TODO list for PostgreSQL

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

Last updated:Sun Nov16 21:05:26 EST 2003

Last updated:Wed Nov19 12:33:55 EST 2003

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

Reporting

=========

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

number, not just messages (Tom)

* -Add error codes (Tom)

* -Make error messages more consistent

* Show location of syntax error in query [yacc]

* -Add GUC log_statement_and_duration to print statement and >= min duration

Administration

or postmaster startup (Bruce)

* Remove behavior of postmaster -o after making postmaster/postgres

flags unique

* -Allow easy display of usernames in a group

* Allow configuration files to be specified in a different directory

* -Add start time to pg_stat_activity

* Allow limits on per-db/user connections

* -Have standalone backend read postgresql.conf (Tom)

* Add group object ownership, so groups can rename/drop/grant on objects,

so we can implement roles

* Add the concept of dataspaces/tablespaces [tablespaces]

* -Allow CIDR format to be used in pg_hba.conf

* Allow logging of only data definition(DDL), or DDL and modification statements

* Allow log lines to include session-level information, like database and user

* Allow server log information to be output as INSERT statements

Data Types

==========

* -Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types

* Remove Money type, add money formatting for decimal type

* Change factorial to return a numeric

* -Change NUMERIC data type to use base 10,000 internally

* Change NUMERIC to enforce the maximum precision, and increase it

* Add function to return compressed length of TOAST data values (Tom)

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

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

* -Add GUC variables to control floating number output digits (Pedro Ferreira)

* Have sequence dependency track use of DEFAULT sequences, seqname.nextval

* Disallow changing default expression of a SERIAL column

* Allow infinite dates just like infinite timestamps

* Allow pg_dump to dump sequences using NO_MAXVALUE and NO_MINVALUE

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

* Allow backend to output result sets in XML

* Prevent whole-row references from leaking memory, e.g. SELECT COUNT(tab.*)

* -Allow current datestyle to restrict dates; prevent month/day swapping

from making invalid dates valid

* -Prevent month/day swapping of ISO dates to make invalid dates valid

* Have initdb set DateStyle based on locale?

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

* Add ALTER DOMAIN, AGGREGATE, CONVERSION, SEQUENCE ... OWNER TO

* ARRAYS

o Allow nulls in arrays

o -Allow arrays to be ORDER'ed

o Allow MIN()/MAX() on arrays

o -Support construction of array result values in expressions (Joe)

o Delay resolution of array expression type so assignment coercion

can be performed on empty array expressions (Joe)

* Make octet_length_client the same as octet_length() (?)

* Prevent mismatch of frontend/backend encodings from converting bytea

data from being interpreted as encoded strings

* -Remove Cyrillic recode support

* Fix upper()/lower() to work for multibyte encodings

Indexes

=======

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

fails index can't store constant parameters

* Order duplicate index entries by tid for faster heap lookups

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

key, foreign key [inheritance]

* UNIQUE INDEX on base column not honored on inserts from inherited table

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

[inheritance]

* Add UNIQUE capability to non-btree indexes

* -Add btree index support for reltime, tinterval, regproc (Tom)

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

* -Certain indexes will not shrink, e.g. indexes on ever-increasing

columns and indexes with many duplicate keys

* Use indexes for min() and max() or convert to SELECT col FROM tab ORDER

BY col DESC LIMIT 1 if appropriate index exists and WHERE clause acceptible

* -Allow LIKE indexing optimization for non-ASCII locales using special index

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

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

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

float4, numeric/decimal too [optimizer]

* Add FILLFACTOR to btree index creation

* Add concurrency to GIST

* -Improve concurrency of hash indexes (Tom)

* Allow a single index to index multiple tables (for inheritance and subtables)

Commands

========

* Add BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC/SYMMETRIC (Christopher)

* -Allow LIMIT/OFFSET to use expressions (Tom)

* Change LIMIT/OFFSET to use int8

* CREATE TABLE AS can not determine column lengths from expressions [atttypmod]

* Allow UPDATE to handle complex aggregates [update]

* Allow command blocks to ignore certain types of errors

* Allow backslash handling in quoted strings to be disabled for portability

* -Return proper effected tuple count from complex commands [return]

* Allow UPDATE, DELETE to handle table aliases for self-joins [delete]

* Add CORRESPONDING BY to UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT

* Allow REINDEX to rebuild all indexes, remove /contrib/reindex

* -Make a transaction-safe TRUNCATE (Rod)

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

* Add schema option to createlang

* Allow savepoints / nested transactions [transactions] (Bruce)

* Allow UPDATE tab SET ROW (col, ...) = (...) for updating multiple columns

* -Allow UPDATE to use SET col = DEFAULT

* -Add config variable to prevent auto-adding missing FROM-clause tables

* Allow SET CONSTRAINTS to be qualified by schema/table

* -Have SELECT '13 minutes'::interval display zero seconds in ISO datestyle

* Prevent COMMENT ON DATABASE from using a database name

* Add GUC variable to prevent waiting on locks

* Allow TRUNCATE ... CASCADE/RESTRICT

rows with DEFAULT value

o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN column SERIAL doesn't create sequence because

of the item above

o -Add ALTER TABLE tab SET WITHOUT OIDS (Rod)

o -Add ALTER SEQUENCE to modify min/max/increment/cache/cycle values

o Have ALTER TABLE rename SERIAL sequences

o Allow columns to be reordered using ALTER ... POSITION i col1 [,col2];

have SELECT * and INSERT honor such ordering

* CLUSTER

o Automatically maintain clustering on a table

o -Allow CLUSTER to cluster all tables (Alvaro Herrera)

* COPY

o Allow dump/load of CSV format

o Have COPY return number of rows loaded/unloaded

* CURSOR

o -MOVE 0 should not move to end of cursor (Bruce)

o Allow UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF cursor using per-cursor tid

stored in the backend (Gavin)

o Prevent DROP of table being referenced by our own open cursor

o -Allow cursors outside transactions

* INSERT

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

o Add SET PERFORMANCE_TIPS option to suggest INDEX, VACUUM, VACUUM

ANALYZE, and CLUSTER

o Add SET PATH for schemas

o -Allow EXPLAIN EXECUTE to see prepared plans

o -Allow SHOW of some non-modifiable variables, like pg_controldata

* SERVER-SIDE LANGUAGES

o Allow PL/PgSQL's RAISE function to take expressions

o Allow function parameters to be passed by name,

get_employee_salary(emp_id => 12345, tax_year => 2001)

o Add PL/PgSQL packages

o -Allow array declarations and other data types in PL/PgSQL DECLARE

o Add table function support to pltcl, plperl, plpython

o -Make PL/PgSQL %TYPE schema-aware

o -Allow PL/PgSQL to support array element assignment (Joe)

o Add PL/PHP (Joe, Jan)

o Allow PL/pgSQL to name columns by ordinal position, e.g. rec.(3)

o Allow PL/pgSQL EXECUTE query_var INTO record_var;

Clients

=======

* -Allow psql to show transaction status if backend protocol changes made

* -Add schema, cast, and conversion backslash commands to psql (Christopher)

* -Allow pg_dump to dump a specific schema (Neil Conway)

* -Allow psql to do table completion for SELECT * FROM schema_part and

table completion for SELECT * FROM schema_name.

* Add XML capability to pg_dump and COPY, when backend XML capability

* -Allow SSL-enabled clients to turn off SSL transfers

* -Modify pg_get_triggerdef() to take a boolean to pretty-print,

and use that as part of pg_dump along with psql

* Allow psql \du to show groups, and add \dg for groups

* Allow clients to query WITH HOLD cursors and prepared statements

* Prevent unneeded quoting in psql \d output using fmtId()

o Solve cardinality > 1 for input descriptors / variables

o Improve error handling

o Add a semantic check level, e.g. check if a table really exists

o -Add SQLSTATE

o fix handling of DB attributes that are arrays

o Use backend prepare/execute facility for ecpg where possible

o -Make casts work in variable initializations

o Implement SQLDA

o Fix nested C comments

o sqlwarn[6] should be 'W' if the PRECISION or SCALE value specified

o -Allow multi-threaded use of SQLCA

o -Understand structure definitions outside a declare section

o -Allow :var[:index] or :var[<integer>] as cvariable for an array var

* Python

o Allow users to register their own types with pg_

* Allow DEFERRABLE UNIQUE constraints

* Allow triggers to be disabled [trigger]

* With disabled triggers, allow pg_dump to use ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY

* -Support statement-level triggers (Neil)

* Allow statement-level triggers to access modified rows

* Support triggers on columns (Neil)

* Have AFTER triggers execute after the appropriate SQL statement in a

* Turn off after-change writes if fsync is disabled (?)

* Add WAL index reliability improvement to non-btree indexes

* Find proper defaults for postgresql.conf WAL entries

* -Add checkpoint_min_warning postgresql.conf option to warn about checkpoints

that are too frequent (Bruce)

* Allow xlog directory location to be specified during initdb, perhaps

using symlinks

* Allow WAL information to recover corrupted pg_controldata

Optimizer / Executor

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

* -Improve Subplan list handling

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

* -Add hash for evaluating GROUP BY aggregates (Tom)

* -Allow merge and hash joins on expressions not just simple variables (Tom)

* -Make IN/NOT IN have similar performance to EXISTS/NOT EXISTS (Tom)

* Missing optimizer selectivities for date, r-tree, etc. [optimizer]

* Allow ORDER BY ... LIMIT to select top values without sort or index

using a sequential scan for highest/lowest values (Oleg)

* -Inline simple SQL functions to avoid overhead (Tom)

* Precompile SQL functions to avoid overhead (Neil)

* Add utility to compute accurate random_page_cost value

* Improve ability to display optimizer analysis using OPTIMIZER_DEBUG

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

* Do async I/O for faster random read-ahead of data

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

* Use mmap() rather than SYSV shared memory or to write WAL files (?) [mmap]

* Improve caching of attribute offsets when NULLs exist in the row

* Add a script to ask system configuration questions and tune postgresql.conf

* Move some things from /contrib into main tree

* Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align

* Move platform-specific ps status display info from ps_status.c to ports

* -Modify regression tests to prevent failures do to minor numeric rounding

* -Add OpenBSD's getpeereid() call for local socket authentication

* Improve access-permissions check on data directory in Cygwin (Tom)

* Add documentation for perl, including mention of DBI/DBD perl location

* Create improved PostgreSQL introductory documentation for the PHP

* Acquire lock on a relation before building a relcache entry for it

* Research interaction of setitimer() and sleep() used by statement_timeout

* Add checks for fclose() failure

* Change CVS $Id: TODO,v 1.1169 2003/11/17 02:05:26 momjian Exp $ to $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/TODO,v 1.1169 2003/11/17 02:05:26 momjian Exp $

* Change CVS $Id: TODO,v 1.1170 2003/11/19 17:34:01 momjian Exp $ to $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/TODO,v 1.1170 2003/11/19 17:34:01 momjian Exp $

* Exit postmaster if postgresql.conf can not be opened

* Rename /scripts directory because they are all C programs now

* Allow the regression tests to start postmaster with -i so the tests

* Wire Protocol Changes

o -Show transaction status in psql

o -Allow binding of query parameters, support for prepared queries

o -Remove hard-coded limits on user/db/password names

o -Remove unused elements of startup packet (unused, tty, passlength)

o -Fix COPY/fastpath protocol

o -Error codes

o Dynamic character set handling

o -Special passing of binary values in platform-neutral format (bytea?)

o Add decoded type, length, precision

o Compression?

o -Report server version number, database encoding, client encoding

o Update clients to use data types, typmod, schema.table.column names of

result sets using new query protocol