==================================================== TODO list (FAQ) for PostgreSQL ==================================================== last updated: Thu Dec 26 09:03:38 EST 1996 current maintainer: Bruce Momjian (maillist@candle.pha.pa.us) The most recent version of this document can be viewed at the postgreSQL WWW site, http://www.postgreSQL.org. Changes included in the 6.0 release are listed at the end of this page. Dashed items(-) are being worked on for the post-6.0 release. Developers who have claimed items are: Bruce is Bruce Momjian Bryan is Bryan Henderson Dan is Dan McGuirk Darren is Darren King Edmund is Edmund Mergl Erich Stamberger Kurt is "Kurt J. Lidl" Martin is Martin S. Utesch Vadim is "Vadim B. Mikheev" Vivek is Vivek Khera RELIABILITY ----------- -Overhaul mdmgr/smgr to fix double unlinking and double opens, cleanup(Erich) -Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager(Vadim) remove -S (stable memory) option or fix memory manager Fix CLUSTER Fix all NULL features allow psql to print nulls meaningfully Fix compile and security of Kerberos V code Dropping a table twice causes corruption, drop/create not rollback-able SUM aggregate on no rows or null value should return NULL, not zero SELECT on two tables where zero or one table in WHERE and target clause returns no rows fix system to use oid index using constant without cast to oid COUNT on VIEW always returns zero (maybe because there is no oid for views?) SELECT ... INTO TABLE ... GROUP BY ... generates unlink error if done three times with same INTO TABLE name (failure cleanup problem?) CREATE VIEW requires super-user priviledge ENHANCEMENTS ------------ Add full ANSI SQL capabilities add subselects, possibility using temporary SQL functions Implement HAVING clause Implement EXISTS qualifier column constraints (using rules), esp. primary keys add DEFAULT, RESTRAINT, and CHECK capabilities report "Not implemented" if valid syntax is supplied add OUTER joins, left and right make VIEWs updateable where possible add UNIONS, INTERSECTS, SUBTRACTS add temporary tables add assertions add domains add sql3 recursive unions add the concept of dataspaces allow conversion type casts on select target fields Allow compression of large fields or a compressed field type Fix the rules system(Jan?) robust making INSTEAD rules work add CONSTRAINT Full set of text operations and functions word searches, concat, upper/lower(), max() on text, char Replace table-level locking with row or page-level locking(Vadim) Large objects overwriting blocks has problems there are other problems, too. Fix large object mapping scheme not to stuff everything as files in a single directory Better interface for adding to pg_group Make multi-field indexes easier to create allow optimizer to effectively use parameters without accessing table Add int8 type Add MONEY/DECIMAL type with defined precision Add table comments Add support for tables >2G, or test current version Incorporate the PERL PG95 interface library into source tree(Edmund) Threaded version of the server or libpq Allow libpq to cancel query requests Add REGEX internationalization Add other language types for built-in functions expand to allow tcl, perl, java, generalize the function manager switch to pass function sources to interpreter engines. remove time-travel feature(Vadim) reduce system column overhead(Vadmin) remove pg_time table(Vadim) allow row re-use without vacuum, maybe?(Vadim) split apart row removal function from statistics function can't vacuum large objects Remove restriction that ORDER BY field must be in SELECT list(?) Allow queries about owner of datbases, tables like: SELECT u.usesysid FROM postgres.pg_user u; DROP AGGREGATE should take in basetype as an arg(Darren) Add word index for text fields, maybe with trigrams, i.e.: ' (cat | dog) & ! fox ' meaning text has cat or dog, but not fox Add common-sense constant type promotions Allow readline-type or editor command editing of multi-line SQL commands Allow pg_dump to dump all databases at a site in one command Allow function result to be used in GROUP BY Populate backend status area and write program to dump status data Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN feature Remove stale files upon startup(Vivek) Add command to show privileges Allow INSERT INTO ... SELECT to convert column types Add syslog functionality Allow aggregate for All types, like count(Darren) Improve optimizer plan choice(Darren) Add STDDEV/VARIANCE() function for standard deviation computation/variance Add upper/lower functions -Add table/column/function discription table indexed by oid -make all identifiers case-insensitive(Bruce) PERFORMANCE ----------- Optimizing disjunctive queries -Add Genetic Query Optimzation for many tables (Martin) -Fix bushy-plans (Martin) Other optimizer bugs Is fsync use optimized? Multi-representational types, a la Illustra. For example, have a text type that is stored in-tuple when less than 8K and in large objects, when greater than 8K. Use indexes in ORDER BY Profile engine in INSERT's and other operations Speed up hash creation by using btree's fast sort/insert routines Cache most recent query plan(s?) Allow compression of log and meta data Allow LIKE/wildcard matches to use indexes if the wildcard character is not first Add FILLFACTOR to index creation Allow indexes to be used with OR clauses -Add column optimization statistics to vacuum(Bruce) -Change pg_attribute.attnvals name to attdispursion and change type float4 DOCUMENTATION ------------- Update usermanual source remove time-travel in documentation(Bruce) added features used in grammer but not in docs, like :: and CAST add DECLARE manual pages add EXPLAIN manual page PORTABILITY ----------- Windows NT port Mariposa project at Berkeley has a person who's working on this Win95 port, use GNU port or remove it? Merge i386_solaris and sparc_solaris into solaris Switch from PORTNAME to individual feature defines (use configure/autoconf?) Change c.h "Index" and "bool" so they do not conflict with c++ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN 6.0 RELEASE Restructured object file generation/location(Bryan, Marc) Restructured port-specific file locations(Bryan, Marc) Makefile restructuring(Bryan, Marc) all functions now have prototypes that are compared against the calls unused/uninialized variables corrected gcc -Wall compiles cleanly with warnings only from unfixable constructs major include file reorganization/reduction(Marc) reduced the number of #define's, centeralized #define's removed many os-specific #define's fixed a few small memory leaks removed duplicate system oid's overhauled parser/analyze code to properly report errors and increase speed properly report errors when INSERT ... SELECT columns did not match properly report errors when insert column names were not correct minor improvements to rules system execute lowercase function names if not found with exact case change oid constants used in code to #define names Memory leaks (hunt and destroy with tools like Purify(Kurt) fix unitialized reads of memory(Kurt) fix array over-runs of memory writes(Kurt) Change default decimal constant representation from float4 to float8(Bruce) Allow libpq to distinguish between text value '' and null(Bruce) Starting quote in insert string errors(Bruce) ALTER TABLE bug - running postgress process needs to re-read table definition Allow non-postgres users with createdb privs to destroydb's Prevent SELECT NULL from crashing server (Bruce) Fix elusive btree range/non-range bug(Dan) Remove duplicate system catalog info or report mismatches(Dan) Remove duplicate OIDS in system tables(Dan) Prevent postmaster from being run as root Implement IN qualifier(Bruce) Implement BETWEEN qualifier(Bruce) add synonym of != for <>(Bruce) add UNIQUE index capability(Dan) Re-visit and fix vacuum(Vadim) speed up vacuum(Vadim) can't shrink tables, pg_time and pg_log(Vadim & Erich) allow actual compression, not just reuse on the same page(Vadim) allow vacuum to be run on one table or entire database(Bruce) Reverse meaning of HBA masks(Bryan) Add hostname/user level access control rather than just hostname and user Allow restriction on who can create C functions(Bryan) Allow installation-configuration option to auto-add all local users(Bryan) Allow restriction on who can do backend COPY(Bryan) allow COPY from the frontend(Bryan) Secure Authentication of local users(Bryan) Idend authentication of local users(Bryan) Change debug level 2 to print queries only, changed debug heading layout(Bruce) Reduce size of regression diffs, remove timezone name difference(Bruce) Remove compile-time parameters to enable binary distributions(Bryan) Merge bsdi_2_1 to bsdi(Bruce) pg_dump(Bruce) allow dump of oid's create indexes after tables are loaded for speed pg_dump -d now handles NULL's properly psql(Bruce) fixed problem with multiple statements on one line with multiple outputs changed command prompt for lines in query or in quotes allow backslashed, semicolons anywhere on the line \h and \? is now readable \g filename now works updated help syntax char(3) now displays as (bp)char in \d output return code now more accurate(Bryan?) new config.h file(Marc, Bryan) fix permissions on lo_export()(Bruce) Make now stops on compile failure(Bryan) submiting an empty query now returns empty status, not just " " query(Bruce) several fixes for queries that crashed the backend portability additions, including Ultrix, DG/UX, AIX, and Solaris fix for pg_log size explosion decoupled sparc and solaris defines(Kurt) new options to initdb(Bryan) allow asserts to be disabled easly from Makefile.global(Bruce) allow "select oid,* from table" NOTIFY fixes PG_VERSION now set to 6.0 and used by postmaster libpq has PQgetisnull()(Bruce) pginterface additions for NULL values(Bruce) fixed ALTER TABLE ... char(3) bug(Bruce) fixed output of group acl permissions new asserts for run-checking name change from Postgres95 to PostgreSQL monitor program removed fix for hash indexes on some types like time and date gist now included in the distrubution(Marc) array fixes fixes for aggregate/GROUP processing, allow 'select sum(func(x),sum(x+y) from z' libpq++ improvements Allow BY,ORDER BY to specify columns by number, or by non-alias table.column(Bruce) Allow GROUP BY to use alias column name(Bruce)