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PostgreSQL Weekly News
== PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 23rd 2003 == There has been some initial talk about releasing a 7.3.3 version in the next few weeks. The fixes available all tend to be minor, for example this week the implementation of abstime-to-time cast function was changed, along with it's volatility, but it would still be nice to make these changes available for those who haven't upgrade yet. As I get more details I will surely report them. The big development news is the Tom Lane has started implementing the revised Front-End/Back-End protocol. For phase one we received the new StartupPacket layout with variable-width fields. There will be no more truncation of long user names and libpq can now send it's environment-variable-driven SET commands. Phase two has added length counts from frontend->backend messages. It also has changed COPY IN data to be packetized into messages. After that, COPY OUT was reimplemented per the new protocol and COPY BINARY to/from the frontend works (at least from the back end's point of view). Libpq's PQgetline API will need to be reworked to be NULL safe. Libpq uses message length words for performance improvement, but not yet for error recovery. By the way, I should mention that while working on this, there may be problems getting compiled CVS version to work; those interested in the gory details can check the -hackers archives. There were some other minor miscellaneous fixes as always; Fixing some breaks in the recent variable-handling changes, cleaning up a palloc(0) error for tables with zero columns, stddev() and variance() were changed to return NULL when there is just one input value (based on recent -general discussion), multiple issues in plperl error handling were cleaned up, and COPY was reworked a little to make handling of line termination more robust. Another important change was the improvement of deferred trigger performance by making defferedTriggerInvokeEvents only scan events added since it last ran. Thanks to Stephan Szabo and Tom Lane for work on that one. Bruce Momjian continues his work on Native Win32 . This week saw updating of tests to match the existing Cygwin tests where appropriate and Win32 now also has a version of unlink and rename. On the documentation front, Bruce Momjian updated the pg_dump information, and updated the FAQ. There was also some addition to the documentation for shared memory costs after some recent discussion on the -performance list. Peter Eisentraut continues is work cleaning up the docs for the next release with another wide batch of changes touching everything from casting to views. While those are only available in CVS right now, in the meantime pdf docs for 7.3.2 we're added to the website at http://www.postgresql.org/docs. We end on a sad note this week, to offer brief mention E. F. Codd has passed away. For those who may not be familiar with him, Codd pioneered the relational model while working for IBM in the 1960's and 1970's. Given that so much of todays technology industry deals with relational databases, we all should pay our respects to someone who was at least as influential as some of our more modern day tech heroes, if not as famous. == PostgreSQL Product News == PDAdmin Version 1.1.1 Released http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pdadmin/projdisplay.php Mammoth PostgreSQL 7.3.2 shipping 04-25-03 http://linuxpr.com/releases/5787.html EMS PostgreSQL Manager for Linux released http://www.databasejournal.com/news/article.php/2194361 == PostgreSQL In the News == Interview with the PostgreSQL Team http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3341 LinuxFest Northwest to be held April 26 in Bellingham, Washington http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/03/04/23/1323226.shtml?tid=52 == Upcoming Events == Open Source Conference: Portland, Oregon: July 7-11 A PostgreSQL track will be available at this years conference. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2003 == PostgreSQL Weekly News - April 23rd 2003 == Don't forget to read Elein Mustain's Weekly Summary of the PostgreSQL General Mailing List http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/ On the Web: http://www.postgresql.org http://advocacy.postgresql.org ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly (Log in to post comments)
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Apr 27, 2003 18:37 UTC (Sun) by leandro (subscriber, #1460) [Link] So Codd is dead... without never seeing the full fruition of his relational model for database management.The sooner SQL is dead, and people disillusion themselves from OO, the sooner we will see Codd's victory!
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Apr 28, 2003 2:56 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Why kill SQL?I have a good knowledge of SQL but it's never been my main job so I can see it's uses but I've never researched it's limitations. Actually, I can't picture a way of accessing data that wouldn't be similar to SQL. I agree that "Object Oriented Databases" is a load of marketing crap, but what's the third option? Thanks for any info
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Apr 28, 2003 10:03 UTC (Mon) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] I agree that "Object Oriented Databases" is a load of marketing crap, but what's the third option? Why, XML databases, of course. They're out there now, inventing an XML-based language for running database queries. XML is this revolutionary new concept called structured data, so when they finally come up with XQuery or whatever it's called, finally the world will have a structured query language and we can all stop using SQL. ...Wait. What does SQL stand for again?
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted May 8, 2003 13:43 UTC (Thu) by aurelien (guest, #11071) [Link] >> Why kill SQL?Because it's such a piece of shit as far as mapping the relational algebra semantics, which are what make RDBMS useful (and not only L. Ellison's cash cow).
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Apr 28, 2003 9:49 UTC (Mon) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link] OO database may look like crap because old, well-known commercial database systems aren't built for object orientation from ground. So forgive me for being naïve, but I thought PostgreSQL could provide a good basis with its Posgres inheritance. PostgreSQL has oids, it has inheritance.. Making a function work as part of a table shouldn't be that hard, all compared?
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Apr 28, 2003 12:28 UTC (Mon) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] PostgreSQL has oids, it has inheritance.. Making a function work as part of a table shouldn't be that hard, all compared? It sounds like you just invented views. And stored procedures. And triggers. To have table output mix real data rows and rows generated from functions has it's uses anyway. That still sounds like views and stored procedures. Ah well, I'm not a DBMS guy. Assuming for the moment that "OO" databases are anything more than a shift in terminology, I probably wouldn't understand the advantages anyway. I'm so behind the times, my Java friends are still having trouble convincing me that exceptions are a worthwhile substitute for actual error handling.
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Apr 28, 2003 16:16 UTC (Mon) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link] There isn't much invention. That's exactly the point. OO isn't more than a shift in terminology. Plus some important implications and some new functions related to that. OO is moving functionality inside the datasets, so the functions can work with a more limited dataset called "its own". So, I didn't mean more than make something unified out of a join between a data table and a number of view/function/whatever. And define a smart&simple way for the function to reference the data row currently being handled. If that's in place, you may find a way for a function to store data into the table row being referenced. Or even let a function create a brand new row and put data into it. Then, you can begin to worry about isolating/protecting the data entries so functions not defined to belong to that particular table row can't mess with it.
PostgreSQL Weekly News Posted Aug 7, 2003 21:06 UTC (Thu) by leandro (subscriber, #1460) [Link] > OO isn't more than a shift in terminology. Would it wasn't... actually OO in databases is going back 30 years to graph databases, like CODASYL, IDMS and IMS: the so-called network and hierarchical horrors. Even if it was, shifting terminology is evil, as it confuses even a situation that was already confused by SQL's crap terminology. Give me relationalspeak, please.
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