TODO list for PostgreSQL

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

Last updated:Sat Apr14 21:55:58 EDT 2001

Last updated:Sun Apr15 21:32:39 EDT 2001

Current maintainer:Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us)

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at

the PostgreSQL web site, http://www.PostgreSQL.org.

A dash (-) marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 7.1 release.

A dash (-) marks changes that will appear in the upcoming 7.2 release.

Bracketed items "[]" have more detailed information at

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/todo.html.

* SELECT pg_class FROM pg_class generates strange error

* Alter TABLE ADD COLUMN does not honor DEFAULT, add CONSTRAINT

* -Creating index of TIMESTAMP & RELTIME fails, or rename to DATETIME (Thomas)

* -SELECT foo UNION SELECT foo is incorrectly simplified to SELECT foo

* Unique index on base column not honored on inserts from inherited table

INSERT INTO inherit_table (unique_index_col) VALUES (dup) should fail

[inheritance]

* -Be smarter about promoting types when UNION merges different data types

* -redesign INSERT ... SELECT to have two levels of target list

* -have INTERSECT/EXCEPT prevent duplicates unless ALL is specified (Tom)

* -SELECT col::DECIMAL(12,10); fails

VIEWS

* -Views containing aggregates sometimes fail (Jan)

* -Creating view and inheriting the view causes view* to show

duplicates [inheritance]

* -Disallow LOCK on view (Mark Hollomon)

MISC

* Plpgsql does not handle quoted mixed-case identifiers

* -Buffer reference counting bugfixes (Tom)

* -Fix libpq bug that causes it to drop backend error message sent

just before connection closure (ie, any FATAL error message)

* -SELECT ... UNION ... ORDER BY fails when sort expr not in result list

* -SELECT ... UNION ... GROUP BY fails if column types disagree, no type

promotion occurs

* -Modification of pg_class can happen while table in use by

another backend. Might lead to MVCC inside of syscache

* Permission to DELETE table allows UPDATE also

* SELECT cash_out(1) causes crash

URGENT

* -Add OUTER joins, left and right (Tom, Thomas)

* -Allow long tuples by chaining or auto-storing outside db (TOAST) (Jan)

* -Fix memory leak for expressions (Tom)

* Add replication of distributed databases [replication]

o automatic fallover

o load balancing

ADMIN

* More access control over who can create tables and use locks (Karel)

* -Test syslog functionality

* Allow elog() to return error codes, module name, file name, line

number, not just messages [elog]

* Allow international error message support and add error codes [elog]

* -Unify configuration into one configuration file (Peter E)

* -use setproctitle() if it exists for 'ps' display of status

* -Prevent initdb from running wrong version of postmaster/postgres (Peter E)

* Remove unused files during database vacuum or postmaster startup

TYPES

* Nchar (as distinguished from ordinary varchar),

* Domain capability

* -Add STDDEV/VARIANCE() function for standard deviation computation/variance

* -Allow compression of large fields or a compressed field type

* -Large objects

o -Fix large object mapping scheme, own typeid or reltype (Peter E)

o -Not to stuff everything as files in a single directory, hash dirs

o -Allow large object vacuuming

o -Tables that start with xinv confused to be large objects

* Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types

* -Fix improper masking of some inet/cidr types

* Add conversion function from text to inet

* Make a separate SERIAL type?

* Store binary-compatible type information in the system

* -Add support for & operator (Peter E)

* Allow LOCALE on a per-column basis, default to ASCII

* Add SHOW command to see locale

* Allow nulls in arrays

* Declare typein/out functions in pg_proc with a special "C string" data type

* Add non-large-object binary field

* Functions returning sets do not totally work

* -Add hash for int8 (Tom)

* SELECT col FROM tab WHERE numeric_col = 10.1 fails

* -Get BIT type working

* Allow better handling of numeric constants, type conversion [typeconv]

* Support multiple simultaneous character sets, per SQL92

* Reject character sequences those are not valid in their charset

* Make functions more multi-byte aware, i.e. trim()

* Make n of CHAR(n)/VARCHAR(n) the number of letters, not bytes

* -Update macaddr manufacturer numbers, or remove the function macaddr_manuf()

* Add btree index support for reltime, tinterval, regproc

* Add rtree index support for line, lseg, path, point

* Make binary/file in/out interface for TOAST columns

VIEWS

* -Allow DISTINCT on views

* -Allow views of aggregate columns

* -Allow views with subselects

* Automatically create rules on views so they are updateable, per SQL92

* -Change elog for complex view ins|upd|del to "cannot {ins|upd|del}

* Add the functionality for "with check option" clause of create view

* Allow NOTIFY in rules involving conditionals

* Evaluate INSERT rules at end of query, rather than beginning

* Allow CREATE INDEX zman_index ON test (date_trunc( 'day', zman ) datetime_ops)

fails index can't store constant parameters

* -Allow SQL function indexes

* Add FILLFACTOR to index creation

* Re-enable partial indexes

* Allow inherited tables to inherit index, UNIQUE constraint, and primary key

* ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN to inherited table put column in wrong place

[inheritance]

* -Add ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN feature (Peter E)

* Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN feature [drop]

* -Add ALTER TABLE command to change table ownership (Mark H)

* Add ALTER FUNCTION

* Add ALTER TABLE ... DROP CONSTRAINT

* -Add ALTER USER command to change user db attributes (Peter E)

* Automatically drop constraints/functions when object is dropped

* CLUSTER

* cluster all tables at once

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

* Allow INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (a, b, c, DEFAULT, x, y, z, ...)

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

* -Allow multi-level query trees for INSERT INTO ... SELECT

* -Allow ORDER BY...LIMIT in INSERT INTO ... SELECT (Tom)

* -Allow ESCAPE '\' at the end of LIKE for ANSI compliance (Thomas)

* -Rewrite the LIKE handling by rewriting the user string with the

supplied ESCAPE

* Allow RULE recompilation

* -Support UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT in sub-selects

* -Allow DELETE and UPDATE to use inheritance

* Allow BINARY option to SELECT, like we do with DECLARE

* MOVE 0 should not move to end of cursor

* Overhaul ACL (access control) code

columns, allow DEFAULT

* Allow cursors to be DECLAREd/OPENed/CLOSEed outside transactions

* Allow DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF cursor

* -redesign UNION structures to have separarate target lists

* Add BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC/SYMMETRIC

CLIENTS

* Allow specification of column names

* Allow dump/load of CSV format

* fix array handling for ECPG

* -add pg_dump option to dump type names as standard ANSI types

* have pg_dump use LEFT OUTER JOIN in multi-table SELECTs

or multiple SELECTS to avoid bad system catalog entries

* -make pg_dump dump in oid order, so dependencies are resolved (Philip)

* allow psql \d to show primary and foreign keys

* allow psql \d to show temporary table structure

* add XML interface capability

* -Allow dumping of users/groups separately

* Add a global RESET command for use with connection pooling

* Remove <=6.3 version compatibility in ODBC?

* Add SET REAL_FORMAT and SET DOUBLE_PRECISION_FORMAT using printf args

* Check that primary key exists at foreign key definition time

* Prevent column dropping if column is used by foreign key

* Propagate column or table renaming to foreign key constraints

* -Emit a warning at foreign key creation time if no UNIQUE index

exists on referenced primary key attributes

* Add deferred trigger queue file (Jan)

* Allow oid to act as a foreign key

* Implement dirty reads and use them in RI triggers

* Increase identifier length(NAMEDATALEN) if small performance hit

* Create a background process for each database that runs while

database is idle, finding superceeded rows, gathering stats and vacuuming

* -Transaction log, so re-do log can be on a separate disk with after-row

images (Vadim)

* Implement UNDO using transaction log

* Populate backend status area and write program to dump status data

* Put sort files in their own directory

* Allow autocommit so always in a transaction block

* Show location of syntax error in query [yacc]

* -Redesign the function call interface to handle NULLs better (Tom)

* Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager

* -Use IPC_EXCL when creating shared memory and semaphores (Tom)

* Encrpyt passwords in pg_shadow table using MD5 (Vince)

* -Use flock() to prevent multiple postmasters on the same port (Tom)

* Allow Java server-side programming [java]

* Add sed-like regular expression search/replace capability

-FSYNC

* -Allow transaction commits with rollback with no-fsync performance

(Vadim)

* Delay fsync() when other backends are about to commit too [fsync]

* Determine optimal commit_delay value

* Determine optimal fdatasync/fsync, O_SYNC/O_DSYNC options

non-consecutive keys or OR clauses, so fewer heap accesses

* Allow SELECT * FROM tab WHERE int2col = 4 use int2col index, int8,

float4, numeric/decimal too [optimizer]

* -Include heap CTID in btree index keys, remove equal-key cruft from

btree (Tom)

* Use indexes with CIDR '<<' (contains) operator

* Allow LIKE indexing optimization for non-ASCII locales

* Be smarter about insertion of already-ordered data into btree index

* Improve speed with indexes (perhaps recreate index instead) [vacuum]

* Reduce lock time by moving tuples with read lock, then write

lock and truncate table [vacuum]

* -Redesign ANALYZE in VACUUM so it can be run separately without locks

* Make ANALYZE a separate command

* Allow ANALYZE to ESTIMATE based on certain random precentage of rows

* Add LAZY VACUUM (Vadim)

* Get faster regex() code from Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.utoronto.ca>

when it is available

* Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory(?) [mmap]

* -Make oid use oidin/oidout not int4in/int4out in pg_type.h (Tom)

* Improve Subplan list handling

* Allow Subplans to use efficient joins(hash, merge) with upper variable

* -use fmgr_info()/fmgr_faddr() instead of fmgr() calls in high-traffic

places, like GROUP BY, UNIQUE, index processing, etc.

* improve dynamic memory allocation by introducing tuple-context memory

allocation (Tom)

* -In WHERE tab1.x=3 AND tab1.x=tab2.y, add tab2.y=3

* allow configuration of maximum number of open files

* Remove pg_listener index

* Improve statistics storage in pg_class [performance]

SOURCE CODE

-----------

* Add use of 'const' for variables in source tree

* -Fix C optimizer problem where fmgr_ptr calls return different types (Tom)

* Does Mariposa source contain any other bug fixes?

* Remove SET KSQO option now that OR processing is improved (Tom)

* -Use macros to define NT open() file parameters, remove NT-specific defines

* -Change CURRENT to OLD internally for rules (Bruce)

* Convert remaining fprintf(stderr,...)/perror() to elog()

* -Allow libedit to be used in place of libreadline

* -BSD/OS does not support locale because there is no LC_MESSAGES (Bruce)

* Remove unused pg_variable, pg_inheritproc, pg_ipl tables

* Experiment with multi-threaded backend [thread]

* Fix problems with libpq non-blocking/async code [async]