PostgreSQL TODO List
====================
-Last updated: Mon Sep 18 12:23:58 EDT 2006
+Last updated: Tue Sep 19 15:19:50 EDT 2006
The most recent version of this document can be viewed at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.TODO.html.
Administration
==============
-* -Make postmater and postgres options distinct so the postmaster -o
- option is no longer needed
-* -Allow pooled connections to list all prepared statements
-
- This would allow an application inheriting a pooled connection to know
- the statements prepared in the current session.
-
* Allow major upgrades without dump/reload, perhaps using pg_upgrade
[pg_upgrade]
* Check for unreferenced table files created by transactions that were
Another idea is to allow separate configuration files for each module,
or allow arbitrary SET commands to be passed to them.
-* -Re-enable the GUC full_page_writes in 8.2 when reliability issues have
- been addressed
* Simplify ability to create partitioned tables
This would allow creation of partitioned tables without requiring
* Configuration files
- o -Add "include file" functionality in postgresql.conf
o Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to restore them
to defaults
previous uncommented value until a server restarted.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-09/msg01481.php
- o -Allow per-database permissions to be set via GRANT
-
- Allow database connection checks based on GRANT rules in
- addition to the existing access checks in pg_hba.conf.
-
o Allow pg_hba.conf to specify host names along with IP addresses
Host name lookup could occur when the postmaster reads the
o %Allow postgresql.conf file values to be changed via an SQL
API, perhaps using SET GLOBAL
o Allow the server to be stopped/restarted via an SQL API
- o -Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value
+ o Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value
is modified and the server config files are reloaded
o Mark change-on-restart-only values in postgresql.conf
most recent transactions aren't available for recovery in case
of a disk failure.
- o -Automatically force archiving of partially-filled WAL files when
- pg_stop_backup() is called or the server is stopped
- o -Add reporting of the current WAL file and offset, perhaps as
- part of partial log file archiving
o %Create dump tool for write-ahead logs for use in determining
transaction id for point-in-time recovery
o Allow a warm standby system to also allow read-only statements
a database for analysis.
* %Add ability to monitor the use of temporary sort files
-* -Allow server logs to be remotely read and removed using SQL commands
-* -Allow protocol-level BIND parameter values to be logged
Data Types
inaccurate, in one sense.
* Fix data types where equality comparison isn't intuitive, e.g. box
-* -Zero umasked bits in conversion from INET cast to CIDR
-* -Prevent INET cast to CIDR from dropping netmask, SELECT '1.1.1.1'::inet::cidr
-* -Allow INET + INT8 to increment the host part of the address or
- throw an error on overflow
-* -Add 'tid != tid ' operator for use in corruption recovery
* Allow user-defined types to specify a type modifier at table creation
time
* Allow user-defined types to accept 'typmod' parameters
o Allow infinite dates and intervals just like infinite timestamps
o Merge hardwired timezone names with the TZ database; allow either
kind everywhere a TZ name is currently taken
- o -Allow customization of the known set of TZ names (generalize the
- present australian_timezones hack)
o Allow TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE to store the original timezone
information, either zone name or offset from UTC [timezone]
If the TIMESTAMP value is stored with a time zone name, interval
computations should adjust based on the time zone rules.
- o -Allow timezone names in SQL strings, '2006-05-24 21:11
- Americas/New_York'::timestamptz
o Fix SELECT '0.01 years'::interval, '0.01 months'::interval
o Add a GUC variable to allow output of interval values in ISO8601
format
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-01/msg00250.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2006-04/msg00248.php
- o -Add support for day-time syntax, INTERVAL '1 2:03:04' DAY TO
- SECOND
o Support ISO INTERVAL syntax if units cannot be determined from
the string, and are supplied after the string
* Arrays
- o -Allow NULLs in arrays
o Delay resolution of array expression's data type so assignment
coercion can be performed on empty array expressions
o Add support for arrays of domains
=========
* Allow INET subnet tests using non-constants to be indexed
-* -Add transaction_timestamp(), statement_timestamp(), clock_timestamp()
- functionality
-
- Current CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the start time of the current
- transaction, and gettimeofday() returns the wallclock time. This will
- make time reporting more consistent and will allow reporting of
- the statement start time.
-
* %Add pg_get_acldef(), pg_get_typedefault(), pg_get_attrdef(),
pg_get_tabledef(), pg_get_domaindef(), pg_get_functiondef()
These would be for application use, not for use by pg_dump.
-* -Allow to_char() to print localized month names
* Allow to_date() and to_timestamp() accept localized month names
* Add missing parameter handling in to_char()
o to_char(INTERVAL '43 hours 20 minutes', 'WK:DD:HR:MI') => 0:1:19:20
o to_char(INTERVAL '3 years 5 months','MM') => 41
-* -Add sleep() function, remove from regress.c
-* -Allow user-defined functions retuning a domain value to enforce domain
- constraints
* Add SPI_gettypmod() to return the typemod for a TupleDesc
* Allow inlining of set-returning functions
* Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT
* Add ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS options to GROUP BY
* %Allow SET CONSTRAINTS to be qualified by schema/table name
-* -Allow TRUNCATE ... CASCADE/RESTRICT
-
- This is like DELETE CASCADE, but truncates.
-
* %Add a separate TRUNCATE permission
Currently only the owner can TRUNCATE a table because triggers are not
* Add NOVICE output level for helpful messages like automatic sequence/index
creation
-* -Add COMMENT ON for all cluster global objects (roles, databases
- and tablespaces)
-* -Make row-wise comparisons work per SQL spec
-
- Right now, '(a, b) < (1, 2)' is processed as 'a < 1 and b < 2', but
- the SQL standard requires it to be processed as a column-by-column
- comparison, so the proper comparison is '(a < 1) OR (a = 1 AND b < 2)'.
-
* Add RESET CONNECTION command to reset all session state
This would include resetting of all variables (RESET ALL), dropping of
* Allow EXPLAIN to identify tables that were skipped because of
constraint_exclusion
* Allow EXPLAIN output to be more easily processed by scripts
-* -Enable escape_string_warning and standard_conforming_strings
+* Enable standard_conforming_strings
* Make standard_conforming_strings the default in 8.3?
When this is done, backslash-quote should be prohibited in non-E''
expressions like SELECT col1 || col2
o Use more reliable method for CREATE DATABASE to get a consistent
copy of db?
- o -Add ON COMMIT capability to CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT
* UPDATE
- o -Allow an alias to be provided for the target table in
- UPDATE/DELETE (Neil)
- o -Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (val, ...) for updating
- multiple columns
o Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (SELECT...)
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-07/msg01306.php
is used
o %Prevent child tables from altering or dropping constraints
like CHECK that were inherited from the parent table
- o -Add ALTER TABLE tab INHERIT / NO INHERIT parent
o Have ALTER INDEX update the name of a constraint using that index
o Add ALTER TABLE RENAME CONSTRAINT, update index name also
This requires the use of a savepoint before each COPY line is
processed, with ROLLBACK on COPY failure.
- o -Have COPY return the number of rows loaded/unloaded?
o Allow COPY on a newly-created table to skip WAL logging
On crash recovery, the table involved in the COPY would
the table at the same time, which is something that is
currently allowed.
- o -Allow COPY (SELECT ...) TO 'filename'
-
* GRANT/REVOKE
o Prevent DROP TABLE from dropping a row referenced by its own open
cursor?
- o -Allow pooled connections to list all open WITH HOLD cursors
-
- Because WITH HOLD cursors exist outside transactions, this allows
- them to be listed so they can be closed.
-
* INSERT
o Allow INSERT/UPDATE of the system-generated oid value for a row
- o -Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)
- o -Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col
o In rules, allow VALUES() to contain a mixture of 'old' and 'new'
references
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2006-02/msg00288.php
- o -Allow PL/python to return composite types and result sets
-
Clients
=======
-* -Have initdb set the input DateStyle (MDY or DMY) based on locale
* Have pg_ctl look at PGHOST in case it is a socket directory?
* Allow pg_ctl to work properly with configuration files located outside
the PGDATA directory
o Allow psql \pset boolean variables to set to fixed values, rather
than toggle
o Consistently display privilege information for all objects in psql
- o -Improve psql's handling of multi-line statements
-
- Currently, while \e saves a single statement as one entry, interactive
- statements are saved one line at a time. Ideally all statements
- would be saved like \e does.
-
- o -Allow multi-line column values to align in the proper columns
-
- If the second output column value is 'a\nb', the 'b' should appear
- in the second display column, rather than the first column as it
- does now.
-
- o -Display IN, INOUT, and OUT parameters in \df
o Add auto-expanded mode so expanded output is used if the row
length is wider than the screen width.
* pg_dump
- o -Allow pg_dump to use multiple -t and -n switches, exclusion
- ability, and regular expression object matching
o %Add dumping of comments on index columns and composite type columns
o %Add full object name to the tag field. eg. for operators we need
'=(integer, integer)', instead of just '='.
o Add pg_dumpall custom format dumps?
- o -Update pg_dump and psql to use the new COPY libpq API (Christopher)
o Remove unnecessary function pointer abstractions in pg_dump source
code
o Allow selection of individual object(s) of all types, not just
* libpq
- o -Add a function to support Parse/DescribeStatement capability
o Add PQescapeIdentifierConn()
o Prevent PQfnumber() from lowercasing unquoted the column name
* Allow accurate statistics to be collected on indexes with more than
one column or expression indexes, perhaps using per-index statistics
-* -Add fillfactor to control reserved free space during index creation
* Allow the creation of indexes with mixed ascending/descending
specifiers
index entry) might be slow and unreliable, especially for user-defined
index functions.
-* -Add system view to show free space map contents
* Allow FSM to return free space toward the beginning of the heap file,
in hopes that empty pages at the end can be truncated by VACUUM
* Allow FSM page return free space based on table clustering, to assist
This is probably not possible because 'gmake' and other compiler tools
do not fully support quoting of paths with spaces.
-* -Allow installing to directories containing spaces
-
- This is possible if proper quoting is added to the makefiles for the
- install targets. Because PostgreSQL supports relocatable installs, it
- is already possible to install into a directory that doesn't contain
- spaces and then copy the install to a directory with spaces.
-
* Fix sgmltools so PDFs can be generated with bookmarks
-* -%Clean up compiler warnings (especially with gcc version 4)
* Use UTF8 encoding for NLS messages so all server encodings can
read them properly
* Update Bonjour to work with newer cross-platform SDK
-* -Remove BeOS and QNX-specific code
* Split out libpq pgpass and environment documentation sections to make
it easier for non-developers to find
* Improve port/qsort() to handle sorts with 50% unique and 50% duplicate
option is to wait for the MinGW project to fix it, or use the
code from the LibGW32C project as a guide.
- o -Port contrib/xml2
o Check WSACancelBlockingCall() for interrupts [win32intr]
-Last updated: Mon Sep 18 12:23:58 EDT 2006
+Last updated: Tue Sep 19 15:19:50 EDT 2006
The most recent version of this document can be viewed at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.TODO.html.
-
-Make postmater and postgres options distinct so the postmaster -o
- option is no longer needed
-
-Allow pooled connections to list all prepared statements
-
This would allow an application inheriting a pooled connection to know
- the statements prepared in the current session.
-
-
Allow major upgrades without dump/reload, perhaps using pg_upgrade
+
Allow major upgrades without dump/reload, perhaps using pg_upgrade
Check for unreferenced table files created by transactions that were
in-progress when the server terminated abruptly
Another idea is to allow separate configuration files for each module,
or allow arbitrary SET commands to be passed to them.
-
-Re-enable the GUC full_page_writes in 8.2 when reliability issues have
- been addressed
Simplify ability to create partitioned tables
This would allow creation of partitioned tables without requiring
creation of rules for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE, and constraints for
Configuration files
-
-Add "include file" functionality in postgresql.conf
-
Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to restore them
+
Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to restore them
to defaults
Currently, if a variable is commented out, it keeps the
previous uncommented value until a server restarted.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-09/msg01481.php
-
-
-Allow per-database permissions to be set via GRANT
-
Allow database connection checks based on GRANT rules in
- addition to the existing access checks in pg_hba.conf.
Allow pg_hba.conf to specify host names along with IP addresses
Host name lookup could occur when the postmaster reads the
%Allow postgresql.conf file values to be changed via an SQL
API, perhaps using SET GLOBAL
Allow the server to be stopped/restarted via an SQL API
-
-Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value
+
Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value
is modified and the server config files are reloaded
Mark change-on-restart-only values in postgresql.conf
most recent transactions aren't available for recovery in case
of a disk failure.
-
-Automatically force archiving of partially-filled WAL files when
- pg_stop_backup() is called or the server is stopped
-
-Add reporting of the current WAL file and offset, perhaps as
- part of partial log file archiving
%Create dump tool for write-ahead logs for use in determining
transaction id for point-in-time recovery
Allow a warm standby system to also allow read-only statements
a database for analysis.
%Add ability to monitor the use of temporary sort files
-
-Allow server logs to be remotely read and removed using SQL commands
-
-Allow protocol-level BIND parameter values to be logged
Fix data types where equality comparison isn't intuitive, e.g. box
-
-Zero umasked bits in conversion from INET cast to CIDR
-
-Prevent INET cast to CIDR from dropping netmask, SELECT '1.1.1.1'::inet::cidr-
-Allow INET + INT8 to increment the host part of the address or
- throw an error on overflow
-
-Add 'tid != tid ' operator for use in corruption recovery
Allow user-defined types to specify a type modifier at table creation
time
Allow user-defined types to accept 'typmod' parameters
Allow infinite dates and intervals just like infinite timestamps
Merge hardwired timezone names with the TZ database; allow either
kind everywhere a TZ name is currently taken
-
-Allow customization of the known set of TZ names (generalize the
- present australian_timezones hack)
Allow TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE to store the original timezone
information, either zone name or offset from UTC [
timezone] If the TIMESTAMP value is stored with a time zone name, interval
computations should adjust based on the time zone rules.
-
-Allow timezone names in SQL strings, '2006-05-24 21:11
- Americas/New_York'::timestamptz
Fix SELECT '0.01 years'::interval, '0.01 months'::interval
Add a GUC variable to allow output of interval values in ISO8601
format
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2006-04/msg00248.php
-
-Add support for day-time syntax, INTERVAL '1 2:03:04' DAY TO
- SECOND
-
Support ISO INTERVAL syntax if units cannot be determined from
+
Support ISO INTERVAL syntax if units cannot be determined from
the string, and are supplied after the string
The SQL standard states that the units after the string
specify the units of the string, e.g. INTERVAL '2' MINUTE
Arrays
-
-Allow NULLs in arrays
-
Delay resolution of array expression's data type so assignment
+
Delay resolution of array expression's data type so assignment
coercion can be performed on empty array expressions
Add support for arrays of domains
Add support for arrays of complex types
Allow INET subnet tests using non-constants to be indexed
-
-Add transaction_timestamp(), statement_timestamp(), clock_timestamp()
- functionality
-
Current CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the start time of the current
- transaction, and gettimeofday() returns the wallclock time. This will
- make time reporting more consistent and will allow reporting of
- the statement start time.
-
%Add pg_get_acldef(), pg_get_typedefault(), pg_get_attrdef(),
pg_get_tabledef(), pg_get_domaindef(), pg_get_functiondef()
These would be for application use, not for use by pg_dump.
-
-Allow to_char() to print localized month names
Allow to_date() and to_timestamp() accept localized month names
Add missing parameter handling in to_char()
to_char(INTERVAL '43 hours 20 minutes', 'WK:DD:HR:MI') => 0:1:19:20
to_char(INTERVAL '3 years 5 months','MM') => 41
-
-Add sleep() function, remove from regress.c
-
-Allow user-defined functions retuning a domain value to enforce domain
- constraints
Add SPI_gettypmod() to return the typemod for a TupleDesc
Allow inlining of set-returning functions
Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT
Add ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS options to GROUP BY
%Allow SET CONSTRAINTS to be qualified by schema/table name
-
-Allow TRUNCATE ... CASCADE/RESTRICT
-
This is like DELETE CASCADE, but truncates.
-
%Add a separate TRUNCATE permission
Currently only the owner can TRUNCATE a table because triggers are not
called, and the table is locked in exclusive mode.
Add NOVICE output level for helpful messages like automatic sequence/index
creation
-
-Add COMMENT ON for all cluster global objects (roles, databases
- and tablespaces)
-
-Make row-wise comparisons work per SQL spec
-
Right now, '(a, b) < (1, 2)' is processed as 'a < 1 and b < 2', but
- the SQL standard requires it to be processed as a column-by-column
- comparison, so the proper comparison is '(a < 1) OR (a = 1 AND b < 2)'.
-
Add RESET CONNECTION command to reset all session state
This would include resetting of all variables (RESET ALL), dropping of
temporary tables, removing any NOTIFYs, cursors, open transactions,
Allow EXPLAIN to identify tables that were skipped because of
constraint_exclusion
Allow EXPLAIN output to be more easily processed by scripts
-
-Enable escape_stringwarning and standardconforming_strings
+
Enable standard_conforming_strings
Make standard_conforming_strings the default in 8.3?
When this is done, backslash-quote should be prohibited in non-E''
strings because of possible confusion over how such strings treat
expressions like SELECT col1 || col2
Use more reliable method for CREATE DATABASE to get a consistent
copy of db?
-
-Add ON COMMIT capability to CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT
UPDATE
-
-Allow an alias to be provided for the target table in
- UPDATE/DELETE (Neil)
-
-Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (val, ...) for updating
- multiple columns
-
Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (SELECT...)
+
Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (SELECT...)
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-07/msg01306.php
is used
%Prevent child tables from altering or dropping constraints
like CHECK that were inherited from the parent table
-
-Add ALTER TABLE tab INHERIT / NO INHERIT parent
Have ALTER INDEX update the name of a constraint using that index
Add ALTER TABLE RENAME CONSTRAINT, update index name also
This requires the use of a savepoint before each COPY line is
processed, with ROLLBACK on COPY failure.
-
-Have COPY return the number of rows loaded/unloaded?
Allow COPY on a newly-created table to skip WAL logging
On crash recovery, the table involved in the COPY would
be removed or have its heap and index files truncated. One
the table at the same time, which is something that is
currently allowed.
-
-Allow COPY (SELECT ...) TO 'filename'
GRANT/REVOKE
Prevent DROP TABLE from dropping a row referenced by its own open
cursor?
-
-Allow pooled connections to list all open WITH HOLD cursors
-
Because WITH HOLD cursors exist outside transactions, this allows
- them to be listed so they can be closed.
-
INSERT
Allow INSERT/UPDATE of the system-generated oid value for a row
-
-Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)
-
-Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col
In rules, allow VALUES() to contain a mixture of 'old' and 'new'
references
Add PL/Python tracebacks
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2006-02/msg00288.php
-
-Allow PL/python to return composite types and result sets
-
-Have initdb set the input DateStyle (MDY or DMY) based on locale
-
Have pg_ctl look at PGHOST in case it is a socket directory?
+
Have pg_ctl look at PGHOST in case it is a socket directory?
Allow pg_ctl to work properly with configuration files located outside
the PGDATA directory
pg_ctl can not read the pid file because it isn't located in the
Allow psql \pset boolean variables to set to fixed values, rather
than toggle
Consistently display privilege information for all objects in psql
-
-Improve psql's handling of multi-line statements
-
Currently, while \e saves a single statement as one entry, interactive
- statements are saved one line at a time. Ideally all statements
- would be saved like \e does.
-
-
-Allow multi-line column values to align in the proper columns
-
If the second output column value is 'a\nb', the 'b' should appear
- in the second display column, rather than the first column as it
- does now.
-
-
-Display IN, INOUT, and OUT parameters in \df
Add auto-expanded mode so expanded output is used if the row
length is wider than the screen width.
Consider using auto-expanded mode for backslash commands like \df+.
pg_dump
-
-Allow pg_dump to use multiple -t and -n switches, exclusion
- ability, and regular expression object matching
-
%Add dumping of comments on index columns and composite type columns
+
%Add dumping of comments on index columns and composite type columns
%Add full object name to the tag field. eg. for operators we need
'=(integer, integer)', instead of just '='.
Add pg_dumpall custom format dumps?
-
-Update pg_dump and psql to use the new COPY libpq API (Christopher)
Remove unnecessary function pointer abstractions in pg_dump source
code
Allow selection of individual object(s) of all types, not just
libpq
-
-Add a function to support Parse/DescribeStatement capability
-
Add PQescapeIdentifierConn()
+
Add PQescapeIdentifierConn()
Prevent PQfnumber() from lowercasing unquoted the column name
PQfnumber() should never have been doing lowercasing, but
historically it has so we need a way to prevent it
Allow accurate statistics to be collected on indexes with more than
one column or expression indexes, perhaps using per-index statistics
-
-Add fillfactor to control reserved free space during index creation
Allow the creation of indexes with mixed ascending/descending
specifiers
This is possible now by creating an operator class with reversed sort
index entry) might be slow and unreliable, especially for user-defined
index functions.
-
-Add system view to show free space map contents
Allow FSM to return free space toward the beginning of the heap file,
in hopes that empty pages at the end can be truncated by VACUUM
Allow FSM page return free space based on table clustering, to assist
Allow building in directories containing spaces
This is probably not possible because 'gmake' and other compiler tools
do not fully support quoting of paths with spaces.
-
-
-Allow installing to directories containing spaces
-
This is possible if proper quoting is added to the makefiles for the
- install targets. Because PostgreSQL supports relocatable installs, it
- is already possible to install into a directory that doesn't contain
- spaces and then copy the install to a directory with spaces.
Fix sgmltools so PDFs can be generated with bookmarks
-
-*%Clean up compiler warnings (especially with gcc version 4)*
Use UTF8 encoding for NLS messages so all server encodings can
read them properly
Update Bonjour to work with newer cross-platform SDK
-
-Remove BeOS and QNX-specific code
Split out libpq pgpass and environment documentation sections to make
it easier for non-developers to find
Improve port/qsort() to handle sorts with 50% unique and 50% duplicate
option is to wait for the MinGW project to fix it, or use the
code from the LibGW32C project as a guide.
-
-Port contrib/xml2
Check WSACancelBlockingCall() for interrupts [win32intr]
Wire Protocol Changes
projects / postgresql.git / commitdiff