PostgreSQL Weekly News - March 19 2005
- Mark Rae did some tests on SMP scaling for PostgreSQL and found that CVS TIP is an improvement over 8.0.1. Details in this thread:
- Christopher Kings-Lynne has developed a set of new PHP access function
for PostgreSQL to support our v3 protocol, which should improve
performance of PostgreSQL-PHP. There was a small legal hitch with the
requirement to re-license parts of the PostgreSQL documentation to
PHP, but that's being resolved.
Satoshi Nagayasu volunteered to work on the "Read-Only Database" TODO
item.
There was an extensive, around how to invalidate cached query plans
which have outlived their usefulness. The product of this was Neil
Conway proposing work on a query planner overhaul that would store its
plan in a fashion that interferes less with our plan caching; however,
the exact architecture of this is not yet determined.
Magnus Hagander has written an addition to the website to database the
PostgreSQL Consultants List
(http://techdocs.postgresql.org/companies.php) and integrate it with
the main web site. This should be up in a couple of weeks. If you
are a PostgreSQL consulting company, please e-mail josh@postgresql.org
with any updates to your information on the referenced page.
Development of a full-featured OLE-DB driver for PostgreSQL proceeds
full speed ahead, let by Shachar Shemesh.
Merlin Moncure proposed a patch to hide the function source in the
pg_proc table from unprivileged users, which was opposed by Tom Lane
(rejected, basically) for being an incomplete solution. The idea is
back to the drawing board for a better implementation.
Tom Lane has discovered that the patch to pg_was he added for 8.0 to
detect a dead lockfile situation on startup was inadequate and is
being re-written.
Michael Fuhr discovered the following cryptic remark in our source
code:
From src/backend/tcop/postgres.c: /* they only drink coffee at dec */ If you know what this comment means, please mail david@fetter.org and we'll publish your explanation next week.
Tom Lane proposed an implementation of a "Local Buffers" feature to allow allocation of per-user buffers specifically for holding temporary tables. The pgsql-performance mailing list had extensive discussions on the query planner parameter model, how to read a query plan, and correlated cost estimation for multi-column indexes. WWPI (Weekly Windows Port Issue): Andrew Dunstan reported that contrib/pg_buffercache is apparently broken on Windows. A patch for the issue was posted but has not yet been tested/merged. Adrian Nida wrote a document elucidating PAM authentication for PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL Product News
- Bricolage 1.8.5 released.
- New pgExpress Driver v3.0 released.
- PostgreSQL RPM Building Project has announced new RPM sets for many platforms. Also, SuSE RPMs are on PostgreSQL FTP sites and its mirrors.
- DataKiosk 0.6 released. DataKiosk is a JuK-like database interface tool for generic SQL databases.
- EMS PostgreSQL Data Pump, DB Comparer and Extract released.
- Oryx Mailstore 0.92 is a mail archive server that uses PostgreSQL. See http://www.oryx.com/mailstore/0.92.html and .../overview.html Microolap Technologies Ltd is proud to announce the availability of version 2.0 of "PostgresDAC", Delphi and C++ Builder components for direct access to PostgreSQL.
- Big Nerd Ranch is offering PostgreSQL training the week of April 18 - 22. Their comprehensive PostgreSQL Bootcamp is taught in a retreat-like setting near Atlanta, GA.
PostgreSQL in the News
- Core member Josh Berkus's interview with Mad Penguin on PostgreSQL adoption. It got a mention on Slashdot.
- Coming this week in General Bits: A Unix Hacker's Windows Experience; Preventing Key Updates; Capsule Summary of Josh Berkus' Open Source Classification.
- This week on www.powerpostgreqsl.com: Josh Berkus classifies FLOSS projects.
Source: PostgreSQL Announcements Mailing List (pgsql-announce) - http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-announce/