[ Thanks to Robert Treat for this
link. ]
PostgreSQL 7.3.4 rolled out without too many issues; by now it
should be available from your local ftp mirror (full list of
mirrors available at
http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html)
in both source and rpm formats. The upgrade is critical for 7.3.3
users, and recommended for all others. If you would like to view
the full release notes, they are available at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/734.html.
Meanwhile prep work for 7.4 beta is continuing. As there are
still issues being worked through, it hasn’t been packaged yet,
since there is no sense packaging a product with known problems.
Incidentally this works well for me as it gives me a good cliff
hanger for each weeks newsletter. 🙂 Seriously though the first
beta package should be available within the next week; in the mean
time lets review this past weeks development.
Another (and perhaps final) round of error message editing was
committed, thanks to the efforts of Tom Lane and Joe Conway. Areas
that were finished up include the contrib modules, the utils,
storage, and optimizer sections of the back end, and the various
procedural languages. It’s been noted that users of the various
pieces of PostgreSQL should keep an eye on the error messages they
receive once in beta to help ensure that the messages you receive
are appropriate for the errors you trigger.
SSL client negotiation now has four different methods it can
support; unencrypted non-SSL only, negotiated connection that
prefer non-SSL, negotiated connections that prefer SSL, and SSL
only connections. These changes work in conjunction with
pg_hba.conf specific settings that can limit connections to the
appropriate negotiated connection style. This work is thanks to Jon
Jensen. Another SSL fix that went in was SSL text now printing only
when SSL mode is enabled.
A number of time oriented fixes went in this week;
timestamp_date for the HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP case was fixed,
date_trunc(‘quarter’,…) and it’s ilk were corrected,and date/time
input now follows along the lines of DateStyle rather than
attempting to determine dates heuristically. Timetravel
functionality also received some work, it now operates properly
with “CREATE UNIQUE INDEX ixxx on table xxx”, timetravel triggers
no longer change the oid of the active record, and a
get_timetravel(tablename) function was created to check timetravel
status, along with some general cleanup of compile warnings.
In ecpg, the mdy function were fixed to use the correct offset,
we now use yyless in place of the string_unput function, and some
explicit casts for date, interval, and timestamp were added. JDBC
received a few patches as well, fixing several sql injection
attacks, thanks to Oliver Jowett and Dmitry Tkach.
A problem with pg_dumps handling of dropped columns was fixed,
pg_dump now uses the same layout for types as it does for tables,
and grant option dumping and some related cross-version
compatibility issues in pg_dump where addressed. Psql now prints
out a list of parent tables along with the standard table
information display, thanks to Nick Barr, and psql’s VERBOSE
variable has been renamed to VERBOSITY.
While an official win32 build wont be coming in 7.4, there is
still some work being done to improve windows support. The static
library libpq.a did not work with psql, which is now fixed. Also
password echoing has been disabled and 8bit characters are now
properly displayed and interpreted. These fixes were all thanks to
Christoph Dalitz.
Rounding out the weeks code changes are a slew of miscellaneous
fixes including a number of outstanding portability issues with the
new IPv6 code were tackled including using a more robust definition
of struct sockaddr_storage, fixing the configure test to see if
ss_len exists, no longer assuming getnameinfo() will handle AF_UNIX
sockets, and more. Unknown-literal-constant default values will now
be coerced to the column type during CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE
SET DEFAULT, rather than postponing it to the time the default
values is inserted into an INSERT command. The ERRCODE_XXX macros
were moved to their own header file. Memory usage in the start-up
process was tightened a little bit. A duplicate array in
help_config.c was removed. Some general cleanup of the recent GUC
changes. We now use a process-specific temp file name (based on
suggestion by Andreas Haumer). An error in _bt_search was fixed. We
now wait for the postmaster to actually exit when shutting down the
postmaster after ‘make check’. The –with-threads option was
renamed to –enable-thread-safeness. The linux startup scripts were
tweaked by Slawomir Sudnik. The initcap function has been made
compatible with Oracle 9i. Error stack traceback support for was
added for SQL-language functions. Pg_settings now displays the
source of its information (default/user/session). And finally, the
regression test for foreign key was improved to work with the
deferred trigger code.
Next week we will round out the final code changes from feature
freeze, and have more information on the start of beta testing.
PostgreSQL Product News
Mammoth PostgreSQL 7.3.3 Released
http://www.commandprompt.com/entry.lxp?lxpe=147
FUDforum 2.5.1 (Stable) released
http://freshmeat.net/releases/131044/
pyPgSQL 2.4 released
http://pypgsql.sourceforge.net/
PostgreSQL In the News
Gambling on Linux pays off in Nevada
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/07/23/1646215.shtml?tid=23
PostgreSQL 7.3.4 Now Available For Download
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4155
rjjm.net blog entry with links to postgresql/jdbc
information
http://www.rjjm.net/archive/2003_07_01_archive.html
Upcoming Events
Tcl’2003 BoF with PgAccess: Ann Arbor, Michigan: July 31 – Aug
2
A BoF will be held Friday night for PostgreSQL based tcl/tk
projects
http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2003/?sc_format=wider
Linux World Expo: San Francisco, California: Aug 6-7
A BoF with the SF PostgreSQL Users group will take place
Wednesday
http://www.postgresql.org/events/155.html
PostgreSQL training at the Big Nerd Ranch: Atlanta, Georgia: Aug
18-22
Bruce Momjian will provide a one week training class.
http://www.bignerdranch.com/Classes/Postgresql.html
1-day PostgreSQL Workshop: Turkey / Istanbul’da: August 23
FrontSITE & TDM is offering 1-day course on PostgreSQL
http://www.frontsite.com.tr
http://www.tdmsoft.com/egitim_ayrinti.php?id=1
== PostgreSQL Weekly News – July 30th 2003 ==
Don’t forget to read Elein Mustain’s Weekly Summary of the
PostgreSQL General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/
On the Web:
http://www.postgresql.org
http://advocacy.postgresql.org