Yesterday Peter Eisentraut committed a patch, written by Damien Clochard, that modifies \d output in psql:
Have \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent As per discussion, \d shows only the number of child tables, because that could be hundreds, when used for partitioning. \d+ shows the actual list. Author: Damien Clochard <damien@dalibo.info>
Continue reading Waiting for 8.5 – Have \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent
Everybody wrote that 8.4 was released, so it's not a news now.
But. Starting from yesterday, my own PostgreSQL reports it's version like this:
# SELECT version(); version ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PostgreSQL 8.5devel ON i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled BY GCC gcc (GCC) 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4), 32-bit (1 ROW)
Which means: I can start new blog posts series.
For quite some time I've been posting about new features in 8.4. First post was over a year ago, on 16th of February 2008.
Now, we just (yesterday) got nice surprise: beta is here:
(depesz@[LOCAL]:5840) 12:39:15 [depesz] # SELECT version(); version ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PostgreSQL 8.4beta1 ON i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled BY GCC gcc (GCC) 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu3), 32-bit (1 ROW)
Since I don't expect any new features in beta and release candidate stages, let me put some short summary.
Usually I write about new features in 8.4, but this time I'd like to write about feature that will be actually missing in 8.4. And thank God, it will be missing.
On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:22:47 -0400 Greg Sabino Mullane wrote mail to pgsql-hackers list with his patch that removes -d switch from pg_dump.
Later there was some discussion (20 mails) that extended the patch to remove also -D.
And now, today, Tom Lane committed:
Remove the -d and -D options of pg_dump and pg_dumpall. The functionality is still available, but you must now write the long equivalent --inserts or --column-inserts. This change is made to eliminate confusion with the use of -d to specify a database name in most other Postgres client programs. Original patch by Greg Mullane, modified per subsequent discussion.
This is great news. One less way a new user of pg (or one that doesn't read –help pages) can do himself harm, one less thing that is purely illogical.
On 2nd of February Andrew Dunstan committed his patch (with editing by Tom Lane) that:
Log Message: ----------- Provide for parallel restoration from a custom format archive. Each data and post-data step is run in a separate worker child (a thread on Windows, a child process elsewhere) up to the concurrent number specified by the new pg_restore command-line --multi-thread | -m switch.
Continue reading Waiting for 8.4 – parallel restoration of dumps
On 22nd of January, Tom Lane committed patch by Stephen Frost, which adds column level privileges:
Log Message: ----------- Support column-level privileges, as required by SQL standard. Stephen Frost, with help from KaiGai Kohei and others
A long overdue post about new functionality. At this moment it is no longer such new, as it was committed on 28th of December (yes, I know, I should have written it earlier, Sorry).
On this day Tom Lane committed patch by Hitoshi Harada which adds support for so called window functions:
Support window functions a la SQL:2008. Hitoshi Harada, with some kibitzing from Heikki and Tom.
On 4th of January, Tom Lane committed patch by Takahiro Itagaki, which adds new contrib module – pg_stat_statements:
Log Message: ----------- Add contrib/pg_stat_statements for server-wide tracking of statement execution statistics. Takahiro Itagaki
On 6th of January Bruce Momjian committed patch by Greg Sabino Mulane, which fixes one of a very long standing annoyances in PostgreSQL – removes system objects from \dX commands in psql.
Continue reading Waiting for 8.4 – remove system objects from \dX
Yesterday Tom Lane committed enormous patch, which had commit log:
Support window functions a la SQL:2008. Hitoshi Harada, with some kibitzing from Heikki and Tom.
… and that would be all. I will write more about it, its use cases, and some detailed examples but now I'm on vacation, and will stay here for some time. You can expect to get the post mid next-week.