fix GROUP BY when order of entries is different from order
in target list (Vadim)
Fix pg_dump for aggregates without sfunc1 (Vadim)
Enhancements
------------
Default genetic optimizer GEQO parameter is now 8(Bruce)
Allow use parameters in target list having aggregates in functions(Vadim)
Added JDBC driver as an interface(Adrian & Peter)
pg_password utility
Return number of tuples inserted/affected by INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE etc.(Vadim)
Triggers implemented with CREATE TRIGGER (SQL3)(Vadim)
SPI (Server Programming Interface) allows execution of queries inside
C-functions (Vadim)
NOT NULL implemented (SQL92)(Robson Paniago de Miranda)
Include reserved words for string handling, outer joins, and unions(Thomas)
Implement extended comments ("/* ... */") using exclusive states(Thomas)
Add "//" single-line comments(Bruce)
Remove some restrictions on characters in operator names(Thomas)
DEFAULT and CONSTRAINT for tables implemented (SQL92)(Vadim & Thomas)
Add text concatenation operator and function (SQL92)(Thomas)
Support WITH TIME ZONE syntax (SQL92)(Thomas)
Support INTERVAL unit TO unit syntax (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define types DOUBLE PRECISION, INTERVAL, CHARACTER,
and CHARACTER VARYING (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define type FLOAT(p) and rudimentary DECIMAL(p,s), NUMERIC(p,s) (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define EXTRACT(), POSITION(), SUBSTRING(), and TRIM() (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP (SQL92)(Thomas)
Add syntax and warnings for UNION, HAVING, INNER and OUTER JOIN (SQL92)(Thomas)
Add more reserved words, mostly for SQL92 compliance(Thomas)
Allow hh:mm:ss time entry for timespan/reltime types(Thomas)
Add center() routines for lseg, path, polygon(Thomas)
Add distance() routines for circle-polygon, polygon-polygon(Thomas)
Check explicitly for points and polygons contained within polygons
using an axis-crossing algorithm(Thomas)
Add routine to convert circle-box(Thomas)
Merge conflicting operators for different geometric data types(Thomas)
Replace distance operator "<===>" with "<->"(Thomas)
Replace "above" operator "!^" with ">^" and "below" operator "!|" with "<^"(Thomas)
Add routines for text trimming on both ends, substring, and string position(Thomas)
Added conversion routines circle(box) and poly(circle)(Thomas)
Allow internal sorts to be stored in memory rather than in files(Bruce & Vadim)
Allow functions and operators on internally-identical types to succeed(Bruce)
Speed up backend start-up after profiling analysis(Bruce)
Inline frequently called functions for performance(Bruce)
Reduce open() calls(Bruce)
psql: Add PAGER for \h and \?,\C fix
Fix for psql pager when no tty(Bruce)
New entab utility(Bruce)
General trigger functions for referential integrity (Vadim)
General trigger functions for time travel (Vadim)
General trigger functions for AUTOINCREMENT/IDENTITY feature (Vadim)
MOVE implementation (Vadim)
Source Tree Changes
-------------------
HPUX 10 patches (Vladimir Turin)
Added SCO support, (Daniel Harris)
mkLinux patches (Tatsuo Ishii)
Change geometric box terminology from "length" to "width"(Thomas)
Deprecate temporary unstored slope fields in geometric code(Thomas)
Remove restart instructions from INSTALL(Bruce)
Look in /usr/ucb first for install(Bruce)
Fix c++ copy example code(Thomas)
Add -o to psql manual page(Bruce)
Prevent relname unallocated string length from being copied into database(Bruce)
Cleanup for NAMEDATALEN use(Bruce)
Fix pg_proc names over 15 chars in output(Bruce)
Add strNcpy() function(Bruce)
remove some (void) casts that are unnecessary(Bruce)
new interfaces directory(Marc)
Replace fopen() calls with calls to fd.c functions(Bruce)
Make functions static where possible(Bruce)
enclose unused functions in #ifdef NOT_USED(Bruce)
Remove call to difftime() in timestamp support to fix SunOS(Bruce & Thomas)
Changes for Digital Unix
Portability fix for pg_dumpall(Bruce)
Rename pg_attribute.attnvals to attdispersion(Bruce)
"intro/unix" manual page now "pgintro"(Bruce)
"built-in" manual page now "pgbuiltin"(Bruce)
"drop" manual page now "drop_table"(Bruce)
Add "create_trigger", "drop_trigger" manual pages(Thomas)
Add constraints regression test(Vadim & Thomas)
Add comments syntax regression test(Thomas)
Add PGINDENT and support program(Bruce)
Massive commit to run PGINDENT on all *.c and *.h files(Bruce)
Files moved to /src/tools directory(Bruce)
SPI and Trigger programming guides (Vadim & D'Arcy)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.1.1
Release date: 1997-07-22
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 6.1 to version 6.1.1
This is a minor bug-fix release. A dump/reload is not required from
version 6.1, but is required from any release prior to 6.1. Refer to the
release notes for 6.1 for more details.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
fix for SET with options (Thomas)
allow pg_dump/pg_dumpall to preserve ownership of all tables/objects(Bruce)
new psql \connect option allows changing usernames without changing databases
fix for initdb --debug option(Yoshihiko Ichikawa))
lextest cleanup(Bruce)
hash fixes(Vadim)
fix date/time month boundary arithmetic(Thomas)
fix timezone daylight handling for some ports(Thomas, Bruce, Tatsuo)
timestamp overhauled to use standard functions(Thomas)
other code cleanup in date/time routines(Thomas)
psql's \d now case-insensitive(Bruce)
psql's backslash commands can now have trailing semicolon(Bruce)
fix memory leak in psql when using \g(Bruce)
major fix for endian handling of communication to server(Thomas, Tatsuo)
Fix for Solaris assembler and include files(Yoshihiko Ichikawa)
allow underscores in usernames(Bruce)
pg_dumpall now returns proper status, portability fix(Bruce)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.1
Release date: 1997-06-08
The regression tests have been adapted and extensively modified for the
6.1 release of PostgreSQL.
Three new data types (datetime, timespan, and circle) have been added to
the native set of PostgreSQL types. Points, boxes, paths, and polygons
have had their output formats made consistent across the data types. The
polygon output in misc.out has only been spot-checked for correctness
relative to the original regression output.
PostgreSQL 6.1 introduces a new, alternate optimizer which uses genetic
algorithms. These algorithms introduce a random behavior in the ordering
of query results when the query contains multiple qualifiers or multiple
tables (giving the optimizer a choice on order of evaluation). Several
regression tests have been modified to explicitly order the results, and
hence are insensitive to optimizer choices. A few regression tests are for
data types which are inherently unordered (e.g. points and time intervals)
and tests involving those types are explicitly bracketed with "set geqo to
'off'" and "reset geqo".
The interpretation of array specifiers (the curly braces around atomic
values) appears to have changed sometime after the original regression
tests were generated. The current "./expected/*.out" files reflect this
new interpretation, which may not be correct!
The float8 regression test fails on at least some platforms. This is due
to differences in implementations of pow() and exp() and the signaling
mechanisms used for overflow and underflow conditions.
The "random" results in the random test should cause the "random" test to
be "failed", since the regression tests are evaluated using a simple diff.
However, "random" does not seem to produce random results on my test
machine (Linux/gcc/i686).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration to version 6.1
This migration requires a complete dump of the 6.0 database and a restore
of the database in 6.1.
Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09
because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
packet length checking in library routines
lock manager priority patch
check for under/over flow of float8(Bruce)
multi-table join fix(Vadim)
SIGPIPE crash fix(Darren)
large object fixes(Sven)
allow btree indexes to handle NULLs(Vadim)
timezone fixes(D'Arcy)
select SUM(x) can return NULL on no rows(Thomas)
internal optimizer, executor bug fixes(Vadim)
fix problem where inner loop in < or <= has no rows(Vadim)
prevent re-commuting join index clauses(Vadim)
fix join clauses for multiple tables(Vadim)
fix hash, hashjoin for arrays(Vadim)
fix btree for abstime type(Vadim)
large object fixes(Raymond)
fix buffer leak in hash indexes (Vadim)
fix rtree for use in inner scan (Vadim)
fix gist for use in inner scan, cleanups (Vadim, Andrea)
avoid unnecessary local buffers allocation (Vadim, Massimo)
fix local buffers leak in transaction aborts (Vadim)
fix file manager memmory leaks, cleanups (Vadim, Massimo)
fix storage manager memmory leaks (Vadim)
fix btree duplicates handling (Vadim)
fix deleted tuples re-incarnation caused by vacuum (Vadim)
fix SELECT varchar()/char() INTO TABLE made zero-length fields(Bruce)
many psql, pg_dump, and libpq memory leaks fixed using Purify (Igor)
Enhancements
------------
attribute optimization statistics(Bruce)
much faster new btree bulk load code(Paul)
BTREE UNIQUE added to bulk load code(Vadim)
new lock debug code(Massimo)
massive changes to libpg++(Leo)
new GEQO optimizer speeds table multi-table optimization(Martin)
new WARN message for non-unique insert into unique key(Marc)
update x=-3, no spaces, now valid(Bruce)
remove case-sensitive identifier handling(Bruce,Thomas,Dan)
debug backend now pretty-prints tree(Darren)
new Oracle character functions(Edmund)
new plaintext password functions(Dan)
no such class or insufficient privilege changed to distinct messages(Dan)
new ANSI timestamp function(Dan)
new ANSI Time and Date types (Thomas)
move large chunks of data in backend(Martin)
multi-column btree indexes(Vadim)
new SET var TO value command(Martin)
update transaction status on reads(Dan)
new locale settings for character types(Oleg)
new SEQUENCE serial number generator(Vadim)
GROUP BY function now possible(Vadim)
re-organize regression test(Thomas,Marc)
new optimizer operation weights(Vadim)
new psql \z grant/permit option(Marc)
new MONEY data type(D'Arcy,Thomas)
tcp socket communication speed improved(Vadim)
new VACUUM option for attribute statistics, and for certain columns (Vadim)
many geometric type improvements(Thomas,Keith)
additional regression tests(Thomas)
new datestyle variable(Thomas,Vadim,Martin)
more comparison operators for sorting types(Thomas)
new conversion functions(Thomas)
new more compact btree format(Vadim)
allow pg_dumpall to preserve database ownership(Bruce)
new SET GEQO=# and R_PLANS variable(Vadim)
old (!GEQO) optimizer can use right-sided plans (Vadim)
typechecking improvement in SQL parser(Bruce)
new SET, SHOW, RESET commands(Thomas,Vadim)
new \connect database USER option
new destroydb -i option (Igor)
new \dt and \di psql commands (Darren)
SELECT "\n" now escapes newline (A. Duursma)
new geometry conversion functions from old format (Thomas)
Source tree changes
-------------------
new configuration script(Marc)
readline configuration option added(Marc)
OS-specific configuration options removed(Marc)
new OS-specific template files(Marc)
no more need to edit Makefile.global(Marc)
re-arrange include files(Marc)
nextstep patches (Gregor Hoffleit)
removed WIN32-specific code(Bruce)
removed postmaster -e option, now only postgres -e option (Bruce)
merge duplicate library code in front/backends(Martin)
now works with eBones, international Kerberos(Jun)
more shared library support
c++ include file cleanup(Bruce)
warn about buggy flex(Bruce)
DG-UX, Ultrix, Irix, AIX portability fixes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 6.0
Release date: 1997-01-29
A dump/restore is required for those wishing to migrate data from previous
releases of PostgreSQL.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 1.09 to version 6.0
This migration requires a complete dump of the 1.09 database and a restore
of the database in 6.0.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from pre-1.09 to version 6.0
Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09
because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Bug Fixes
---------
ALTER TABLE bug - running postgress process needs to re-read table definition
Allow vacuum to be run on one table or entire database(Bruce)
Array fixes
Fix array over-runs of memory writes(Kurt)
Fix elusive btree range/non-range bug(Dan)
Fix for hash indexes on some types like time and date
Fix for pg_log size explosion
Fix permissions on lo_export()(Bruce)
Fix unitialized reads of memory(Kurt)
Fixed ALTER TABLE ... char(3) bug(Bruce)
Fixed a few small memory leaks
Fixed EXPLAIN handling of options and changed full_path option name
Fixed output of group acl permissions
Memory leaks (hunt and destroy with tools like Purify(Kurt)
Minor improvements to rules system
NOTIFY fixes
New asserts for run-checking
Overhauled parser/analyze code to properly report errors and increase speed
Pg_dump -d now handles NULL's properly(Bruce)
Prevent SELECT NULL from crashing server (Bruce)
Properly report errors when INSERT ... SELECT columns did not match
Properly report errors when insert column names were not correct
Psql \g filename now works(Bruce)
Psql fixed problem with multiple statements on one line with multiple outputs
Removed duplicate system oid's
SELECT * INTO TABLE . GROUP/ORDER BY gives unlink error if table exists(Bruce)
Several fixes for queries that crashed the backend
Starting quote in insert string errors(Bruce)
Submitting an empty query now returns empty status, not just " " query(Bruce)
Enhancements
------------
Add EXPLAIN manual page(Bruce)
Add UNIQUE index capability(Dan)
Add hostname/user level access control rather than just hostname and user
Add synonym of != for <>(Bruce)
Allow "select oid,* from table"
Allow BY,ORDER BY to specify columns by number, or by non-alias table.column(Bruce)
Allow COPY from the frontend(Bryan)
Allow GROUP BY to use alias column name(Bruce)
Allow actual compression, not just reuse on the same page(Vadim)
Allow installation-configuration option to auto-add all local users(Bryan)
Allow libpq to distinguish between text value '' and null(Bruce)
Allow non-postgres users with createdb privs to destroydb's
Allow restriction on who can create C functions(Bryan)
Allow restriction on who can do backend COPY(Bryan)
Can shrink tables, pg_time and pg_log(Vadim & Erich)
Change debug level 2 to print queries only, changed debug heading layout(Bruce)
Change default decimal constant representation from float4 to float8(Bruce)
European date format now set when postmaster is started
Execute lowercase function names if not found with exact case
Fixes for aggregate/GROUP processing, allow 'select sum(func(x),sum(x+y) from z'
Gist now included in the distrubution(Marc)
Idend authentication of local users(Bryan)
Implement BETWEEN qualifier(Bruce)
Implement IN qualifier(Bruce)
Libpq has PQgetisnull()(Bruce)
Libpq++ improvements
New options to initdb(Bryan)
Pg_dump allow dump of oid's(Bruce)
Pg_dump create indexes after tables are loaded for speed(Bruce)
Pg_dumpall dumps all databases, and the user table
Pginterface additions for NULL values(Bruce)
Prevent postmaster from being run as root
Psql \h and \? is now readable(Bruce)
Psql allow backslashed, semicolons anywhere on the line(Bruce)
Psql changed command prompt for lines in query or in quotes(Bruce)
Psql char(3) now displays as (bp)char in \d output(Bruce)
Psql return code now more accurate(Bryan?)
Psql updated help syntax(Bruce)
Re-visit and fix vacuum(Vadim)
Reduce size of regression diffs, remove timezone name difference(Bruce)
Remove compile-time parameters to enable binary distributions(Bryan)
Reverse meaning of HBA masks(Bryan)
Secure Authentication of local users(Bryan)
Speed up vacuum(Vadim)
Vacuum now had VERBOSE option(Bruce)
Source tree changes
-------------------
All functions now have prototypes that are compared against the calls
Allow asserts to be disabled easly from Makefile.global(Bruce)
Change oid constants used in code to #define names
Decoupled sparc and solaris defines(Kurt)
Gcc -Wall compiles cleanly with warnings only from unfixable constructs
Major include file reorganization/reduction(Marc)
Make now stops on compile failure(Bryan)
Makefile restructuring(Bryan, Marc)
Merge bsdi_2_1 to bsdi(Bruce)
Monitor program removed
Name change from Postgres95 to PostgreSQL
New config.h file(Marc, Bryan)
PG_VERSION now set to 6.0 and used by postmaster
Portability additions, including Ultrix, DG/UX, AIX, and Solaris
Reduced the number of #define's, centeralized #define's
Remove duplicate OIDS in system tables(Dan)
Remove duplicate system catalog info or report mismatches(Dan)
Removed many os-specific #define's
Restructured object file generation/location(Bryan, Marc)
Restructured port-specific file locations(Bryan, Marc)
Unused/uninialized variables corrected
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 1.09
Release date: 1996-11-04
Sorry, we didn't keep track of changes from 1.02 to 1.09. Some of the
changes listed in 6.0 were actually included in the 1.02.1 to 1.09
releases.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 1.02
Release date: 1996-08-01
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 1.02 to version 1.02.1
Here is a new migration file for 1.02.1. It includes the 'copy' change and
a script to convert old ASCII files.
Note: The following notes are for the benefit of users who want to
migrate databases from Postgres95 1.01 and 1.02 to Postgres95 1.02.1.
If you are starting afresh with Postgres95 1.02.1 and do not need to
migrate old databases, you do not need to read any further.
In order to upgrade older Postgres95 version 1.01 or 1.02 databases to
version 1.02.1, the following steps are required:
databases. This is done by running the new 1.02.1 server against your
own 1.01 or 1.02 database and applying the queries attached at the end
of the file. This can be done easily through "psql". If your 1.01 or
1.02 database is named testdb and you have cut the commands from the
end of this file and saved them in "addfunc.sql":
% psql testdb -f addfunc.sql
Those upgrading 1.02 databases will get a warning when executing the
last two statements in the file because they are already present in
1.02. This is not a cause for concern.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dump/Reload Procedure
If you are trying to reload a pg_dump or text-mode, copy tablename to
stdout generated with a previous version, you will need to run the
attached "sed" script on the ASCII file before loading it into the
database. The old format used '.' as end-of-data, while '\.' is now the
end-of-data marker. Also, empty strings are now loaded in as '' rather
than NULL. See the copy manual page for full details.
sed 's/^\.$/\\./g' <in_file >out_file
If you are loading an older binary copy or non-stdout copy, there is no
end-of-data character, and hence no conversion necessary.
-- following lines added by agc to reflect the case-insensitive
-- regexp searching for varchar (in 1.02), and bpchar (in 1.02.1)
create operator ~* (leftarg = bpchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = bpchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = varchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = varchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Source code maintenance and development
* worldwide team of volunteers
* the source tree now in CVS at ftp.ki.net
Enhancements
* psql (and underlying libpq library) now has many more options for
formatting output, including HTML
* pg_dump now output the schema and/or the data, with many fixes to
enhance completeness.
* psql used in place of monitor in administration shell scripts.
monitor to be depreciated in next release.
* date/time functions enhanced
* NULL insert/update/comparison fixed/enhanced
* TCL/TK lib and shell fixed to work with both tck7.4/tk4.0 and tcl7.5/tk4.1
Bug Fixes (almost too numerous to mention)
* indexes
* storage management
* check for NULL pointer before dereferencing
* Makefile fixes
New Ports
* added SolarisX86 port
* added BSDI 2.1 port
* added DGUX port
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 1.01
Release date: 1996-02-23
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migration from version 1.0 to version 1.01
The following notes are for the benefit of users who want to migrate
databases from Postgres95 1.0 to Postgres95 1.01.
If you are starting afresh with Postgres95 1.01 and do not need to migrate
old databases, you do not need to read any further.
In order to Postgres95 version 1.01 with databases created with Postgres95
version 1.0, the following steps are required:
OIDNAMELEN to 20.
data directory (typically the value of your $PGDATA).
"src/libpq/pg_hba" shows an example syntax.
the line
HBA = 1
in "src/Makefile.global"
Note that host-based authentication is turned on by default, and
if you do not take steps A or B above, the out-of-the-box 1.01
will not allow you to connect to 1.0 databases.
your existing $PGDATA directory.
path up so that 1.01 binaries are being used.
This is done by running the new 1.01 server against your own 1.0
database and applying the queries attached and saving in the file
1.0_to_1.01.sql. This can be done easily through "psql". If your 1.0
database is name testdb:
% psql testdb -f 1.0_to_1.01.sql
and then execute the following commands (cut and paste from here):
-- add builtin functions that are new to 1.01
create function int4eqoid (int4, oid) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function oideqint4 (oid, int4) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char2icregexeq (char2, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char2icregexne (char2, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char4icregexeq (char4, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char4icregexne (char4, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char8icregexeq (char8, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char8icregexne (char8, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char16icregexeq (char16, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char16icregexne (char16, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function texticregexeq (text, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function texticregexne (text, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
-- add builtin functions that are new to 1.01
create operator = (leftarg = int4, rightarg = oid, procedure = int4eqoid);
create operator = (leftarg = oid, rightarg = int4, procedure = oideqint4);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char2, rightarg = text, procedure = char2icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char2, rightarg = text, procedure = char2icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char4, rightarg = text, procedure = char4icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char4, rightarg = text, procedure = char4icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char8, rightarg = text, procedure = char8icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char8, rightarg = text, procedure = char8icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char16, rightarg = text, procedure = char16icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char16, rightarg = text, procedure = char16icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = text, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = text, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Incompatibilities:
* 1.01 is backwards compatible with 1.0 database provided the user
follow the steps outlined in the MIGRATION_from_1.0_to_1.01 file.
If those steps are not taken, 1.01 is not compatible with 1.0 database.
Enhancements:
* added PQdisplayTuples() to libpq and changed monitor and psql to use it
* added NeXT port (requires SysVIPC implementation)
* added CAST .. AS ... syntax
* added ASC and DESC keywords
* added 'internal' as a possible language for CREATE FUNCTION
internal functions are C functions which have been statically linked
into the postgres backend.
* a new type "name" has been added for system identifiers (table names,
attribute names, etc.) This replaces the old char16 type. The
of name is set by the NAMEDATALEN #define in src/Makefile.global
* a readable reference manual that describes the query language.
* added host-based access control. A configuration file ($PGDATA/pg_hba)
is used to hold the configuration data. If host-based access control
is not desired, comment out HBA=1 in src/Makefile.global.
* changed regex handling to be uniform use of Henry Spencer's regex code
regardless of platform. The regex code is included in the distribution
* added functions and operators for case-insensitive regular expressions.
The operators are ~* and !~*.
* pg_dump uses COPY instead of SELECT loop for better performance
Bug fixes:
* fixed an optimizer bug that was causing core dumps when
functions calls were used in comparisons in the WHERE clause
* changed all uses of getuid to geteuid so that effective uids are used
* psql now returns non-zero status on errors when using -c
* applied public patches 1-14
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 1.0
Release date: 1995-09-05
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Copyright change:
* The copyright of Postgres 1.0 has been loosened to be freely modifiable
and modifiable for any purpose. Please read the COPYRIGHT file.
Thanks to Professor Michael Stonebraker for making this possible.
Incompatibilities:
* date formats have to be MM-DD-YYYY (or DD-MM-YYYY if you're using
EUROPEAN STYLE). This follows SQL-92 specs.
* "delimiters" is now a keyword
Enhancements:
* sql LIKE syntax has been added
* copy command now takes an optional USING DELIMITER specification.
delimiters can be any single-character string.
* IRIX 5.3 port has been added.
Thanks to Paul Walmsley and others.
* updated pg_dump to work with new libpq
* \d has been added psql
Thanks to Keith Parks
* regexp performance for architectures that use POSIX regex has been
improved due to caching of precompiled patterns.
Thanks to Alistair Crooks
* a new version of libpq++
Thanks to William Wanders
Bug fixes:
* arbitrary userids can be specified in the createuser script
* \c to connect to other databases in psql now works.
* bad pg_proc entry for float4inc() is fixed
* users with usecreatedb field set can now create databases without
having to be usesuper
* remove access control entries when the entry no longer has any
permissions
* fixed non-portable datetimes implementation
* added kerberos flags to the src/backend/Makefile
* libpq now works with kerberos
* typographic errors in the user manual have been corrected.
* btrees with multiple index never worked, now we tell you they don't
work when you try to use them
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Postgres95 Release 0.03
Release date: 1995-07-21
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Incompatible changes:
* BETA-0.3 IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH DATABASES CREATED WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS
(due to system catalog changes and indexing structure changes).
* double-quote (") is deprecated as a quoting character for string literals;
you need to convert them to single quotes (').
* name of aggregates (eg. int4sum) are renamed in accordance with the
SQL standard (eg. sum).
* CHANGE ACL syntax is replaced by GRANT/REVOKE syntax.
* float literals (eg. 3.14) are now of type float4 (instead of float8 in
previous releases); you might have to do typecasting if you depend on it
being of type float8. If you neglect to do the typecasting and you assign
a float literal to a field of type float8, you may get incorrect values
stored!
* LIBPQ has been totally revamped so that frontend applications
can connect to multiple backends
* the usesysid field in pg_user has been changed from int2 to int4 to
allow wider range of Unix user ids.
* the netbsd/freebsd/bsd o/s ports have been consolidated into a
single BSD44_derived port. (thanks to Alistair Crooks)
SQL standard-compliance (the following details changes that makes postgres95
more compliant to the SQL-92 standard):
* the following SQL types are now built-in: smallint, int(eger), float, real,
char(N), varchar(N), date and time.
The following are aliases to existing postgres types:
smallint -> int2
integer, int -> int4
float, real -> float4
char(N) and varchar(N) are implemented as truncated text types. In
addition, char(N) does blank-padding.
* single-quote (') is used for quoting string literals; '' (in addition to
\') is supported as means of inserting a single quote in a string
* SQL standard aggregate names (MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, COUNT) are used
(Also, aggregates can now be overloaded, i.e. you can define your
own MAX aggregate to take in a user-defined type.)
* CHANGE ACL removed. GRANT/REVOKE syntax added.
- Privileges can be given to a group using the "GROUP" keyword.
For example:
GRANT SELECT ON foobar TO GROUP my_group;
The keyword 'PUBLIC' is also supported to mean all users.
Privileges can only be granted or revoked to one user or group
at a time.
"WITH GRANT OPTION" is not supported. Only class owners can change
access control
- The default access control is to to grant users readonly access.
You must explicitly grant insert/update access to users. To change
this, modify the line in
src/backend/utils/acl.h
that defines ACL_WORLD_DEFAULT
Bug fixes:
* the bug where aggregates of empty tables were not run has been fixed. Now,
aggregates run on empty tables will return the initial conditions of the
aggregates. Thus, COUNT of an empty table will now properly return 0.
MAX/MIN of an empty table will return a tuple of value NULL.
* allow the use of \; inside the monitor
* the LISTEN/NOTIFY asynchronous notification mechanism now work
* NOTIFY in rule action bodies now work
* hash indexes work, and access methods in general should perform better.
creation of large btree indexes should be much faster. (thanks to Paul
Aoki)
Other changes and enhancements:
* addition of an EXPLAIN statement used for explaining the query execution
plan (eg. "EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM EMP" prints out the execution plan for
the query).
* WARN and NOTICE messages no longer have timestamps on them. To turn on
timestamps of error messages, uncomment the line in
src/backend/utils/elog.h:
/* define ELOG_TIMESTAMPS */
* On an access control violation, the message
"Either no such class or insufficient privilege"
will be given. This is the same message that is returned when
a class is not found. This dissuades non-privileged users from
guessing the existence of privileged classes.
* some additional system catalog changes have been made that are not
visible to the user.
libpgtcl changes:
* The -oid option has been added to the "pg_result" tcl command.
pg_result -oid returns oid of the last tuple inserted. If the
last command was not an INSERT, then pg_result -oid returns "".
* the large object interface is available as pg_lo* tcl commands:
pg_lo_open, pg_lo_close, pg_lo_creat, etc.
Portability enhancements and New Ports:
* flex/lex problems have been cleared up. Now, you should be able to use
flex instead of lex on any platforms. We no longer make assumptions of
what lexer you use based on the platform you use.
* The Linux-ELF port is now supported. Various configuration have been
tested: The following configuration is known to work:
kernel 1.2.10, gcc 2.6.3, libc 4.7.2, flex 2.5.2, bison 1.24
with everything in ELF format,
New utilities:
* ipcclean added to the distribution
ipcclean usually does not need to be run, but if your backend crashes
and leaves shared memory segments hanging around, ipcclean will
clean them up for you.
New documentation:
* the user manual has been revised and libpq documentation added.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Postgres95 Release 0.02
Release date: 1995-05-25
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes
Incompatible changes:
* The SQL statement for creating a database is 'CREATE DATABASE' instead
of 'CREATEDB'. Similarly, dropping a database is 'DROP DATABASE' instead
of 'DESTROYDB'. However, the names of the executables 'createdb' and
'destroydb' remain the same.
New tools:
* pgperl - a Perl (4.036) interface to Postgres95
* pg_dump - a utility for dumping out a postgres database into a
script file containing query commands. The script files are in a ASCII
format and can be used to reconstruct the database, even on other
machines and other architectures. (Also good for converting
a Postgres 4.2 database to Postgres95 database.)
The following ports have been incorporated into postgres95-beta-0.02:
* the NetBSD port by Alistair Crooks
* the AIX port by Mike Tung
* the Windows NT port by Jon Forrest (more stuff but not done yet)
* the Linux ELF port by Brian Gallew
The following bugs have been fixed in postgres95-beta-0.02:
* new lines not escaped in COPY OUT and problem with COPY OUT when first
attribute is a '.'
* cannot type return to use the default user id in createuser
* SELECT DISTINCT on big tables crashes
* Linux installation problems
* monitor doesn't allow use of 'localhost' as PGHOST
* psql core dumps when doing \c or \l
* the "pgtclsh" target missing from src/bin/pgtclsh/Makefile
* libpgtcl has a hard-wired default port number
* SELECT DISTINCT INTO TABLE hangs
* CREATE TYPE doesn't accept 'variable' as the internallength
* wrong result using more than 1 aggregate in a SELECT
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Postgres95 Release 0.01
Release date: 1995-05-01
Initial release.