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<note>

<title>Release date</title>

<simpara>2006-1?-??</simpara>

<para>CURRENT AS OF 2006-11-05</>

<para>CURRENT AS OF 2006-11-24</>

</note>

<sect2>

<title>Overview</title>

<para>

This release adds many functionality and performance improvements that

were requested by users, including:

</para>

</sect2>

<sect2>

<title>Migration to version 8.2</title>

<para>

A dump/restore using <application>pg_dump</application> is

required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous

release.

</para>

<para>

Observe the following incompatibilities:

</para>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Data can no longer be shared between a PL/Perl function and a

PL/PerlU function, and modules used by a /PerlU function are no

longer available to PL/Perl functions.

</para>

<para>

Some perl installations have not been compiled with the correct flags

to allow multiple interpreters to exist within a single process.

In this situation PL/Perl and PL/PerlU cannot both be used in a

single backend. The solution is to get a Perl installation which

supports multiple interpreters. (Andrew)

</para>

<listitem>

<para>

For security's sake, modules used by a PL/PerlU function are no

longer available to PL/Perl functions (Andrew)

</para>

<note>

<para>

This also implies that data can no longer be shared between a PL/Perl

function and a PL/PerlU function.

Some perl installations have not been compiled with the correct flags

to allow multiple interpreters to exist within a single process.

In this situation PL/Perl and PL/PerlU cannot both be used in a

single backend. The solution is to get a Perl installation which

supports multiple interpreters.

</para>

</note>

</listitem>

<listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</sect2>

<sect2>

<title>Changes</title>

<para>

Below you will find a detailed account of the

changes between <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> 8.2 and

the previous major release.

</para>

<sect3>

<title>Performance Improvements</title>

<itemizedlist>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a

gigabyte boundary by <command>VACUUM</> (Tom)

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Fix bug causing needless deadlock errors on row-level locks (Tom)

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Each backend process is now its own process group leader (Tom)

</para>

<para>

This allows query cancel to abort subprocesses invoked from a

backend or archive/recovery process.

</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</sect3>

<para>

Previously, it was lexical, which caused unexpected sharing

violations.

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Run PL/Perl and PL/PerlU in separate interpreters, for security

reasons.

</para>

<para>

In consequence, they can no longer share data nor loaded modules.

Also, if Perl has not been compiled with the requisite flags to

allow multiple interpreters, only one of theselamguages can be used

in any given backend process. (Andrew)

</para>

</listitem>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Run PL/Perl and PL/PerlU in separate interpreters, for security

reasons (Andrew)

</para>

<para>

In consequence, they can no longer share data nor loaded modules.

Also, if Perl has not been compiled with the requisite flags to

allow multiple interpreters, only one of theselanguages can be used

in any given backend process.

</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

Python 2.5 is now supported (Tom)

</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</sect3>

<listitem>

<para>

Drop privileges on startup, so that the server can be started from

Drop privileges on startup, so that the server can be started from

an administrative account (Magnus)

</para>

</listitem>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>

New function gen_random_bytes() that returns cryptographically strong

New function gen_random_bytes() that returns cryptographically strong

randomness. Useful for generating encryption keys.

</para>

</listitem>