[ Thanks to Robert Treat for this
link. ]
By now I’m sure you’re all running 7.3.3 right? 🙂 The official
announcement went out Monday night, and all of the ftp mirrors
should have the latest distribution by this point. You can find a
list of ftp mirrors at http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html.
I should also mention that each release is also available through
the sourceforge project page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgsql/.
Be sure to read the HISTORY file included with the distribution for
a detailed list of changes.
With 7.3.3 released, we are now getting into the “home stretch”
for 7.4. A number of miscellaneous improvements went in this week,
some large and some small. A core dump in pg_get_triggerdef was
fixed, we now ensure function names are schema-qualified when
needed, argument-printing code has been simplified, pl_funcs now
have support for plpgsql PERFORM statements, our static cbrt()
implementation in float.c was cleaned up, compilation on Cygwin was
fixed, and we now make sure printtup() always sends the number of
columns previously advertised in RowDescription message. A very
remote case of incorrect computation of StartUpID was fixed, based
on a report from Rao Kumar.
There were also some nice enhancements made in the back end.
Information schema saw some minor improvements, and yes/no
interactive responses have now been internationalized. The
implementation of btrim/ltrim/rtrim were all improved. The changes
were made in preparation for using rtrim1() as the bpchar-to-text
cast operator, but these changes stand on there own as a
performance improvement even if we decide not to do that. CHAR(n)
to TEXT/VARCHAR conversion was also modified to automatically strip
trailing blanks along with removal of some redundant operators for
VARCHAR. There was also some clean up on resolution of ambiguous
operators/functions to avoid surprising choices for domains
(domains are treated as equivalent to their base types and
binary-coercibility is no longer considered a preference item when
choosing among multiple operators/functions). And lastly, some
marginal cleanup was done that includes merging the (essentially)
duplicate resolution code in parse_func.c and parse_oper.c as well
as restructuring “special operator” handling to fetch operators via
index opclasses rather than hardwiring assumptions about names
(cleans up the pattern_ops stuff a little).
There were a number of improvements to ecpg this week; fixes
include ecpg now recognizing named structs/unions (so you don’t
have to list the whole definition every time you declare a variable
anymore), ecpg now accepts array elements as arguments, it now
allows input from stdin and output to stdout, a fix for incorrect
output for some structs, and a segfault fix when detecting
undefined cursors.
And rounding things out this week are some error handling and
logging changes that will be new in 7.4. Error-handling logic in
libpq was adjusted so that for the first time, libpq copes sanely
with running out of memory for a query result. The log_ GUC
settings are now controllable only by super-users, so non-super
users can’t turn them off, and debug_ GUC variables output DEBUG1
rather than LOG.
== PostgreSQL Product News ==
phpPgAdmin 3.0 enters beta phase
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=279039
Aqua Data Studio, version 3.0 Released
http://www.databasejournal.com/news/article.php/2210571
== PostgreSQL In the News ==
PostgreSQL 7.3.3 Released
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3660
IBM to Release ‘Express’ Database for SMBs
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/2211551
== Upcoming Events ==
Fenasoft Brasil Software Week: Sao Paulo, Brazil: May 27-30
dbExperts will have a PostgreSQL demonstration
http://www.dbexperts.com.br/noticias/mostraNoticia?id=55
Open Source Conference: Portland, Oregon: July 7-11
A PostgreSQL track is available this year
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2003
== PostgreSQL Weekly News – May 28th 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: