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Announcements Software

PostgreSQL Beta Testers Needed 26

Posted by timothy from the test-it-out dept.
aliensexfiend writes ""PostgreSQL Beta Testing has begun. The more testers, the merrier. Read the announcement page as well as the Beta info page. Interesting new features include a new Binary I/O protocol, ability to inline simple SQL functions, and an error message wording scheme that provides 3 layers of detail!!.""
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PostgreSQL Beta Testers Needed More

PostgreSQL Beta Testers Needed

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  • SELECT * FROM bugs ?

  • Some changes in psql 7.4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by zaqattack911 ( 532040 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @12:57PM (#7046391) Journal
    In case you are interested, but don't want to hunt around. Here are the list of changes in 7.4 devel branch:

    Server Operation

    Allow IPv6 server connections (Nigel Kukard, Johan Jordaan, Bruce, Tom, Kurt
    Roeckx, Andrew Dunstan)
    Fix SSL to handle errors cleanly (Nathan Mueller)
    SSL protocol security and performance improvements (Sean Chittenden)
    Print lock information when a deadlock is detected (Tom)
    Update /tmp socket mod. times regularly to avoid their removal (Tom)
    Enable PAM for MAC OS X (Aaron Hillegass)
    Make btree indexes fully WAL-safe (Tom)
    Allow btree index compaction and empty page reuse (Tom)
    Fix inconsistent index lookups during split of first root page (Tom)
    Improve free space map allocation logic (Tom)
    Preserve free space information between postmaster restarts (Tom)
    Set proper schema permissions in initdb (Peter)
    Add start time to pg_stat_activity (Neil)
    New code to detect corrupt disk pages; erase with zero_damaged_pages (Tom)
    New client/server protocol: faster, no username length limit, allow
    clean exit from COPY (Tom)
    Add transaction status, tableid, columnid to backend protocol (Tom)
    Add new binary I/O protocol (Tom)
    Remove autocommit server setting; move to client applications (Tom)
    New error message wording, error codes, and three levels of error detail (Tom)

    __________________________________________________ _______________

    Performance

    Add hashing for GROUP BY aggregates (Tom)
    Allow nested loops to be smarter about multicolumn indexes (Tom)
    Allow multi-key hash joins (Tom)
    Improve constant folding (Tom)
    Add ability to inline simple SQL functions (Tom)
    Reduce memory usage for queries using complex functions (Tom)
    Improve GEQO optimizer performance (Tom)
    Allow IN/NOT IN to be handled via hash tables (Tom)
    Improve NOT IN (subquery) performance (Tom)
    Allow most IN subqueries to be processed as joins (Tom)
    Allow the postmaster to preload libraries using preload_libraries (Joe)
    Improve optimizer cost computations, particularly for subqueries (Tom)
    Avoid sort when subquery ORDER BY matches upper query (Tom)
    Assume WHERE a.x = b.y and b.y = 42 also means a.x = 42 (Tom)
    Allow hash/merge joins on complex joins (Tom)
    Allow hash joins for more data types (Tom)
    Allow join optimization of ANSI joins, disable with join_collapse_limit (Tom)
    Add from_collapse_limit to control conversion of subqueries to joins (Tom)
    Use faster regex code from TCL (Henry Spencer, Tom)
    Use bit-mapped relation sets in the optimizer (Tom)
    Improve backend startup time (Tom)
    Improve trigger/constraint performance (Stephan)

    __________________________________________________ _______________

    Server Configuration

    Rename server parameter server_min_messages to log_min_messages (Bruce)
    Rename show_*_stats to log_*_stats (Bruce)
    Rename show_source_port to log_source_port (Bruce)
    Rename hostname_lookup to log_hostname (Bruce)
    Add checkpoint_warning to warn of excessive checkpointing (Bruce)
    New read-only server parameters for localization (Tom)
    Change debug server log messages to output as DEBUG rather than LOG (Bruce)
    Prevent server log variables from being turned off by non-super users (Bruce)
    log_min_messages/client_min_messages now controls debug_* output (Bruce)
    Add Rendezvous server support (Chris Campbell)
    Add ability to print only slow statements using log_min_duration_statement
    (Christopher)
    Allow pg_hba.conf to accept netmasks in CIDR format (Andrew Dunstan)
    New is_superuser read-only variable (Tom)
    New server-side parameter log_error_verbosity to control error detail (Tom)
    postgres --help-config now dumps server config variables (Aizaz Ahmed)
    Make default shared_buffers 1000 and max_connections 100, if possible (Tom)
    Add new columns in pg_settings: context, type, source , min_val, max_val (Joe)
    New pg_hba.conf 'hostnossl' to
    • Now we just need a short list that outlines which of those features are big improvements that should make doubters look at PostgreSQL again.
      • I'm afraid 'big features' aren't really in this release. There are a large number of small but important features but the importance list changes depending on who you are.

        A number of people are happy to have decent DOMAIN support.

        Others are happy to have indexes that don't grow unbounded (vacuum will clean them up now).

        Developers are happy to have much improved error handling and optimizer corrections (a little smarter with some corner cases).

        Folks with odd data or performance requirements are happy to

  • Big, big question: When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

    It would be great to vastly expand the number of users. A Windows version would help some people with testing, too.
  • Remove rarely used oidrand()...

    Damn it - I use oidrand() quite often.

    It's really handy when you want to pick a few items at random from a large dataset.

    for example, "select whatever from bigdata where oidrand(oid,100) order by random() limit 1;" works well for selecting one item, and is faster that the other methods I've tried.

    • Re:oidrand() (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nconway ( 86640 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @02:37AM (#7052837)
      Since I was responsible for removing oidrand(), I should probably speak up in my own defense :-)

      The motivation for removing oidrand() was that:

      1. it was undocumented
      2. it was poorly named
      3. it was crufty: the unused OID argument is intended to workaround an optimizer bug that has been fixed for years
      4. it didn't play nicely with other portions of the backend that also use a PNRG.


      Note that it is easy to workaround this change: you can either replace references to oidrand(123, y) with 'random() < 1.0/y', or just define the following function:


      CREATE FUNCTION oidrand(oid, int) RETURNS bool AS 'SELECT random() < 1.0/$2' LANGUAGE sql;

      The former being arguably cleaner, the latter meaning that you won't need to change a single line of application code.

      For more information, the thread on pgsql-patches discussing the change is here [postgresql.org].

      I'm pretty convinced that removing oidand() is justified, but if you feel otherwise, please speak up. Thanks for raising the issue.
  • A little whiles back I looked into open source databases for a little side project. I specifically looked at mySql and PostgreSQL. In the end I choose PostgreSQL for a number of reason I won't get into here.

    Lately whenever I see articles concerning databases I rarely ever see postgreSQL in there but I see mySql more and more often. Why is mySql so popular? Is it that the name mySql sounds better than postgreSql?

    • MySQL had an edge over PostgreSQL in 1997 when MySQL worked and PostgreSQL was buggy. Bugs got fixed, but MySQL was easier to install, so it continued to gain momentum. I think it's mainly momentum from prior years that keeps MySQL in the spotlight today.

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