Appendix E. Release Notes

Table of Contents
E.1. Release 7.4
E.2. Release 7.3.4
E.3. Release 7.3.3
E.4. Release 7.3.2
E.5. Release 7.3.1
E.6. Release 7.3
E.7. Release 7.2.4
E.8. Release 7.2.3
E.9. Release 7.2.2
E.10. Release 7.2.1
E.11. Release 7.2
E.12. Release 7.1.3
E.13. Release 7.1.2
E.14. Release 7.1.1
E.15. Release 7.1
E.16. Release 7.0.3
E.17. Release 7.0.2
E.18. Release 7.0.1
E.19. Release 7.0
E.20. Release 6.5.3
E.21. Release 6.5.2
E.22. Release 6.5.1
E.23. Release 6.5
E.24. Release 6.4.2
E.25. Release 6.4.1
E.26. Release 6.4
E.27. Release 6.3.2
E.28. Release 6.3.1
E.29. Release 6.3
E.30. Release 6.2.1
E.31. Release 6.2
E.32. Release 6.1.1
E.33. Release 6.1
E.34. Release 6.0
E.35. Release 1.09
E.36. Release 1.02
E.37. Release 1.01
E.38. Release 1.0
E.39. Postgres95 Release 0.03
E.40. Postgres95 Release 0.02
E.41. Postgres95 Release 0.01

E.1. Release 7.4

E.1.1. Overview

Major changes in this release:

  • IN/NOT IN subqueries are now much more efficient

    In previous releases, IN/NOT IN subqueries were joined to the upper query by sequentially scanning the subquery looking for a join. The 7.4 code uses the same sophisticated techniques used by ordinary joins and so is much faster. An IN will now usually as fast as or faster than an equivalent EXISTS subquery; this reverses the conventional wisdom that applied to previous releases.

  • Improved GROUP BY processing by using hash buckets

    In previous releases, GROUP BY values were accumulated and sorted to obtain group-by counts; the 7.4 code places GROUP BY values in hash buckets so sorting is not required, or reverts to the old behavior if the group-by buckets will not fit in memory.

  • New multi-key hash join capability

    In previous releases, hash joins could only occur on single-column joins. This release allows multi-column hash joins.

  • ANSI joins are now better optimized

    Prior releases evaluated ANSI join syntax only in the order specified by the query; 7.4 allows full optimization of queries using ANSI join syntax, meaning the optimizer considers all possible join orderings and chooses the most efficient. Outer joins, however, must still follow the declared ordering.

  • Faster and more powerful regular expression code

    The entire regular expression module has been replaced with a new version by Henry Spencer, originally written for TCL. The code greatly improves performance and supports several flavors of regular expressions.

  • Function-inlining for simple SQL functions

    Simple SQL functions can now be inlined by including their SQL in the main query. This improves performance by preventing repeated calls to the SQL function --- this allows simple SQL functions to behave like macros.

  • Full support for IPv6 connections and IPv6 address data types

    Prior releases allowed only IPv4 connections and IP data types only supported IPv4 addresses. This release adds full IPv6 support in both of these areas.

  • Major improvements in SSL performance and reliability

    Several people very familiar with the SSL API have overhauled our SSL code to improve SSL key negotiation and error recovery.

  • Allow free space map to efficiently reuse empty index pages, and other free space management improvements.

    In prior releases, index pages that were left empty because of deleted rows could only be reused by rows with index values similar to the original rows indexed on that page. In 7.4, VACUUM records empty index pages and allows them to be used for any future index rows.

  • Implement information schema

  • Support for read-only transactions

  • Make cursors comply more closely with the SQL standard

  • New client-to-server protocol adds error codes, more status information, faster startup, better support for binary data transmission, parameter values separated from SQL commands, prepared statements available at the protocol level, clean recovery from COPY failures, and cleaner startup packets. The older protocol is still supported by both servers and clients.

  • Allow cursors to exist outside transactions, also called holdable cursors

  • libpq and ecpg are now fully thread-safe with --enable-thread-safety

    While prior libpq releases already supported threads, this release improves thread safety by fixing some non-thread-safe code that was used in the database connection routines.

  • New version of full text indexing in /contrib/tsearch2

  • New autovacuum tool in /contrib

    This new tool monitors the database statistics tables for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE activity and automatically vacuums tables when needed.

  • Array handling has been improved and moved into the main server

    Many array limitations have been removed and they behave more like fully-supported data types.

E.1.2. Migration to version 7.4

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • The server-side autocommit setting was removed and reimplemented in client applications and languages.

    Server-side autocommit was causing too many problems with languages and applications that wanted to control their own autocommit behavior so autocommit was removed from the server and added to individual client API's as appropriate.

  • Error message wording has changed substantially in this release, and error codes have been added.

  • ANSI inner joins may behave differently because they are now better optimized

  • A number of server variables have been renamed for clarity, primarily those related to logging

  • MOVE/FETCH 0 now does nothing

    In prior releases, FETCH 0 would fetch all remaining rows, and MOVE 0 would move to the end of the cursor.

  • MOVE/FETCH now returns the actual number of rows moved/fetched, or zero if at the beginning/end of the cursor

    Prior releases would return the row count passed to the command, not the actual number of rows FETCHed or MOVEd.

  • COPY now can process carriage-return and carriage-return/line-feed end-of-line terminated files.

  • Literal carriage-returns and line-feeds are no longer accepted as data values; use \r and \n instead.

  • Trailing spaces are now trimmed when converting from CHAR(n) to VARCHAR(n) / TEXT

  • FLOAT(p) now measures 'p' in bits, not digits

  • Ambiguous date values now must match the ordering specified by DateStyle

    In prior releases, a date of 10/20/03 was interpreted as a date in October even if the DateStyle specified the day should be first. In 7.4, DateStyle is honored when converting such values and will throw an error if the date is invalid for the current DateStyle.

  • The oidrand(), oidsrand(), and userfntest() functions have been removed.

    These functions were determined to be no longer useful.

  • 'now' will no longer work as a column default; now() or CURRENT_TIMESTAMP should be used instead

    In prior releases, there was special code so the string 'now' was interpreted at INSERT time and not at table creation time, but this work around didn't cover all cases. Release 7.4 now requires that defaults be defined properly using the now() or the special value CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. These will work in all situations.

  • 'today' will no longer work as a column default; CURRENT_DATE should be used instead

    Same description as above.

  • Dollar sign ($) is no longer allowed in operator names

  • Dollar sign ($) can be a non-first character in identifiers

    This was done to improve compatibility with other database systems.

  • Syntax errors now reported as 'syntax error' rather than 'parse error' (Tom)

E.1.3. Server Operation Changes

  • Allow IPv6 server connections (Nigel Kukard, Johan Jordaan, Bruce, Tom, Kurt Roeckx, Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix SSL to handle errors cleanly (Nathan Mueller)

    In prior releases, certain rare SSL API error reports were not handled correctly. This release fixes those problems. gracefully.

  • SSL protocol security and performance improvements (Sean Chittenden)

    SSL key renegotiation was happening too frequently, causing poor SSL performance. Also, initial key handling was improved.

  • Print lock information when a deadlock is detected (Tom)

    This allows easier debugging of deadlock situations.

  • Update /tmp socket mod. times regularly to avoid their removal (Tom)

    This should help prevent /tmp directory cleaner administration scripts from removing server socket files.

  • Enable PAM for Mac OS X (Aaron Hillegass)

  • Make btree indexes fully WAL-safe (Tom)

    In prior releases, under certain rare cases, a server crash could cause btree indexes to become corrupt. This release removes those last few rare cases.

  • Allow btree index compaction and empty page reuse (Tom)

  • Fix inconsistent index lookups during split of first root page (Tom)

    In prior releases, when a single-page index split into two page, there was a brief period when another database session would miss seeing an index entry. This failure was possible primarly on multi-cpu machines. This release fixes that rare failure case.

  • Improve free space map allocation logic (Tom)

  • Preserve free space information between postmaster restarts (Tom)

    In prior releases, the free space map was not saved when the postmaster was stopped, so newly started servers has no free space information. This release saves the free space map, which is loaded when the server is restarted.

  • 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)

E.1.4. Performance Changes

  • 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)

    In prior releases, functions returning allocated memory would not free it until the query completed. This release allows the freeing of function-allocated memory when the function call completes, reducing the total memory used by functions.

  • Improve GEQO optimizer performance (Tom)

    There were several inefficiencies in the way the GEQO optimizer managed potential query paths. This release fixes this.

  • 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)

    For shared libraries that require a long time to load, this option is available so the library can be pre-loaded in the postmaster and inherited by all database sessions.

  • 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 inner joins, disable with join_collapse_limit (Tom)

  • Add from_collapse_limit to control conversion of subqueries to joins (Tom)

  • Use faster and more powerful regular expression code from TCL (Henry Spencer, Tom)

  • Use bit-mapped relation sets in the optimizer (Tom)

  • Improve backend startup time (Tom)

    The new network protocol requires fewer network packets to start a database session.

  • Improve trigger/constraint performance (Stephan)

  • Improve speed of col IN (const, const, const, ...) (Tom)

  • Fix hash indexes which were broken in rare cases (Tom)

  • Improve hash index concurrency and speed (Tom)

    Prior releases suffered from poor hash index performance, particularly for high concurrency situations. This release fixes that, and the development group is interested in reports comparing btree and hash index performance.

  • Align shared buffers on 32-byte boundary for copy speed improvement (Manfred Spraul)

    Certain CPU's perform faster data copies when addresses are 32-byte aligned.

  • The NUMERIC datatype has been reimplemented for better performance (Tom)

    NUMERIC used to be stored in base-100. The new code uses base-10000, for significantly better performance.

E.1.5. Server Configuration Changes

  • Rename server parameter server_min_messages to log_min_messages (Bruce)

    This was done so most parameters that control the server logs being with log_.

  • 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)

    In prior releases, it was difficult to determine if checkpoint was happening too frequently. This feature adds a warning to the server logs when excessive checkpointing happens.

  • 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)

    This is a security feature so non-super-users can't disable logging that was enabled by the administrator.

  • log_min_messages/client_min_messages now controls debug_* output (Bruce)

    This centralizes client debug information so all debug output can be sent to either the client or server logs.

  • Add Mac OS X Rendezvous server support (Chris Campbell)

    This allows Mac OS X machines to query the network for available PostgreSQL servers.

  • Add ability to print only slow statements using log_min_duration_statement (Christopher)

    This is an often requested debugging feature that allows administrators to see only slow queries in their server logs.

  • Allow pg_hba.conf to accept netmasks in CIDR format (Andrew Dunstan)

    This allows administrators to merge the host IP address and netmask fields into a single CIDR field in pg_hba.conf.

  • New is_superuser read-only variable (Tom)

  • New server-side parameter log_error_verbosity to control error detail (Tom)

    This works with the new error reporting feature to supply additional error information like hints, file names and line numbers.

  • postgres --describe-config now dumps server config variables (Aizaz Ahmed, Peter)

    This option is useful for administration tools that need to know the configuration variable names and their minimum, maximums, defaults, and descriptions.

  • Make default shared_buffers 1000 and max_connections 100, if possible (Tom)

    Prior versions defaulted to 64 shared buffers so PostgreSQL would start on even old computers. This release tests the amount of shared memory supported by the hardware and sizes it accordingly. Of course, users are still encouraged to evaluate their resource load and size shared_buffers accordingly.

  • Add new columns in pg_settings: context, type, source, min_val, max_val (Joe)

  • New pg_hba.conf 'hostnossl' to prevent SSL connections (Jon Jensen)

    In prior releases, there was no way to prevent SSL connections if both the client and server supported SSL. This option allows that capability.

  • Remove geqo_random_seed server parameter (Tom)

E.1.6. Query Changes

  • New SQL-standard information schema (Peter)

    bjm

  • Add read-only transactions (Peter)

  • Add server variable regex_flavor to control regular expression processing (Tom)

  • Print key name and value in foreign-key violation messages (Dmitry Tkach)

  • Allow users to see their own queries in pg_stat_activity (Kevin Brown)

    In prior releases, only the super-user could see query strings using pg_stat_activity. Now ordinary users can see their own query strings.

  • Fix aggregates in subqueries to match SQL spec (Tom)

    The SQL spec says that an aggregate function appearing within a nested subquery belongs to the outer query if its argument contains only outer-query variables. Prior PG releases did not handle this fine point correctly.

  • Add option to prevent auto-addition of tables referenced in query (Nigel J. Andrews)

    By default, tables mentioned in the query are automatically added to the FROM clause if they are not already there. This is compatible with historic Postgres behavior but is contrary to the SQL spec. This option allows selecting spec-compatible behavior.

  • Allow UPDATE ... SET col = DEFAULT (Rod)

    This allows UPDATE to set a column to its default value.

  • Allow expressions to be used in LIMIT/OFFSET (Tom)

    In prior releases, LIMIT/OFFSET could only use constants, not expressions.

  • Change EXECUTE INTO to CREATE TABLE AS EXECUTE (Peter)

    bjm ?

E.1.7. Object Manipulation Changes

  • Make CREATE SEQUENCE grammar more SQL1999 standards compliant (Neil)

    bjm ?

  • Add FOR EACH STATEMENT statement-level triggers (Neil)

    While this allows a trigger to fire at the end of a statement, it does not allow the trigger to access all rows modified by the query. This capability is planned for a future release.

  • Add DOMAIN CHECK constraints (Rod)

    This greatly increases the usefulness of domains by allowing them to use CHECK constraints.

  • Add ALTER DOMAIN .. SET / DROP NOT NULL, SET / DROP DEFAULT, ADD / DROP CONSTRAINT (Rod)

    This allows manipulation of existing domains.

  • Fix several zero-column table bugs (Tom)

    PostgreSQL supports zero-column tables. This fixes various bugs that occur when using such tables.

  • Have ALTER TABLE ... ADD PRIMARY KEY add NOT NULL constraint (Rod)

    In prior releases, ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY would add a unique index, but not a NOT NULL constraint. That is fixed in this release.

  • Add ALTER DOMAIN OWNER (Rod)

  • Add ALTER TABLE ... WITHOUT OIDS (Rod)

    This allows control over whether new and updated rows will have an oid column. This is most useful for saving storage space.

  • Add ALTER SEQUENCE to modify min/max/increment/cache/cycle values (Rod)

  • Add ALTER TABLE ... CLUSTER ON (Alvaro Herrera)

    This command is used by pg_dump to record the CLUSTER column for each table previously clustered. This information is used by database-wide cluster to cluster all previously clustered tables.

  • Improve DOMAIN automatic type casting (Rod, Tom)

  • Allow dollar signs in identifiers, except as first character (Tom)

  • Disallow dollar signs in operator names, so x=$1 works (Tom)

  • Allow SQL200X inheritance syntax LIKE subtable, INCLUDING DEFAULTS (Rod)

  • Add WITH GRANT OPTION clause to GRANT, per SQL spec (Peter)

    Allow GRANT to give other users the ability to grant permissions on a object.

E.1.8. Utility Command Changes

  • Add ON COMMIT clause to CREATE TABLE for temp tables (Gavin)

    This adds the ability for a table to be dropped or all rows deleted on transaction commit.

  • Allow cursors outside transactions using WITH HOLD (Neil)

    In previous releases, cursors were removed at the end of the transaction. Using WITH HOLD, the current release allows transaction to remain outside their own transaction.

  • MOVE/FETCH 0 now does nothing (Bruce)

    In previous releases, MOVE 0 moved to the end of the cursor, and FETCH 0 fetched all remaning rows.

  • Cause MOVE/FETCH to return the number of rows moved/fetched, or zero if at the beginning/end of cursor, per SQL spec (Bruce)

    In prior releases, the row count returned by MOVE and FETCH did not accurately reflect the number of rows processed.

  • Properly handle SCROLL with cursors, or report an error (Neil)

    Certain cursors can not be fetched backwards optimally. By specifying SCROLL, extra work will be performed to guarantee that the cursor can be fetched in reverse or random order.

  • Implement SQL92-compatible FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE n, RELATIVE n options for FETCH and MOVE (Tom)

  • Allow EXPLAIN on DECLARE CURSOR (Tom)

    Prior versions would not allow EXPLAIN on a DECLARE statement.

  • Allow CLUSTER to use index marked as pre-clustered by default (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Allow CLUSTER to cluster all tables (Alvaro Herrera)

    This allows all previously clustered tables in a database to be reclustered with a single command.

  • Prevent CLUSTER on partial indexes (Tom)

  • Allow \r and \r\n termination for COPY files (Bruce)

  • Disallow literal carriage return as a data value, backslash-carriage-return and \r are still allowed (Bruce)

  • COPY changes (binary, \.)? (Tom)

  • Recover from COPY IN/OUT failure cleanly (Tom)

  • Prevent possible memory leaks in COPY (Tom)

  • Make TRUNCATE transaction-safe (Rod)

    Truncate can now be used inside a transaction, and rolled back if the transaction aborts.

  • Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects

  • Allow pg_dump to dump specific schemas (Neil)

  • Allow pg_dump to preserve column storage characteristics (Christopher)

    This preserves ALTER TABLE ... SET STORAGE information.

  • Allow pg_dump to preserve CLUSTER characteristics (Christopher)

  • Have pg_dumpall use GRANT/REVOKE to dump database-level permissions (Tom)

  • Allow pg_dumpall to support the -a, -s, -x options of pg_dump (Tom)

  • Prevent pg_dump from lowercasing identifiers specified on the command line (Tom)

  • Allow PREPARE/bind of utility commands like FETCH and EXPLAIN (Tom)

  • Add EXPLAIN EXECUTE (Neil)

  • Allow pg_get_constraintdef() to support UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY and CHECK constraints (Christopher)

  • Improve VACUUM performance on indexes by reducing WAL traffic (Tom)

  • Allow pg_ctl to better handle non-standard ports (Greg)

  • Functional indexes have been generalized into expressional indexes (Tom)

    In prior releases, only columns could be used in functional indexes. This release allows any type of expression.

  • Syntax errors now reported as 'syntax error' rather than 'parse error' (Tom)

  • Have SHOW TRANSACTION_ISOLATION match input to SET TRANSACTION_ISOLATION (Tom)

  • Have COMMENT ON DATABASE on non-local database generate a warning (Rod)

    Database comments are stored in database-local tables so comments on a database have to be stored in each database.

  • Improve reliability of LISTEN/NOTIFY (Tom)

  • Allow REINDEX to reliably reindex non-shared system catalog indexes (Tom)

    This allows system tables to be reindexed without the requirement of a standalone backend, which was necessary in previous releases. The only tables that now require a standalone backend for reindex are the global system tables pg_database, pg_shadow, and pg_group.

  • pg_dump --use-set-session-authorization and --no-reconnect now do nothing, all dumps use SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION

    pg_dump now no longer reconnects to switch users, but instead uses SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION. This should reduce password prompting during restores.

  • Long options for pg_dump are now available on all platforms

    We now include our own long option processing routines.

E.1.9. Data Type and Function Changes

  • New extra_float_digits server parameter to control float precision display (Pedro Ferreira, Tom)

    This controls precision output which was causing regression testing problems.

  • Allow +1300 as a numeric timezone specifier, for FJST (Tom)

  • Remove rarely used oidrand(), oidsrand(), and userfntest() functions (Neil)

  • Add md5() function to main server, already in /contrib/pgcrypto (Joe)

    An md5 function was frequently requested. For more complex encryption capabilities, use /contrib/pgcrypto.

  • Increase date range of timestamp (John Cochran)

    bjm ??

  • Change EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM timestamp) so timestamp without time zone is assumed to be in local time, not GMT (Tom)

  • Trap division by zero in case the operating system doesn't prevent it (Tom)

  • Change the NUMERIC data type internally to base 10000 (Tom)

  • New hostmask() function (Greg Wickham)

  • Fixes for to_char() (Karel)

  • Allow functions that can take any argument data type and return any data type, using ANYELEMENT and ANYARRAY (Joe)

    This allows the creation of functions that can work with any data type.

  • Arrays may now be specified as ARRAY[1,2,3], ARRAY[['a','b'],['c','d']], or ARRAY[ARRAY[ARRAY[2]]] (Joe)

  • Allow proper comparisons for arrays (Joe)

  • Allow array concatenation with '||' (Joe)

  • Allow indexes on array columns, and used in ORDER BY and DISTINCT (Joe)

  • Allow WHERE qualification 'expr >oper< ANY/SOME/ALL (array-expr)' (Joe)

    This allows arrays to behave like subqueries or a list of values: SELECT * FROM tab WHERE col IN array_val

  • New array functions array_append(), array_cat(), array_lower(), array_prepend(), array_to_string(), array_upper(), string_to_array() (Joe)

  • Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe)

  • Allow assignments to empty arrays (Joe)

  • Allow 60 in seconds fields of timestamp, time, interval input values (Tom)

    Sixty-second values are needed for leap seconds.

  • Allow CIDR data type to be cast to text (Tom)

  • Allow the creation of special LIKE indexes for non-C locales (Peter)

    There is no way for non-ASCII locales to use indexes for LIKE comparisons. However, this release adds a way to create a special index for LIKE. bjm ??

  • Disallow invalid timezone names (Tom)

  • Trim trailing spaces when CHAR() is cast to VARCHAR or TEXT (Tom)

  • Make FLOAT(p) measure the precision p in bits, not decimal digits (Tom)

  • Add IPv6 support to the inet and cidr data types (Michael Graff)

  • Add family() function to report whether address is IPv4 or IPv6 (Michael Graff)

  • Have SHOW DATESTYLE generate output similar to that used by SET DATESTYLE (Tom)

  • Make EXTRACT(TIMEZONE) and SET/SHOW TIMEZONE follow the SQL convention for the sign of timezone offsets, ie, positive is east from UTC (Tom)

  • Fix date_trunc('quarter',...) (B?jthe Zolt?n)

    Prior releases returned an incorrect value for this function call.

  • Make initcap() more compatible with Oracle (Mike Nolan)

    bjm ??

  • Allow only DateStyle field order for date values not in ISO format (Greg)

  • Add new DateStyle values MDY, DMY, and YMD; honor US and European for backward compatibility (Tom)

  • 'now' will no longer work as a column default, use now() (change required for prepared statements) (Tom)

  • Assume NaN value to be larger than any other value in MIN()/MAX() (Tom)

  • Prevent interval from suppressing ':00' seconds display

  • New pg_get_triggerdef(prettyprint) and pg_constraint_is_visible() functions

  • Allow time to be specified as '040506' or '0405' (Tom)

E.1.10. Server-side Language Changes

  • Prevent PL/pgSQL crash when RETURN NEXT is used on a zero-row record variable (Tom)

  • Make PL/python's spi_execute interface handle NULLs properly (Andrew Bosma)

  • Allow PL/pgSQL to declare variables of composite types without %ROWTYPE (Tom)

  • Fix PL/python _quote() function to handle big integers (?)

  • Make PL/python an untrusted language, now called plpythonu (Kevin Jacobs, Tom)

    The Python language no longer supports a restricted execution environment, so we removed the trusted version of PL/python. If this situation changes, we will re-add a version of PL/python that can be used by non-super users.

  • Allow polymorphic PL/pgSQL functions (Tom, Joe)

  • Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe)

    bjm ??

  • Improved compiled function caching mechanism in PL/pgSQL with full support for polymorphism (Joe)

  • Add new $0 parameter in PL/pgSQL representing the function's actual return type (Joe)

  • Allow pltcl and plpython use the same trigger on multiple tables (Tom)

  • Fixed PL/Tcl's spi_prepare to accept full qualified type names in the parameter type list (Jan)

E.1.11. Psql Changes

  • Add "\pset pager always" to always use pager (Greg)

    This forces the pager to be used even if the number of rows is less than the screen height --- this is valuable for rows that wrap across several screen rows.

  • Improve tab completion (Rod, Ross Reedstrom, Ian Barwick)

  • Reorder \? help into groupings (Harald Armin Massa, Bruce)

  • Add backslash commands for listing schemas, casts, and conversions (Christopher)

  • \encoding now changes based on the client_encoding server variable (Tom)

    In previous versions, \encoding was not aware of encoding changes made using SET CLIENT_ENCODING.

  • Save edit history into readline history (Ross)

    When \e is used to edit a query, the result is saved in the readline history for retrieval using the up arrow.

  • Improve \d display (Christopher)

  • Enhance HTML mode to be more standards-compliant (Greg)

  • New '\set AUTOCOMMIT off' capability (Tom)

    This takes the place of the remove server variable 'autocommit'.

  • New '\set VERBOSITY' to control error detail (Tom)

    This controls the new error reporting details.

  • New %T prompt string to show transaction status (Tom)

  • Long options for psql are now available on all platforms

E.1.12. Libpq Changes

  • Allow PQcmdTuples() to return row counts for MOVE and FETCH (Neil)

  • Add PQfreemem() for freeing memory on Win32, suggest for NOTIFY (Bruce)

    Win32 requires that memory allocated in a library be freed by a function in the same library, hence free() doesn't work for freeing memory allocated by libpq. PQfreemem() is the proper way to free libpq memory, especially on Win32, and is recommended for other platforms as well.

  • Document service capability, and add sample file (Bruce)

    This allows clients to look up connection information in a central file on the client machine.

  • Make PQsetdbLogin() have the same defaults as PQconnectdb() (Tom)

  • Allow libpq to cleanly fail when result sets are too large (Tom)

  • Improve performance of PGunescapeBytea() (Ben Lamb)

  • Allow thread-safe libpq with --enable-thread-safety (Lee Kindness, Philip Yarra)

  • Allow pqInternalNotice() to accept a format string and args instead of just a preformatted message (Tom, Sean Chittenden)

  • Allow control SSL negotiation with sslmode values "disable", "allow", "prefer", and "require" (Jon Jensen)

  • Allow new error codes and levels of text (Tom)

  • Allow access to the underlying table and column of a query result (Tom)

    This is helpful for query-builder applications that want to know the underlying table and column names associated with a specific result set.

  • Allow access to the current transaction status (Tom)

  • Add ability to pass binary data directly to the backend (Tom)

  • Add PQexecPrepared() and PQsendQueryPrepared() functions which perform Bind/Execute of previously prepared statements (Tom)

E.1.13. JDBC Changes

  • Allow setNull on updateable resultsets

  • Allow executeBatch on a prepared statement (Barry)

  • Support SSL connections (Barry)

  • Handle schema names in result sets (Paul Sorenson)

  • Add refcursor support (Nic Ferrier)

E.1.14. Miscellaneous Interface Changes

  • Prevent possible memory leak or core dump during libpgtcl shutdown (Tom)

  • Add ecpg Informix compatibility (Michael)

    This allows ecpg to process embedded C programs that were written using certain Informix extensions.

  • Add ecpg DECIMAL type that is fixed length, for Informix (Michael)

  • Allow thread-safe ecpg with --enable-thread-safety (Lee Kindness, Bruce)

    This allows multiple ecpg threads to access the database at the same time.

  • Move python client interface to http://www.pygresql.org (Marc)

E.1.15. Source Code Changes

  • Prevent need for separate platform geometry regression result files (Tom)

  • Improved PPC locking primitive (Reinhard Max)

  • Embed LD_LIBRARY_PATH used for build process into binaries (Billy)

  • New palloc0 function to allocate and clear memory (Bruce)

  • Fix locking code for s390x CPU (64-bit) (Tom)

  • Allow OpenBSD to use local ident credentials (William Ahern)

  • Make query plan trees read-only to executor (Tom)

  • Add Darwin startup scripts (David Wheeler)

  • Allow libpq to compile with Borland C++ compiler (Lester Godwin, Karl Waclawek)

  • Use our own version of getopt_long() if needed (Peter)

  • Convert administration scripts to C (Peter)

  • Bison >= 1.85 is now required to build the PostgreSQL grammar, if building from CVS

  • Merge documentation into one book (Peter)

  • Add Win32 compatibility functions (Bruce)

  • Allow client interfaces to compile under MinGW/Win32 (Bruce)

  • New ereport() function for error reporting (Tom)

  • Support Intel Linux compiler (Peter)

  • Improve Linux startup scripts (Slawomir Sudnik, Darko Prenosil)

  • Add support for AMD Opteron and Itanium (Jeffrey W. Baker, Bruce)

  • Remove --enable-recode option to configure

    This was no longer needed now that we have CREATE CONVERSION.

  • Generate a compile error if spinlock code is not found (Bruce)

    Platforms without spinlock code will now fail to compile, rather than silently using semaphores. This failure can be disabled with a new configure option.

E.1.16. Contrib Changes

  • Change dbmirror license to BSD

  • Improve earthdistance (Bruno Wolff III)

  • Portability improvements to pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)

  • Prevent xml crash (John Gray, Michael Richards)

  • Update oracle

  • Update mysql

  • Update cube (Bruno Wolff III)

  • Update earthdistance to use cube (Bruno Wolff III)

  • Update btree_gist (Oleg)

  • New tsearch2 full-text search module (Oleg, Teodor)

  • Add hashed based crosstab function to tablefuncs (Joe)

  • Add serial column to order connectby() siblings in tablefuncs (Nabil Sayegh,Joe)

  • Add named persistent connections to dblink (Shridhar Daithanka)

  • New pg_autovacuum allows automatic VACUUM (Matthew T. O'Connor)

  • Allow pgbench to honor PGHOST, PGPORT, PGUSER env. variables (Tatsuo)

  • Improve intarray (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Improve pgstattuple (Rod)

  • Fix bug in metaphone() in fuzzystrmatch

  • Improve adddepend (Rod)

  • Update spi/timetravel (B?jthe Zolt?n)

  • Fix dbase -s option and improve non-ASCII handling (Thomas Behr,M?rcio Smiderle)

  • Remove array module because features now included by default (Joe)

E.1.17. Other Uncategorized Changes

  • DATESTYLE can now be set to DMY, YMD, or MDY to specify input field order

  • Input date order must now be YYYY-MM-DD (with 4-digit year) or match DATESTYLE

  • Pattern matching operations can use indexes regardless of locale?