PostgreSQL TODO List

====================

Current maintainer:Bruce Momjian (bruce@momjian.us)

Last updated:Mon Sep18 12:23:58 EDT 2006

Last updated:Tue Sep19 15:19:50 EDT 2006

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.TODO.html.

Administration

==============

* -Make postmater and postgres options distinct so the postmaster -o

option is no longer needed

* -Allow pooled connections to list all prepared statements

This would allow an application inheriting a pooled connection to know

the statements prepared in the current session.

* Allow major upgrades without dump/reload, perhaps using pg_upgrade

[pg_upgrade]

* Check for unreferenced table files created by transactions that were

Another idea is to allow separate configuration files for each module,

or allow arbitrary SET commands to be passed to them.

* -Re-enable the GUC full_page_writes in 8.2 when reliability issues have

been addressed

* Simplify ability to create partitioned tables

This would allow creation of partitioned tables without requiring

* Configuration files

o -Add "include file" functionality in postgresql.conf

o Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to restore them

to defaults

Currently, if a variable is commented out, it keeps the

previous uncommented value until a server restarted.

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-09/msg01481.php

o -Allow per-database permissions to be set via GRANT

Allow database connection checks based on GRANT rules in

addition to the existing access checks in pg_hba.conf.

o Allow pg_hba.conf to specify host names along with IP addresses

Host name lookup could occur when the postmaster reads the

o %Allow postgresql.conf file values to be changed via an SQL

API, perhaps using SET GLOBAL

o Allow the server to be stopped/restarted via an SQL API

o-Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value

o Issue a warning if a change-on-restart-only postgresql.conf value

is modified and the server config files are reloaded

o Mark change-on-restart-only values in postgresql.conf

most recent transactions aren't available for recovery in case

of a disk failure.

o -Automatically force archiving of partially-filled WAL files when

pg_stop_backup() is called or the server is stopped

o -Add reporting of the current WAL file and offset, perhaps as

part of partial log file archiving

o %Create dump tool for write-ahead logs for use in determining

transaction id for point-in-time recovery

o Allow a warm standby system to also allow read-only statements

a database for analysis.

* %Add ability to monitor the use of temporary sort files

* -Allow server logs to be remotely read and removed using SQL commands

* -Allow protocol-level BIND parameter values to be logged

Data Types

inaccurate, in one sense.

* Fix data types where equality comparison isn't intuitive, e.g. box

* -Zero umasked bits in conversion from INET cast to CIDR

* -Prevent INET cast to CIDR from dropping netmask, SELECT '1.1.1.1'::inet::cidr

* -Allow INET + INT8 to increment the host part of the address or

throw an error on overflow

* -Add 'tid != tid ' operator for use in corruption recovery

* Allow user-defined types to specify a type modifier at table creation

time

* Allow user-defined types to accept 'typmod' parameters

o Allow infinite dates and intervals just like infinite timestamps

o Merge hardwired timezone names with the TZ database; allow either

kind everywhere a TZ name is currently taken

o -Allow customization of the known set of TZ names (generalize the

present australian_timezones hack)

o Allow TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE to store the original timezone

information, either zone name or offset from UTC [timezone]

If the TIMESTAMP value is stored with a time zone name, interval

computations should adjust based on the time zone rules.

o -Allow timezone names in SQL strings, '2006-05-24 21:11

Americas/New_York'::timestamptz

o Fix SELECT '0.01 years'::interval, '0.01 months'::interval

o Add a GUC variable to allow output of interval values in ISO8601

format

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-01/msg00250.php

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2006-04/msg00248.php

o -Add support for day-time syntax, INTERVAL '1 2:03:04' DAY TO

SECOND

o Support ISO INTERVAL syntax if units cannot be determined from

the string, and are supplied after the string

* Arrays

o -Allow NULLs in arrays

o Delay resolution of array expression's data type so assignment

coercion can be performed on empty array expressions

o Add support for arrays of domains

=========

* Allow INET subnet tests using non-constants to be indexed

* -Add transaction_timestamp(), statement_timestamp(), clock_timestamp()

functionality

Current CURRENT_TIMESTAMP returns the start time of the current

transaction, and gettimeofday() returns the wallclock time. This will

make time reporting more consistent and will allow reporting of

the statement start time.

* %Add pg_get_acldef(), pg_get_typedefault(), pg_get_attrdef(),

pg_get_tabledef(), pg_get_domaindef(), pg_get_functiondef()

These would be for application use, not for use by pg_dump.

* -Allow to_char() to print localized month names

* Allow to_date() and to_timestamp() accept localized month names

* Add missing parameter handling in to_char()

o to_char(INTERVAL '43 hours 20 minutes', 'WK:DD:HR:MI') => 0:1:19:20

o to_char(INTERVAL '3 years 5 months','MM') => 41

* -Add sleep() function, remove from regress.c

* -Allow user-defined functions retuning a domain value to enforce domain

constraints

* Add SPI_gettypmod() to return the typemod for a TupleDesc

* Allow inlining of set-returning functions

* Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT

* Add ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS options to GROUP BY

* %Allow SET CONSTRAINTS to be qualified by schema/table name

* -Allow TRUNCATE ... CASCADE/RESTRICT

This is like DELETE CASCADE, but truncates.

* %Add a separate TRUNCATE permission

Currently only the owner can TRUNCATE a table because triggers are not

* Add NOVICE output level for helpful messages like automatic sequence/index

creation

* -Add COMMENT ON for all cluster global objects (roles, databases

and tablespaces)

* -Make row-wise comparisons work per SQL spec

Right now, '(a, b) < (1, 2)' is processed as 'a < 1 and b < 2', but

the SQL standard requires it to be processed as a column-by-column

comparison, so the proper comparison is '(a < 1) OR (a = 1 AND b < 2)'.

* Add RESET CONNECTION command to reset all session state

This would include resetting of all variables (RESET ALL), dropping of

* Allow EXPLAIN to identify tables that were skipped because of

constraint_exclusion

* Allow EXPLAIN output to be more easily processed by scripts

*-Enable escape_string_warning and standard_conforming_strings

* Enable standard_conforming_strings

* Make standard_conforming_strings the default in 8.3?

When this is done, backslash-quote should be prohibited in non-E''

expressions like SELECT col1 || col2

o Use more reliable method for CREATE DATABASE to get a consistent

copy of db?

o -Add ON COMMIT capability to CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT

* UPDATE

o -Allow an alias to be provided for the target table in

UPDATE/DELETE (Neil)

o -Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (val, ...) for updating

multiple columns

o Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (SELECT...)

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-07/msg01306.php

is used

o %Prevent child tables from altering or dropping constraints

like CHECK that were inherited from the parent table

o -Add ALTER TABLE tab INHERIT / NO INHERIT parent

o Have ALTER INDEX update the name of a constraint using that index

o Add ALTER TABLE RENAME CONSTRAINT, update index name also

This requires the use of a savepoint before each COPY line is

processed, with ROLLBACK on COPY failure.

o -Have COPY return the number of rows loaded/unloaded?

o Allow COPY on a newly-created table to skip WAL logging

On crash recovery, the table involved in the COPY would

the table at the same time, which is something that is

currently allowed.

o -Allow COPY (SELECT ...) TO 'filename'

* GRANT/REVOKE

o Prevent DROP TABLE from dropping a row referenced by its own open

cursor?

o -Allow pooled connections to list all open WITH HOLD cursors

Because WITH HOLD cursors exist outside transactions, this allows

them to be listed so they can be closed.

* INSERT

o Allow INSERT/UPDATE of the system-generated oid value for a row

o -Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)

o -Allow INSERT/UPDATE ... RETURNING new.col or old.col

o In rules, allow VALUES() to contain a mixture of 'old' and 'new'

references

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2006-02/msg00288.php

o -Allow PL/python to return composite types and result sets

Clients

=======

* -Have initdb set the input DateStyle (MDY or DMY) based on locale

* Have pg_ctl look at PGHOST in case it is a socket directory?

* Allow pg_ctl to work properly with configuration files located outside

the PGDATA directory

o Allow psql \pset boolean variables to set to fixed values, rather

than toggle

o Consistently display privilege information for all objects in psql

o -Improve psql's handling of multi-line statements

Currently, while \e saves a single statement as one entry, interactive

statements are saved one line at a time. Ideally all statements

would be saved like \e does.

o -Allow multi-line column values to align in the proper columns

If the second output column value is 'a\nb', the 'b' should appear

in the second display column, rather than the first column as it

does now.

o -Display IN, INOUT, and OUT parameters in \df

o Add auto-expanded mode so expanded output is used if the row

length is wider than the screen width.

* pg_dump

o -Allow pg_dump to use multiple -t and -n switches, exclusion

ability, and regular expression object matching

o %Add dumping of comments on index columns and composite type columns

o %Add full object name to the tag field. eg. for operators we need

'=(integer, integer)', instead of just '='.

o Add pg_dumpall custom format dumps?

o -Update pg_dump and psql to use the new COPY libpq API (Christopher)

o Remove unnecessary function pointer abstractions in pg_dump source

code

o Allow selection of individual object(s) of all types, not just

* libpq

o -Add a function to support Parse/DescribeStatement capability

o Add PQescapeIdentifierConn()

o Prevent PQfnumber() from lowercasing unquoted the column name

* Allow accurate statistics to be collected on indexes with more than

one column or expression indexes, perhaps using per-index statistics

* -Add fillfactor to control reserved free space during index creation

* Allow the creation of indexes with mixed ascending/descending

specifiers

index entry) might be slow and unreliable, especially for user-defined

index functions.

* -Add system view to show free space map contents

* Allow FSM to return free space toward the beginning of the heap file,

in hopes that empty pages at the end can be truncated by VACUUM

* Allow FSM page return free space based on table clustering, to assist

This is probably not possible because 'gmake' and other compiler tools

do not fully support quoting of paths with spaces.

* -Allow installing to directories containing spaces

This is possible if proper quoting is added to the makefiles for the

install targets. Because PostgreSQL supports relocatable installs, it

is already possible to install into a directory that doesn't contain

spaces and then copy the install to a directory with spaces.

* Fix sgmltools so PDFs can be generated with bookmarks

* -%Clean up compiler warnings (especially with gcc version 4)

* Use UTF8 encoding for NLS messages so all server encodings can

read them properly

* Update Bonjour to work with newer cross-platform SDK

* -Remove BeOS and QNX-specific code

* Split out libpq pgpass and environment documentation sections to make

it easier for non-developers to find

* Improve port/qsort() to handle sorts with 50% unique and 50% duplicate

option is to wait for the MinGW project to fix it, or use the

code from the LibGW32C project as a guide.

o -Port contrib/xml2

o Check WSACancelBlockingCall() for interrupts [win32intr]