-
+
-.5">
-
Release 8.5alpha<span class="marked">1</span>
+-5">
+
Release 8.5alpha<span class="marked">2</span>
Overview
using those if you are looking for bug-fix-only upgrades for your
current installations.
+ The release notes are cumulative over all alpha releases. Items
+ that are new in the latest alpha release
+ are emphasized.
+
Migration
SQL Features
+
+ Modify the definition of window-function PARTITION
+ BY and ORDER BY clauses so that their elements are always
+ taken as simple expressions over the query's input
+ columns.
+
+
+
+ Fix bug with WITH RECURSIVE immediately inside WITH
+ RECURSIVE.
+
+
+
+ Define a new, more extensible syntax for COPY options.
+
+
+
+ Add ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES command, which allows
+ users to adjust the privileges that will be applied to
+ subsequently-created objects.
+
+
+
+ Support use of function argument names to identify which
+ actual arguments match which function parameters. The syntax
+ uses AS, for example funcname(value AS arg1, anothervalue AS
+ arg2).
+
+
+
+ Add CREATE LIKE INCLUDING COMMENTS and STORAGE, and INCLUDING
+ ALL shortcut.
+
+
+
+ Add GRANT/REVOKE ON ALL TABLES/SEQUENCES/FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA.
+
+
+
+ Add SQL-compliant triggers on columns, ie fire only if
+ certain columns are named in the UPDATE's SET list.
+
+
+
+ Add surrogate pair support for U& string and identifier
+ syntax.
+
+
+
+ Add Unicode escapes in E'...' strings.
+
+
DROP COLUMN and DROP CONSTRAINT now support an IF EXISTS clause so
- Allows parentheses around the query expression that follows a WITH
+ Allow parentheses around the query expression that follows a WITH
clause.
INFORMATION_SCHEMA, a catalog of standard views of database
- objects, has been updated to the SQL:2008 ANSI/ISO standard.
+ objects, has been updated to the SQL:2008 standard.
- Changes character_octet_length to more sensible values in
+ Change character_octet_length to more sensible values in
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.
Performance
+
+ Make TRUNCATE do truncate-in-place when processing
+ a relation that was created or previously truncated in the
+ current (sub)transaction.
+
+
+
+ Implement "join removal" for cases where the inner side
+ of a left join is unique and is not referenced above the join.
+
+
EXPLAIN allows output of plans in XML or JSON format for automated
- Makes GEQO's planning deterministic by having it start from a
+ Make GEQO's planning deterministic by having it start from a
predictable random number seed each time.
Administration and Monitoring
+
+ Add a Boolean server configuration parameter
+ "bonjour" to control whether a Bonjour-enabled
+ build actually attempts to advertise itself via Bonjour.
+
+
+
+ When reloading postgresql.conf, log what parameters actually
+ changed.
+
+
+
+ Make it possibly to specify server configuration parameters
+ per user and per database. psql has gained a drds command to
+ display the settings.
+
+
+
+ Allow the collection of statistics on sequences.
+
+
Add the ability to include the SQLSTATE error code of any error
+
+
Server Configuration
+
+
+ Increase the maximum value of extra_float_digits to
+ 3, and have pg_dump use that value when the backend is new
+ enough to allow it, because it is possible to need 3 extra
+ digits for float4 values (but not for float8 values).
+
+
+
+
Security
+
+ Support "samehost" and "samenet" specifications
+ in pg_hba.conf.
+
+
New has_sequence_privilege() functions allow you to check sequence
Built-In Functions
+
+ Support POSIX-compatible interpretation of ? as well as {m,n}
+ and related constructs in SIMILAR TO, per SQL:2008.
+
+
The to_char() formatting functions now supports EEEE (scientific
-
Data<span class="marked">t</span>ypes
+
Data<span class="marked"> T</span>ypes
-
- New hex-string input and output format options for type BYTEA. Hex
- output format is enabled by default, which is an INCOMPATIBLE
- CHANGE. See the new bytea_output parameter if you need to restore
+
+ Fix encoding handling in binary input function of xml type.
+
+
+
+ Tighten binary receive functions so that they reject values
+ that the text input functions don't accept either.
+
+
+
+ New hex-string input and output format options for type bytea. Hex
+ output format is enabled by default, which is an incompatible
+ change. See the new bytea_output parameter if you need to restore
compatibility.
Server Tools
-
+
+ It is now reasonably safe to use pg_ctl to start
+ the postmaster from a boot-time script.
+
+
+
+ Remove the use of the flat files pg_auth and
+ pg_database. (At least pgbouncer currently suggests referring
+ to the pg_auth file for its user database. Such schemes will
+ no longer work.)
+
+
+
pg_dump/pg_restore --clean now drops large objects.
- Modifies parallel pg_restore ordering logic to avoid a potential
+ Modify parallel pg_restore ordering logic to avoid a potential
O(N^2) slowdown for some complex databases.
psql
+
+ Implement significantly saner behavior when two or
+ more psql sessions overlap in their use of the history file.
+
+
+
+ Add "pset linestyle ascii/unicode" option to psql,
+ allowing our traditional ASCII-art style of table output to
+ be upgraded to use Unicode box drawing characters if
+ desired. By default, psql will use the Unicode characters
+ whenever client_encoding is UTF8.
+
+
Have \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent
Procedural Languages
+
+ Add DO statement to support execution of procedural language
+ code without having to create a function for it.
+
+
+
+ Fix/improve bytea and boolean support in PL/Python. Data type
+ conversion into and out of PL/Python previously went through
+ an intermediate string representation, which caused various
+ discrepancies especially with bytea and boolean data. This is
+ now fixed by converting the values directly.
+
+
+
+ PL/Python now accepts Unicode objects where it previously
+ only accepted string objects (for example, as return
+ value). Unicode objects are converted to the PostgreSQL
+ server encoding as necessary.
+
+
+
+ Improve error context reporting in PL/Perl, for
+ easier debugging.
+
+
+
+ Allow plpgsql IN parameters to be assigned to.
+
+
+
+ Convert a Perl array to a PostgreSQL array when returned by
+ set-returning functions as well as non-SRFs.
+
+
+
+ Allow MOVE FORWARD n, MOVE BACKWARD n, MOVE FORWARD ALL, MOVE
+ BACKWARD ALL in PL/pgSQL.
+
+
PL/pgSQL functions can now better cope with row types
- Improves error context reporting in PL/Python, for easier
+ Improve error context reporting in PL/Python, for easier
debugging.
- Greatly expands the regression testing for PL/Python.
+ Greatly expand the regression testing for PL/Python.
Additional Supplied Modules
+
+ Assorted improvements in contrib/hstore.
+
+
pgbench is now multi-threaded, allowing it to use multiple CPU's
+
+
Programming Tools
+
+
+ Add ECPG function that returns the current transaction status.
+
+
+
+ Make ECPG more robust against applications freeing strings.
+
+
+
+ Make libpq reject non-numeric and out-of-range port numbers with a
+ suitable error message.
+
+
+
+
Development
Ports
-
+
+ Change the WIN32 API version to be 5.01 (Windows XP), to
+ bring in the proper IPv6 headers in newer SDKs.
+
+
+
+ Write to the Windows eventlog in UTF-16, converting the
+ message encoding as necessary.
+
+
+
+ Replace use of the long-deprecated Bonjour API
+ DNSServiceRegistrationCreate with the not-so-deprecated
+ DNSServiceRegister. The new code will fail on Mac OS X
+ releases before 10.3.
+
+
+
+ Install a hopefully-temporary workaround for Mac OS X Snow Leopard
+ readdir() bug.
+
+
+
Reserve the shared memory region during backend startup on Windows,
so that memory allocated by starting third party DLLs doesn't end
Source code, build options
+
+ Fix inclusions of readline/editline header files so that we
+ only attempt to #include the version of history.h that is in
+ the same directory as the readline.h we are using. This
+ avoids problems in some scenarios where both readline and
+ editline are installed.
+
+
+
+ Derived files that are shipped in the distribution used to be
+ built in the source directory even for out-of-tree
+ builds. They are now also built in the build tree. This
+ should be more convenient for certain developers' workflows.
+
+
+
+ Translations were updated.
+
+
Upgrade to Autoconf 2.63 (not relevant to users of distribution
will let it be used directly by PL/pgSQL.
-
- Fix backend startup to not depend on the flat-file copy of
- pg_database. This is a first step towards eliminating the flat
- files altogether.
-
-
projects / postgresql.git / commitdiff