postgresql/HISTORY

PostgreSQL 6.0 beta              Thu Dec 26 16:47:43 EST 1996
-------------------------------------------------------------

A dump/restore is required for those wishing to migrate data from
previous releases of PostgreSQL.

Major contributors:
-------------------
	Bruce is Bruce Momjian<maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
	Bryan is Bryan Henderson<bryanh@giraffe.netgate.net>
	Dan is Dan McGuirk <mcguirk@indirect.com>
	Darren is Darren King <darrenk@insightdist.com>
	Edmund is Edmund Mergl <E.Mergl@bawue.de>
	Erich Stamberger <eberger@gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at>
	Kurt is "Kurt J. Lidl" <lidl@va.pubnix.com>
 	Martin is Martin S. Utesch <utesch@aut.tu-freiberg.de>
	Vadim is "Vadim B. Mikheev" <vadim@sable.krasnoyarsk.su>
	Vivek is Vivek Khera <khera@kci.kciLink.com>

Changes in this release:
------------------------
Restructured object file generation/location(Bryan, Marc)
Restructured port-specific file locations(Bryan, Marc)
Makefile restructuring(Bryan, Marc)
all functions now have prototypes that are compared against the calls
unused/uninialized variables corrected
gcc -Wall compiles cleanly with warnings only from unfixable constructs
major include file reorganization/reduction(Marc)
reduced the number of #define's, centeralized #define's
removed many os-specific #define's
fixed a few small memory leaks
removed duplicate system oid's
overhauled parser/analyze code to properly report errors and increase speed
properly report errors when INSERT ... SELECT columns did not match
properly report errors when insert column names were not correct
minor improvements to rules system
execute lowercase function names if not found with exact case
change oid constants used in code to #define names
Memory leaks (hunt and destroy with tools like Purify(Kurt)
fix unitialized reads of memory(Kurt)
fix array over-runs of memory writes(Kurt)
Change default decimal constant representation from float4 to float8(Bruce)
Allow libpq to distinguish between text value '' and null(Bruce)
Starting quote in insert string errors(Bruce)
ALTER TABLE bug - running postgress process needs to re-read table definition
Allow non-postgres users with createdb privs to destroydb's
Prevent SELECT NULL from crashing server (Bruce)
Fix elusive btree range/non-range bug(Dan)
Remove duplicate system catalog info or report mismatches(Dan)
Remove duplicate OIDS in system tables(Dan)
Prevent postmaster from being run as root
Implement IN qualifier(Bruce)
Implement BETWEEN qualifier(Bruce)
add synonym of != for <>(Bruce)
add UNIQUE index capability(Dan)
Re-visit and fix vacuum(Vadim)
speed up vacuum(Vadim)
can't shrink tables, pg_time and pg_log(Vadim & Erich)
allow actual compression, not just reuse on the same page(Vadim)
allow vacuum to be run on one table or entire database(Bruce)
Reverse meaning of HBA masks(Bryan)
Add hostname/user level access control rather than just hostname and user
Allow restriction on who can create C functions(Bryan)
Allow installation-configuration option to auto-add all local users(Bryan)
Allow restriction on who can do backend COPY(Bryan)
allow COPY from the frontend(Bryan)
Secure Authentication of local users(Bryan)
Idend authentication of local users(Bryan)
Change debug level 2 to print queries only, changed debug heading layout(Bruce)
Reduce size of regression diffs, remove timezone name difference(Bruce)
Remove compile-time parameters to enable binary distributions(Bryan)
Merge bsdi_2_1 to bsdi(Bruce)
pg_dump(Bruce)
	allow dump of oid's
	create indexes after tables are loaded for speed
	pg_dump -d now handles NULL's properly
psql(Bruce)
	fixed problem with multiple statements on one line with multiple outputs
	changed command prompt for lines in query or in quotes
	allow backslashed, semicolons anywhere on the line
	\h and \? is now readable
	\g filename now works
	updated help syntax
	char(3) now displays as (bp)char in \d output
	return code now more accurate(Bryan?)
new config.h file(Marc, Bryan)
fix permissions on lo_export()(Bruce)
Make now stops on compile failure(Bryan)
submiting an empty query now returns empty status, not just " " query(Bruce)
several fixes for queries that crashed the backend
portability additions, including Ultrix, DG/UX, AIX, and Solaris
fix for pg_log size explosion
decoupled sparc and solaris defines(Kurt)
new options to initdb(Bryan)
allow asserts to be disabled easly from Makefile.global(Bruce)
allow "select oid,* from table"
NOTIFY fixes
PG_VERSION now set to 6.0 and used by postmaster
libpq has PQgetisnull()(Bruce)
pginterface additions for NULL values(Bruce)
fixed ALTER TABLE ... char(3) bug(Bruce)
fixed output of group acl permissions
new asserts for run-checking
name change from Postgres95 to PostgreSQL
monitor program removed
fix for hash indexes on some types like time and date
gist now included in the distrubution(Marc)
array fixes
fixes for aggregate/GROUP processing, allow 'select sum(func(x),sum(x+y) from z'
libpq++ improvements
Allow BY,ORDER BY to specify columns by number, or by non-alias table.column(Bruce)
Allow GROUP BY to use alias column name(Bruce)



Postgres95 1.02                 Thu Aug  1 18:00:00 EDT 1996
-------------------------------------------------------------

Source code maintainenance and development
 * worldwide team of volunteers
 * the source tree now in CVS at ftp.ki.net
 * developers mailing list - pg95-dev@ki.net

Enhancements
 * psql (and underlying libpq library) now has many more options for
   formatting output, including HTML
 * pg_dump now output the schema and/or the data, with many fixes to
   enhance completeness.
 * psql used in place of monitor in administration shell scripts.
   monitor to be depreciated in next release.
 * date/time functions enhanced
 * NULL insert/update/comparison fixed/enhanced
 * TCL/TK lib and shell fixed to work with both tck7.4/tk4.0 and tcl7.5/tk4.1

Bug Fixes (almost too numerous to mention)
 * indexes
 * storage management
 * check for NULL pointer before dereferencing
 * Makefile fixes

New Ports
 * added SolarisX86 port
 * added BSDI 2.1 port
 * added DGUX port

Contributors (appologies to any missed)
 * Kurt J. Lidl <lidl@va.pubnix.com> 
	(missed in first run, but no less important)
 * Erich Stamberger <eberger@gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at>
 * Jason Wright <jason@shiloh.vnet.net>
 * Cees de Groot <C.deGroot@inter.NL.net>
 * ernst.molitor@uni-bonn.de
 * michael.siebenborn@ae3.Hypo.DE (Michael Siebenborn (6929))
 * Brian E. Gallew <geek+@cmu.edu>
 * Vadim B. Mikheev <vadim@sable.krasnoyarsk.su>
 * Adam Sussman <myddryn@vidya.com>
 * Chris Dunlop <chris@onthe.net.au>
 * Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@ki.net>
 * Dan McGuirk <mcguirk@indirect.com>
 * Dr_George_D_Detlefsen <drgeorge@ilt.com>
 * Erich Stamberger <eberger@gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at>
 * Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>
 * Randy Kunkee <kunkee@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
 * Rick Weldon <rick@wisetech.com>
 * Thomas van Reimersdahl <reimersd@dali.techinfo.rwth-aachen.de>
 * david bennett <dave@bensoft.com>
 * ernst.molitor@uni-bonn.de
 * Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.net>
 * Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
 * Paul "Shag" Walmsley <ccshag@cclabs.missouri.edu>
 * "Alistair G. Crooks" <azcb0@sde.uts.amdahl.com>

Postgres95 1.01			Fri Feb 23 18:20:36 PST 1996
-------------------------------------------------------------
Incompatibilities:
 * 1.01 is backwards compatible with 1.0 database provided the user
   follow the steps outlined in the MIGRATION_from_1.0_to_1.01 file.
   If those steps are not taken, 1.01 is not compatible with 1.0 database.

Enhancements:
 * added PQdisplayTuples() to libpq and changed monitor and psql to use it
 * added NeXT port (requires SysVIPC implementation)
 * added CAST .. AS ... syntax
 * added ASC and DESC keywords
 * added 'internal' as a possible language for CREATE FUNCTION
   internal functions are C functions which have been statically linked
   into the postgres backend.
 * a new type "name" has been added for system identifiers (table names,
   attribute names, etc.)  This replaces the old char16 type.   The
   of name is set by the NAMEDATALEN #define in src/Makefile.global
 * a readable reference manual that describes the query language.
 * added host-based access control.  A configuration file ($PGDATA/pg_hba)
   is used to hold the configuration data.  If host-based access control
   is not desired, comment out HBA=1 in src/Makefile.global.
 * changed regex handling to be uniform use of Henry Spencer's regex code
   regardless of platform.  The regex code is included in the distribution
 * added functions and operators for case-insensitive regular expressions. 
   The operators are ~* and !~*.
 * pg_dump uses COPY instead of SELECT loop for better performance

Bug fixes:
 * fixed an optimizer bug that was causing core dumps when 
   functions calls were used in comparisons in the WHERE clause
 * changed all uses of getuid to geteuid so that effective uids are used
 * psql now returns non-zero status on errors when using -c
 * applied public patches 1-14

Postgres95 1.0			Tue Sep  5 11:24:11 PDT 1995
-------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright change:
 * The copyright of Postgres 1.0 has been loosened to be freely modifiable
   and modifiable for any purpose.  Please read the COPYRIGHT file.
   Thanks to Professor Michael Stonebraker for making this possible.

Incompatibilities:
 *  date formats have to be MM-DD-YYYY (or DD-MM-YYYY if you're using
   EUROPEAN STYLE).  This follows SQL-92 specs.
 *  "delimiters" is now a keyword

Enhancements:
 *  sql LIKE syntax has been added
 *  copy command now takes an optional USING DELIMITER specification.
   delimiters can be any single-character string. 
 *  IRIX 5.3 port has been added.
   Thanks to Paul Walmsley (ccshag@everest.cclabs.missouri.edu) and others.
 *  updated pg_dump to work with new libpq
 *  \d has been added psql 
   Thanks to Keith Parks (emkxp01@mtcc.demon.co.uk)
 *  regexp performance for architectures that use POSIX regex has been
   improved due to caching of precompiled patterns.
   Thanks to Alistair Crooks (agc@uts.amdahl.com) 
 *  a new version of libpq++
   Thanks to William Wanders (wwanders@sci.kun.nl)

Bug fixes:
 *  arbitrary userids can be specified in the createuser script
 *  \c to connect to other databases in psql now works.
 *  bad pg_proc entry for float4inc() is fixed
 *  users with usecreatedb field set can now create databases without
   having to be usesuper
 *  remove access control entries when the entry no longer has any
   permissions
 *  fixed non-portable datetimes implementation
 *  added kerberos flags to the src/backend/Makefile
 *  libpq now works with kerberos
 *  typographic errors in the user manual have been corrected.
 *  btrees with multiple index never worked, now we tell you they don't
   work when you try to use them


Postgres95 Beta 0.03		Fri Jul 21 14:49:31 PDT 1995
------------------------------------------------------
Incompatible changes:
 * BETA-0.3 IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH DATABASES CREATED WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS
   (due to system catalog changes and indexing structure changes).
 * double-quote (") is deprecated as a quoting character for string literals;
   you need to convert them to single quotes (').
 * name of aggregates (eg. int4sum) are renamed in accordance with the
   SQL standard (eg. sum).
 * CHANGE ACL syntax is replaced by GRANT/REVOKE syntax.
 * float literals (eg. 3.14) are now of type float4 (instead of float8 in
   previous releases); you might have to do typecasting if you depend on it
   being of type float8.  If you neglect to do the typecasting and you assign
   a float literal to a field of type float8, you may get incorrect values
   stored!
 * LIBPQ has been totally revamped so that frontend applications
   can connect to multiple backends
 * the usesysid field in pg_user has been changed from int2 to int4 to
   allow wider range of Unix user ids.
 * the netbsd/freebsd/bsd o/s ports have been consolidated into a
   single BSD44_derived port.  (thanks to Alistair Crooks)

SQL standard-compliance (the following details changes that makes postgres95
more compliant to the SQL-92 standard):
 * the following SQL types are now built-in: smallint, int(eger), float, real,
   char(N), varchar(N), date and time.

   The following are aliases to existing postgres types:
		smallint -> int2
		integer, int -> int4
		float, real  -> float4
   char(N) and varchar(N) are implemented as truncated text types. In
   addition, char(N) does blank-padding. 
 * single-quote (') is used for quoting string literals; '' (in addition to
   \') is supported as means of inserting a single quote in a string
 * SQL standard aggregate names (MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, COUNT) are used
   (Also, aggregates can now be overloaded, i.e. you can define your
   own MAX aggregate to take in a user-defined type.)
 * CHANGE ACL removed. GRANT/REVOKE syntax added.  
   - Privileges can be given to a group using the "GROUP" keyword.
	For example:
		GRANT SELECT ON foobar TO GROUP my_group;
	The keyword 'PUBLIC' is also supported to mean all users.	

	Privileges can only be granted or revoked to one user or group
	at a time.  

	"WITH GRANT OPTION" is not supported.  Only class owners can change
	access control
   - The default access control is to to grant users readonly access.
     You must explicitly grant insert/update access to users.  To change
     this, modify the line in 
		src/backend/utils/acl.h 
     that defines ACL_WORLD_DEFAULT 

Bug fixes:
 * the bug where aggregates of empty tables were not run has been fixed. Now,
   aggregates run on empty tables will return the initial conditions of the
   aggregates. Thus, COUNT of an empty	table will now properly return 0.
   MAX/MIN of an empty table will return a tuple of value NULL. 
 * allow the use of \; inside the monitor
 * the LISTEN/NOTIFY asynchronous notification mechanism now work
 * NOTIFY in rule action bodies now work
 * hash indices work, and access methods in general should perform better.
   creation of large btree indices should be much faster.  (thanks to Paul
   Aoki)

Other changes and enhancements:
 * addition of an EXPLAIN statement used for explaining the query execution
   plan (eg. "EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM EMP" prints out the execution plan for
   the query).
 * WARN and NOTICE messages no longer have timestamps on them. To turn on
   timestamps of error messages, uncomment the line in
   src/backend/utils/elog.h:
	/* define ELOG_TIMESTAMPS */ 
 * On an access control violation, the message
	"Either no such class or insufficient privilege"
   will be given.  This is the same message that is returned when
   a class is not found.  This dissuades non-privileged users from
   guessing the existence of privileged classes.
 * some additional system catalog changes have been made that are not
   visible to the user.

libpgtcl changes:
 * The -oid option has been added to the "pg_result" tcl command.
   pg_result -oid returns oid of the last tuple inserted.   If the
   last command was not an INSERT, then pg_result -oid returns "".
 * the large object interface is available as pg_lo* tcl commands:
   pg_lo_open, pg_lo_close, pg_lo_creat, etc.

Portability enhancements and New Ports:
 * flex/lex problems have been cleared up.  Now, you should be able to use
   flex instead of lex on any platforms.  We no longer make assumptions of
   what lexer you use based on the platform you use. 
 * The Linux-ELF port is now supported.  Various configuration have been 
   tested:  The following configuration is known to work:
	kernel 1.2.10, gcc 2.6.3, libc 4.7.2, flex 2.5.2, bison 1.24
   with everything in ELF format,

New utilities:
 * ipcclean added to the distribution
   ipcclean usually does not need to be run, but if your backend crashes
   and leaves shared memory segments hanging around, ipcclean will
   clean them up for you.

New documentation:
 * the user manual has been revised and libpq documentation added.

Postgres95 Beta 0.02	(Thu May 25 16:54:46 PDT 1995)
------------------------------------------------------
Incompatible changes:
 * The SQL statement for creating a database is 'CREATE DATABASE' instead
   of 'CREATEDB'. Similarly, dropping a database is 'DROP DATABASE' instead
   of 'DESTROYDB'. However, the names of the executables 'createdb' and 
   'destroydb' remain the same.
 
New tools:
 * pgperl - a Perl (4.036) interface to Postgres95
 * pg_dump - a utility for dumping out a postgres database into a
	script file containing query commands. The script files are in a ASCII
	format and can be used to reconstruct the database, even on other
	machines and other architectures. (Also good for converting
	a Postgres 4.2 database to Postgres95 database.)

The following ports have been incorporated into postgres95-beta-0.02:
 * the NetBSD port by Alistair Crooks
 * the AIX port by Mike Tung
 * the Windows NT port by Jon Forrest (more stuff but not done yet)
 * the Linux ELF port by Brian Gallew

The following bugs have been fixed in postgres95-beta-0.02:
 * new lines not escaped in COPY OUT and problem with COPY OUT when first
   attribute is a '.' 
 * cannot type return to use the default user id in createuser
 * SELECT DISTINCT on big tables crashes
 * Linux installation problems
 * monitor doesn't allow use of 'localhost' as PGHOST
 * psql core dumps when doing \c or \l
 * the "pgtclsh" target missing from src/bin/pgtclsh/Makefile
 * libpgtcl has a hard-wired default port number
 * SELECT DISTINCT INTO TABLE hangs
 * CREATE TYPE doesn't accept 'variable' as the internallength
 * wrong result using more than 1 aggregate in a SELECT

Postgres95 Beta 0.01	(Mon May 1 19:03:10 PDT 1995)
------------------------------------------------------
Initial release.