PostgreSQL Beta Testers Needed

aliensexfiend writes ""PostgreSQL Beta Testing has begun. The more testers, the merrier. Read the announcement page as well as the Beta info page. Interesting new features include a new Binary I/O protocol, ability to inline simple SQL functions, and an error message wording scheme that provides 3 layers of detail!!.""

Comments

Let the flamewars begin

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, am I the only one who can see this entire discussing turning into one giant flamewar?

Re:Let the flamewars begin

[hmallett]

Save a load of time - read some comparisons, like this one and make your own mind up

no beta testers needed

[kurosawdust]

SELECT * FROM bugs ?

Some changes in psql 7.4

[zaqattack911]

In case you are interested, but don't want to hunt around. Here are the list of changes in 7.4 devel branch:

Server Operation

Allow IPv6 server connections (Nigel Kukard, Johan Jordaan, Bruce, Tom, Kurt
Roeckx, Andrew Dunstan)
Fix SSL to handle errors cleanly (Nathan Mueller)
SSL protocol security and performance improvements (Sean Chittenden)
Print lock information when a deadlock is detected (Tom)
Update /tmp socket mod. times regularly to avoid their removal (Tom)
Enable PAM for MAC OS X (Aaron Hillegass)
Make btree indexes fully WAL-safe (Tom)
Allow btree index compaction and empty page reuse (Tom)
Fix inconsistent index lookups during split of first root page (Tom)
Improve free space map allocation logic (Tom)
Preserve free space information between postmaster restarts (Tom)
Set proper schema permissions in initdb (Peter)
Add start time to pg_stat_activity (Neil)
New code to detect corrupt disk pages; erase with zero_damaged_pages (Tom)
New client/server protocol: faster, no username length limit, allow
clean exit from COPY (Tom)
Add transaction status, tableid, columnid to backend protocol (Tom)
Add new binary I/O protocol (Tom)
Remove autocommit server setting; move to client applications (Tom)
New error message wording, error codes, and three levels of error detail (Tom)

__________________________________________________ _______________

Performance

Add hashing for GROUP BY aggregates (Tom)
Allow nested loops to be smarter about multicolumn indexes (Tom)
Allow multi-key hash joins (Tom)
Improve constant folding (Tom)
Add ability to inline simple SQL functions (Tom)
Reduce memory usage for queries using complex functions (Tom)
Improve GEQO optimizer performance (Tom)
Allow IN/NOT IN to be handled via hash tables (Tom)
Improve NOT IN (subquery) performance (Tom)
Allow most IN subqueries to be processed as joins (Tom)
Allow the postmaster to preload libraries using preload_libraries (Joe)
Improve optimizer cost computations, particularly for subqueries (Tom)
Avoid sort when subquery ORDER BY matches upper query (Tom)
Assume WHERE a.x = b.y and b.y = 42 also means a.x = 42 (Tom)
Allow hash/merge joins on complex joins (Tom)
Allow hash joins for more data types (Tom)
Allow join optimization of ANSI joins, disable with join_collapse_limit (Tom)
Add from_collapse_limit to control conversion of subqueries to joins (Tom)
Use faster regex code from TCL (Henry Spencer, Tom)
Use bit-mapped relation sets in the optimizer (Tom)
Improve backend startup time (Tom)
Improve trigger/constraint performance (Stephan)

__________________________________________________ _______________

Server Configuration

Rename server parameter server_min_messages to log_min_messages (Bruce)
Rename show_*_stats to log_*_stats (Bruce)
Rename show_source_port to log_source_port (Bruce)
Rename hostname_lookup to log_hostname (Bruce)
Add checkpoint_warning to warn of excessive checkpointing (Bruce)
New read-only server parameters for localization (Tom)
Change debug server log messages to output as DEBUG rather than LOG (Bruce)
Prevent server log variables from being turned off by non-super users (Bruce)
log_min_messages/client_min_messages now controls debug_* output (Bruce)
Add Rendezvous server support (Chris Campbell)
Add ability to print only slow statements using log_min_duration_statement
(Christopher)
Allow pg_hba.conf to accept netmasks in CIDR format (Andrew Dunstan)
New is_superuser read-only variable (Tom)
New server-side parameter log_error_verbosity to control error detail (Tom)
postgres --help-config now dumps server config variables (Aizaz Ahmed)
Make default shared_buffers 1000 and max_connections 100, if possible (Tom)
Add new columns in pg_settings: context, type, source , min_val, max_val (Joe)
New pg_hba.conf 'hostnossl' to

Re:Some changes in psql 7.4

[Elwood P Dowd]

Now we just need a short list that outlines which of those features are big improvements that should make doubters look at PostgreSQL again.

Re:Some changes in psql 7.4

[rtaylor]

I'm afraid 'big features' aren't really in this release. There are a large number of small but important features but the importance list changes depending on who you are.

A number of people are happy to have decent DOMAIN support.

Others are happy to have indexes that don't grow unbounded (vacuum will clean them up now).

Developers are happy to have much improved error handling and optimizer corrections (a little smarter with some corner cases).

Folks with odd data or performance requirements are happy to have the dramatically improved ARRAY support.

My personal favorite is the Transaction safe Truncate.

This release is more about rounding off some of the sharp edges than a marketing feature box hunt.

Needs to be populated

[bluGill]

You mis read the artical. They need more data entry people to enter the data so the bugs table is full. Right now they know that there are things that should be in that table, but are not.

Re:Needs to be populated

[FroMan]

Sounds like data integrity problems to me then... should put that in the table. :-)

Re:wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

never let you down? maybe for keeping track of how many visitors your rinky-dink web site has. Come back when MySQL supports transactions.

moderators, pleeeese

[BigGerman]

This is beta of version 7.4. Postgres has been stable and running production quality things for lo-ong time.

But remember that's rather old

[abulafia]

That's a pretty old comparison; both PG and Mysql have changed a lot since then.

Re:But remember that's rather old

[hmallett]

Indeed, but additions such as replication and true ACIDity (MySQL, is it or isn't it?) only matter if you're going to base your opinion on considered facts. And let's face it, this is Slashdot...

Re:wow!

[Cecil]

Congratulations on that new sarcasm detector you have! It seems to work really well!

When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

[Futurepower(R)]

Big, big question: When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

It would be great to vastly expand the number of users. A Windows version would help some people with testing, too.

Re:When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can run PostgreSQL using Cygwin on winderz.
i think most winderz types would be a little put off
by the interface, although i believe there is a
GUI program for winderz operation.

Re:When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

[oscarcar]

You install cygwin first, then you can install Postgresql.

It's nice if you have to use Windows, but I like that it's focused on unix variant OS's. Who wants a big old GUI desktop running when all you want is to access data. At least the ability to turn off the GUI, which you never really can with Windows.

Re:When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

[BigGerman]

PgAdmin is the Windows program for Postgres admin.
I have been developing on Windows running Postgres under cygwin and it works just fine.

Re:When will PostgreSQL have a Windows version?

[nconway]

There is a fairly good chance that there will be a native Win32 port of PostgreSQL in the 7.5 release. If you'd like to help make that happen, join the pgsql-hackers-win32 mailing list.

oidrand()

[Pathwalker]

Remove rarely used oidrand()...

Damn it - I use oidrand() quite often.

It's really handy when you want to pick a few items at random from a large dataset.

for example, "select whatever from bigdata where oidrand(oid,100) order by random() limit 1;" works well for selecting one item, and is faster that the other methods I've tried.

Re:oidrand()

[nconway]

Since I was responsible for removing oidrand(), I should probably speak up in my own defense :-)

The motivation for removing oidrand() was that:

1. it was undocumented
   
2. it was poorly named
   
3. it was crufty: the unused OID argument is intended to workaround an optimizer bug that has been fixed for years
   
4. it didn't play nicely with other portions of the backend that also use a PNRG.
   

Note that it is easy to workaround this change: you can either replace references to oidrand(123, y) with 'random() < 1.0/y', or just define the following function:


CREATE FUNCTION oidrand(oid, int) RETURNS bool AS 'SELECT random() < 1.0/$2' LANGUAGE sql;


The former being arguably cleaner, the latter meaning that you won't need to change a single line of application code.

For more information, the thread on pgsql-patches discussing the change is here.

I'm pretty convinced that removing oidand() is justified, but if you feel otherwise, please speak up. Thanks for raising the issue.

A native Windows version would benefit everyone.

[Futurepower(R)]

Cygwin doesn't completely solve the problem. PostgreSQL under Cygwin has some behavior that you and I very readily understand. However, it is beyond the understanding or interest of a Windows user who just wants a database.

If there is a native Windows PostgreSQL version, then there will be more users, and with more users there will be benefits to every user, including those who run it under Linux anyway.

Why doesn't PostgreSQL get more press?

[Stone316]

A little whiles back I looked into open source databases for a little side project. I specifically looked at mySql and PostgreSQL. In the end I choose PostgreSQL for a number of reason I won't get into here.

Lately whenever I see articles concerning databases I rarely ever see postgreSQL in there but I see mySql more and more often. Why is mySql so popular? Is it that the name mySql sounds better than postgreSql?

Re:Why doesn't PostgreSQL get more press?

[brlewis]

MySQL had an edge over PostgreSQL in 1997 when MySQL worked and PostgreSQL was buggy. Bugs got fixed, but MySQL was easier to install, so it continued to gain momentum. I think it's mainly momentum from prior years that keeps MySQL in the spotlight today.

Re:Why doesn't PostgreSQL get more press?

[Anonymous Coward]

Applications may have been playing a role in this over time.

I recently installed phpBB, which supports both mySQL and PostgreSQL. Due to the way they designed their tables, IN is used when messages are edited to delete orphaned records in their phpbb_search_wordlist table. This is much slower on postgres than on mysql. After a message board gets up to a few thousand messages, a board running on mySQL takes a second to edit a message, but a board running on PostgreSQL can appear to hang (actually, it takes 30 or 45 seconds).

If you were writing an application and had picked postgres, you'd make a change to the tables and find a more efficient way to do things. However, if you weren't simultaneously developing and testing with mySQL, your application might not work so well with it. In the case of the phpBB developers, they develop primarily on mySQL; I deduce this from the fact that recent phpBB releases broke on PostgreSQL and required patches to basic SQL syntax in order to work.

If applications start to favor one database over another, the problem exacerbates itself as more and more developers tend toward the more popular database on their primary dev boxes. This may be what's happening in the application world with mySQL and PostgreSQL.

Re:A native Windows version would benefit everyone

[axxackall]

Alternatively more users will be happy, if Postfresql installation script for windows will check for cygwin and if it's not there - install it.