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<sect1 id="release-9-1-alpha">

<title>Release 9.1alpha2</title>

<title>Release 9.1alpha3</title>

<sect2>

<title>Overview</title>

<para>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add ALTER TYPE ... ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE</emphasis>

<emphasis>Add ALTER ... SET SCHEMA support for conversions,

operators, operator classes, operator families, text search

configurations, text search dictionaries, text search

parsers, and text search templates</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Support triggers on views</emphasis>

<emphasis>Make TRUNCATE ... RESTART IDENTITY restart

sequences transactionally</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

Previously, the sequence restart did not roll back on error.

This meant that an error between truncating and committing

left the sequences out of sync with the table contents, with

potentially bad consequences as were noted in a Warning on

the TRUNCATE man page.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Prevent invoking I/O conversion casts via

functional/attribute notation</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

This was found to be confusing in some cases. The

functionality is still available via cast syntax.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Add ALTER TYPE ... ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Support triggers on views

</para>

<para>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Allow WITH clauses to be attached to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE

statements</emphasis>

Allow WITH clauses to be attached to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE

statements

</para>

<para>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Allow new values to be added to an existing enum type</emphasis>

Allow new values to be added to an existing enum type

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Support MergeAppend plans, to allow sorted output

from append relations</emphasis>

<emphasis>Optimize the commit_siblings configuration parameter</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>KNN GiST, otherwise known as order-by-operator support for GiST</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

This can be used to optimize nearest-neighbor searches.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Improve process shutdown speed</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Speed up conversion of signed integers to C strings</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Support MergeAppend plans, to allow sorted output

from append relations

</para>

<para>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Reduce the memory requirement for large ispell dictionaries</emphasis>

Reduce the memory requirement for large ispell dictionaries

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Teach CLUSTER to use seqscan-and-sort when it's faster than

indexscan</emphasis>

Teach CLUSTER to use seqscan-and-sort when it's faster than

indexscan

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Improve GIN indexscan cost estimation</emphasis>

Improve GIN indexscan cost estimation

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Performance improvements in pg_upgrade for uses with many tables</emphasis>

Performance improvements in pg_upgrade for uses with many tables

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Allow pg_ctl to register the service in either AUTO or DEMAND start

type</emphasis>

<emphasis>Instrument checkpoint sync calls</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Use the same lexer for recovery.conf that has been used for postgresql.conf</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

Among other things, this allows values in recovery.conf to be unquoted.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add column buffers_backend_fsync to pg_stat_bgwriter</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add monitoring function pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp()</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Allow pg_ctl to register the service in either AUTO or DEMAND start

type

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Support host names and host key

Support host names and host key

word <literal>all</literal>

in <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename></emphasis>

in <filename>pg_hba.conf</filename>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add SECURITY LABEL command</emphasis>

Add SECURITY LABEL command

</para>

<para>

This is intended as infrastructure to support integration

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Accept <literal>public</literal> as a pseudo-role

<emphasis>Add pg_read_binary_file() and whole-file-at-once

versions of pg_read_file()</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add new function format(), for sprintf-like string formatting</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add pg_describe_object() function to obtain textual

descriptions of objects as stored in pg_depend</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Accept <literal>public</literal> as a pseudo-role

name in <literal>has_table_privilege()</literal> and friends

to see if a particular privilege has been granted to

<literal>PUBLIC</literal></emphasis>

<literal>PUBLIC</literal>

</para>

</listitem>

<title>psql</title>

<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add <quote>S</quote> option to \dn command in psql</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

System schemas are now hidden by default by \dn.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Add \conninfo command to psql, to show current connection

</itemizedlist>

</sect3>

<sect3>

<title>libpq</title>

<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add PQlibVersion() function</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>When reporting the server as not responding, if the

hostname was supplied, also print the IP address</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

This allows IPv4 and IPv6 failures to be distinguished. Also

useful when a hostname resolves to multiple IP addresses.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add functions PQping and PQpingParams to allow

detection of the server's status, including a status where

the server is running but refuses ordinary connections</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

pg_ctl uses the new function. This fixes the case where

pg_ctl reports that the server is not running (cannot

connect) but in fact it is running.

</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</sect3>

<sect3>

<title>Procedural Languages</title>

<sect4>

<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Allow generic record arguments to PL/Perl functions</emphasis>

Allow generic record arguments to PL/Perl functions

</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Updates to contrib/isn ISBN tables</emphasis>

<emphasis>New module contrib/auth_delay</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Updates to contrib/isn ISBN tables

</para>

</listitem>

<title>Source Code, Build Options</title>

<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Rewrite the GiST insertion logic so that the

post-recovery cleanup stage to finish incomplete inserts or

splits is not needed anymore</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Add support for collecting

<quote>minidump</quote>-style crash dumps on

Windows</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Replace pg_class.relistemp column with relpersistence</emphasis>

</para>

<para>

This is for upcoming work on unlogged and global temporary tables.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>GNU make 3.80 or newer is now required</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

<emphasis>Improved support for parallel make, make -k, and make -q</emphasis>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Include the backend ID in the relpath of temporary