Appendix E. Release Notes

Table of Contents
E.1. Release 8.1
E.2. Release 8.0.3
E.3. Release 8.0.2
E.4. Release 8.0.1
E.5. Release 8.0
E.6. Release 7.4.8
E.7. Release 7.4.7
E.8. Release 7.4.6
E.9. Release 7.4.5
E.10. Release 7.4.4
E.11. Release 7.4.3
E.12. Release 7.4.2
E.13. Release 7.4.1
E.14. Release 7.4
E.15. Release 7.3.10
E.16. Release 7.3.9
E.17. Release 7.3.8
E.18. Release 7.3.7
E.19. Release 7.3.6
E.20. Release 7.3.5
E.21. Release 7.3.4
E.22. Release 7.3.3
E.23. Release 7.3.2
E.24. Release 7.3.1
E.25. Release 7.3
E.26. Release 7.2.8
E.27. Release 7.2.7
E.28. Release 7.2.6
E.29. Release 7.2.5
E.30. Release 7.2.4
E.31. Release 7.2.3
E.32. Release 7.2.2
E.33. Release 7.2.1
E.34. Release 7.2
E.35. Release 7.1.3
E.36. Release 7.1.2
E.37. Release 7.1.1
E.38. Release 7.1
E.39. Release 7.0.3
E.40. Release 7.0.2
E.41. Release 7.0.1
E.42. Release 7.0
E.43. Release 6.5.3
E.44. Release 6.5.2
E.45. Release 6.5.1
E.46. Release 6.5
E.47. Release 6.4.2
E.48. Release 6.4.1
E.49. Release 6.4
E.50. Release 6.3.2
E.51. Release 6.3.1
E.52. Release 6.3
E.53. Release 6.2.1
E.54. Release 6.2
E.55. Release 6.1.1
E.56. Release 6.1
E.57. Release 6.0
E.58. Release 1.09
E.59. Release 1.02
E.60. Release 1.01
E.61. Release 1.0
E.62. Postgres95 Release 0.03
E.63. Postgres95 Release 0.02
E.64. Postgres95 Release 0.01

E.1. Release 8.1

Release date: 2005-1?-??, Current as of 2005-08-24

E.1.1. Overview

Major changes in this release:

Improve concurrent access to the shared buffer cache (Tom)

This was accomplished by eliminating global locks and using a clock sweep algorithm to find free buffers. This increases scalability on multi-CPU systems.

Automatically use indexes for MIN() and MAX() (Tom)

In previous releases, the only way to use an index for MIN() or MAX() was to rewrite the query as SELECT col FROM tab ORDER BY col LIMIT 1. Index usage now happens automatically.

Add in-memory bitmaps which allows multiple indexes to be merged in a single query (Tom)

In previous releases, only a single index could be used to do lookups on a table. With this feature, if a query has WHERE tab.col1 = 4 and tab.col2 = 9, and there is no multicolumn index on col1 and col2, but there is an index on col1 and another on col2, it is possible to do lookups on the col1 index and the col2 index and combine them in memory to do heap lookups on rows matching both the col1 and col2 restrictions. This is very useful in environments that have a lot of unstructured queries where it is impossible to create indexes that match all possible access conditions.

Add two-phase commit (Heikki Linnakangas, Alvaro, Tom)

Two-phase commit allows transactions to be "prepared" on several computers, and once all computers have successfully prepared their transactions (none failed), all transactions can be committed. Even if a machine crashes after a prepare, the prepared transaction can be committed after it is restarted. New syntax includes PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT/ROLLBACK PREPARED. A new system view pg_prepared_xacts has also been added.

Create a new role system that replaces users and groups (Stephen Frost)

Roles are a combination of users and groups. Like users, they can have login capability, and like groups, a role can have other roles as members. Roles basically remove the distinction between users and groups. For example, a role can:

  • Have optionally have login capability

  • Own objects

  • Inherit permission from other member roles

  • Switch to another member role using SET ROLE

So, once a user logs into a role, she inherits capabilities of the login role plus any inherited roles, and can use SET ROLE to switch to other member roles. This change also replaces pg_shadow and pg_group by with new role-capable catalogs pg_authid and pg_auth_members. The old tables are redefined as views on the new role tables.

Move /contrib/pgautovacuum into the main server (Alvaro Herrera)

Moving pgautovacuum from /contrib allows it to be automatically started and stopped in sync with the database server, and allows for pgautovacuum to be configured from postgresql.conf.

Add shared row level locks using SELECT ... FOR SHARE (Alvaro)

While PostgreSQL's MVCC locking allows SELECT to never be blocked by writers and therefore does not need shared row locks for typical operations, shared locks are useful for applications that require shared row locking, and to reduce the locking requirements to maintain referential integrity.

E.1.2. Migration to version 8.1

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

The 8.0 release announced that the to_char() function for intervals would be removed in 8.1. However, since no better API has been suggested, to_char(interval) has been enhanced in 8.1 and will remain in the server.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • Change add_missing_from to 'false'

    Generate an error if a table used in a query without a FROM reference (Neil) This command, SELECT pg_class.*, now generates an error.

  • Cause input of a zero-length strings ('') for float4/float8/oid to throw an error, rather than treat it as a zero (Neil)

    This change is consistent with the current handling of zero-length strings for integers. The schedule for this change was announced in 8.0.

  • Change default_with_oids to default to false (Neil)

    With this option set to false, user-created tables no longer have an the usually-invisible OID column unless WITH OIDS is specified in CREATE TABLE. Though OIDs have existed in all previous releases of PostgreSQL, their use is limited because they are only four bytes long and the counter is unique across all installed databases. The preferred way of uniquely identifying rows is via sequences and SERIAL, which has been supported since PostgreSQL 6.4.

  • Add E'' syntax so eventually ordinary strings can treat backslashes literally (Bruce)

    Currently PostgreSQL processes a backslash in a string as preceeding a character that requires special processing, e.g. \n or \010. While this allows easy entry of special values, it is non-standard and makes porting of application from other databases more difficult. For this reason, the PostgreSQL project is planning to remove the special meaning of backslashes in strings. For backward compatibility and for users who want special backslash processing, a new string type will be created. This new string type is formed by having an E precede the single quote that starts the string, e.g. E'hi\n'. While this release does not change the handling of backslashes in strings, it does add several new GUC variables to help users migrate applications for future releases:

    • escape_string_warning - warn about backslashes in ordinary (non-E) strings

    • escape_string_syntax - does this release support the E'' syntax?

    • standard_conforming_strings - does this release treat backslashes literally in ordinary strings?

    The last two values are read-only and should assist in the porting of applications. Applications can retrieve these values to know how backslashes are processed. In a later release, standard_conforming_strings will be true, meaning backslashes will be treated literally in non-E strings. To prepare for this change, use E'' strings in places that need special backslash processing, and turn on escape_string_warning to find additional strings that need to be converted to use E''. Also, use two single-quotes ('') to embed a literal single-quote in a string, rather than the PostgreSQL-supported syntax of backslash single-quote (\'). The former is standards-conforming and does not require the use of the E'' string syntax. You can also use the $$ string syntax, which does not treat backslashes specially.

  • Make REINDEX DATABASE reindex all indexes in the database (Tom)

    The old behavior of REINDEX database reindexed only system tables. This new behavior seems more intuitive. A new command REINDEX SYSTEM allows for reindexing just the system tables.

  • In psql, treat unquoted \{digit}+ sequences as octal (Bruce)

    In previous releases, \{digit}+ sequences were treated as decimal, and only \0{digit}+ were treated as octal. This change was made for consistency.

  • Remove grammar productions for prefix and postfix % and ^ operators (Tom)

    These have never been documented and complicated the use of the modulus operator (%) with negative numbers.

  • Make &< and &> for polygons consistent with the box "over" operators (Tom)

E.1.3. Additional Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the additional changes between release 8.1 and the previous major release.

E.1.3.1. Performance Improvements

  • Improve rtree index capabilities and performance (Neil)

  • Improve the optimizer, including auto-resizing of hash joins (Tom)

  • Overhaul internal API in several areas

  • Change WAL CRC records from 64bit to 32bit (Tom)

  • Prevent writing large empty gaps in WAL pages (Tom)

  • Allow non-consecutive index columns to be used in a multi-column index (Tom)

    For example, this allows an index on columns a,b,c to be used in a query with WHERE a = 4 and c = 10.

  • Skip WAL logging for CREATE TABLE AS / SELECT INTO (Simon)

    Since a crash during CREATE TABLE would cause the table to be dropped during recovery, there is no reason to WAL log as the table is loaded.

  • Allow concurrent GIST index access (Teodor, Oleg)

  • Add GUC full_page_writes to control writing full pages to WAL (Bruce)

    To prevent partial disk writes from corrupting the database, PostgreSQL writes a complete copy of each database disk page to WAL the first time it is modified after a checkpoint. This turns off that functionality for users with battery-backed disk caches where partial page writes cannot happen.

  • Add constraint_exclusion to restrict child table lookups based on table constraints (Simon)

    This allows for a type of table partitioning. If child table placed in a different tablespaces using appropriate CHECK constraints, the optimizer will skip child table accesses if the constraint guarantees no matching rows exist in the child table.

  • Use O_DIRECT if available when using O_SYNC for wal_sync_method (Itagaki Takahiro)

    O_DIRECT causes disk writes to bypass the kernel cache, and for WAL writes, this improves performance.

  • Improve COPY FROM performance (Alon Goldshuv)

    This was accomplished by reading COPY input in larger chunks, rather than character by character.

E.1.3.2. Server Changes

  • Prevent problems due to transaction ID (XID) wraparound (Tom)

    This was accomplished by warning the transaction counter is near the the earliest transaction id determined by the database whose last vacuum is the oldest. If the limit is reached, the server will no longer accept queries.

  • Fix problem of object ID (OID) wraparound conflicting with existing system objects (Tom)

  • Add warning about the need to increase max_fsm_relations and max_fsm_pages during VACUUM (Ron Mayer)

  • Add temp_buffers GUC variable to allow users to determine the size of the local buffer area for temporary table access (Tom)

  • Add session start time and client IP address to pg_stat_activity (Magnus)

  • Enhance pg_locks display (Tom)

  • Log queries for client-side PREPARE and EXECUTE (Simon)

  • Allow Kerberos name and user name case sensitivity to be specified in postgresql.conf (Magnus)

  • Add GUC krb_server_hostname so the server hostname can be specified as part of service principal (Todd Kover)

    If not set, any service principal matching an entry in the keytab can be used. This is new Kerberos matching behavior in this release.

  • Add log_line_prefix options for millisecond timestamps (%m) and remote host (%h) (Ed L.)

  • Add WAL logging for GIST indexes (Teodor, Oleg)

    GIST indexes are now safe for crash and point-in-time recovery

  • Remove old *.backup files when we do pg_stop_backup() (Bruce)

    This prevents a large number of *.backup files from existing in /pg_xlog.

  • Add GUC variables to control TCP/IP keep-alive times for idle, interval, and count (Oliver Jowett)

  • Add per-user and per-database connection limits (Petr Jelinek)

    Using ALTER USER and ALTER DATABASE, limits can now be enforced on the maximum number of users who can connect as as a specific user or to a specific database. Setting the limit to zero disables user or database connections.

  • Allow more than two gigabyes of shared memory and per-backend work memory on 64-bit machines (Koichi Suzuki)

E.1.3.3. Query Changes

  • Add temporary views (Koju Iijima)

  • Fix HAVING without any aggregate functions or GROUP BY so that the query returns a single group (Tom)

    Previously, such a case would treat the HAVING clause the same as a WHERE clause. This was not per spec.

  • Add USING clause to allow additional tables to be specified to DELETE (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

    In prior releases, there was no clear method for specifying additional tables to be used for joins in a DELETE statement. UPDATE already has a FROM clause for this purpose.

  • Add support for \x hex escapes in backend and ecpg strings (Bruce)

    This is just like the standard C \x escape syntax. Octal escapes were already supported.

  • Add BETWEEN SYMMETRIC query syntax (Pavel Stehule)

    This feature allows BETWEEN comparisons without requiring the first value to be less than the second. For example, 2 BETWEEN [ASYMMETRIC] 3 AND 1 returns false, while 2 BETWEEN SYMMETRIC 3 AND 1 returns true. BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC was already supported.

  • Add NOWAIT option to SELECT ... FOR UPDATE/SHARE (Hans-Juergen Schoenig)

    While SET statement_timeout allows a query taking over a certain amount of time to be cancelled, the NO WAIT option allows a query to be canceled as soon as a SELECT ... FOR UPDATE/SHARE cannot immediately acquire a row lock.

E.1.3.4. Object Manipulation Changes

  • Track dependencies of shared objects (Alvaro)

    PostgreSQL allows global tables (users, databases, tablespaces) to reference information in multiple databases. This addition adds dependency information for global tables, so, for example, user ownership can be tracked across databases, so a user who owns something in any database can no longer be removed. Dependency tracking already existed for database-local objects.

  • Allow limited ALTER OWNER commands to be performed by the object owner (Stephen Frost)

    Prior releases allowed only the super-user to change object owners, even if the current owner was executing the command and the new owner was in the same group. With roles such transfers are now possible.

  • Add ALTER object SET SCHEMA capability for some object types (tables, functions, types) (Bernd Helmle)

    This allows objects to be moved to different schemas.

  • Add ALTER TABLE ENABLE/DISABLE TRIGGER to disable triggers (Satoshi Nagayasu)

E.1.3.5. Utility Command Changes

  • Allow TRUNCATE to truncate multiple tables in a single command (Alvaro)

    Because of referential integrity checks, it is impossible to truncate a table that is part of a referential integrity constraint. Using this new functionality, TRUNCATE can be used to truncate all tables involved in referential integrity if they are truncated in a single TRUNCATE command.

  • Properly process carriage returns and line feeds in COPY CSV mode (Andrew Dunstan)

    In release 8.0, carriage returns and line feeds in CSV COPY TO were processed in an inconsistent manner. (This was documented on the TODO list.)

  • Add COPY WITH CSV HEADER to allow a header line as the first line in COPY (Andrew)

    This allows handling of the common CSV usage of placing the column names on the first line of the data file. For COPY TO, the first line contains the column names, and for COPY FROM, the first line is ignored.

  • On Win32, display better sub-second precision in EXPLAIN ANALYZE (Magnus)

  • Add trigger duration display to EXPLAIN ANALYZE (Tom)

    Prior releases accumulated trigger execution time as part of the total execution time.

  • Add support for \x hex escapes in COPY (Sergey Ten)

    Previous releases only supported octal escapes.

  • Have SHOW ALL include variable descriptions (Matthias Schmidt)

    SHOW varname still only displays the variable's value and does not include the description.

  • Have initdb create new standard database called postgres and convert utilities to use postgres rather than template1 for standard lookups (Dave)

    In prior releases, template1 was used both as a default connection for utilities like createuser, and as a template for new databases. This caused CREATE DATABASE to sometimes fail because a new database cannot be created if anyone else is in the template database. With this change, the default connection database is now postgres, meaning it is much less likely someone will be using template1 during CREATE DATABASE.

  • Create new reindexdb command-line utility by moving /contrib/reindexdb into the server (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

E.1.3.6. Data Type and Function Changes

  • Add MAX() and MIN() aggregates for array types (Koju Iijima)

    How does this work?

  • Fix to_date() and to_timestamp() to behave reasonably when CC and YY fields are both used (Karel Zak)

    If the format specification contains CC and a year specification is YYY or longer, ignore the CC. If the year specification is YY or shorter, interpret CC as the previous century. ?

  • Add md5(bytea) (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    md5(text) already existed.

  • Fix CHAR() to properly pad spaces to the specified length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)

    In prior releases, the padding of CHAR() was incorrect because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without considering how many characters were stored.

  • Add support for NUMERIC ^ NUMERIC based on power(numeric, numeric)

    The function already existed, but there was no operator assigned to it.

  • Fix NUMERIC modulus by properly truncating the quotient during computation (Bruce)

    In previous releases, modulus for large values sometimes returned negative results due to the rounding of the quotient.

  • Add a function lastval()(Dennis Björklund)

    lastval() is a simplified version of currval(). It automatically determines the proper sequence name based on the most recent nextval() or setval() call performed by the current session.

  • Add to_timestamp(DOUBLE PRECISION)

    Converts Unix seconds since 1970 to a TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE.

  • Add pg_postmaster_start_time() function (Euler Taveira de Oliveira, Matthias Schmidt)

  • Allow the full use of time zone names in AT TIME ZONE, not just the short list previously available (Magnus)

    Previously, only a predefined list of time zone names were supported by AT TIME ZONE. Now any supported time zone name can be used, e.g.:

             SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AT TIME ZONE 'Europe/London';
            

    In the above query, the time zone used is adjusted based on the daylight savings time rules that were in effect on the supplied date.

  • Add GREATEST() and LEAST() functions (Pavel Stehule)

    These functions take a variable number of arguments and return the greatest or least value.

  • Add pg_column_size() (Mark Kirkwood)

    This returns storage size of a column, including any compression used.

  • Add regexp_replace() (Atsushi Ogawa)

    This allows regular expression replacement, like sed. A four-argument version also allows for global (replace all) and case-insensitive modes.

  • Fix interval division and multiplication (Bruce)

    Previous versions sometimes returned unjustified results, like '4 months'::interval / 5 returning '1 mon -6 days'.

  • Add an internal day field to INTERVAL so a one day interval can be distinguished from a 24 hour interval (Michael Glaesemann)

    Days that contain a daylight savings time adjustment are not 24 hours, but typically 23 or 25 hours. This change allows days (not fixed 24-hour periods) to be added to dates who's result includes a daylight savings time adjustment period. Therefore, while in previous releases 1 day and 24 hours where interchangeable interval periods, in this release they are treated differently, e.g.

             '2005-05-03 00:00:00 EST' + '1 day' = '2005-05-04 00:00:00-04'
             '2005-05-03 00:00:00 EST' + '24 hours' = '2005-05-04 01:00:00-04'
            

  • Add justify_days() and justify_hours() (Michael Glaesemann)

    These functions, respectively, adjust days to an appropriate number of full months and days, and adjust hours to an appropriate number of full days and hours.

  • Move /contrib/dbsize into the backend, and rename some of the functions (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

    • pg_tablespace_size()

    • pg_database_size()

    • pg_relation_size()

    • pg_complete_relation_size()

    • pg_size_pretty()

    pg_complete_relation_size() includes indexes and TOAST tables.

  • Add functions for read-only file access to the cluster directory (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

    • pg_stat_file()

    • pg_read_file()

    • pg_ls_dir()

  • Add pg_reload_conf() to force reloading of the configuration files (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

  • Add pg_rotate_logfile() to force rotation of the server log file (Dave Page,

  • Change pg_stat_* views to show TOAST tables (Tom)

E.1.3.7. Encoding and Locale Changes

  • Rename some encodings to be more consistent and to follow international standards(Bruce)

    • UNICODE is now UTF8

    • ALT is now WIN866

    • WIN is now WIN1251

    • TCVN is now WIN1258

    The original names still work.

  • Add support for WIN1252 encoding (Roland Volkmann)

  • Add support for 3 and 4-byte UTF8 characters (John Hansen)

    Previously only one and two-byte UTF8 characters were supported. This is particularly important for support for some Chinese character.

  • Allow direct conversion between EUC_JP and SJIS to improve performance (Atsushi Ogawa)

  • Allow the UTF8 encoding to work on Win32 (Magnus)

    This is done by mapping UTF8 to the Win32-native UTF16 implementation.

E.1.3.8. General Server-Side Language Changes

  • Fix ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME (Sergey Yatskevich)

  • Allow function characteristics, like strictness and volatility, to be modified via ALTER FUNCTION (Neil)

  • Increase the maximum number of function arguments to 100 (Tom)

  • Allow SQL and PL/PgSQL functions to use OUT and INOUT parameters (Tom)

    OUT is an alternate way for a function to return values. Instead of using RETURN, values can be returned by assigning to parameters declared as OUT or INOUT. This is notationally simpler in some cases, particularly so when multiple values need to be returned. While returning multiple values from a function was possible in previous releases, this greatly simplifies the process. (The feature will be extended to other PLs in due course.)

  • Move language handlers into the pg_catalog schema

    This makes it easier to drop the public schema if desired.

E.1.3.9. PL/PgSQL Server-Side Language Changes

  • Reduce memory usage of PL/PgSQL functions (Neil)

    Each function now has its own memory context that can be freed when the function exits.

  • Check function syntax as CREATE FUNCTION time, rather than at runtime (Neil)

    Previously, syntax errors were reported only when the function was executed.

  • Allow OPEN to open non-SELECT queries like EXPLAIN and SHOW (Tom)

  • No longer require functions to issue a RETURN statement (Tom)

    This is a byproduct of the newly added OUT and INOUT functionality.

  • Add support for an optional INTO clause to PL/PgSQL's EXECUTE command (Pavel Stehule)

  • Make CREATE TABLE AS set ROW_COUNT (Tom)

  • Define SQLSTATE and SQLERRM to return the SQLSTATE and error message of the current exception (Pavel Stehule)

    These variables are only accessible inside exception blocks.

  • Allow the parameters to the RAISE statement to be expressions (Pavel Stehule)

  • Add a loop CONTINUE statement (Pavel Stehule)

  • Allow block and loop labels (Pavel Stehule)

E.1.3.10. PL/Perl Server-Side Language Changes

  • Allow large result sets to be returned efficiently (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This allows functions to use return_next() to avoid building the entire result set in memory.

  • Allow one-row-at-a-time retrieval of query results (Abhijit)

    This allows functions to use spi_query() and spi_fetchrow() to avoid accumulating the entire result set in memory.

  • Force PL/Perl to handle strings as UTF8 if the server encoding is UTF8 (David Kamholz)

  • Add a validator function for PL/Perl (Andrew)

    This allows syntax errors to be reported at definition time, rather than execution time.

  • Allow PL/Perl to return a Perl array when the function returns an array type (Andrew)

    This basically maps PostgreSQL arrays to Perl arrays.

  • Allow Perl non-fatal warnings to generate NOTICE messages (Andrew)

  • Allow strict mode to be enabled (Andrew)

E.1.3.11. psql Changes

  • Add psql \set ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK to allow statements in a transaction to error without affecting the rest of the transaction (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    This is basically implemented by wrapping every statement in a sub-transaction.

  • Add support for \x hex strings in psql variables (Bruce)

    Octal escapes were already supported.

  • Add psql support for troff -ms output format (Roger Leigh)

  • Allow psql's history file location to be controlled by HISTFILE (Andreas Seltenreich)

    This allows configuration of per-database history storage.

  • Prevent psql \x (expanded mode) from affecting other backslash output (Neil)

  • Add -L option to psql to log sessions (Lorne Sunley)

    This option was added because some operating systems do not have simple command-line activity logging functionality.

  • Have psql \d show tablespace of indexes (Qingqing Zhou)

  • Allow psql help (\h) to make a best guess on the proper help information (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    This allows the user to just add \h to the front of the syntax error query and get help on the supported syntax. Previously any additional query text beyond the help topics supported had to be removed to use \h.

  • Add psql \pset numericlocale to allow numbers to be output in a locale-aware format (Eugen Nedelcu)

    For example, using C locale 100000 would be output as 100,000.0 and European locale might output this value as 100.000,0.

E.1.3.12. pg_dump Changes

  • Add -n / --schema switch to pg_restore (Richard van den Bergg)

    This allows only objects from a specified schema to be restored.

  • Allow pg_dump to dump a consistent snapshot of large objects (Tom)

  • Allow pg_dump to dump large objects even in text mode (Tom)

  • Dump comments for large objects (Tom)

  • Add --encoding to pg_dump (Magnus Hagander)

    This allows a database to be dumped in an encoding that is different from the server's encoding. This is valuable when transferring the dump to a machine with a different encoding.

E.1.3.13. libpq Changes

  • Add a PGPASSFILE environment variable to specify the password file's filename (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Add lo_create(), that is similar to lo_creat() but allows the OID of the large object to be specified (Tom)

E.1.3.14. Source Code Changes

  • Add spinlock support for the Itanium processor using Intel compiler (Vikram Kalsi)

  • Add Kerberos 5 support for Win32 (Magnus)

  • Add Chinese FAQ (laser@pgsqldb.com)

  • Rename Rendezvous to Bonjour to match OS/X feature renaming (Bruce)

  • Add support for wal_fsync_writethrough for Darwin (Chris Campbell)

  • Streamline the passing of information within the server, the optimizer, and the lock system (Tom)

  • Allow pg_config to be compiled using MSVC (Andrew Dunstan)

    This is required to build DBD::Pg using MSVC.

  • Remove support for Kerberos V4 (Magnus)

    Kerberos 4 had security vulnerabilities and is no longer being maintained by the authors.

  • Code cleanups (Coverity static analysis performed by EnterpriseDB)

  • Modify postgresql.conf to use documentation defaults on/off rather than true/false (Bruce)

  • Enhance pg_config to be able to report more build-time values (Tom)

  • Allow libpq to be build thread-safe on Win32 (Dave Page)

E.1.3.15. Contrib Changes

  • Add /contrib/pg_buffercache contrib module (Mark Kirkwood)

    This displays the contents of the buffer cache, for debugging and performance tuning purposes.

  • Remove /contrib/array because it is obsolete (Tom)

  • Cleanup the /contrib/lo module (Tom)

  • Move /contrib/findoidjoins to /src/tools (Tom)

  • Remove the <<, >>, &<, and &> operators from /contrib/cube

    These operators were not useful.

  • Improve /contrib/btree_gist (Janko Richter)

  • /contrib/pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)

    • implementation of OpenPGP symmetric-key and public-key encryption

      Supported are both RSA and Elgamal public-key algorithms.

    • Stand alone build: include SHA256/384/512 hashes, Fortuna PRNG

    • OpenSSL build: support 3DES, use internal AES with OpenSSL < 0.9.7

    • Take build parameters (OpenSSL, zlib) from ./configure result

      No need to edit the Makefile anymore.

    • Remove support for libmhash and libmcrypt