postgresql/doc/TODO

TODO list for PostgreSQL
========================
Last updated:		Sat Jan 26 23:20:24 EST 2002

Current maintainer:	Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us)

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at
the PostgreSQL web site, http://www.PostgreSQL.org.

A dash (-) marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 7.2 release.

Bracketed items "[]" have more detailed.


RELIABILITY
-----------

* -SELECT pg_class FROM pg_class generates strange error (Bruce)


ENHANCEMENTS
------------

URGENT

* Add replication of distributed databases [replication]
	o automatic failover
	o load balancing
	o master/slave replication
	o multi-master replication
	o partition data across servers
	o sample implementation in contrib/rserv
	o queries across databases or servers (two-phase commit)
	o http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pgreplication/projdisplay.php
* Point-in-time data recovery using backup and write-ahead log
* Allow row re-use without vacuum (Tom)

REPORTING

* Allow elog() to return error codes, module name, file name, line
  number, not just messages (Peter E)
* Add error codes (Peter E)
* -Allow international error message support (Peter E)
* Change DEBUG startup tag to NOTICE;  change NOTICE to output to client
  only if client exists (Bruce)
* Show location of syntax error in query [yacc]
* -Populate backend status area and write program to dump status data (Jan)

PERMISSIONS

* Improve control over user privileges, including table creation and
  lock use [privileges] (Karel, others)
* Allow usernames to be specified directly in pg_hba.conf (Bruce)
* Add PGPASSWORDFILE environment variable or ~/.pgpass to store
  user/host/password combinations
* Remove PGPASSWORD because is insecure on some OS's
* Make single-user local access permissions the default (Peter E)
* -Allow single-user access without passwords using Unix socket permissions
* -Better document pg_hba.conf host-based authentication (Bruce)
* -Add MD5 to ODBC (Bruce)
* Use thread-safe crypt() in libpq, if available

ADMIN

* Incremental backups
* Make it easier to create a database owned by someone who can't createdb,
  perhaps CREATE DATABASE dbname WITH OWNER = "user" (Gavin)
* Make equals sign optional in CREATE DATABASE WITH param = 'val'
* -Permission to DELETE table also allows UPDATE (Peter E)
* -Remove unused sort files on postmaster startup (Bruce)
* Remove unreferenced table files and temp tables during database vacuum
  or postmaster startup (Bruce)
* -Remove unreferenced sort files during postmaster startup (Bruce)
* Add table name mapping for numeric file names (Bruce)
* -Encrypt passwords in pg_shadow table using MD5 (Bruce, Vince)
* Remove behavior of postmaster -o after making postmaster/postgres
  flags unique
* Allow logging of query durations
* -Put sort files in their own directory (Bruce)

DATA TYPES

* Add domain capability [domain]
* Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types
* Remove Money type, add money formatting for decimal type
* SELECT cash_out(2) crashes because of opaque
* Declare typein/out functions in pg_proc with a special "C string" data type
* Functions returning sets do not totally work
* -Add SQL standard function bit_length() (Peter E)
* -Make oid use unsigned int more reliably (Tom)
* Change factorial to return a numeric
* Add function to return compressed length of TOAST data values (Tom)

* CONVERSION
	o -Add conversion function from text to inet
	o Store binary-compatible type information in the system
	o Allow better handling of numeric constants, type conversion 
	  [typeconv]
	o SELECT col FROM tab WHERE numeric_col = 10.1 fails, requires quotes

* ARRAYS
	o Allow nulls in arrays
	o Allow arrays to be ORDER'ed
	o Ensure we have array-eq operators for every built-in array type
	o Support construction of array result values in expressions

* BINARY DATA
	o -Add non-large-object binary field (already exists -- bytea)
	o -Make binary interface for TOAST columns (base64)
	o Improve vacuum of large objects, like /contrib/vacuumlo
	o Add security checking for large objects
	o Make file in/out interface for TOAST columns, similar to large object
	  interface (force out-of-line storage and no compression)
	o Auto-delete large objects when referencing row is deleted

MULTI-LANGUAGE SUPPORT

* Add NCHAR (as distinguished from ordinary varchar),
* Allow LOCALE on a per-column basis, default to ASCII
* Support multiple simultaneous character sets, per SQL92
* -Reject character sequences those are not valid in their charset (Tatsuo)
* -Make functions more multi-byte aware, e.g. trim() (Tatsuo)
* -Make n of CHAR(n)/VARCHAR(n) the number of letters, not bytes (Tatsuo)
* Allow setting database character set without multibyte enabled
* Improve Unicode combined character handling
* Optimize locale to have minimal performance impact when not used (Peter E)
* -Optimize textlength(), etc. for single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)
* Add octet_length_server() and octet_length_client() (Thomas, Tatsuo)
* Make octet_length_client the same as octet_length() (?)

VIEWS / RULES

* Automatically create rules on views so they are updateable, per SQL92 [view]
* Add the functionality for WITH CHECK OPTION clause of CREATE VIEW
* Allow NOTIFY in rules involving conditionals
* -Evaluate INSERT rules at end of query, rather than beginning (Jan)
* Allow temporary views
* Move psql backslash information into views
* Allow RULE recompilation
* Remove brackets as multi-statement rule grouping, must use parens

INDEXES

* Allow CREATE INDEX zman_index ON test (date_trunc( 'day', zman ) datetime_ops)
  fails index can't store constant parameters
* Order duplicate index entries by tid for faster heap lookups
* -Re-enable partial indexes
* -Prevent pg_attribute from having duplicate oids for indexes (Tom)
* Allow inherited tables to inherit index, UNIQUE constraint, and primary
  key, foreign key  [inheritance]
* UNIQUE INDEX on base column not honored on inserts from inherited table
  INSERT INTO inherit_table (unique_index_col) VALUES (dup) should fail
  [inheritance]
* Allow UPDATE/DELETE on inherited table
* Have UPDATE/DELETE clean out indexes
* Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes
* Add btree index support for reltime, tinterval, regproc
* Add rtree index support for line, lseg, path, point
* Certain indexes will not shrink, e.g. oid indexes with many inserts
* Use indexes for min() and max() or convert to SELECT col FROM tab ORDER
  BY col DESC LIMIT 1 if appropriate index exists and WHERE clause acceptible
* Allow LIKE indexing optimization for non-ASCII locales
* Use index to restrict rows returned by multi-key index when used with
  non-consecutive keys or OR clauses, so fewer heap accesses
* Be smarter about insertion of already-ordered data into btree index
* -Gather more accurate dispersion statistics using indexes (Tom)
* Add deleted bit to index tuples to reduce heap access
* Prevent index uniqueness checks when UPDATE does not modifying column
* Add bitmap indexes [performance]
* Improve handling of index scans for NULL
* Allow SELECT * FROM tab WHERE int2col = 4 to use int2col index, int8,
  float4, numeric/decimal too [optimizer]
* -Use indexes with CIDR '<<' (contains) operator
* Improve concurrency in GIST
* Add FILLFACTOR to index creation

SYSTEM TABLES

* -Add unique indexes to pg_shadow.usename and pg_shadow.usesysid or
  switch to pg_shadow.oid as user id (Tom)
* -Add unique indexes on pg_database (Tom)
* -Check all system tables and add unique indexes as needed (Tom)
* -Remove pg_listener index (Tom)
* -Remove unused pg_variable, pg_inheritproc, pg_ipl tables (Bruce)

COMMANDS

* Add SIMILAR TO to allow character classes, 'pg_[a-c]%'
* Add BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC/SYMMETRIC
* -Allow LOCK TABLE tab1, tab2, tab3 so all tables locked in unison
* Remove LIMIT #,# and force use LIMIT and OFFSET clauses in 7.3 (Bruce)
* Allow LIMIT/OFFSET to use expressions
* -Allow GRANT/REVOKE to handle multiple user/group names (Vince)
* -Allow CREATEUSER/CREATEDB ordering in CREATE/ALTER USER (Vince)
* Disallow TRUNCATE on tables that are involved in referential constraints
* Add OR REPLACE clauses to non-FUNCTION object creation
* CREATE TABLE AS can not determine column lengths from expressions [atttypmod]
* Allow UPDATE to handle complex aggregates [update]
* Prevent create/drop scripts from allowing extra args (Bruce)
* Allow command blocks to ignore certain types of errors

* ALTER
	o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN does not honor DEFAULT and non-CHECK CONSTRAINT
	o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN to inherited table put column in wrong place
	  [inheritance]
	o Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN feature [drop] (Bruce)
	o Add ALTER FUNCTION
	o Add ALTER TABLE DROP non-CHECK CONSTRAINT
	o -Add ALTER TABLE DROP CHECK CONSTRAINT (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
	o ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
	o ALTER TABLE ADD UNIQUE (Christopher Kings-Lynne)
	o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN column SERIAL doesn't create sequence
	o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN column SET DEFAULT should fill existing
	  rows with DEFAULT value
	o Have ALTER TABLE OWNER change all dependant objects like indexes

* CLUSTER
	o cluster all tables at once
	o prevent lose of indexes, permissions, inheritance (Bruce)
	o Automatically maintain clustering on a table
	o -Keep statistics about clustering (Tom) [optimizer]

* COPY
	o Allow specification of column names
	o Allow dump/load of CSV format
	o Change syntax to WITH DELIMITER, (keep old syntax around?)
	o Allow COPY to report error lines and continue;  optionally
	  allow error codes to be specified; requires savepoints or can
	  not be run in a multi-statement transaction

* CURSOR
	o Allow BINARY option to SELECT, just like DECLARE
	o MOVE 0 should not move to end of cursor
	o Allow cursors to be DECLAREd/OPENed/CLOSEed outside transactions
	o Allow UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF cursor using per-cursor tid
	  stored in the backend
	o Prevent DROP of table being referenced by our own open cursor

* INSERT
	o Allow INSERT/UPDATE of system-generated oid value for a row
	o Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)
	o Allow INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (a, b, c, DEFAULT, x, y, z, ...)
	o Disallow missing columns in INSERT ... VALUES, per ANSI
	o Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col; handle
	  RULE cases (Philip)

* SHOW/SET
	o Add SHOW command to display locks
	o -Add SHOW command to show all settings
	o -Add a global RESET command for use with connection pooling
	o Add SET or BEGIN timeout parameter to cancel query
	o Add SET REAL_FORMAT and SET DOUBLE_PRECISION_FORMAT using printf args
	o Remove SET KSQO option now that OR processing is improved (Tom)
	o Add SET PERFORMANCE_TIPS option to suggest INDEX, VACUUM, VACUUM
	  ANALYZE, and CLUSTER
	o Add SHOW command to see locale

* SERVER-SIDE LANGUAGES
	o Allow PL/PgSQL's RAISE function to take expressions
	o Fix PL/PgSQL to handle quoted mixed-case identifiers
	o Change PL/PgSQL to use palloc() instead of malloc()
	o Add untrusted version of plpython
	o Add plsh server-side shell language (Peter E)
	o Allow Java server-side programming (?) [java]

CLIENTS

* -Make NULL's come out at the beginning or end depending on the
  ORDER BY direction (Tom)
* Have pg_dump use LEFT OUTER JOIN in multi-table SELECTs
  or multiple SELECTS to avoid bad system catalog entries
* Have pg_dump -C dump database location and encoding information
* Allow psql \d to show foreign keys
* Allow psql \d to show temporary table structure
* Add XML interface:  psql, pg_dump, COPY, separate server (?)
* -Fix libpq to properly handle socket failures under native MS Win32
* Add config file check for $ODBCINI, $HOME/.odbc.ini, installpath/etc/odbc.ini

* JDBC
	o Comprehensive test suite. This may be available already.
	o Updateable resultSet (must be done in backend code)
	o -Improved DatabaseMetaData [java]
	o JDBC-standard BLOB support
	o Error Codes (pending backend implementation)
	o -Support for binary data/bytea
	o Support both 'make' and 'ant'
	o -Add MD5 capability
	o Fix LargeObject API to handle OIDs as unsigned ints
	o Implement cancel() method on Statement
	o Use cursors implicitly to avoid large results (see setCursorName())
        o Add support for CallableStatements

* ECPG
	o Implement set descriptor, using descriptor
	o Make casts work in variable initializations
	o -Allow variable to specify the connection name
	o -Fix variable handling in EXEC SQL AT statement
	o Implement SQLDA
	o -Allow SELECT of array of strings into a auto-sized variable
	o Solve cardinality > 1 for input descriptors / variables
	o Understand structure definitions outside a declare section
	o sqlwarn[6] should be 'W' if the PRECISION or SCALE value specified
	o Improve error handling
	o Allow :var[:index] or :var[<integer>] as cvariable for an array var
	o Add a semantic check level, e.g. check if a table really exists
	o -Remove space_or_nl and line_end from pgc.l
	o Fix nested C comments
	o Add SQLSTATE
	o fix handling of DB attributes that are arrays

REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY

* Add MATCH PARTIAL referential integrity [foreign]
* -Check that primary key exists at foreign key definition time
* Add deferred trigger queue file (Jan)
* Allow oid to act as a foreign key
* Implement dirty reads and use them in RI triggers
* Make triggers refer to columns by number, not name
* Enforce referential integrity for system tables
* -INSERT & UPDATE/DELETE in transaction of primary key fails with
  deferredTriggerGetPreviousEvent or "change violation"
* Allow user to control trigger firing order
* Change foreign key constraint for array -> element to mean element
  in array
* Fix foreign key constraints to not error on intermediate db states (Stephan)

DEPENDENCY CHECKING

* Add pg_depend table for dependency recording; use sysrelid, oid,
  depend_sysrelid, depend_oid, name
* Auto-destroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL; perhaps a separate
  SERIAL type
* Have SERIAL generate non-colliding sequence names when we have 
  auto-destruction
* Prevent column dropping if column is used by foreign key
* Propagate column or table renaming to foreign key constraints
* Automatically drop constraints/functions when object is dropped
* Make constraints clearer in dump file
* Make foreign keys easier to identify

TRANSACTIONS

* Allow autocommit so always in a transaction block
* Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager
* Allow savepoints / nested transactions [transactions]
* -Handle transaction rollover (Tom) [transactions]

EXOTIC FEATURES

* Add sql3 recursive unions
* Add the concept of dataspaces/tablespaces [tablespaces]
* Allow SQL92 schemas [schema]
* Allow queries across multiple databases [crossdb]
* Add pre-parsing phase that converts non-ANSI features to supported features
* Allow plug-in modules to emulate features from other databases
* SQL*Net listener that makes PostgreSQL appear as an Oracle database
  to clients


PERFORMANCE
-----------

FSYNC

* Delay fsync() when other backends are about to commit too [fsync]
	o Determine optimal commit_delay value
* Determine optimal fdatasync/fsync, O_SYNC/O_DSYNC options
	o Allow multiple blocks to be written to WAL with one write()

CACHE

* Cache most recent query plan(s) (Karel) [prepare]
* Shared catalog cache, reduce lseek()'s by caching table size in shared area
* Add free-behind capability for large sequential scans (Bruce)
* Allow binding query args over FE/BE protocol
* Consider use of open/fcntl(O_DIRECT) to minimize OS caching
* Make blind writes go through the file descriptor cache

VACUUM

* Improve speed with indexes (perhaps recreate index instead) [vacuum]
* Reduce lock time by moving tuples with read lock, then write
  lock and truncate table [vacuum]
* -Make ANALYZE a separate command (Tom)
* -Allow ANALYZE to ESTIMATE based on certain random percentage of rows (Tom)
* Add LAZY VACUUM (Vadim) [performance]

LOCKING

* Make locking of shared data structures more fine-grained
* Add code to detect an SMP machine and handle spinlocks accordingly
  from distributted.net, http://www1.distributed.net/source, 
  in client/common/cpucheck.cpp
* Research use of sched_yield() for spinlock acquisition failure
* -Improve spinlock code [performance] (Tom)

STARTUP TIME

* Experiment with multi-threaded backend [thread]
* Add connection pooling [pool]
* Allow persistent backends [persistent]
* Create a transaction processor to aid in persistent connections and
  connection pooling
* Do listen() in postmaster and accept() in pre-forked backend
* Have pre-forked backend pre-connect to last requested database or pass
  file descriptor to backend pre-forked for matching database

WRITE-AHEAD LOG

* Have after-change WAL write()'s write only modified data to kernel
* Reduce number of after-change WAL writes; they exist only to gaurd against
  partial page writes
* Turn off after-change writes if fsync is disabled (?)
* Add WAL index reliability improvement to non-btree indexes
* Reorder postgresql.conf WAL items in order of importance
* Remove wal_files postgresql.conf option because WAL files are now recycled
* Find proper defaults for postgresql.conf WAL entries
* Add checkpoint_min_warning postgresql.conf option to warn about checkpoints
  that are too frequent

OPTIMIZER/EXECUTOR

* Improve Subplan list handling
* Allow Subplans to use efficient joins(hash, merge) with upper variable
* Improve dynamic memory allocation by introducing tuple-context memory
  allocation (Tom)
* Add hash for evaluating GROUP BY aggregates
* Nested FULL OUTER JOINs don't work (Tom)
* Allow merge and hash joins on expressions not just simple variables (Tom)
* Add new pg_proc cachable settings to specify whether function can be
  evaluated only once or once per query
* Change FIXED_CHAR_SEL to 0.20 from 0.04 to give better selectivity (Bruce)
* Make IN/NOT IN have similar performance to EXISTS/NOT EXISTS [exists]
* Missing optimizer selectivities for date, r-tree, etc. [optimizer]
* Allow ORDER BY ... LIMIT to select top values without sort or index

MISCELLANEOUS

* -Allow compression of log and meta data (Tom)
* Do async I/O for faster random read-ahead of data
* Get faster regex() code from Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.utoronto.ca>
  when it is available
* Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory or to write WAL files (?) [mmap]
* -Allow GUC configuration of maximum number of open files (Tom)
* -Improve statistics storage in pg_class [performance] (Tom)
* -Read pg_hba.conf only on postmaster startup or SIGHUP (Bruce)


SOURCE CODE
-----------
* Add use of 'const' for variables in source tree
* -Convert remaining fprintf(stderr,...)/perror() to elog() (Peter E)
* Fix problems with libpq non-blocking/async code [async]
* -Merge global and template BKI files (Tom)
* -Fix username/password length limits in all areas, e.g. pg_passwd
* -Remove compile-time upper limit on number of backends (MAXBACKENDS) (Tom)
* Make sure all block numbers are unsigned to increase maximum table size
* Use BlockNumber rather than int where appropriate
* Merge LockMethodCtl and LockMethodTable into one shared structure (Bruce)
* HOLDER/HOLDERTAB rename to PROCLOCK/PROCLOCKTAG (Bruce)
* Remove LockMethodTable.prio field, not used (Bruce)
* Add version file format stamp to heap and other table types
* Rename some /contrib modules from pg* to pg_*
* Move some things from /contrib into main tree
* Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align
* Move platform-specific ps status display info from ps_status.c to ports
* Allow ps status display to work on Solaris/SVr4-based systems
* -Decide on spelling of indexes/indices (Peter E)
* -Add mention of VACUUM, log rotation to Administrator's Guide (Tom, Bruce)
* Make one version of simple_prompt() in code (Bruce, Tom)
* Compile in syslog functionaility by default (?)
* Modify regression tests to prevent failures do to minor numeric rounding
* Remove USING clause from pg_get_indexdef() if index is btree (Bruce)
* Use our own getopt() for FreeBSD/OpenBSD to allow --xxx flags (Bruce)
* Add OpenBSD's getpeereid() call for local socket authentication (Bruce)
* Improve access-permissions check on data directory in Cygwin (Tom)
* Report failure to find readline or zlib at end of configure run
* Add --port flag to regression tests
* Increase identifier length (NAMEDATALEN) if small performance hit,
  perhaps to standard length of 128;  change struct pgNotify to use pid 
  first, breaks notify API;
* Increase maximum number of function parameters if little wasted space
* Add documentation for perl, including mention of DBI/DBD perl location
* Add optional CRC checksum to heap and index pages
* Change representation of whole-tuple parameters to functions
* Evaluate AIX cs() spinlock macro for performance optimizations (Tatsuo)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Developers who have claimed items are:
--------------------------------------
* Billy is Billy G. Allie <Bill.Allie@mug.org>
* Bruce is Bruce Momjian<pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net>
* Edmund is Edmund Mergl <E.Mergl@bawue.de>
* Hiroshi is Hiroshi Inoue <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>
* Karel is Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>
* Jan is Jan Wieck <wieck@sapserv.debis.de>
* Liam is Liam Stewart <liams@redhat.com>
* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>
* Mark is Mark Hollomon <mhh@mindspring.com>
* Marko is Marko Kreen <marko@l-t.ee>
* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org>
* Oleg is Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>
* Peter M is Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>
* Peter E is Peter Eisentraut<peter_e@gmx.net>
* Philip is Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
* Ross is Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
* Ryan is Ryan Bradetich <rbrad@hpb50023.boi.hp.com>
* Stephan is Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone23.bigpanda.com>
* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp>
* Thomas is Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>
* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
* TomH is Tom I Helbekkmo <tih@Hamartun.Priv.no>
* Vadim is Vadim B. Mikheev <vadim4o@email.com>