TODO list for PostgreSQL

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

Last updated:Sun Jun 622:08:59 EDT 1999

Last updated:Tue Jul 605:41:10 EDT 1999

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

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at

the PostgreSQLWWW site, http://www.postgreSQL.org.

the PostgreSQLweb site, http://www.postgreSQL.org.

A dash(-) marks changes to be in the next release.

Developers who have claimed items are:

-------------------------------------

* Billy is Billy G. Allie <Bill.Allie@mug.org>

* Brook is Brook Milligan <brook@trillium.NMSU.Edu>

* Bruce is Bruce Momjian<maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>

* Bryan is Bryan Henderson<bryanh@giraffe.netgate.net>

* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net>

* David is David Hartwig <daveh@insightdist.com>

* Edmund is Edmund Mergl <E.Mergl@bawue.de>

* Goran is Goran Thyni <goran@kyla.kiruna.se>

* Hiroshi is Hiroshi Inoue<Inoue@tpf.co.jp>

* Jan is Jan Wieck <wieck@sapserv.debis.de>

* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>

* Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>

* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@debian.org>

* Oleg is Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>

* Peter is Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>

* Stefan Simkovics <ssimkovi@rainbow.studorg.tuwien.ac.at>

* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp>

* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

* Thomas is Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>

* TomH is Tom I Helbekkmo <tih@Hamartun.Priv.NO>

* Vadim is "Vadim B. Mikheev" <vadim@krs.ru>

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

RELIABILITY

-----------

* Overhaul mdmgr/smgr to fix double unlinking and double opens, cleanup

* Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager

* Remove EXTEND?

* Tables that start with xinv confused to be large objects

* Two and three dimensional arrays display improperly, missing {}

* Select a[1] FROM test fails, it needs test.a[1]

* Update table SET table.value = 3 fails

* User who can create databases can modify pg_database table

RESOURCES

* Elog() does not free all its memory(Jan)

*Disallow inherited columns with the same name as new columns

*spinlock stuck problem when elog(FATAL) and elog(ERROR) inside bufmgr

* Recover or force failure when disk space is exhausted

* Views containing aggregates sometimes fail(Jan)

PARSER

* Disallow inherited columns with the same name as new columns

* INSERT INTO ... SELECT with AS columns matching result columns problem

* SELECT pg_class FROM pg_class generates strange error

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

* Do not allow bpchar column creation without length

* Select a[1] FROM test fails, it needs test.a[1]

* Array index references without table name cause problems

* Update table SET table.value = 3 fails

* Creating index of timestamp fails

VIEWS

* Views containing aggregates sometimes fail(Jan)

* Views with spaces in view name fail when referenced

* Plpgsql does not handle quoted mixed-case identifiers

* Do not allow bpchar column creation without length

* INSERT INTO ... SELECT with AS columns matching result columns problem

MISC

* User who can create databases can modify pg_database table

* Plpgsql does not handle quoted mixed-case identifiers

ENHANCEMENTS

------------

URGENT

* Add referential integrity

* Add OUTER joins, left and right(Thomas)

* Allow long tuples by chaining or auto-storing outside db (chaining,large objs)

* Eliminate limits on query length

* Fix memory leak for expressions?, aggregates?

Exotic features:

EXOTIC FEATURES

* Add sql3 recursive unions

* Add the concept of dataspaces

* Add replication of distributed databases

* Allow queries across multiple databases

Admin:

ADMIN

* Better interface for adding to pg_group

* More access control over who can create tables and access the database

* Add syslog functionality

* Generate postmaster pid file and remove flock/fcntl lock code

* Add ability to specifiy location of lock/socket files

Types:

TYPES

* Add BIT, BIT VARYING

* 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

* Fix large object mapping scheme, own typeid or reltype(Peter)

* Allow large text type to use large objects(Peter)

* Not to stuff everything as files in a single directory

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

o Allow large text type to use large objects(Peter)

o Not to stuff everything as files in a single directory

* Allow pg_descriptions when creating types, tables, columns, and functions

* Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types

* Make a separate SERIAL type?

* Store binary-compatible type information in the system

* Allow user to define char1 column

* Add support for & operator

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

* Allow array on int8[]

* Remove Money type, add money formatting for decimal type

VIEWS

Views:

* Allow DISTINCT on views

* Allow views of aggregate columns

* Allow views with subselects

* Allow subqueries in target list

* Put sort files, large objects in their on directory

* Do autocommit so always in a transaction block

* Show location of syntax error in query

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

* Document/trigger/rule so changes to pg_shadow create pg_pwd

* Missing optimizer selectivities for date, etc.

INDEXES

Indexes:

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

fails index can't store constant parameters

fails index can't store constant parameters

* Allow creation of functional indexes to use default types

* Permissions on indexes - prevent them?

* Allow SQL function indexes

* Add FILLFACTOR to index creation

* Allow indexing of LIKE with localle character sets

* Allow indexing of more than eight columns

COMMANDS

Commands:

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

* Add ALTER TABLE DROP/ALTER COLUMN feature

* Allow CLUSTER on all tables at once, and improve CLUSTER

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

* Allow ESCAPE '\' at the end of LIKE for ANSI compliance

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

supplied ESCAPE

supplied ESCAPE

* Move LIKE index optimization handling to the optimizer

Clients:

CLIENTS

* Make NULL's come out at the beginning or end depending on the

ORDER BY direction

ORDER BY direction

* Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs

* Update reltuples from COPY command

* Allow psql \copy to allow delimiters

* Add a function to return the last inserted oid, for use in psql scripts

* Allow psql to print nulls as distinct from ""(?)

MISC

* Increase identifier length(NAMEDATALEN) if small performance hit

* Allow row re-use without vacuum, maybe?(Vadim)

* Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes

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

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

* Make oid use unsigned int more reliably, pg_atoi()

* Allow subqueries in target list

* Put sort files, large objects in their on directory

* Do autocommit so always in a transaction block

* Show location of syntax error in query

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

* Document/trigger/rule so changes to pg_shadow create pg_pwd

* Missing optimizer selectivities for date, etc.

* Overhaul mdmgr/smgr to fix double unlinking and double opens, cleanup

* Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager

* Tables that start with xinv confused to be large objects

* Add PL/Perl(Mark Hollomon)

PERFORMANCE

-----------

FSYNC

* Allow transaction commits with rollback with no-fsync performance

* Prevent fsync in SELECT-only queries

INDEXES

* Use indexes in ORDER BY for restrictive data sets, min(), max()

* Pull requested data directly from indexes, bypassing heap data

* Use index to restrict rows returned by multi-key index when used with

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

* Use index with constants on functions

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

* Convert function(constant) into a constant for index use

* Allow LIMIT ability on single-table queries that have no ORDER BY to use

a matching index

a matching index

* Improve LIMIT processing by using index to limit rows processed

CACHE

* Cache most recent query plan(s?)

* Shared catalog cache, reduce lseek()'s by caching table size in shared area

MISC

* Allow compression of log and meta data

* Update pg_statistic table to remove operator column

* Make index creation use psort code, because it is now faster(Vadim)

* Allow char() not to use variable-sized header to reduce disk size

* Do async I/O to do better read-ahead of data

* Fix memory exhaustion when using many OR's

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

when it is available

when it is available

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

* Process const = const parts of OR clause in separate pass

* Make oid use oidin/oidout not int4in/int4out in pg_type.h

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

-------------

-----------

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

* Fix C optimizer problem where fmgr_ptr calls return different types

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Developers who have claimed items are:

--------------------------------------

* Billy is Billy G. Allie <Bill.Allie@mug.org>

* Brook is Brook Milligan <brook@trillium.NMSU.Edu>

* Bruce is Bruce Momjian<maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>

* Bryan is Bryan Henderson<bryanh@giraffe.netgate.net>

* D'Arcy is D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net>

* David is David Hartwig <daveh@insightdist.com>

* Edmund is Edmund Mergl <E.Mergl@bawue.de>

* Goran is Goran Thyni <goran@kyla.kiruna.se>

* Hiroshi is Hiroshi Inoue<Inoue@tpf.co.jp>

* Jan is Jan Wieck <wieck@sapserv.debis.de>

* Marc is Marc Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>

* Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>

* Michael is Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org>

* Oleg is Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>

* Peter is Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>

* Stefan Simkovics <ssimkovi@rainbow.studorg.tuwien.ac.at>

* Tatsuo is Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp>

* Tom is Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

* Thomas is Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>

* TomH is Tom I Helbekkmo <tih@Hamartun.Priv.NO>

* Vadim is "Vadim B. Mikheev" <vadim@krs.ru>